be deprived of their hard-earned grants for their pupils who successfully
passed the South Kensington examinations! This is the man who posed
as the amateur champion of omnipotence! Surely if deity wanted a
champion, Sir Henry Tyler is about the last person who would receive
an application. Yet it is men of this stamp who have usually set
the Blasphemy Laws in operation. These infamous laws are allowed
to slumber for years, until some contemptible wretch, to gratify
his private malice or a baser passion, rouses them into vicious
activity, and fastens their fangs on men whose characters are far
superior to his own. With this fact before them, it is strange
that Christians should continue to regard these detestable laws as
a bulwark of their faith, or in any way calculated to defend it
against the inroads of "infidelity."

Sir Henry Tyler may after all have been a tool in the hands of others,
for the _St. Stephen's Review_ has admitted that the object of this
prosecution was to cripple Mr. Bradlaugh in his parliamentary struggle,
and we expected a prosecution long before it came, in consequence
of some conversation on the subject overheard in the Tea Room of
the House of Commons. But this, if true, while it heightens his
insignificance, in no wise lessens his infamy; and it certainly does
not impair, but rather increases, the force of my strictures on the
Blasphemy Laws.

Lord Coleridge, in the Court of Queen's Bench, on the occasion of
Mr. Bradlaugh's trial, sarcastically alluded to Sir Henry Tyler as
"a person entirely unknown to me"--a very polite way of saying,
"What does such an obscure person mean by assuming the _role_ of
Defender of the Faith?" His lordship must also have had that
individual in his mind when, on the occasion of my own trial with