Is Limitation of the Family Immoral ? 
 
 The following Judgment on the right of the public to discuss 
 the expediency and the possibility of preventing over- 
 population by artificial Checks, was delivered by Mr. 
 Justice Windeyer, at the Supreme Court, Sydney ', on the 
 1 2th December 1888. Held by the Court, consisting of 
 JDarley, C.J., Windeyer, and Stephen, J.J., Darley, C.J., 
 dissenting, that a Pamphlet advocating the use of artificial 
 Checks was not an obscene publication. 
 
 This case comes before us on motion to make absolute 
 a rule nisi granted by me, calling upon a stipendiary 
 magistrate to show cause why the conviction of the appli- 
 cant of selling an obscene pamphlet, under section 2 of 
 the Obscene Publications Prevention Act of 1880, should 
 not be set aside upon the ground that the work in respect 
 of which he had been convicted was not an obscene publi- 
 cation. 
 
 The objection taken to the conviction raises a question 
 which involves not only the consideration of a topic diffi- 
 cult of discussion cor am populo, but the very right of the 
 public discussion of a subject of great importance to civi- 
 lised society. The difficulty of dealing with the matter is 
 not lessened by the fact that the question involved comes 
 for consideration surrounded by all the prejudices with 
 which centuries of ignorance and thoughtlessness have 
 invested it, accompanied by fear of the world's censure, 
 on points about which all who reverence purity and the 
 ideal life of goodness would least wish to be misunder- 
 stood. Apart from the obligation which is cast upon a 
 
4 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 judge to declare the truth as he sees it, only the love of 
 truth and an earnest desire to benefit mankind could 
 compel anyone in the present state of the world's education 
 to pronounce an opinion upon a subject, with reference to 
 which it is so much more easy to win a reputation for 
 sactity by declamatory violence against new ideas as to 
 the essential in morality than by a life of virtue and of 
 that service of man which is the true service of God. A 
 court of law has now to decide for the first time whether 
 it is lawful to argue in a decent way with earnestness of 
 thought and sobriety of language the right of married 
 men and women to limit the number of the children to be 
 begotten by them by such means as medical science says 
 are possible and not injurious to health. Of the enormous 
 importance of this question, not only to persons of limited 
 means in every society and country, but to nations, the 
 population of which have a tendency to increase more 
 rapidly than the means of subsistence, there cannot be 
 the slightest doubt. Since the days when Malthus first 
 announced his views on the subject to be misrepresented 
 and villified, as originators of new ideas usually are by 
 the ignorant and unthinking, the question has not only 
 been pressing itself with increasing intensity of force upon 
 thinkers and social reformers dealing with it in the 
 abstract, but the necessity of practically dealing with the 
 difficulty of over-population has become a topic publicly 
 discussed by statesmen and politicians. It is no longer a 
 question whether it is expedient to prevent the growth of 
 a pauper population, with all its attendant miseries follow- 
 ing upon semi-starvation, overcrowding, disease, and an 
 enfeebled national stamina of constitution ; but how 
 countries suffering from all these causes of national decay 
 shall avert national disaster by checking the production of 
 children, whose lives must be too often a misery to them- 
 selves, a burden to society, and a danger to the State. 
 Public opinion has so far advanced in the consideration of 
 a question that has become of burning importance in the 
 Mother Country by reason of its notoriously increasing 
 over-population, that invectives are no longer hurled against 
 those who, like John Stuart Mill and others, discuss in the 
 abstract the necessity of limiting the growth of population ; 
 but they are reserved for those who attempt practically to 
 follow up their teaching and show how such abstract 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 5 
 
 reasoning should be acted upon. It seems to be conceded 
 by public opinion, and has indeed been admitted in argu- 
 ment before us, that the abstract discussion of the necessity 
 of limiting the number of children brought into the world is 
 a subject fitting for the philosopher and student of sociology. 
 The thinkers of the world have so far succeeded in educating 
 it upon the subject, and public attention is so thoroughly 
 aroused to its importance, that every reader of our English 
 periodical literature knows it to be constantly discussed in 
 magazines and reviews, Statesmen, reviewers, and ecclesi- 
 astics join in a common chorus of exhortation against 
 improvident marriages to the working classes, and preach to 
 them the necessity of deferring the ceremony till they have 
 saved the competency necessary to support the truly British 
 family of ten or twelve children. Those, however, who 
 take a practical view of life, will inevitable ask whether 
 the masses, for whose benefit this exhortation is given, can 
 be expected to exercise all the powers of self-denial which 
 compliance with it would involve. To what period of life 
 is marriage to be postponed by the sweater in the East 
 End of London, earning his three or four shillings a day, 
 without any hope of ever being able to educate, decently 
 house, and bring up, eight or ten children. The Protestant 
 world rejects the idea of a celibate clergy as incompatible 
 with purity and the safety of female virtue, though the 
 ecclesiastic is strengthened by all the moral helps of a call- 
 ing devoted to the noblest of objects, and by every induce- 
 ment to a holy life. With strange inconsistency the same 
 disbelivers in the power of male human nature to resist 
 the most powerful of instincts, expect men and women, 
 animated by no such exalted motives, with their moral 
 nature more or less stunted, huddled together in dens 
 where the bare conditions of living preclude even elemen- 
 tary ideas of modesty, with none of the pleasures of life, 
 save those enjoyed in common with the animals expect 
 these victims of a social state, for which the educited are 
 responsible if they do not use their superior wisdom and 
 knowlege for its redress, to exercise all the self-control of 
 which the celibate ecclesiastic is supposed to be incapable. 
 If it is right to declaim against over-population as a 
 danger to society, as involving conditions of life not only 
 destructive of morals but conducive to crime and national 
 degeneration, the question immediately arises, can it be 
 
6 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL ? 
 
 wrong to discuss the possibility of limiting births by 
 methods which do not involve in their application the 
 existence of an impossible state of society in the world as 
 it is, and which do not ignore the natural sexual instincts 
 of mankind. 
 
 Why is the philosopher who describes the nature of the 
 disease from which we are suffering, who detects the causes 
 which induce it and the general character of the remedies 
 to be applied, to be regarded as a sage and a benefactor, 
 but his necessary complement in the evolution of a great 
 idea, the man who works out in practice the theories of 
 the abstract thinker, to be denounced as a criminal ? It 
 was only when Jenner ventured to act on the theory which 
 he had founded upon his observations that he was de- 
 nounced and vilified in language which it is now almost 
 impossible to conceive. 
 
 In the domain of morality as of medicine, the teachers 
 who first publicly proclaimed the brotherhood of man, his 
 equality in the next world, and his right to worship as he 
 chose, were prosecuted as the enemies of society. Doctrines 
 such as these, fit though they might be for discussion by 
 philosophers and a select class of esoteric students, were to 
 be put down as dangerous to society when taught to the 
 common people as the fundamental basis upon which 
 society must rest. The history is the same in the growth 
 of all opinion and the perception of all truth, whether we 
 read it in the history of the law of witchcraft, of blasphemy, 
 or any other subject which has been the object of human 
 thought associated with the idea of right and wrong. The 
 current and preconceived opinion which is brought to the 
 consideration of any such question has at first sternly re- 
 sisted, next only tolerated, and only at last recognised as a 
 right, the free discussion of its foundation in truth. The 
 world, having first tortured those who would show a better 
 way, has in after generations venerated as martyrs and 
 heroes those who died for the truth as they saw it, or who 
 endured in silence the lifelong persecution of the con- 
 fessor. 
 
 With this growth of public opinion the law has also 
 grown. A prosecution (as Lord Coleridge says in his able 
 charge in the case of Reg. v. Ramsey, i C. and E. 137) 
 which was possible for seditous libel, because a man de- 
 corously discussed the respective advantages of an hereditary 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 7 
 
 or elective monarchy without any reflexion upon any part 
 of the existing government, and which was carried to a 
 conviction, would be impossible under our present ideas 
 of political freedom. In the region of religious discussion 
 it is the same. In an empire, the Sovereign of which 
 rules over more non-Christians than Christians, it has 
 become an obsolete fiction that Christianity is part of 
 the Common Law. Writings which a 'century ago would 
 have been held by the judges of the time as blasphemous 
 libels, simply because they question the truth of 
 Christianity, will, as Lord Coleridge points out in the 
 same judgement, no longer be so regarded, " because 
 the dicta of the judges promulgating that legal doctrine 
 of bygone times cannot be taken to be a true statement 
 of the law as the law is now." As in religion, so in 
 morals. The state of modern society, with all its complex 
 aspects, has provoked the public discussion of questions 
 relating to marriage and divorce, contagious diseases, 
 over-population, and over-crowding, which would have 
 shocked the old-fashioned notions of preceding genera- 
 tions, with their limitedrange of thought uponsuch matters. 
 Upon some of these subjects the necessities of the day 
 have already driven us to legislation which in past time 
 would have been denounced as immoral by all, as it still 
 is by a minority ; and the question discussed in this 
 pamphlet is one of a kindred character. Whilst the law 
 has thus altered with the times in allowing a greater 
 latitude in discussing questions fundamentally affecting 
 religion, the Government of the country, and public 
 morality, it has remained the same in insisting upon 
 a respectful, grave, and decent tone of discussion. 
 Whether this has originated in a desire to protect the 
 innovating thinker from such violence as might be 
 offered by the ignorant multitude to those regarded as 
 publicly insulting the great Ephesian Diana of the day, 
 by restraining him from the use of language likely to 
 provoke anger, or whether it has proceeded from the 
 exploded fallacy that truth requires the prop of penal 
 statutes tc maintain it, the law clearly is that, whether 
 the subject of discussion be religion, government, or 
 morals, whilst every latitude is allowed in discussing 
 their fundamental principles, no language must be used 
 which is stronger than is necessary for clearly expound- 
 
8 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 ing- the doctrine or system advocated by the writer. 
 The publication of language which is calculated to 
 destroy respect for religious or moral obligations, to 
 incite people to violent and unconstitutional attacks upon 
 the established Government, or to destroy public 
 morality by the advocacy of immoral practices, is illegal ; 
 and if its necessary results if acted upon are such, it is 
 no excuse that the person publishing it thinks he is 
 doing a public good. The law clearly is, that though 
 he should be actuated by the noblest aspiration for the 
 public good, he must either achieve his reform in a 
 legal manner or be content, if his revolutionary course 
 of action is unsuccesful, to suffer in the cause of truth 
 and right, hereafter, like John Brown, to be chanted as 
 a martyr in national lyrics when public opinion has 
 changed. A certain number of prosecutions under the 
 law, a certain number of victims to the ignorance or 
 superstition of those who framed it, a certain number of 
 refusals to convict under a growing sense of its un- 
 wisdom, injustice, and barbarity, seem to be in all 
 societies the stages passed through by laws established 
 for the purpose of coercing the opinions of mankind 
 before they become obsolete, if judge-made, or, if 
 statutes, are repealed as inconsistent with advancing 
 knowledge. Were the publication now under considera- 
 tion prosecuted as an obscene libel, all the above 
 questions would be very proper for consideration. The 
 publication, however, does not come before us as an 
 obscene libel at common law. The test in this case is 
 not whether the tendency of the book is to promote im- 
 morality, but whether the language itself of the book is 
 obscene. Were the question whether the book was an 
 obscene libel, it might possibly be held to be such, 
 though there was no language in it inconsistent with 
 decency, if its purpose was inconsistent with the morals 
 of society. This is clear from the language used by 
 Lord Cockburn in the case of the Queen v. Bradlaugh 
 and Besant ; and though the work, the subject of that 
 prosecution, was not identical with that now before us, 
 and that was a proceeding against the defendants for 
 an obscene libel, the principles laid down in that case, 
 as far as can be applied, must govern this. In that case 
 Lord Cockburn says : 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL ? 9 
 
 "In the first place are there in this publication details 
 inconsistent with decency ? Even if that should not be the 
 case, the second point is whether that purpose advocated in 
 the work is a purpose inconsistent with the morals of society ? * 
 
 The second of these questions, though proper enough 
 for consideration in the case of an obscene libel, has no 
 necessary place in the consideration of the question 
 whether the work is an obscene publication under the 
 statute. To suggest, as this book does, that the evils of 
 over-population should be prevented by married persons 
 having recourse to such artificial means as medical 
 science suggests to prevent conception and the conse- 
 quent evils, especially to the poorer classes, which the 
 production of too numerous progeny is certain to bring 
 about, may be held by some persons to be the promul- 
 gation of teaching that is dangerous to morals ; but it is 
 clearly an ab^se of language to say that the suggestion 
 would make the work necessarily obscene. The pre- 
 vention of conception may be secured by total sexual 
 abstinence, or by sexual abstinence at certain periods of 
 female life ; and it is therefore idle to argue that the 
 mere suggestion that families should be limited by the 
 prevention of conception is an idea in itself obscene ; 
 unless it is contented that to advise total sexual abstinence 
 is itself obscene. It has been admitted in argument 
 before us that the bulk of this pamphlet, which consists 
 of the most powerful arguments in support of the neces- 
 sity of limiting population in old countries, and of the 
 only effectual means of limiting it being conjugal 
 prudence in sexual intercourse, is not open to the objec- 
 tion of being obscene. And it is said that had the writer 
 contented herself with inculcating in the abstract the 
 expediency of resorting to artificial means to prevent 
 conception, the publication could not be the subject of 
 prosecution. It was objected, however, that the third 
 chapter of the pamphlet, which describes the means 
 which may be used to prevent conception, and which 
 describes the female sexual organs as far as is necessary 
 for the understanding of the modes of preventing con- 
 ception suggested was obscene. This brings us to the 
 question, what is obscenity ? Tfce definition of the word 
 obscene adopted by Sir James Martin in the case ot 
 Brenner v. Walker, 6 N.S.W. Reports, p. 281 runs as 
 
10 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 follows : " Obscene ; offensive to chastity and delicacy ; 
 impure ; expressing" or presenting- to the mind or view 
 something- which delicacy, purity, and decency forbid to 
 be exposed, as obscene language and obscene pictures.*' 
 Of this definition the words " expressing or presenting 
 to the mind or view something which delicacy, purity, 
 and decency forbid to t}e exposed, 7 ' give the essential 
 element which makes language and conduct obscene, 
 and which distinguishes language and conduct as 
 obscene from the same language and conduct when not 
 obscene. It is, in short, the circumstances under which 
 language is published, or acts done, that determine 
 whether language or conduct is obscene. No natural 
 function of the human body is obscene itself. In the 
 physical constitution of man, including all his natural 
 instincts, there is nothing unholy or unclean. Only in 
 the diseased mind of the unnatural living ascetic, with 
 his distorted views of religion, did God's handiwork in 
 the human frame become an object of shame and dis- 
 gust. In the Hebrew myth of Eden it was truly re- 
 presented that sin first brought the sense of shame. The 
 holy tie of marriage, regarded both by the law and 
 religion as founded upon the instincts of sexual passion, 
 and by the law regarded as a nullity where its gratifica- 
 tion is physically impossible, has in the Christian world 
 been taken as the type of the mystic union of Christ and 
 his Church. Martyred saints and noblest poets have 
 alike combined to make a union founded upon harmony 
 in sexual feeling an instinct which we enjoy in common 
 with the brutes the most perfect type of purest love and 
 unselfish devotion, consecrated in thought as the highest 
 ideal of earthly happiness and delight, divinely transfigured 
 as it is in its lowest aspect by the spiritual union of soul with 
 soul. There is nothing in the sexual act itself which is 
 obscene, unholy, or impure, offensive to chastity or delicacy. 
 But, whilst this is clear, it is equally clear that its commis- 
 sion in public would bean atrocious offence against decency, 
 deserving condign punishment. So with regard to language. 
 Language that might be permissible and necessary if used 
 on certain occasions, it would manifestly be an outrage 
 against decency to use when occasion did not warrant it. 
 The question therefore is, when language is objected to as 
 obscene, whether the occasion upon which it has been used 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? II 
 
 warrants its use in the manner resorted to ? This view of 
 the law, I find, is taken by the most distinguished writer 
 upon the criminal law of modern days that most acute 
 thinker, Sir James Stephen. That learned judge, in his 
 Digest of the Criminal Law, p. 105, submits the following 
 as the true view of the law with reference to the publication 
 of matter that would be obscene if not justified by the 
 occasion : 
 
 " A person/' he says, "is justified in exhibiting disgusting 
 objects, or publishing obscene books, papers, writings, pic- 
 tures, drawings, or other representations, if their exhibition or 
 publication is for the public good, as being necessary or 
 advantageous to religion or morality, to the administration of 
 justice, the pursuit of science, literature or art, or other subjecfs 
 of general interest ; but the justification ceases if the publication 
 is made in such a manner, to such an extent, or under such 
 circumstances, as to exceed what the public good require in 
 regard to the particular matter published." 
 
 Regarding this to be the law, as I do, the question now 
 for determination is, whether the chapter of this book 
 which is objected to makes the publication obscene ? In 
 deciding this, it is necessary to consider the whole pamphlet 
 in cbnnexion with which the alleged obscene matter is 
 published, as without a consideration of it we cannot form 
 an opinion whether the language complained of ceases to 
 be obscene as warranted by the occasion. The pamphlet 
 before us, by Mrs. Annie Besant, is entitled " The Law of 
 Population . its consequences and its bearing upon human 
 conduct and morals." The work starts with a statement 
 of the theory first propounded by Malthus, now, as Lord 
 Cockburn says, accepted as " an irrefragable truth," that 
 population has a strong and natural tendency to increase 
 faster than the means of subsistence afforded by the 
 earth or that the skill and industry of man can produce for 
 the support of life. It shows in clear and powerful 
 language all the miseries which result to mankind from 
 the unchecked operation of this law, and it discusses 
 whether it is not possible for man to avert the consequences 
 of this inevitable tendency by such means as medical 
 science and an enlightened understanding of the laws of 
 nature place at his disposal. As it cannot be denied that 
 the question propounded for discussion is of enormous 
 importance, and that it is right to advocate in the abstract 
 the expedience of checking the advancing tide of popula- 
 
12 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMROAL ? 
 
 tion, it appears to me impossible to contend that language 
 which tells how this may be done is obscene if it goes no 
 further than is necessary for this purpose, Having care- 
 fully read the third chapter of the pamphlet, it appears 
 to me to be written with all decent sobriety of language. 
 I see nothing in its language which an earnest minded 
 man or woman of pure life and morals might not use to 
 one of his own sex, if explaining to him or her what was 
 necessary in order to understand the methods suggested 
 by which married people could prevent the number of 
 their children increasing beyond their means of support- 
 ing them. There is nothing which points to the con- 
 clusion that any language is used with the intention 
 of exciting feelings of wantonness and lust ; and it 
 requires but slight acquaintance with the medical pro- 
 fession to discover that the advice given in this chap- 
 ter is frequently given by them to women suffering 
 from over-childbearing, and to those to whom partituri- 
 tion is dangerous. The information afforded in the third 
 chapter of the pamphlet, if given by a medical man to a 
 patient suffering from over-maternity, or if whispered in 
 matrimonial confidence, or imparted in the privacy existing 
 between the author and the reader of her pamphlet, is not 
 obscenity ; though the public proclamation of the same 
 information on a placard in George Street or Piccadilly, so 
 that all who ran might read, would be an obscenity of the 
 grossest kind, so clearly do the circumstances of a publica- 
 tion alter its character. If admitted, as it is, that the 
 information, physiological and otherwise, given in Chap- 
 ter 3 can be found in medical works of an expensive 
 kind, it cannot affect the character of the information for 
 obscenity that it is given in a cheap form. Information 
 cannot be pure, chaste, and legal in morocco at a guinea, 
 but impure, obscene, and indictable in a paper pamphlet 
 at sixpence. The information, to be of value in a national 
 point of view as a safeguard from the miseries of over- 
 population and overcrowding, must be given wholesale to 
 the masses likely to overbreed. The time is past when 
 knowledge can be kept as the exclusive privilege of any 
 caste or class. The fact that a book may excite prurient 
 thoughts if used for that purpose by the low-minded and 
 the young, does not make it obscene. Every one who 
 knows what some, but only some, boys are, and who 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 13 
 
 remembers his school days, must know that he has seen 
 not only Lempriere's Classical Dictionary but the Bible 
 itself used for the disgusting purpose of picking out 
 passages which public decency forbids to be read aloud. 
 No one, however, thinks of prosecuting a vendor of 
 Lempriere's Dictionary, or the Bible Society as publishers 
 of obscene books. The intention and general scope of a 
 work being clearly matters involved in determining the 
 question of obscenity, it is impossible to avoid a considera- 
 tion of the general purpose of the pamphlet. Its perusal 
 must, I think, convince even the most prejudiced against 
 the practical suggestions that it contains, that its author was 
 only actuated by an honest and single-minded desire to 
 benefit those desiring to escape from the burden of a larger 
 family than their means will enable them to support. The 
 objection which has been urged, that the means suggested 
 for the prevention of conception might be availed of by 
 the unmarried and immoral for the purpose of enabling 
 them safely to indulge in vice is simply the application to 
 this subject of the exploded delusion that knowledge is a 
 dangerous thing. That nature has formed us with organs 
 and propensities, which, if abused, lead to the ruin of 
 health and the destruction of morals, is no imputation 
 upon the wisdom of God in so constituting man. The 
 same argument might be urged with equal force against 
 the teaching of writing and the art of photography, because 
 they assist people to commit forgery. The time is surely 
 past when countenance can be given to the argument that 
 a knowledge of any truth either in physics or in the 
 domain of thought is to be stifled because its abuse might 
 be dangerous to society. The guardianship of the eunuch 
 and the seclusion of the harem were not necessary to 
 build up the national character of English women for 
 chastity ; and it is an insult to them to argue that it is 
 necessary to keep them in ignorance on sexual matters to 
 maintain it. Ignorance is no more the mother of chastity 
 than of true religion. 
 
 A further argument urged before us, as showing that the 
 work was obscene, was that its advice as to the adoption of 
 scientific checks to population involved a violation of 
 natural laws and a frustration of nature's ends. The 
 argument that nature intends every woman to conceive 
 as often as is possible would, if carried to its logical 
 
14 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 conclusion, result in the Indian custom of marrying every 
 female child upon reaching puberty in order that no 
 opportunity of conception should be lost. In all other 
 matters of breeding but the all-important one of the 
 breeding of the human race, the aim of man is to defeat 
 the effects of nature's laws of reproduction, and to limit 
 the number and kind of animals produced to the amount 
 required for the use of man. The forces of nature, blind 
 and ruthless in their effect, we control and defeat in their 
 operation by all the means that science places at our 
 command. To protect churches and hospitals from the 
 operations of nature's laws, we put up conductors to arrest 
 the inexorable effects of lightning, which would remorse- 
 lessly destroy what pity and humanity would protect. 
 The course of nature is to kill a noble 'woman, a devoted 
 wife and loving mother, if her pelvis is too small to admit 
 the delivery of a child with an abnormally large head. 
 The practice of civilised man, aided by science, is in such 
 a case of parturition to destroy the infant and to save the 
 mother. The interference with the course of nature is 
 direct, the practice in no way natural ; but enlightened 
 public opinion in no way condemns it. But if the pelvis 
 of a woman is so unusually small that she never can be 
 delivered of a child but at the peril of her life, where is 
 the immorality in the husband and wife resorting to any 
 preventive checks that may preserve a life that is dear 
 and perhaps valuable to the world ? It is unreasoning 
 prejudice alone that starts the objection that such preven- 
 tion of all the physical agony involved in a painful and 
 dangerous delivery and possible loss of life is immoral 
 and unnatural. Or, take the case of a woman married to 
 a drunken husband, steadily ruining his constitution and 
 hastening to the drunkard's doom, loss of employment for 
 himself, semi-starvation for his family, and finally death 
 without a shilling to leave those whom he has brought into 
 the world, but armed with the authorithy of the law to treat 
 his wife as his slave, ever brutally insisting of the indulgence 
 of his marital rights. Where is the immorality, if already 
 broken in health from unresting maternity, already having 
 a larger family than she can support when the miserable 
 breadwinner has drunk himself to death, the woman avails 
 herself of the information given in this book, and so averts 
 the consequences of yielding, perhaps under threats of 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 15 
 
 violence, to her husband's brutal insistence on his marital 
 rights. Already weighted with a family that sh is unable 
 decently to bring up, the immorality, it seems to me, would 
 be in the reckless and criminal disregai'S^tSr 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 alcoholism would soon drag 
 them down with their sisters to herd with the seething mass 
 of degenerate and criminal humanity that constitutes the 
 dangerous classes of great cities. In all these cases the 
 appeal is from thoughtless, unreasoning prejudice to con- 
 science, and, if listened to, its voice will be heard un- 
 mistakeably indicating where the path of duty lies. As 
 Matthew Arnold points out, the Divine nature cannot take 
 a delight in swarming the East End of London with paupers. 
 Surely, as he says, what conscience tell us is, " that a man's 
 children are not really sent any more than his horses, his 
 dogs, or his pictures." We may be guilty of as much im- 
 moral extravagance, and with more disastrous results, in 
 the production of one as in the acquisition of the other. 
 The natural man, as the typically excellent, is not he who 
 '* wild in woods a noble savage run/' but one ideally perfect 
 in Nature's eye as she conceived him in the ultimate per- 
 fection of his nature, in the full efflorescence of his physical, 
 social, intellectual, and spiritual growth. 
 
 The argument founded upon the allegation that the 
 advocacy of preventive checks is immoral, seems to me 
 equally untenable and founded upon a misconception of 
 what is true morality. As this pamphlet points out, true 
 morality is ever idenlical with the greatest good of the 
 greatest number. To quote from the pamphlet, its quoted 
 words of another author, whose book was long advertised 
 in the Westminster Review ', and which has never been the 
 subject of a prosecution, though its advocacy of preventive 
 intercourse is as outspoken as that of the pamphlet before 
 us : 
 
 " It is immoral to give life when you cannot support it. It 
 is immoral to bring children into the world when you cannot 
 clothe, feed, and educate them. It is immoral to crowd new 
 life into already overcrowded houses, and to give birth to 
 children wholesale who never have a chance of healthy life." 
 
 The cases of the Queen v. Hicklin and Steele v. Brannan, 
 L.R. 7 C.P. 263, which have been cited, have no direct 
 
t6 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 bearing upon the question before us. They simply illus- 
 trate the doctrine that, if the immediate effect of a pub- 
 lication is to injure morals, the publication cannot be ex- 
 cused on the ground that its ultimate object was laudable. 
 The Queen v. Hicklin turned upon the right of a political 
 society to publish in the form of a pamphlet, entitled " The 
 Confessional Unmasked," extracts from certain Roman 
 Catholic theologians on the practice of auricular confession, 
 the object of the society being "to protest against teach- 
 ings and practices which were un-English, immoral, and 
 blasphemous, and to maintaining the Protestantism of the 
 Bible and the liberty of England." With all respect for 
 the judges who decided these cases, I do not think that 
 they are decisions which will stand the criticism of time, 
 as they are founded upon a want of confidence in the 
 power of truth and in the right to publish it. There lies 
 at the bottom of them the old delusion, that it is not always 
 safe in teaching mankind to let them know the truth. This 
 is the mainspring theory of all prosecutions of innovating 
 thinkers from the time of Socrates to the present day. 
 Allow the young to question the foundations of a popular 
 system, invite them to belief in the one, great, unseen In- 
 telligence governing the world, surround his teaching with 
 all the high morality of natural religion, and the teacher 
 under this theory is but a " corrupter of youth," thought 
 worthy of death in a past age, of fine and imprisonment in 
 this. It was not by such hushing up of the abominations 
 of paganism that the gods of Olympus were overthrown, 
 and a purer undefiled religion was given to the world. It is 
 only the public reading of the Apostolic writing through 
 many generations that has taught mixed congregations of men 
 and women to listen without blushing to their denunciations 
 of the abominable and now nameless vices of antiquity. It 
 is true that attacking the foundations of any system of morals 
 may cause some to fall away from belief in all morality, and 
 from the practice of any ; but that is no reason why the 
 pursuit of truth should be given up or condemned as an 
 offence. The ultimate probable effect of the publication 
 of what is true cannot be prejudicial to general morality 
 and decency, if the publication is bona fide made in the 
 interest of truth, and in pursuing a legitimate subject 
 of controversy ; and it is, I submit, by the ultimate result 
 of the publication that its legality should be tested. The 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 17 
 
 decision in Steele v. Brannan is, of course, well founded, 
 as far as it is an authority for the position that the pub- 
 lication of obscene matter cannot be justified under the 
 guise of a report of the proceedings of a court of law ; but 
 the weakness of the decisions, both in the Queen v. Hicklin 
 and Steele v. Brannan, especially in the latter, seems to 
 me to be in their not more clearly resting upon the canon 
 suggested by Sir James Stephen as a test whether the 
 matter published was really obscene. Begin with assum- 
 ing that the latter is obscene, and the right decision is 
 clear enough in any case. The fallacy lies in assuming 
 that evil is done that good may come, when the real case 
 is that some few may be injured in trying to do good to 
 the many. In the Queen v. Hicklin, moreover, the work 
 condemned described and alluded to what all men regard 
 as filthy practices, as self abuse and the like ; and the 
 judgment of the court proceeded upon the ground that 
 the publication of the pamphlet would have been open to 
 prosecution as a misdemeanor, " because the indiscrimite 
 circulation of it in the way in which it appears to have 
 been circulated was calculated necessarily to prejudice the 
 minds of the people, and the publication of such obscene 
 matter was not justified by the occasion. " Lord Cockburn 
 during the argument, p. 367, says : 
 
 tl A medical treatise with illustrations necessary for the in- 
 formation of those for whose education or information the work 
 is intended, may in certain sense be obscene, and yet not the 
 subject for indictment ; but it can never be that these prints 
 may be exhibited for any one, boys and girls, to see as they 
 pass. The immunity must depend upon tne circumstances of 
 the publication." 
 
 Both Lord Cockburn and Lord Blackburn in their judg- 
 ments lay stress upon the mode in which the book was 
 sold to young and old at the corners of the streets ; and 
 the judgment of all the judges manifestly went upon the 
 ground that the publication of the filthy matter was not 
 necessary in their opinions for combatting the evils of the 
 confessional system, Lord Blackburn pointing out the 
 occasion of the publication is never irrelevant, and that 
 the question was whether the matter published, which 
 might be injurious, was more injurious than the occasion 
 warranted, Mr. Justice Mellor, who seems to have seen 
 
1 8 IS LIMITATION OF THE TAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 the danger of burking the expression of the truth in bona 
 fide controversy, in giving judgment, says : 
 
 " I confess I have, with some difficulty and some hesitation , 
 arrived very much at the conclusion at which my lord and my 
 learned brothers have arrived. My difficulty was, whether or 
 not the publication was under the finding of the recorder, within 
 the Act having reference to obscene publications. I am not 
 certainly in a condition to dissent from the view which my 
 lord and my brothers have taken as to the recorder's finding, 
 and, if that view be correct, then 1 agree with what has been 
 said by my lord and my brother Blackburn. The nature of 
 the subject itself, if it may be discussed at all (and I think it 
 undoubtedly may), is such that it cannot be discussed without, 
 to a certain extent, producing authorities for the assertion that 
 the confessional would be a mischievous thing to be introduced 
 into the kingdom ; and therefore it appears to me very much 
 a question of degree ; and if the matter were left to a jury it 
 would depend very much on the opinion which the jury might 
 form of that degree in such a publication as the present. Now, 
 I take it for granted that the magistrates themselves were per- 
 fectly satisfied that this work went far beyond anything which 
 was necessary or legitimate for the purpose of attacking the 
 confessional. I take it that the finding of the recorder is (as I 
 suppose was the finding of the justices below) that though 
 one-half of the book consists of casuistical and controversial 
 questions, and so on, and which may be discussed very well 
 without detriment to public morals, yet that the other half 
 consists of quotations which are detrimental to public morals. 
 On looking at this book myself I cannot question either the 
 finding of the recorder or of the justices. It does appear to me 
 that there is a great deal here which there cannot be any 
 necessity for in any legitimate argument on the confessional 
 and the like ; and, agreeing in that view, I certainly am not in 
 a condition to dissent from my lord and my brother Blackburn, 
 and I know my brother Lush agrees entirely with their opinion. 
 Therfore, with the expression of the hesitation I have men- 
 tioned, I agree in the result at which they have arrived. 
 
 His judgment evidently was given on the sole defensible 
 ground that the publication of such filthy matter as was 
 there published was not necessary for the purpose of the 
 controversy. The general tenor of the judgments, how- 
 ever, shows that every case is to be determined by the 
 question whether the occasion justifies the publication of 
 the incriminated matter. It was not necessary, as Lord 
 Cockburn suggests, to prevent the English people from 
 becoming Roman Catholics that filthy matter should be 
 sold at the corner of the streets to every boy and girl 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 19 
 
 already of the Protestant faith. Such a course of action 
 rather pointed to the conclusion that the object of the 
 publication was to insult a small number of religionists in 
 England, and to make money by the sale of filthy matter. 
 In this pamphlet there is no filthy matter published as was 
 the case in " The Confessional Unmasked ; " and the physio- 
 logical information given with the information how concep- 
 tion may be prevented, is clearly necessary for enabling men 
 and women to understand how the evils following upon the 
 unlimited procreation of children may be prevented. If it 
 is thought desirable to prevent the publication of sexual 
 physiological information to persons of an age likely to be 
 injured by the premature disclosure to them of matters 
 that grown men and women have a right to know, and 
 may consider without any danger of corrupting what we 
 all recognise and reverence in the young as purity of mind, 
 and which is consistent with all knowledge in mature 
 men and women, the danger which is feared in the publi- 
 cation of such matters to the young may be easily pre- 
 vented by making the sale to them of such publications 
 illegal, just as the sale to them of spirituous liquors should 
 also be made illegal. The unrestricted sale of arsenic is 
 undoubtedly attended with some danger to society ; but no 
 one, I presume, would absolutely stop the sale of "Rough on 
 Rats " because it may be used by some people for poisoning 
 their neighbours. The case of the Queen v. Bradlaugh and 
 Eesant has been cited as an authority in support of the 
 contention that the book is obscene, inasmuch as the 
 pamphlet which was the subject of that prosecution, and 
 for the selling of which the defendants were convicted, 
 advocated the adoption of preventive checks. As I have 
 already pointed out, the case cannot be regarded as an 
 authority upon that point, as there the question was 
 whether the pamphlet was an obsene libel. Whether the 
 verdict of the jury was right in that case is not a matter 
 of law, but of opinion. Reading the summing-up of Lord 
 Chief Justice Cockburn with some knowledge of judicial 
 modes of putting criminal cases to a jury, it appears to me 
 that, though expressing no direct opinion as to its character, 
 the learned Chief Justice thought that the book was not 
 an obscene libel, and was cautiously guiding the jury to 
 that conclusion. By the opinion of a jury coming to the 
 consideration of so delicate a question of social science as 
 
20 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMROAL ? 
 
 was submitted to them, probably without any previous- 
 acquaintance with subjects of the kind, [ decline to be in 
 any way bound ; and I have no hesitation in saying that, 
 had I been a member of the jury, I should have acted 
 upon the reasoning of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, and 
 acquitted the defendants. Not only does the whole tenor 
 of his Lordship's summing-up appear to me argumentatively 
 in favour of the defendants, but, from certain passages, it 
 appears to me that the inference is clearly to be drawn 
 that he neither thought the physiological details of the 
 book were obscene, nor was of opinion that its teaching 
 would promote immorality. He says on page 261 of the 
 special report printed by the defendants, which bears every 
 appearance of authenticity : 
 
 " I come to the plain issue before you. Knowlton goes into 
 the physiological details connected with the functions of the 
 generation and procreation of children. The principles of this 
 pamphlet, with its details, are to be found in greater abundance 
 and distinctness in numerous works to which your attention 
 has been directed ; and having these details before you, you 
 must judge for yourselves whether there is anything in them 
 which is calculated to excite the passions of man and debase 
 the public morals. If so, every medical work is open to the 
 same imputation." Again he says, page 263 : " Knowlton 
 points out as a physiological fact established by long ex- 
 perience and consistent with the present scientific theory of 
 the subject of procreation that if conjugal intercourse is 
 avoided at a particular period and within a certain time of 
 menstruation, conception cannot take place in fact, it becomes 
 physically or all but physically impossible. Now suppose a 
 married man and woman, with limited means and having as 
 many children as they can maintain, were to come to the 
 resolution to avoid conjugal intercourse at the particular period 
 at which the conjugal, intercourse mainly produces its natural 
 result, would that be an immoral course of proceeding ? If it 
 would be an immoral course of proceeding, the man who 
 recommends an immoral course of proceeding in an open 
 publication is guilty of an offence against the law. Another 
 artificial check is suggested. (His Lordship here referred 
 to an artificial check recommended ; Knowlton, page 39.) 
 These are very unpleasent details in a public court, but 
 we must deal with them Is that inconsistent with morality ? 
 There may be a certain degree of indelicacy in the suggestion ; 
 but the question for your decision and for your decision only 
 is whether it could have the effect of corrupting the morals 
 of these persons who resort to the practice. A man and woman 
 say : ' We have more children than we can supply with the 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 21 
 
 common necessaries of life ; what are we to do ? Let us have 
 recourse to this contrivance/ Then, gentlemen, you should con- 
 sider whether that particular course of proceeding is inconsistent 
 with morality whether it would have a tendency to degrade 
 and deprave the man or woman." 
 
 That latter passage seems to me clearly to indicate that, 
 in the opinion of Lord Cockburn, the adoption of the pre- 
 ventive checks recommended would not be immoral : for 
 how could it be urged by any reasonable being that the 
 wish of married people to bring no more children into the 
 world than they could support, and the adoption of the 
 necessary precautions to effect that wish, would be immoral ? 
 Instead of poor, let a case of consumptive parents be taken, 
 or of parents one of whom has developed symptons of 
 insanity. Who can suppose that any jury would regard any 
 means adopted by them to prevent the procreation of a 
 number of children, diseased and rickety, or certain to 
 inherit a trace of insanity, would be otherwise than natural 
 and right, and the adoption of any means that medical 
 science could suggest to prevent it not only not immoral, 
 but laudible in the highest degree ? If it is not immoral 
 to do what the pamphlet advocates, it seems to me 
 impossible to argue that the mere advocacy itself is a 
 penal offence. The question is, Where does the immorality 
 come in? Wrongs can only be regarded as such in their 
 relation to others, or as self-regarding. Is there in the adop- 
 tion of preventive intercourse any invasion of the rights of 
 others? Certainly none. The use of the preventive checks 
 can only be viewed as a possible wrong in the light of a 
 self-regarding one. How can it be argued with any show 
 of sound reason, that the use of preventive checks (adopted, 
 perhaps, from the determination not to bring into the 
 world children that cannot be even fed) can be morally 
 injurious to persons animated by a sense of duty founded 
 upon the noblest altruism ? The world would have little 
 need of penal statutes if a consideration of the rights of 
 others actuated the conduct of all mankind. Active 
 altruism the distinctive feature of Christian teaching, 
 inculcated in the precept, " Do unto others as you would 
 men should do unto you " can never in its application 
 injuriously react upon the moral nature of those who seek 
 to put it in force with regard to any conduct which may 
 affect the happiness of others. The profound law of 
 
22 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 ethics, that in trying to do good to others we unconsciously 
 benefit ourselves, is no less true here than in all other 
 phases of human conduct. Every thought entertained, 
 every effort made for the good of others, must elevate the 
 thinker and the actor. Who will say that the low and 
 vicious parents of East London's gutter children, brought 
 up amidst all the moral horrors ot over- crowding, half- 
 starved, and stunted in growth, without elementary notions 
 of decency or morality who will say that such parents 
 would not have been morally superior if they could have 
 seen the wrong they were doing in bringing such offspring 
 into the world, and had taken measures to prevent it? 
 Who will say that the future of society would not have an 
 infinitely better outlook if the breeding of such children 
 were to be prevented by the conjugal prudence of parents 
 in resorting to the use of such means as would prevent 
 their procreation. It is idle to preach to the masses 
 the necessity of deferred marriage and of a celebate life 
 in the heyday of passion. To attempt to stifle the cry for 
 human nature uttered jthe voice of JTrl its most powerful 
 instinct, is indeed to Tiy in the face of nature. Like all 
 attempts to regulate conduct by ignoring the facts of human 
 nature, it must signally fail. Prostitution, with all its 
 horrors is the outcome of enforced unnatural celibacy. 
 To use and not abuse, to direct and control in its operation 
 any God-given faculty is the true aim of man, the true 
 object all morality. 
 
 As I have already stated, there is no case which either 
 decides that this pamphlet is obscene or which can be 
 regarded as an authority for the argument that the 
 advocacy of preventive checks to population is immoral 
 or obscene. The question decided in the case of Bradlaugh 
 v. The Queen in Error, 3 Queen's Bench Division, was 
 simply technical ; but even in deciding that Lord Bramwell 
 was carefully to say, " I repeat that I wish it to be under- 
 stood that we express no opinion, whether this is a filthy 
 and obscene or an innocent book ; we have not the 
 materials before us for coming to a decision upon that 
 point." So in the case of Bremner v. Walker in our own 
 court, the question for decision, as Mr. Justice Fawcett 
 points out, was simply whether the information was good. 
 The question whether it is right to advocate in a book the 
 use of preventive checks was not argued, and was in no 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL ? 23 
 
 way before the Court for decision ; and Mr. Justice 
 Fawcett therefore abstains in his judgment from saying 
 anything upon the subject. The observation of Chief 
 Justice Martin and of Mr. Justice Innes, going beyond the 
 legal question raised, are mere obiter dicta, which are of 
 no judicial weight, as they are the expression of opinions 
 which were not necessarily formed for the purpose of 
 determining whether an information under the Act 43 Vic. 
 No. 24 should be framed in a certain way. In the case of 
 In re Besant, II Chancery Division, 508, there are also 
 expressions used by the Master of the Rolls, Sir G. Jessel, 
 condemning another book published, but not written by, 
 the author of this pamphlet before us, and entitled " The 
 Fruits of Philosophy." What was the language of that 
 book we are not informed, and we are therefore not in a 
 position to say judicially whether it was an obscene book, 
 though the Master of the Rolls seems to have thought it 
 was, as he says, " I am sorry to. say that on my attention 
 being directed to some of the pages of this pamphlet, I 
 can entertain no doubt whatever as to its being an 
 obscene publication. My view is exactly the same as was 
 entertained by the Lord Chief Justice of England and a 
 jury on the occasion of the trial of Mr. Bradlaugh and 
 Mrs. Besant for the publication of this book ; and although 
 that conviction has been set aside on a technical point, no 
 judge, so far as I am aware, has for a moment doubted the 
 propriety of that conviction." There was however no 
 language used by Lord Cockburn which justified the 
 Master of the Rolls in assuming that Lord Cockburn 
 regarded the book as obscene, or as the convicting jury 
 did ; nor was any judge afterwards called upon to give 
 any judicial opinion as to the propriety of the verdict. I 
 have already given my reasons for thinking that Lord 
 Cockburn could not have regarded the book as obscene : 
 and the loose manner in which the Master of the Rolls 
 here expresses himself shows how little weight is to be 
 attached to his opinion on a point not submitted for his 
 decision. The question of the obscenity of the book was 
 not argued before him ; and it was in no way necessary for 
 his decision that he should determine whether the 
 advocacy of preventive checks to population was immoral, 
 or whether a book only giving such physiological details 
 as were necessary to elucidate the advocacy of such a 
 
24 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL ? 
 
 system was obscene. All that the Master of the Rolls had 
 to decide in that case was whether effect was to be given 
 to an agreement for separation between Mr. and Mrs. 
 Besant, which provided that Mrs. Besant was to have the 
 custody and bringing up of a little girl eight years of age. 
 His judicial mind was simply exercised with the question 
 whether allowing the agreement to be enforced was 
 really for the benefit of the child ; the statute under which 
 he was deciding the case providing that " No court shall 
 enforce any such agreement for separation if of opinion 
 that it will not be for the benefit of the infant or infants 
 to give effect thereto." The Master of the Rolls was of 
 opinion, having regard to the fact that Mrs. Besant was 
 preventing the child from obtaining religious instructions 
 of any kind, and entertained speculative opinions in 
 religion opposed to those held by the mass of mankind, 
 and had, moreover, been convicted of publishing an 
 obscene libel, that it could not be for the benefit of the 
 child that she should be brought up by a mother who, the 
 Master of the Rolls thought, must be cut off, by reason of 
 her opinions, from social intercourse with the great 
 majority of her sex. Whether the opinions which she 
 held were or were not immoral, it was, under the law 
 which he was administering, no more necessary for him 
 to enquire than it would have been for a Roman judge, 
 called upon to administer a similar law, to enquire during 
 the persecutions of Nero or Diocletian whether " the 
 detestable superstition of Christians " was well founded. 
 It was enough for the Master of the Rolls to see that it 
 was against the temporal interests of the child that it 
 should be brought up in a narrow sectarian sphere, hold- 
 ing heretical opinions ; and it became his legal duty to 
 give her what the world would consider her best chance in 
 life as the daughter of a clergyman of the Established 
 Church. If the language of the Master of the Rolls and 
 of James L. J., giving the judgment of the Lords-Justices 
 who heard the case on appeal, is to be taken as condemn- 
 ing the advocacy of preventive intercourse as illegal and 
 immoral, it is of no judicial weight, as it was not necessary 
 that he or they should pronounce a judicial opinion 
 upon the point. Like many, holding a popular opinion 
 without examination, they seem to have thought them- 
 selves at liberty to assume that difference in opinion 
 
IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 2$ 
 
 means difference in morals, and that all not depraved by 
 that differing opinion, must at least, if at all right-minded, 
 be disgusted with the expression of it by those who differ. 
 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 
 them to be immoral. Sitting here I can view the case 
 from no standpoint but that of a lawyer ; and I cannot rid 
 myself of the responsibility of deciding the matter 
 submitted for my judgment by adopting without examina- 
 tion the obiter dicta which have been cited by the Chief 
 Justice in support of his dissent, of Judges pronouncing 
 upon a question with reference to which their mere 
 unreasoned opinions are of no weight against unrefuted 
 arguments. So strong is the dread of the world's censure 
 upon this topic, that few have courage openly to express 
 their views upon it ; and its nature is such that it is only 
 amongst thinkers who discuss all subject, or amongst 
 intimate acquaintances, that community of thought upon 
 the question is discovered. But let anyone inquire 
 amongst 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 refinqd, see no moral 
 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 more robust view of 
 morals teaches that it is puerile to ignore human passions 
 and human physiology. A clearer perception of truth 
 and the safety of trusting to it, teaches that in law as in 
 religion it is useless trying to limit the knowlege of man- 
 kind by any inquisitorial attempts to place upon a judicial 
 index exputgatorious works written with an earnest pur- 
 pose, and commending 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 matter as all good men 
 would regard 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 
 
26 IS LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY IMMORAL? 
 
 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 mischievous, even by those who 
 disapprove of the opinions sought to be stifled, inasmuch as 
 they only tend more widely to diffuse the teaching objected 
 to. To those on the other hand who desire its promulgation, 
 it must be matter of congratulation that this, like all 
 attempted persecutions of thinkers, will defeat its own 
 object and that truth like a torch " the more it's shook it 
 shines/' 
 
 As it seems to me that this book is neither obscene in its 
 language, nor by its teaching incites people to obscenity, 
 I am of opinion that the prohibition should go. 
 
 W. C, WINDEYER, 
 
 Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court 
 
 of New South Wales. 
 
WORKS BY MRS, BESSNT. 
 
 Disestablish the Church, or Sins of the Church of 
 England. A Vade Mecum for Liberationists, full 
 of details about Tithes, " Church " Revenues, Per- 
 secuting Laws, attitude of the Church towards 
 Education, the Slavery Question, etc., etc. Neatly 
 bound in cloth, gilt lettered, with Index of Con- 
 tents 1 
 
 Is Socialism Sound ? Four nights' Debate with G. W. 
 
 Foote. Paper covers, Is. Cloth, on superior paper 2 
 
 Socialism : For and Against. Written debate with 
 
 Charles Bradlaugh ... ... ... ... ... 4 
 
 Socialism v. Individualism. A debate with F. Miller 2 
 God's views on Marriage... ... ... ... ... 2 
 
 The True Basis of Morality. A Plea for Utility as the 
 
 Standard of Morality. Seventh Thousand ... 2 
 
 The Trades Union Movement ... ... ... ... 4 
 
 Legalisation of Female Slavery in England ... ... 1 
 
 Modern Socialism ... ... ... ... 06 
 
 
 
 Why I am a Socialist ... ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 Kadiealism and Socialism ... ... ... ... 
 
 The Socialist Movement (From Westminster Review] ... 
 
 The Evolution of Society 
 
 The Redistribution of Political Power ... ... ... 4 
 
 Landlords, Tenant Farmers, and Laborers ... ... 1 
 
 The English Land System 1 
 
 English Republicanism ... ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 The Political Status of Woman. A Plea for Women's 
 
 Rights 2 
 
 For complete catalogue of Mrs. JBesanCs works send stamped 
 and directed envelope to R, Fordir, 8, Stonecutter Strict, 
 Farringdon Street, E.C, 
 
YB 6! 187 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 LD 21A-60m-3,'65 
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 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
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