Editing The Spectator (section)

==History==
===Robert Stephen Rintoul===
''The Spectator''{{'}}s founder, Scottish reformer [[Robert Stephen Rintoul]], former editor of the ''[[Dundee Courier & Argus|Dundee Advertiser]]'' and the London-based ''[[The Atlas (newspaper)|Atlas]]'', launched the paper on 6 July 1828.<ref name=FirstNumber/><ref>{{Cite news |date=5 July 1828 |title=News of the Week |work=The Spectator (archives) |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/page/5th-july-1828/7 |url-status=live |access-date=7 September 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181007073730/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/page/5th-july-1828/7 |archive-date=7 October 2018}}</ref> Rintoul consciously revived the title from the celebrated, if short-lived, daily publication by [[Joseph Addison]] and [[Richard Steele]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Nelson |first=Fraser |date=March 2019 |title=1711 and all that: the untold story of The Spectator |url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/1711-and-all-that-the-untold-story-of-the-spectator |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240616154502/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/1711-and-all-that-the-untold-story-of-the-spectator/ |archive-date=2024-06-16 |website=spectator.co.uk}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=1 March 2018 |title=How the spirit of The Spectator dates back to 1711 |url=https://retro-blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/how-the-original-spectator-began-on-this-day-in-1711/ |website=Coffee House }}{{Dead link|date=March 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> As he had long been determined "to edit a perfect newspaper",<ref name="Beach Thomas 1928">{{Cite book |last=Beach Thomas |first=William |title=The Story of the Spectator, 1828–1928 |year=1928 |author-link=William Beach Thomas}}</ref> Rintoul initially insisted on "absolute power"<ref name="Beach Thomas 1928" /> over content, commencing a long-lasting tradition of the paper's editor and proprietor being one and the same person. Although he wrote little himself, "every line and word passed through the alembic of his brain."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Froude |first1=James Anthony |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sbC4oVZEDWMC&pg=PA611 |title=Fraser's Magazine |last2=Tulloch |first2=John |date=2 July 1858 |publisher=J. Fraser |via=Google Books}}</ref>

''The Spectator''{{'}}s political outlook in its first thirty years reflected Rintoul's [[Classical radicalism|liberal-radical]] agenda.<ref name="Blake">{{Cite news |last=Blake |first=Robert |date=23 September 1978 |title=From Wellington to Thatcher |work=The Spectator}}</ref> Despite its political stance, it was widely regarded and respected for its non-partisanship, in both its political and cultural criticism. Rintoul initially advertised his new title as a "family paper", the euphemistic term for a journal free from strong political rhetoric. However, events soon compelled him to confess that it was no longer possible to be "a mere Spectator". Two years into its existence, ''The Spectator'' came out strongly for wide-reaching parliamentary reform: it produced supplements detailing vested interests in the Commons and Lords, coined the well-known phrase "The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill", and helped drive through the [[Reform Act 1832|Great Reform Act of 1832]]. Virulently anti-[[Tory]] in its politics, ''The Spectator'' strongly objected to the appointment of the [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]] as prime minister, condemning him as "a Field Marshal whose political career proves him to be utterly destitute of political principle&nbsp;– whose military career affords ample evidence of his stern and remorseless temperament."<ref>''The Spectator'', 3 January 1835.</ref>

The paper spent its first century at premises on Wellington Street (now [[Lancaster Place]]). Despite its robust criticism of the Conservative Party leader [[Robert Peel]] for several years, ''The Spectator'' rallied behind him when he split the Tory party by successfully repealing the [[Corn Laws]]. Rintoul's fundamental principles were freedom of the individual, freedom of the press and freedom of trade, of religious tolerance and freedom from blind political adherence. The magazine was vocal in its opposition to the [[First Opium War]] (1839–1842), commenting that "all the alleged aims of the expedition against China are vague, illimitable, and incapable of explanation, save only that of making the Chinese pay the opium-smugglers."<ref>{{Cite news |date=2 May 1840 |title=The Opium War, Its Supporters and Opponents |page=10 |work=The Spectator |publisher=The Spectator Archive |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/2nd-may-1840/10/the-opium-war-its-supporters-and-opponents |url-status=live |access-date=13 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140715185045/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/2nd-may-1840/10/the-opium-war-its-supporters-and-opponents |archive-date=15 July 2014}}</ref> The magazine further wrote: "There does not appear to be much glory gained in a contest so unequal that hundreds are killed on one side and none on the other. What honour is there in going to shoot men, certain that they cannot hurt you? The cause of the war, be it remembered, is as disreputable as the strength of the parties is unequal. The war is undertaken in support of a co-partnery of opium-smugglers, in which the [[British Raj|Anglo-Indian Government]] may be considered as the principal partner."<ref>{{Cite news |date=17 January 1842 |title=The Opium War |page=9 |work=The Spectator |publisher=The Spectator Archive |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/17th-january-1842/9/the-opium-war |url-status=live |access-date=13 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140723224724/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/17th-january-1842/9/the-opium-war |archive-date=23 July 2014}}</ref>

In 1853, ''The Spectator''{{'}}s lead book reviewer [[George Brimley]] published an anonymous and unfavourable notice of [[Charles Dickens]]'s ''[[Bleak House]]'', typical of the paper's enduring contempt for him as a "popular" writer "amusing the idle hours of the greatest number of readers; not, we may hope, without improvement to their hearts, but certainly without profoundly affecting their intellects or deeply stirring their emotions."<ref>''The Spectator'', 24 September 1853, reprinted in Philip Collins (ed), ''Charles Dickens: The Critical Heritage'', Taylor and Francis, 2005 [1971], pp. 295–98, 297.</ref> Rintoul died in April 1858, having sold the magazine two months earlier. The circulation had already been falling, under particular pressure from its new rival, ''The Saturday Review''. Its new owner, the 27-year-old John Addyes Scott, kept the purchase quiet, but Rintoul's death made explicit the change of guard. His tenure was unremarkable, and subscribers continued to fall.<ref>Butterfield, David (2020). ''10,000 Not Out: The History of The Spectator 1828–2020''. London: Unicorn, pp. 40–41.</ref> By the end of the year, Scott sought his escape, selling the title for £4,200 in December 1858 ({{Inflation|UK|4200|1858|r=0|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}) to two British-based Americans, James McHenry and [[Benjamin Moran]]. While McHenry was a businessman, Moran was an assistant secretary to the American ambassador, [[George M. Dallas]]; they saw their purchase as a means to influence British opinion on American affairs.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Press in a Mess |url=https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/press-mess |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200519053531/https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/press-mess |archive-date=19 May 2020 |access-date=19 May 2020 |website=History Today}}</ref>

The editor was [[Thornton Leigh Hunt]], a friend of Moran who had also worked for Rintoul. Hunt was also nominally the purchaser, having been given the necessary monies in an attempt by McHenry and Moran to disguise the American ownership. Circulation declined with this loss of independence and inspirational leadership, as the views of [[James Buchanan]], then President of the United States, came to the fore. Within weeks, as the last pre-American ownership issue appears to have been that of 25 December 1858. the editorial line followed Buchanan's pronouncements in being "neither pro-[[Slavery in the United States|slavery]] nor pro-[[abolitionist]]. To unsympathetic observers Buchanan's policy seemed to apportion blame for the impasse on the slavery question equally on pro-slavery and abolitionist factions – and rather than work out a solution, simply to argue that a solution would take time. ''The Spectator'' now would publicly support that 'policy'".<ref name="Fulton" /> This set it at odds with most of the British press, but gained it the sympathy of expatriate Americans in the country. Richard Fulton notes that from then until 1861, "the ''Spectator''{{'}}s commentary on American affairs read like a Buchanan administration propaganda sheet." and that this represented a ''volte-face''.<ref name="Fulton">{{Cite journal |last=Fulton |first=Richard |date=Winter 1991 |title=The "Spectator" in Alien Hands |journal=Victorian Periodicals Review |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals |volume=24 |issue=4 |pages=187–196 |jstor=20082560}} {{subscription required}}</ref> Under Hunt's tenure, ''The Spectator'' may even have been steered by financial support from the court of [[Napoleon III]].<ref>Butterfield, David (2020). ''10,000 Not Out: The History of The Spectator 1828-2020''. London: Unicorn, pp. 44-5.</ref>

===Meredith Townsend, Richard Holt Hutton, and John St Loe Strachey===
The need to promote the Buchanan position in Britain had been reduced as British papers such as ''[[The Times]]'' and ''[[Saturday Review (London)|The Saturday Review]]'' turned in his favour, fearing the potential effects of a split in the Union. As [[Abraham Lincoln]] was set to succeed the vacillating Buchanan after the [[1860 United States presidential election]], the owners decided to stop pumping money into a loss-making publication: as Moran confided to his diary, "it don't pay, never did since Hunt became its owner."<ref>Wallace, S. A. and F. E. Gillespie (eds.). ''The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865'' (Chicago, 1948) Vol. 1, p. 763.</ref> On 19 January 1861, ''The Spectator'' was sold to a journalist, [[Meredith Townsend]], for the marked-down sum of £2,000. Though not yet thirty, Townsend had spent the previous decade as an editor in India, and was prepared to restore to the paper an independent voice in a fast-changing world. From the outset, Townsend took up an anti-Buchanan, anti-slavery position, arguing that his unwillingness to act decisively had been a weakness and a contributor to the problems apparent in the US.<ref name="Fulton" /> He soon went into partnership with [[Richard Holt Hutton]], the editor of ''[[The Economist]]'', whose primary interests were literature and theology. Hutton's close friend [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]] later called him "the first critic of the nineteenth century".<ref name="Blake" /> Townsend's writing in ''The Spectator'' confirmed him as one of the finest journalists of his day, and he has since been called "the greatest leader writer ever to appear in the English Press."<ref name="Blake" />

The two men remained co-proprietors and joint editors for 25 years, taking a strong stand on some of the most controversial issues of their day. They supported the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] against the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] in the [[American Civil War]], an unpopular position which, at the time, did serious damage to the paper's circulation, reduced to some 1,000 readers. The issue of 25 January 1862, published in the wake of the [[Trent Affair]], argued that "The Southern Bid" for active support in return for an Abolition promise, "demands careful examination".<ref>{{Cite web |title=25 Jan 1862 » The Spectator Archive |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/issue/25th-january-1862 |access-date=2023-04-01 |website=archive.spectator.co.uk}}</ref> In time, the paper regained readers when the victory of the North validated its principled stance.<ref name=Blake/> They also launched an all-out assault on [[Benjamin Disraeli]], accusing him in a series of leaders of jettisoning ethics for politics by ignoring the atrocities committed against Bulgarian civilians by the [[Ottoman Empire]] in the 1870s.<ref>See {{Cite book |last=O'Donnell |first=Frank Hugh |title=A Borrowed Plume of the "Daily News": The First Description of the Bulgarian Rising in 1876 |publisher=Arthur L. Humphreys |year=1912 |location=London |hdl=2027/wu.89013491543 |author-link=Frank Hugh O'Donnell}}</ref>

In 1886, ''The Spectator'' parted company with [[William Ewart Gladstone]] when he declared his support for [[Irish Home Rule movement|Irish Home Rule]]. Committed to defending the Union ahead of the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]] line, Townsend and Hutton aligned themselves with the [[Liberal Unionist Party|Liberal Unionist]] wing. As a result, [[H. H. Asquith]] (the future Prime Minister), who had served as a leader-writer for ten years, left his post. Townsend was succeeded by a young journalist named [[John Strachey (journalist)|John St Loe Strachey]], who would remain associated with the paper for the next 40 years. When Hutton died in 1897, Strachey became co-owner with Townsend; by the end of the year Strachey was made sole editor and proprietor. As chief leader-writer, general manager, literary critic and all things beside, Strachey embodied the spirit of ''The Spectator'' until the 1920s. Among his various schemes were the establishment of a Spectator Experimental Company, to show that new soldiers could be trained up to excellence in six months, the running of a Cheap Cottage Exhibition, which laid the foundations for Letchworth Garden City, and the impassioned defence of Free Trade against [[Joseph Chamberlain]]'s protectionist 'Tariff Reform' programme.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}

Within two years he had doubled the paper's circulation, which peaked at 23,000. In the early decades of the twentieth century it was heralded as "the most influential of all the London weeklies".<ref name="Courtauld 1999">{{Cite book |last=Courtauld |first=Simon |title=To Convey Intelligence: The Spectator 1928–1998' |publisher=Profile Books Ltd |year=1999}}</ref> The First World War put the paper and its editor under great strain: after the conflict it seemed to be behind the times, and circulation began to fall away. Even the introduction of signed articles, overturning the paper's fixed policy of anonymity for its first century, did little to help. After years of illness, Strachey decided at the end of 1924 to sell his controlling interest in the paper to his recently appointed business manager, Sir [[Evelyn Wrench]]. Although he gained a second wind as a novelist, Strachey died two years later in 1928.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}