Beauchamp presented himself rather late in the afternoon, when Mr. Austin and Blackburn Tuckham were sipping tea in Cecilia’s boudoir with that lady, and a cousin of her sex, by whom she was led to notice a faint discoloration over one of his eyes, that was, considering whence it came, repulsive to compassion.  A blow at a Radical meeting!  He spoke of Dr. Shrapnel to Tuckham, and assuredly could not complain that the latter was unsympathetic in regard to the old man’s health, though when he said, ‘Poor old man! he fears he will die!’ Tuckham rejoined:  ’He had better make his peace.’

‘He fears he will die, because of his leaving Miss Denham unprotected,’ said Beauchamp.

’Well, she’s a good-looking girl:  he’ll be able to leave her something, and he might easily get her married, I should think,’ said Tuckham.

‘He’s not satisfied with handing her to any kind of man.’

’If the choice is to be among Radicals and infidels, I don’t wonder.  He has come to one of the tests.’

Cecilia heard Beauchamp speaking of a newspaper.  A great Radical Journal, unmatched in sincerity, superior in ability, soon to be equal in power, to the leader and exemplar of the lucre-Press, would some day see the light.

‘You’ll want money for that,’ said Tuckham.

‘I know,’ said Beauchamp.

‘Are you prepared to stand forty or fifty thousand a year?’

’It need not be half so much.,

‘Counting the libels, I rate the outlay rather low.’

’Yes, lawyers, judges, and juries of tradesmen, dealing justice to a Radical print!’

Tuckham brushed his hand over his mouth and ahemed.  ’It’s to be a penny journal?’

‘Yes, a penny.  I’d make it a farthing—­’

‘Pay to have it read?’

‘Willingly.’

Tuckham did some mental arithmetic, quaintly, with rapidly blinking eyelids and open mouth.  ’You may count it at the cost of two paying mines,’ he said firmly.  ’That is, if it’s to be a consistently Radical Journal, at law with everybody all round the year.  And by the time it has won a reputation, it will be undermined by a radicaller Radical Journal.  That’s how we’ve lowered the country to this level.  That’s an Inferno of Circles, down to the ultimate mire.  And what on earth are you contending for?’

‘Freedom of thought, for one thing.’

‘We have quite enough free-thinking.’

‘There’s not enough if there’s not perfect freedom.’

‘Dangerous!’ quoth Mr. Austin.

’But it’s that danger which makes men, sir; and it’s fear of the danger that makes our modern Englishman.’

‘Oh!  Oh!’ cried Tuckham in the voice of a Parliamentary Opposition.  ’Well, you start your paper, we’ll assume it:  what class of men will you get to write?’

‘I shall get good men for the hire.’

’You won’t get the best men; you may catch a clever youngster or two, and an old rogue of talent; you won’t get men of weight.  They’re prejudiced, I dare say.  The Journals which are commercial speculations give us a guarantee that they mean to be respectable; they must, if they wouldn’t collapse.  That’s why the best men consent to write for them.’