Part 7 (2/2)

”I trust I shall not do so,under your lordshi+p's co ainst clever counsel, aided by a counsel instead of a judge on the bench Only once did judge and counsel fall out Mr

Ince and Mr Bardswell had been arguing that uardian for my child; Mr Ince declared that Mabel, educated by ood in this world,” and ”hopeless for good hereafter, outcast in this life and dae to consider that my custody of her ”would be detrimental to the future prospects of the child in society, to say nothing of her eternal prospects” Had not theihed at the e establish a ot that Sir George Jessel was a Jew, and lifting eyes to heaven in horrified appeal, he gasped out:

”Your lordshi+p, I think, will scarcely credit it, but Mrs Besant says, in a later affidavit, that she took away the Testaes unfit for a child to read”

The opportunity was too te at a book written by apostate Jews, and Sir George Jessel answered sharply:

”It is not true to say there are no passages unfit for a child's reading, because I think there are a great es that could fairly be called coarse”

”I cannot quite assent to that”

Barring this little episode judge and counsel showed a char unanimity I distinctly said I was an Atheist, that I had withdrawn the child froious instruction at the day-school she attended, that I had written various anti-Christian books, and so on; but I clairound that the deed of separation distinctly gave it to me, and had been executed by her father after I had left the Christian Church, and that my opinions were not sufficient to invalidate it It was admitted on the other side that the child was ad reatest possible care of the child, but decided that the ious instruction was sufficient ground for depriving arded as ”not only reprehensible, but detestable, and likely to work utter ruin to the child, and I certainly should upon this ground alone decide that this child ought not to remain another day under the care of her e Jessel denounced also my Malthusian views in a fashi+on at once so brutal and so untruthful as to facts, that soe of the Supree used by Lord cockburn which justified the Master of the Rolls in assuarded the book as obscene,” and that ”little weight is to be attached to his opinion on a point not submitted for his decision”; he went on to ade Jessel travelled outside the case, and remarked that ”abuse, however, of an unpopular opinion, whether indulged in by judges or other people, is not argument, nor can the vituperation of opponents in opinion prove thee Jessel was all-powerful in his own court, and he deprivedto stay the order even until the hearing of er from the father came to my house, and the little child was carried away by , still weak from the fever, and nearly frantic with fear and passionate resistance No access to her was given ave notice that if access were denied hts, ht see reat, and I nearly wentup and down the eht forget The loneliness and silence of the house, of whichhad always been the sunshi+ne and the hed on me like an evil drea feet, and arden, the sweet hts Iof the little child; eacharms and soft, sweet kisses At last health broke down, and fever struck ave ony of conscious loss Through that terrible illness, day after day, Mr

Bradlaugh camore like a tender h it seemed to me for awhile of little value, till the first months of lonely pain were over When recovered, I took steps to set aside an order obtained by Mr Besant during ainst hi that all access had been denied tocondemnation of the way in which I had been treated Finally the deed of separation executed in 1873 was held to be good as protecting Mr Besant froht by hts, while the clauses giving me the custody of the child were set aside The Court of Appeal in April, 1879, upheld the decision, the absolute right of the father as against a ht to her children on the part of thethat has since been redressed by Parliarasp this instruonise depends on the tenderness and strength of the motherliness of the wife In the days when the law took my child from me, it virtually said to all women: ”Choose which of these two positions, as wife and ally your husband's wife, you can have no legal claially you are your husband's ained in the Court of Appeal The Court expressed a strong view as to e Jessel for it, adding that it could not doubt he would grant it Under cover of this I applied to the Master of the Rolls, and obtained liberal access to the children; but I found thatand fretting for enious forainst me and used in the children's presence would soon become palpable to thele withthe that thus only could I save the conflict, destructive of all happiness and of all respect for one or the other parent

Resolutely I turned ht spare them trouble, and determined that, robbed of my own, I would be a mother to all helpless children I could aid, and cure the pain atthe pain of others

As far as regards this whole struggle over the Knowlton pa the line Not only did we, as related, recover all our seized pamphlets, and continue the sale till all prosecution and threat of prosecution were definitely surrendered; but my own tract had an enormous sale, so that when I withdrew it froe suht, an offer which I, of course, refused Since that tie or per ere that the paal vindication For while it circulated untouched in England, a prosecution was atteainst it in New South Wales, but was put an end to by an eloquent and lue of the Supreme Court, Mr

Justice Winde, the reat Australian colony, spoke out plainly and strongly on the”Take the case,” he said, ”of a wo his constitution and hastening to the drunkard's doom, loss of employment for himself, semi-starvation for his fa to leave those whoht into the world, but armed with the authority of the law to treat his wife as his slave, ever brutally insisting on the indulgence of his hts Where is the i er family than she can support when the miserable breadwinner has drunk hiiven in this book, and so averts the consequences of yielding to her husband's brutal insistence on his hted with a fa up, the immorality, it seeard of precautions which would prevent her bringing into the world daughters whose future outlook as a career would be prostitution, or sons whose inherited taint of alcoholis the enerate and crireat cities In all these cases the appeal is fro prejudice to conscience, and, if listened to, its voice will be heard un where the path of duty lies”

The judge forcibly refused to be any party to the prohibition of such a pah service to the co is the dread of the world's censure upon this topic that few have the courage openly to express their views upon it; and its nature is such that it is only ast intiht upon the question is discovered But let any one inquire ast those who have sufficient education and ability to think for themselves, and who do not idly float, slaves to the current of conventional opinion, and he will discover that numbers of men and women of purest lives, of noblest aspirations, pious, cultivated, and refined, see no wrong in teaching the ignorant that it is wrong to bring into the world children to whom they cannot do justice, and who think it folly to stop short in telling them simply and plainly how to prevent it A nore huy A clearer perception of truth and the safety of trusting to it teaches that in law, as in religion, it is useless trying to lie of mankind by any inquisitorial atteatorius works written with an earnest purpose, and co themselves to thinkers of well-balanced minds I will be no party to any such attempt I do not believe that it was ever meant that the Obscene Publication Act should apply to cases of this kind, but only to the publication of such ard as lewd and filthy, to lewd and bawdy novels, pictures and exhibitions, evidently published and given for lucre's sake It could never have been intended to stifle the expression of thought by the earnest-minded on a subject of transcendent national importance like the present, and I will not strain it for that purpose As pointed out by Lord cockburn in the case of the Queen v Bradlaugh and Besant, all prosecutions of this kind should be regarded as ht to be stifled, inas objected to To those, on the other hand, who desire its proratulation that this, like all attempted persecutions of thinkers, will defeat its own object, and that truth, like a torch, 'the ument of Mr Justice Windmeyer for the Neo-Malthusian position was (as any one ent I have ever read The judglish press as a ”brilliant triual judgland by nant and persistent misrepresentation What that trial and its results cost me in pain no one but myself will ever know; on the other hand, there was the passionate gratitude evidenced by letters from thousands of poor y them how to escape from the veritable hell in which they lived The ”upper classes” of society know nothing about the way in which the poor live; how their overcrowding destroys all sense of personal dignity, of modesty, of outward decency, till huraded below the level of the swine” To such, and ae the price that then seemed to me as the ranso of all thatof all that gave hope of a better future So how could I hesitate--I whose heart had been fired by devotion to an ideal Humanity, inspired by that Materialisust, 1893, we find the _Christian World,_ the representative organ of orthodox Christian Protestantisht and the duty of voluntary li article, after a number of letters had been inserted, it said:--

”The conditions are assuredly wrong which bring one e so cruel It is no less evident that the cause of the bondage in such cases lies in the too rapid multiplication of the family There was a tiarded by pious people as interfering with Providence We are beyond that now, and have becoh the common sense of individual brains We lie from prudential motives as by any action that may be taken after it Apart froravely questioned by ical laws of the subject, the failure to know and to observe which is inexcusable on the part either ofin this connection that Dr Billings, in his article in thisbirth-rate of the United States, gives as one of the reasons the greater diffusion of intelligence, by y, than fored in sixteen years, and all the obloquy poured on us is seen to have been the outcootry

As for the children, as gained by their separation froh to free theirl's too brief stay with e, and I fancy the fears expressed for her eternal future will prove as groundless as the fears for her temporal ruin have proved to be! Not only so, but both are treading in ards their views of the nature and destiny of ht youth the Theosophical Society to which, after so ht to discuss the prudential restraint of population did not, however, conclude without a martyr Mr Edward Truelove, alluded to above, was prosecuted for selling a treatise by Robert Dale Owen on ”Moral Physiology,” and a pamphlet entitled, ”Individual, Family, and National Poverty” He was tried on February 1, 1878, before the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of Queen's Bench, and was most ably defended by Professor WA Hunter The jury spent two hours in considering their verdict, and returned into court and stated that they were unable to agree The majority of the jury were ready to convict, if they felt sure that Mr Truelove would not be punished, but one of them boldly declared in court: ”As to the book, it is written in plain language for plain people, and I think that ht to knohat the contents of the book are”

The jury was discharged, in consequence of this one e, but Mr Truelove's persecutors--the Vice Society--were determined not to let their victim free They proceeded to trial a second ti that as prudential restraint would raise wages by li the supply of labour, they would be entlemen” than from one composed of workers This atteal advisers, who let a _procedendo_ go which sent back the trial to the Old Bailey The second trial was held on May 16th at the Central Criminal Court before Baron Pollock and a co for the defence The jury convicted, and the brave old e, was conde a pa a period of forty-five years, by Jae Jacob Holyoake, Austin Holyoake, and Charles Watts Mr Grain, the counsel eainst Mr Truelove my ”Law of Population,” a pamphlet which contained, Baron Pollock said, ”the head and front of the offence in the other [the Knowlton]

case” I find an indignant protest against this odious unfairness in the _National Reforainst Mr Truelove as an aggravation of his offence, passing over the utter ainst a prisoner a book whose author has never been attacked for writing it--does Mr Collette, or do the authorities, iine that the severity shown to Mr Truelove will in any fashi+on deter anda? Letof the kind; I shall continue to sell the 'Law of Population' and to advocate scientific checks to population, just as though Mr Collette and his Vice Society were all dead and buried In coet, and keep, a verdict againstme to prison, they will only make people more anxious to read my book, and make me more personally powerful as a teacher of the viehich they attack”

A persistent attempt was made to obtain a writ of error in Mr

Truelove's case, but the Tory Attorney-General, Sir John Holker, refused it, although the ground on which it was asked was one of the grounds on which a sih and myself Mr Truelove was therefore coned by 11,000 persons, asking for his release, were sent to the Home Secretary fro in St James's Hall, London, deitation did not shorten Mr

Truelove's sentence by a single day, and he was not released from Coldbath Fields Prison until September 5th On the 12th of the same month the Hall of Science was croith enthusiastic friends, who assembled to do him honour, and he was presented with a beautifully-illu 177 (subsequent subscriptions raised the amount to 197 16s 6d)

It is scarcely necessary to say that one of the results of the prosecution was a great agitation throughout the country, and a wide popularisation of Malthusian views Soe demonstrations were held in favour of free discussion; on one occasion the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, was crowded to the doors; on another the Star Music Hall, Bradford, was craha-rooether, it was the saerly attended, and Malthusian literature eagerly bought, but curiosity brought ht lectures, and thousands heard for the first time what Secularisreed in branding the prosecution as foolish, and it was generally remarked that it resulted only in the wider circulation of the indicted book, and the increased popularity of those who had stood for the right of publication The furious attacks since made upon us have been ical creed, and who have found a misrepresentation of our prosecution served the the last few years public opinion has been gradually co round to our side, in consequence of the pressure of poverty resulting fro the sensation caused in 1884 by ”The Bitter Cry of Outcast London,” many writers in the _Daily News_--notably Mr GR Sireat extent due to the large families of the poor, andthe very knowledge which would bring salvation to the sufferers in our great cities

A the useful results of the prosecution was the establishitate for the abolition of all penalties on the public discussion of the population question,” and ”to spread ae of the law of population, of its consequences, and of its bearing upon huue was held at the Hall of Science on July 26, 1877, and a council of twenty persons was elected, and this council on August 2nd elected Dr CR Drysdale, MD, President; Mr Swaagman, Treasurer; Mrs Besant, Secretary; Mr

Shearer, assistant-Secretary; and Mr Heue, under the saable president, has worked hard to carry out its objects; it has issued a large number of leaflets and tracts; it supports a monthly journal, the _Malthusian;_ numerous lectures have been delivered under its auspices in all parts of the country; and it has now a medical branch, into which none but duly qualified medical men and women are admitted, with members in all European countries

Another result of the prosecution was the accession of ”D” to the staff of the _National Reforhtful writer came forward and joined our ranks as soon as he heard of the attack on us, and he further volunteered to conduct the journal during our expected imprisonment From that time to this--a period of fifteen years--articles fro all that time not one solitary difficulty arose between editors and contributor In public a trustworthy colleague, in private a warm and sincere friend, ”D” proved an unmixed benefit bestowed upon us by the prosecution