On that Sunday evening in London Mr Low was successful in finding the Vice-Chancellor, and the great judge smiled and nodded, listened to the story, and acknowledged that the circumstances were very peculiar¹. He thought that an injunction to restrain the publication might be given at once upon Mr Finn’s affidavit²; and that the peculiar circumstances justified³ the peculiarity⁴ of Mr Low’s application. Whether he would have said as much had the facts concerned the families of Mr Joseph Smith and his son-in-law Mr John Jones, instead of the Earl of Brentford and the Right Honourable⁵ Robert Kennedy, some readers will perhaps doubt, and may doubt also whether an application coming from some newly-fledged barrister would have been received as graciously as that made by Mr Low, Q.C. and M.P. — who would probably himself soon sit on some lofty legal bench. On the following morning Phineas and Mr Low — and no doubt also Mr Vice-Chancellor Pickering — obtained early copies of the People’s Banner, and were delighted to find that Mr Kennedy’s letter did not appear in it. Mr Low had made his calculation rightly. The editor, considering that he would gain more by having the young member of Parliament and the Standish family, as it were, in his hands than by the publication of a certain libellous letter, had resolved to put the document back for at least twenty-four hours, even though the young member neither came nor wrote as he had promised. The letter did not appear, and before ten o’clock Phineas Finn had made his affidavit in a dingy⁶ little room behind the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. The injunction was at once issued, and was of such potency⁷ that should any editor dare to publish any paper therein prohibited, that editor and that editor’s newspaper would assuredly be crumpled⁸ up in a manner very disagreeable, if not altogether destructive. Editors of newspapers are self-willed,

分享到：