the first dealt with the sexual relation, and advocated,
from the standpoint of an experienced medical man, what is roughly known
as "free love"; the second was entirely medical, dealing with diseases;
the third consisted of a very clear and able exposition of the law of
population as laid down by Malthus, and insisted--as John Stuart Mill had
done--that it was the duty of married persons to voluntarily limit their
families within their means of subsistence. Mr. Bradlaugh, in the
_National Reformer_, in reviewing the book, stated that it was written
"with honest and pure intent and purpose", and recommended to working men
the exposition of the law of population. Because he did this Christians
and Tories who desire to injure him still insist that he shares the
author's views on sexual relations, and despite his reiterated
contradictions, they quote detached pieces of the work, speaking against
marriage, as containing his views. Anything more meanly vile and
dishonest than this it would be difficult to imagine, yet such are the
weapons used against Atheists in a Christian country. Unable to find in
Mr. Bradlaugh's own writings anything to serve their purpose, they take
isolated passages from a book he neither wrote nor published, but once
reviewed with a recommendation of a part of it which says nothing against
marriage.

That the book is a remarkable one and deserves to be read has been
acknowledged on all hands. Personally, I cordially dislike a large part
of it, and dissent utterly from its views on the marital relation, but
none the less I feel sure that the writer is an honest, good, and right
meaning man. In the _Reasoner_, edited by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, I
find warmer praise of it than in the _National Reformer_; in the review
the following passage appears:--

"In some respects all books of this class are evils: but it would be
weakness and criminal prudery--a prudery as criminal as vice itself--not
to say that such a book as the one in question is not only a far lesser
evil than the one that it combats, but in one sense a book which it is a
mercy to issue and courage to publish."

The _Examiner_, reviewing the same book, declared it to be

"A very valuable, though rather heterogeneous book.... This is, we
believe, the only book that has fully, honestly, and in a scientific
spirit recognised all the elements in the problem--How are mankind to
triumph over poverty, with its train of attendant evils?--and fea