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.'
'Money will do it,' said Beauchamp.