This was
an unpleasant fact, and alas! it was only one of a good many I shall
have to relate presently.
Before our committal I essayed to read a brief protest against the
prosecution, which I had carefully prepared. In defiance of the
statute, the Lord Mayor refused to hear it. An altercation then
ensued, and I should have insisted on my right unless stopped by
brute force; but on his lordship promising that a copy should be
attached to the depositions, I yielded in order to let Mr. Bradlaugh
have a full opportunity of stigmatising Sir Henry Tyler, who had
left his questionable business at Dashwood House during a part of
the day, to gloat over the spectacle of his enemy in a criminal dock.
Some portions of my half-suppressed protest ought not to be omitted
in this history. After dealing in a few lines with the origin of
the Blasphemy Laws, censuring the conduct of Sir Henry Tyler, and
alluding to Sir. William Harcourt's reply to Mr. Freshfield, I
expressed myself as follows:
"What, indeed, do the prosecutors hope or expect to gain?
Freethought is no longer a weak, tentative, apologetic thing;
it is strong, bold, and aggressive; and no law could now suppress
it except one of extermination. Every breach made in its ranks
by imprisonment would be instantly filled; and as punishment
is not eternal on this side of death, the imprisoned man would
some day return to his old place, fiercer than ever for the fight,
and inflamed with an unappeasable hatred of the religion whose
guardians prefer punishment to persuasion, and supplement the
weakness of argument by the force of brutality.
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