“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?”