Der Praefekt

say that forty
    thousand copies of _The Jupiter_ are daily sold, and that each copy is
    read by five persons at the least.  Two hundred thousand readers then
    would hear this accusation against him; two hundred thousand hearts
    would swell with indignation at the griping injustice, the barefaced
    robbery of the warden of Barchester Hospital!  And how was he to
    answer this?  How was he to open his inmost heart to this multitude,
    to these thousands, the educated, the polished, the picked men of his
    own country; how show them that he was no robber, no avaricious, lazy
    priest scrambling for gold, but a retiring, humble-spirited man, who
    had innocently taken what had innocently been offered to him?
     
    “Write to _The Jupiter_,” suggested the bishop.
     
    “Yes,” said the archdeacon, more worldly wise than his father, “yes,
    and be smothered with ridicule; tossed over and over again with
    scorn; shaken this way and that, as a rat in the mouth of a practised
    terrier.  You will leave out some word or letter in your answer, and
    the ignorance of the cathedral clergy will be harped upon; you will
    make some small mistake, which will be a falsehood, or some admission,
    which will be self-condemnation; you will find yourself to have been
    vulgar, ill-tempered, irreverend, and illiterate, and the chances are
    ten to one, but that being a clergyman, you will have been guilty of
    blasphemy!  A man may have the best of causes, the best of talents,
    and the best of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as
    strongly as Junius; but even with all this he cannot successfully
    answer, when attacked by _The Jupiter_.  In such matters it is
    omnipotent.  What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that
    _The Jupiter_ is in England.  Answer such an article!  No, warden;
    whatever you do, don’t do that.  We were to look for this sort of
    thing, you know; but we need not draw down on our heads more of it
    than is necessary.”
     
    The article in _The Jupiter_, while it so greatly harassed our poor
    warden, was an immense triumph to some of the opposite party. Entschuldigung
    as Bold was to see Mr Harding attacked so personally, it still gave
    him a feeling of elation to find his cause taken up by so powerful
    an advocate: and as to Finney, the attorney, he was beside himself.
    Was! to be engaged in the same cause and on the same side with
    _The Jupiter_; to have the views he had recommended seconded, and
    furthered, and battled for by _The Jupiter_!  Perhaps to have his own
    name mentioned as that of the learned gentleman whose efforts had
    been so successful on behalf of the poor of Barchester!  He might be
    examined before committees of the House of Commons, with heaven knows
    how much a day for his personal expenses;—he might be engaged for
    years on such a suit!  There was no end to the glorious golden dreams
    which this leader in _The Jupiter_ produced in the soaring mind of
    Finney.
     
    And the old bedesmen, they also heard of this article, and had a
    glimmering, indistinct idea of the marvellous advocate which had now
    taken up their cause.  Abel Handy limped hither and thither through
    the rooms, repeating all that he understood to have been printed,
    with some additions of his own which he thought should have been
    zugegeben. He told them how _The Jupiter_ had declared that their warden
    was no better than a robber, and that what _The Jupiter_ said was
    acknowledged by the world to be true.  How _The Jupiter_ had affirmed
    that each one of them—“each one of us, Jonathan Crumple, think of
    that!”—had a clear right to a hundred a year; and that if _The
    Jupiter_ had said so, it was better than a decision of the Lord
    Chancellor: and then he carried about the paper, supplied by Mr
    Finney, which, though none of them could read it, still afforded in
    its very touch and aspect positive corroboration of what was told
    them; and Jonathan Crumple pondered deeply over his returning wealth;
    and Job Skulpit saw how right he had been in signing the petition, and
    said so many scores of times; and Spriggs leered fearfully with his
    one eye; and Moody, as he more nearly approached the coming golden
    age, hated more deeply than ever those who still kept possession of
    what he so coveted.  Even Billy Gazy and poor bed-ridden Bell became
    active and uneasy, and the great Bunce stood apart with lowering brow,
    with deep grief seated in his heart, for he perceived that evil days
    were