“Then that accounts for all the recent——”
“Perhaps not quite all,” put in Uncle Dudley. “But the Timby-Hucks is both energetic and vigilant, and she tells me she is doing splendidly. She is very enthusiastic about it, naturally. She says that while the money is, of course, an object, her real satisfaction is in the humanitarian aspects of her work.”
“I am not sure that I follow,” I said doubtingly.
“No, I didn’t altogether myself at the start,” said Uncle Dudley, “but as she explains it, it is very simple. You see business is in a bad way in London—worse, they say, than usual. The number of unemployed is something dreadful to think of, so I am told by those who have thought of it. There are many thousands of people with no food, no fire, no clothes to speak of. Most people are discouraged about this. They can’t see how the thing can be improved. But Miss Timby-Hucks has a very ingenious idea. Why, she asks, do not all the Unemployed sue all the newspapers for libel? Do you catch the notion?”
“By George!” I exclaimed, “that is a bold, comprehensive thought!”
“Yes, isn’t it?” cried Uncle Dudley. “I am immensely attracted by it. For one thing, it is so secure, so certain! Broadly speaking, there are no risks at all. I suppose there has never yet been a case, no matter what its so-called merits, in which the English newspaper hasn’t been cast in damages of some sort Nobody is too humble or too shady to get a verdict against an editor or newspaper proprietor. Miss Timby-Hucks relates several most touching instances where the wolf was actually at the door, the children shoeless and hungry, the mother prostrated by drink, rain coming through the roof and so on—and everything has been changed to peace and contentment by the happy thought of bringing a libel suit. The father now wears a smile and a white waistcoat; the drains have been repaired; the little children, nicely washed and combed, kick each other’s shins with brand new boots, and sing cheerfully beneath a worsted-work motto of ‘God bless our Home!’ I find myself much affected by the thought.”
“You had always a tender heart,” I responded. “I suppose there would be no trouble about the Judges?”
“Not the least in the world,” said Uncle Dudley, with confidence. “Of course the Bench would have to be greatly enlarged, but there need be no fear on that score. There is a mysterious but beneficent rule, my boy, which you can always count upon in this making of judges—no matter how hail-fellow-well-met an eminent lawyer may be, no matter how intimate his connection with newspapers, how large his indebtedness to them for his career—the moment he gets on the Bench he catches the full, fine, old-crusted judicial spirit toward the Press. The scales fall with a bang from his eyes, and he sees the editor and newspaper proprietor as they really are—designing criminals, mercenary reprobates, social pests—to be lectured and bullied and put down. O, you may rely on the Judges! They are as safe as a new Liberal peer is to vote Tory.”
“But the ‘power of the Press’?” I urged. “If the newspapers combine in protest, and——”
“You talk at random!” said Uncle Dudley almost austerely. “I should say the most certain, the most absolutely reliable, element in the whole case is the fact that newspapers do not combine. Whenever one editor gets hit, all the others grin. One journal is mulcted in heavy damages: the rest have all a difficulty in dissembling their delight. You read in natural history that kites are given to falling upon one of their kind which gets wounded or decrepit, and picking out its eyes. Well, kites are also made of newspapers.”