“Carleton will want him to make his food policy include Tariff Reform,” he said.  “If he prove pliable, and is willing to throw over his free trade principles, all well and good.”

“What’s Carleton got to do with it?” demanded Joan with a note of indignation.

He turned his head towards her with an amused raising of the eyebrows.  “Carleton owns two London dailies,” he answered, “and is in treaty for a third:  together with a dozen others scattered about the provinces.  Most politicians find themselves, sooner or later, convinced by his arguments.  Phillips may prove the exception.”

“It would be rather interesting, a fight between them,” said Joan.  “Myself I should back Phillips.”

“He might win through,” mused Greyson.  “He’s the man to do it, if anybody could.  But the odds will be against him.”

“I don’t see it,” said Joan, with decision.

“I’m afraid you haven’t yet grasped the power of the Press,” he answered with a smile.  “Phillips speaks occasionally to five thousand people.  Carleton addresses every day a circle of five million readers.”

“Yes, but when Phillips does speak, he speaks to the whole country,” retorted Joan.

“Through the medium of Carleton and his like; and just so far as they allow his influence to permeate beyond the platform,” answered Greyson.

“But they report his speeches.  They are bound to,” explained Joan.

“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered.  “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country.  He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made.  What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’  That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain.  A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’  The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him.  And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform:  or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh.  “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”

“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is.  There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country.  He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”