anything against the peace. I give the Indictment an absolute
denial. To talk of danger to the peace is only a mask to hide
the hideous and repulsive features of intolerance and persecution.
They don't want to punish us because we have assailed religion,
but because we have endangered the peace. Take them at their
word, gentlemen. Punish us if we have endangered the peace,
and not if we have assailed religion; and as you know we have
not endangered the peace, you will of course bring in a verdict
of Not Guilty. Gentlemen, I hope you will by your verdict to-day
champion that great law of liberty which is challenged--the law
of liberty which implies the equal right of everyman, while he
does not trench upon the equal right of every other man, to print
what he pleases for people who choose to buy and read it, so
long as he does not libel men's characters or incite people
to the commission of crime."

Appealing now to a far larger jury in the high court of public opinion,
I ask whether Freethinkers are not one of the most orderly sections of
the community. Why should we resort to violence, or invoke it, or
even countenance it, when our cardinal principle is the sovereignty of
reason, and our hope of progress lies in the free play of mind on every
subject? We are perhaps more profoundly impressed than others with the
idea that all institutions are the outward expression of inward thoughts
and feelings, and that it is impossible to forestall the advance of
public sentiment by the most cunningly-devised machinery. We are _par
excellence_ the party of order, though not of stagnation. It is a
striking and pregnant fact that Freethought meetings are kept peaceful
and orderly without any protection by the police. At St. James's Hall,
London, the only demonstrations, I believe, for which the services of
a certain number of policemen are not charged for in the bill with the
rent, are those convened by Mr. Bradlaugh and his friends.

Lord Coleridge, ostensibly but not actually following Michaelis, raised
the subtle argument that as people's feelings are very tender on the
subject of religion, and the populace is apt to take the law into its
own hands when there is no legal method of expressing its anger and
indignation, "some sort of blasphemy laws reasonably enforced may be
an advantage even to those who differ from the popular religion of
a country, and