Emmanuel Burden, merchant, of Thames St., in the city of London, exporter of hardware

by Hilaire Belloc

Lest I should be accused of concealing anything that might militate against my contention, I will mention the fact that Mr Barnett did own the majority of the shares of the Twentieth Century Syndicate. Now the Twentieth Century Syndicate, it is true, finances the Railton Group; but Mr Barnett himself had nothing to do with that group. It is interested in The Mercury, The Britisher, The Hammer, and the two evening papers, England and The Empire. No one who is acquainted with the nature of modern finance can believe for a moment that so indirect a relation would give Mr Barnett the least voice in the management of these sheets.

Whether Mr Barnett held shares in the London and General Publishing Company at any one time, it is not easy to determine. These shares fluctuated considerably, and, if one may say so without disrespect to so honoured a name as that of the Duke of Essex, the chairman of the Company, they were something of a gambling stock. They were perpetually changing hands, and the motive of their acquisition, whether by Mr Barnett or by anyone else, cannot have been other than that of a speculative game.

Over the great dailies he had absolutely no control whatsoever. He advertised in them, of course; and a good deal of capital was made by his opponents out of the fact that Mr Jefferson, the owner and editor of so important a sheet as The Gazette, was connected with Mr Barnett in the old business of the Haymarket Bank; but if that is to be taken as an evidence of corruption, or even of undue influence, who would be safe from such an accusation?[6] A man in his position is naturally acquainted, often intimate, with the leading men of his time. The editor of The Doctrinaire—a man wholly above suspicion—was proud of his intimate friendship; and he naturally had relations as a host upon more than one occasion with the two proprietors of The Nation, and with the editors or owners of most of the other great dailies. But Mr Barnett had no monopoly in such acquaintances or friendships; most of our great financiers could have boasted of the same.

It is time that I should turn from the ungrateful task of defending a man against a calumny that ought never to have been made, to describe the real services which Mr Barnett rendered to his adopted country, and to the Empire; nowhere were these services more apparent than in the interest he took in the careers of the more brilliant young journalists. Let me cite the case of Mr Powler.

Mr Powler had been among the first to see the advantages of reversing our fiscal policy. As long ago as 1898, just after taking his degree, he had written a powerful defence of Protection which had earned him his Fellowship. He was poor, and the whole weight of his genius might have been lost for years to England had not Mr Barnett appointed him to the editorship of The Review, just before the outbreak of the war in South Africa. No one is ignorant of the effect of that appointment.

THE EDITOR OF “THE DOCTRINAIRE”
(AS HE APPEARED READING HIS PAPER—“CAUSES OF OUR SUCCESS IN SOUTH AFRICA,” TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY)

Long after the war was over, but a full year before any mention of the M’Korio Delta had been publicly made, the editor of The Doctrinaire—a man wholly above suspicion—wrote to Mr Barnett, and asked him if he could recommend some young fellow to sub-edit that great weekly journal during his own enforced absence upon a shooting party in Scotland. I know from Mr Powler himself what passed. Mr Barnett came in person to the office of The Review, climbed to the third story (no small sacrifice in a man of his temperament and figure!) and begged Mr Powler to accept the post.

“It is better paid,” he said, “and a bigger place altogether than anything that I could offer you.” Then he added with a smile: “You know the advice that I always give to you young men.”

It was in vain that Mr Powler (so he himself assures me), pleaded to remain in the service of a man whom he could not but regard as the builder of a new world. He knew that Mr Barnett was making a great sacrifice in permitting him to go, and it was only after a generous dispute that the older man had his way.