We were not blind to the danger to which this defiance of the authorities exposed us, but it was not the danger of failure, with the prison as penalty, that gave us pause.  It was the horrible misconceptions that we saw might arise; the odious imputations on honour and purity that would follow.  Could we, the teachers of a lofty morality, venture to face a prosecution for publishing what would be technically described as an obscene book, and risk the ruin of our future, dependent as that was on our fair fame?  To Mr. Bradlaugh it meant, as he felt, the almost certain destruction of his Parliamentary position, the forging by his own hands of a weapon that in the hands of his foes would be well-nigh fatal.  To me it meant the loss of the pure reputation I prized, the good name I had guarded—­scandal the most terrible a woman could face.  But I had seen the misery of the poor, of my sister-women with children crying for bread; the wages of the workmen were often sufficient for four, but eight or ten they could not maintain.  Should I set my own safety, my own good name, against the helping of these?  Did it matter that my reputation should be ruined, if its ruin helped to bring remedy to this otherwise hopeless wretchedness of thousands?  What was worth all my talk about self-sacrifice and self-surrender, if, brought to the test, I failed?  So, with heart aching but steady, I came to my resolution; and though I know now that I was wrong intellectually, and blundered in the remedy, I was right morally in the will to sacrifice all to help the poor, and I can rejoice that I faced a storm of obloquy fiercer and harder to bear than any other which can ever touch me again.  I learned a lesson of stern indifference to all judgments from without that were not endorsed by condemnation from within.  The long suffering that followed was a splendid school for the teaching of endurance.

The day before the pamphlet was put on sale we ourselves delivered copies to the Chief Clerk of the Magistrates at Guildhall, to the officer in charge at the City Police Office in Old Jewry, and to the Solicitor for the City of London.  With each pamphlet was a notice that we would attend and sell the book from 4 to 5 p.m. on the following day, Saturday, March 24th.  This we accordingly did, and in order to save trouble we offered to attend daily at the shop from 10 to 11 a.m. to facilitate our arrest, should the authorities determine to prosecute.  The offer was readily accepted, and after some little delay—­during which a deputation from the Christian Evidence Society waited upon Mr. Cross to urge the Tory Government to prosecute us—­warrants were issued against us and we were arrested on April 6th.  Letters of approval and encouragement came from the most diverse quarters, including among their writers General Garibaldi, the well-known economist, Yves Guyot, the great French constitutional lawyer, Emile Acollas, together with letters literally by the hundred from poor men and women thanking and blessing us for the stand taken.  Noticeable were the numbers of letters from clergymen’s wives, and wives of ministers of all denominations.