They used the editorial
page and, to even better advantage, the news-columns, in revenging
themselves for too heavy levies of blackmail upon their corrupt interests
or in securing unjust legislation and privileges.
Obedient and cynical Mr. Malcolm had made the editorial page corrupt and
brilliant--never so effective as when assailing a good cause. The great
misfortune of good causes is that they attract so many fatal friends--the
superciliously conscientious; the well-meaning but feeble-minded and
blundering; the most offensive because least deceptive kinds of hypocrites.
Mr. Malcolm, as acute as he was intellectually unscrupulous, well
understood how to weaken or to ruin a just cause through these supporters.
Sometimes he stood afar off, showering the poisoned arrows of raillery and
satire. Again he was the plain-spoken friend of the cause and warned its
honest supporters against these "fool friends" whom he pretended to regard
as its leaders. Again he played the part of a blind enthusiast and praised
folly as wisdom and urged it on to more damaging activities.
"We abhor humbug here," he used to say; and perhaps he did in a measure
excuse himself to his conscience with the phrase. But in fact his editorial
page was usually a succession of humbugs, of brilliant hypocrisies and
cheats perpetrated under the guise of exposing humbug.
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