Dog does not eat dog, but the unwritten etiquette in accordance with which one newspaper does not directly attack another was much less strictly observed sixty or seventy years ago. Delane, the editor of _The Times_, exercised a greater political influence than any other journalist before or since, and for a good many years _Punch_ acted as a sort of free-lance ally of the great daily,[23] drawing liberally from its columns in the way of extracts and illustrations, and, according to his habitual practice, underlining its policy while pretending to be shocked at it. Several of the men on _Punch_ were contributors to _The Times_. Gilbert à Beckett's name stands first in the list of the principal contributors and members of the staff of _The Times_ under Delane given in Mr. Dasent's biography. Yet I have searched the pages of the biography and the index in vain for a single reference to _Punch_. None the less the relations of the two papers were close and cordial, and "Billy" Russell, the _Times_ war correspondent and unsparing critic of mismanagement in the Crimea, had no more enthusiastic trumpeter than _Punch_. But the great gulf in prestige and power between _The Times_ under Delane and the rest of the London Press is indirectly but unmistakably shown in _Punch's_ habitual disrespect for most of his other contemporaries. In another context, I have quoted examples of his flagellation of the _Morning Post_--the only paper, by the way, which supported the _Coup d'État_; but two masterpieces of malice may be added. In 1843, _à propos_ of "Jenkins's" incurably unctuous worship of rank, _Punch_ observes: "If the reader be not weeping at this, it is not in the power of onions to move him." And again, a little later on in the same year, _Punch_ compares the "beastliness" of Jenkins, "the life-long toad-eater," with the "beastly fellow" denounced in the _Morning Post_ for swallowing twelve frogs for a wager! _Punch_ was not content with identifying the _Morning Post_ with the imaginary personality of Jenkins, the super-flunkey, but was also responsible for re-christening the _Morning Herald_ and the _Standard_--Conservative morning and evening papers which, until 1857, belonged to the same proprietor--Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. The _Standard_ retaliated by calling _Punch_ the "most abject of all the toadies of _The Times_," and accusing it of libelling "the young gentlemen of Eton" and the Queen. By an unconscious compliment _Punch_ was bracketed with the _Examiner_, the ablest and most independent of the weeklies, as _The Times_ was of the dailies, for its disloyalty to the Crown. In the war of wits which ensued and was carried on for several years, all the honours rested with _Punch_. But these controversies belong rather to the domestic history of _Punch_; and _Punch's_ friendly relations with the _Daily News_, of which Dickens was the first editor, must be somewhat discounted by the facts that