things, I should have seen little wisdom in flight; and
being shot in the back, while no less dangerous, is far more ignominious
than being shot in the front. I have paid the full penalty of my policy;
I have suffered twelve months' torture in a Christian gaol; yet I do not
repent the course I took; and ever since my release from prison I
have felt it my duty to continue doing the very thing for which I was
punished.

Being tastefully got-up, well printed, profusely illustrated, and
extensively denounced by the organs of Toryism and piety, this Christmas
Number had a very large sale. Yet, strange as it may sound to some
bigoted ears, Mr. Ramsey and I were after all several pounds out of
pocket by it, the expenses being altogether out of proportion to
the price, and our object being less material gain than the wide
dissemination of our views. With the knowledge of this pecuniary loss
in our minds, it may be imagined how grimly we smiled when the counsel
sternly alluded to our "nefarious profits."

I shall have occasion to deal with the contents of this Christmas Number
when I explain our second Indictment; which, I repeat, as there is
general misunderstanding on the subject, was tried before the first, and
resulted in Judge North's atrocious and almost unparalleled sentence.

During the interval between the publication of this "budget of
blasphemy" and the date of our summons to answer a criminal charge
founded on it, I had several interviews with Mr. E. Truelove, a
gentleman well known to all advanced people in London as a veteran
champion of the freedom as the press. At the age of seventy, after
a long life _sans peur et sans reproche_, this fine old reformer was
dragged by the paid Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice
(or the Vice Society as Cobbett always called it) into a criminal court
to answer a charge of obscenity. The objectionable matter was contained
in an extremely mild, not to say mawkish, essay on the population
question by Robert Dale Owen, a man of literary eminence in the United
States, and once an ambassador of the great Republic. Like ourselves,
Mr. Truelove was tried twice before a verdict of guilty could be
obtained. His sentence was four months' imprisonment like a common
felon. Mr. Truelove was indisposed to reveal the secrets of his
prison-house out of a tender regard for my feelings, but seeing that I
preferred to know the worst, he told me all about the felon's cell,
the pla