’The bold words I have spoken from this place would be nothing but the emptiest brag and the coward’s boast, if I flinched now in the day of battle’.  Every word of praise of the fighters of old would fall in disgrace on the head of him who spoke it, if when the time came to share in their peril he shrunk back from the danger of the strife....  Mr. Bradlaugh drew a graphic picture of the earlier struggles for a free press, and then dealt with the present state of the law; from that he passed on to the pamphlet which is the test-question of the hour; he pointed out how some parts of it were foolish, such as the ‘philosophical proem’, but remarked that he knew no right in law to forbid the publication of all save wisdom; he then showed how, had he originally been asked to publish the pamphlet, he should have raised some objections to its style, but that was a very different matter from permitting the authorities to stop its sale; the style of many books might be faulty without the books being therefore obscene.  He contended the book was a perfectly moral medical work, and was no more indecent than every other medical work dealing with the same subject.  The knowledge it gave was useful knowledge; many a young man might be saved from disease by such a knowledge as was contained in the book; if it was argued that such books should not be sold at so cheap a rate, he replied that it was among the masses that such physiological knowledge was needed, ‘and if there is one subject above all others’, he exclaimed, ’for which a man might gladly sacrifice his hopes and his life, surely it is for that which would relieve his fellow-men from poverty, the mother of crimes, and would make happy homes where now only want and suffering reign’.  He had fully counted the cost; he knew all he might lose; but Carlile before him had been imprisoned for teaching the same doctrine, ’and what Carlile did for his day, I, while health and strength remain, will do for mine’.”

The position we took up in republishing the pamphlet was clearly stated in the preface which we wrote for it, and which I here reprint, as it gives plainly and briefly the facts of the case: 

“PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE TO DR. KNOWLTON’S ‘FRUITS OF PHILOSOPHY’.

“The pamphlet which we now present to the public is one which has been lately prosecuted under Lord Campbell’s Act, and which we now republish in order to test the right of publication.  It was originally written by Charles Knowlton, M.D., an American physician, whose degree entitles him to be heard with respect on a medical question.  It is openly sold and widely circulated in America at the present time.  It was first published in England, about forty years ago, by James Watson, the gallant Radical who came to London and took up Richard Carlile’s work when Carlile was in jail.  He sold it unchallenged for many years, approved it, and recommended it.  It was printed and published by Messrs. Holyoake and Co., and found its place, with other works of a similar