learn the truth and will cease to circulate the slanders they may have
repeated in ignorance.

On February 27th our determination to republish the Knowlton pamphlet was
announced by Mr. Bradlaugh in an address delivered by him at the Hall of
Science on "The Right of Publication". Extracts from a brief report,
published in the _National Reformer_ of March 11th, will show the drift
of his statement:

"Mr. Bradlaugh was most warmly welcomed to the platform, and reiterated
cheers greeted him as he rose to make his speech. Few who heard him that
evening will forget the passion and the pathos with which he spoke. The
defence of the right to publish was put as strongly and as firmly as
words could put it, and the determination to maintain that right, in dock
and in jail as on the platform, rang out with no uncertain sound. Truly,
as the orator said: 'The bold words I have spoken from this place would
be nothing but the emptiest brag and the coward's boast, if I flinched
now in the day of battle'. Every word of praise of the fighters of old
would fall in disgrace on the head of him who spoke it, if when the time
came to share in their peril he shrunk back from the danger of the
strife.... Mr. Bradlaugh drew a graphic picture of the earlier struggles
for a free press, and then dealt with the present state of the law; from
that he passed on to the pamphlet which is the test-question of the hour;
he pointed out how some parts of it were foolish, such as the
'philosophical proem', but remarked that he knew no right in law to
forbid the publication of all save wisdom; he then showed how, had he
originally been asked to publish the pamphlet, he should have raised some
objections to its style, but that was a very different matter from
permitting the authorities to stop its sale; the style of many books
might be faulty without the books being therefore obscene. He contended