They had secured something, both financially and morally; what best pleased them, perhaps, was the extent to which they got their scheme discussed.

Here Lorne had been invaluable; Murchison had done more with the newspapers, they agreed, than any of them with Cabinet Ministers.

The journalist everywhere is perhaps more accessible to ideas, more susceptible to enthusiasm, than his fellows, and Lorne was charged with the object of his deputation in its most communicable, most captivating form.

At all events, he came to excellent understanding, whether of agreement or opposition, with the newspapermen he met--Cruickshank knew a good many of them and these occasions were more fruitful than the official ones--and there is no doubt that the guarded approval of certain leading columns had fewer ifs and buts and other qualifications in consequence, while the disapproval of others was marked by a kind of unwilling sympathy and a freely accorded respect.

Lorne found London editors surprisingly unbiased, London newspapers surprisingly untrammelled.
They seemed to him to suffer from no dictated views, no interests in the background or special local circumstances.