innumerable blockheads of lower circles, not understanding the real cause
of fear, sought a false one in the supposed thunderbolts of the rhetoric.
Opera-house thunderbolts they were: and strange it is, that grave men
should fancy newspapers, teeming (as they have always done) with
_Publicolas_, with _Catos_, with _Algernon Sidneys_, able by such trivial
small shot to gain a moment's attention from the potentates of Downing
Street. Those who have despatches to write, councils to attend, and votes
of the Commons to manage, think little of Junius Brutus. A Junius Brutus,
that dares not sign by his own honest name, is presumably skulking from
his creditors. A Timoleon, who hints at assassination in a newspaper, one
may take it for granted, is a manufacturer of begging letters. And it is a
conceivable case that a twenty pound note, enclosed to Timoleon's address,
through the newspaper office, might go far to soothe that great patriot's
feelings, and even to turn aside his avenging dagger. These sort of people
were not the sort to frighten a British Ministry. One laughs at the
probable conversation between an old hunting squire coming up to comfort
the First Lord of the Treasury, on the rumor that he was panic-struck.
'What, surely, my dear old friend, you're not afraid of Timoleon?' First
Lord.--'Yes, I am.' C. Gent.--'What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in the
papers?' F. L.--'Yes, dreadfully.' C. Gent.--'Why, I always understood
that these people were a sort of shams--living in Grub Street--or where
was it that Pope used to tell us they lived? Surely you're not afraid of
Timoleon, because some people think he's a patriot?' F. L.--'No, not at
all; but I am afraid because some people think he's a housebreaker!' In
that character only could Timoleon become formidable to a Cabinet
Minister; and in some such character must our friend, Junius Brutus, have
made himself alarming to Government. From the moment that B is properly
explained, it throws light upon C. The Government was alarmed--not at such
moonshine as patriotism, or at a soap-bubble of rhetoric--but because
treachery was lurking amongst their own households: and, if the thing went