52 The Newspaper World, remarks the Dean, " if we really dive into its meaning. It reminds me of the speech of the young English king who, when this nation found itself for a moment without a leader, came forward and said, * I will be your leader.' I do not say that the leaders in our great journals really rise to the height of this position ; but still they claim it, and it is their position if they would rightly fill it." It will not be without interest to contrast the high opinion which Dean Stanley had of the leading article with the singularly low estimate of the value and importance of such productions entertained by Richard Cobden. Refer- ring to the many articles which in his own recollection had moved and stirred the heart of England, the Dean asks, in the same speech from which quotation has been already made, " if we cannot recall here and there in the midst of some great national crisis, words which have come home to those whom no sermon could ever reach, and yet which those who write sermons feel they might imitate as their best and noblest models ?" On more than one occasion Mr Cobden expressed the opinion in the House of Com- mons and elsewhere that it was the mission of the news- paper to give news without comment of its own. " Mr Cobden's opinion was," we are told by Mr James Grant,
- that the great bulk of the people did not care for long
leading articles, which he regarded as nothing better than dull disquisitions, or elaborate and heavy essays." When the Star was established as the organ of the Free Trade party, Cobden endeavored to get the committee of man- agement to carry out his views and to have, instead of three or four articles, one only of the character of a gen- eral summary. But it was discovered that this limitation of leading matter was not appreciated by the public. It is also of iiiterest to mention in this connection that Mr John Bright did not hold his colleague's views, but was a frequent contributor of leading and other articles to at
