Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant were called up for judgment
before the Court of Queen's Bench on Thursday, for the offence of publishing the " Fruits of Philosophy," a book declared by the jury calculated to deprave public morals. The Lord Chief Justice, after rejecting a plea that the indictment was bad, and a demand for a new trial, declared that as the defendants had set the law at defiance by circulating the book after the verdict had condemned it, the sentence, which otherwise would have been light, must be severe. Each defendant was therefore con- demned to imprisonment for six months, to pay a fine of £200, and to enter into recognisances in the sum of £500 to be of good behaviour for two years,—good behaviour including, of course, the withdrawal of the book. The sentence is condemned in some quarters as being too severe, but it is difficult to see, if the pernicious teaching of the defendants is to be stopped, how it could have been lighter. Their honesty of purpose, as affirmed by the jury, has nothing to do with the mat- ter, when the object is the protection of society from counsel which destroys it. Nobody would be permitted to preach in- fanticide because Plato, doubtless in honesty, taught that it was in certain cases essential to an ideal civilisation.
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