In the midst of the welter that followed the foregoing catastrophe, the Cabinet, at a hastily-summoned meeting, at last decided on something in the nature of drastic action. Since the suppression of the Leaguers, for the time being at any rate, was quite impossible, it was resolved to raid the offices of the _Epoch_, which had become more and more revolutionary in its articles, and was held by the police to have indirectly incited the recent outrage. It certainly was significant that this very moment was chosen for publication of a sketch of the career of Jack the Painter, who was extolled by the _Epoch_ as a hero and martyr for his attempts to destroy certain of the royal dockyards in the time of the American war with the mother country. The _Epoch_ dwelt on the brutality of the punishment dealt out to this man, who was convicted at Winchester in 1777, and sentenced to be executed at the gate of Portsmouth dockyard. There the wretched man was drawn up by pulleys to a gibbet sixty-four feet high, made of the mizzenmast of the frigate _Arethusa_, higher than Haman hanged on the gallows he had meant for Mordecai. His body afterwards hung in chains at the entrance to the harbour for several years. This, and many another barbarous punishment, said the _Epoch_, was ruthlessly carried out in the sacred name of Justice. “Let Justice be purified by the shedding of blood--an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, exacted by a counter-claim which no statute of limitations should avail to bar.” Further articles containing like passages were found ready in type when the police in great force made a sudden descent on the offices of the journal; but, apparently, the contingency had been anticipated. No resistance was offered by the staff, but after only a day’s interval the _Epoch_ reappeared, published at another printing-office, and printed this time in blood-red ink.