Reviewing The Examiner (1848–49)

Abstract

The fivepenny Sunday weekly which Leigh Hunt founded and edited until 1821 still occupied a distinctive niche in the newspaper world of the 1840s. Its early outspoken republicanism (which had warned the youthful Dickens of the ‘existence of a terrible banditti, called “The Radicals,” whose principles were that the Prince Regent wore stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and navy ought to be put down’) had given way to an intellectual radical tradition on Albany Fonblanque’s installation as editor-cum-manager in 1830, while its excellent, independent coverage of drama and literature remained a selling point amongst well-to-do Whig and Liberal readers throughout the country.¹ As much a review as a political print, for most of its life only three to four of the sixteen pages of The Examiner contained original matter, the rest being supplied from cuttings and digests of the week’s news. As Fonblanque aged and mellowed, and following Forster’s official appointment as Editor in November 1847, it steered a slow but firm course towards respectability and the political centre-ground, without breaking openly with Benthamite thought. Whilst growing ever more critical of the working class aspirations represented by Chartism and the Ten Hours movement, the paper during Forster’s ten-year editorship gave unqualified support to the new Liberal prime minister Lord John Russell and the ‘best-conditioned middle class in the world,’ advocating what Carlyle considered the essentially conservative ‘theory of human affairs prevalent in fashionable Whig circles.’