I say that the advocacy of any check amongst the masses to be useful must of necessity be put in the plainest language and in the cheapest form, and be widely spread; and I press that upon you because I understand that the learned Solicitor-General in his argument put it that one of the faults of this pamphlet was that it was not obscured in learned language. If we possessed the facility of expressing ourselves in French, or Italian, or Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or Arabic, what earthly use would that be to the poor unfortunate wretches whose misery we want to address?
After traversing with his accustomed skill and acumen the charges formulated by the prosecution, Mr. Bradlaugh concluded his address with a peroration full of passionate eloquence:
We want (he said) to make the poor more comfortable; and you tell us we are immoral. We want to prevent them bringing into the world little children to suck death, instead of life, at the breasts of their mother; and you tell us we are immoral. I should not say that, perhaps, for you, gentlemen, may judge things differently from myself; but I know the poor. I belong to them. I was born amongst them. Among them are the early associations of my life. Such little ability as I possess to-day has come to me in the hard struggle of life. I have had no University to polish my tongue; no Alma Mater to give to me any eloquence by which to move you. I plead here simply for the class to which I belong, and for the right to tell them what may redeem their poverty and alleviate their misery. And I ask you to believe in your heart of hearts, even if you deliver a verdict against us here—I ask you, at least, to try and believe both for myself and the lady who sits besides me (I hope it for myself, and I earnestly wish it for her), that all through we have meant to do right, even if you think that we have done wrong.… My co-defendant referred, in earnest language, to the letters which she had received from women, and clergymen, and others throughout the country. I, too, have received many warm words of sympathy from those who think that I am right. It is true many of them may be ignorant people, and therefore may be wrong; but they have written to encourage me with their kindly sympathy in my pleading before you. If we are branded with the offence of circulating an obscene book, many of these poor people will still think “No.” They think such knowledge would prevent misery in their families, would check hunger in their families, and would hinder disease in their families. Do you know what poverty means in a poor man’s house? It means that when you are reproaching a poor and ignorant man with brutality, you forget that he is merely struggling against that hardship of life which drives all chivalry and courtesy out of his existence. Do not blame poor men too much that they are rough and brutal. Think mercifully of a man such as a brick-maker, who, going home after his day’s toil, finds six or seven little ones crying for bread, and clinging around his wife for the food which they cannot get. Think you such a scene as that is not sufficient to make both himself and her hungry and angry too? Gentlemen, it is for you, in your deliverance of guilty or not guilty, to say how we are to go from this court—whether, when we leave this place, if you mark us guilty, his lordship may feel it to be his duty to sentence us, and put upon us the brand of a doom such as your verdict may warrant; or whether, by your verdict of not guilty—which I hope for myself and desire for my co-defendant—we may go out of this court absolved from that shame which this indictment has sought to put upon us.
We must pass over the evidence given by Dr. Alice Vickery, Dr. C. R. Drysdale, Mr. Bohn and others for the defence; and refer briefly to the summing-up of the Lord Chief Justice (Sir Alexander Cockburn). His lordship dwelt upon “the mischievous character and effect” of the prosecution, and declared that “a more ill-advised and more injudicious proceeding” had probably never been brought into a court of justice. He adverted in terms of severity to the secrecy that had been maintained as to the real originators of the prosecution. In discussing the questions involved, his lordship referred to the theory of Malthus as “a theory which astonished the world, though it is now accepted as an irrefragable truth, and has since been adopted by economist after economist. That the evils arising from over-population,” he continued, “are evils which, if they could be prevented, it would be the first business of human charity to prevent, there cannot be any doubt. That the evils of population are real, and not imaginary, no one acquainted with the state of society in the present day can possibly deny.” Upon the question whether or not the advocacy of prudential checks tended to corrupt public morals, his lordship said to the jury: “You must decide that with a due regard and reference to the law, and with an honest and determined desire to maintain the morals of mankind. But, on the other hand, you must carefully consider what is due to public discussion, and with an anxious desire not, from any prejudiced view of this subject, to stifle what may be a subject of legitimate enquiry.” The concluding passages of the charge to the jury are so significant that they are here reproduced entire:
If you are of opinion that this work of Knowlton’s, although well intended, and although the publication of it by the defendants may be intended for the benefit of mankind, if you think they have taken an erroneous view as to the effect of the work, and that its entire scope is subversive of the morals of society, if that is your opinion, it is then your bounden duty to find the defendants liable. But whilst that is the case, it is for the prosecution to make out the charge they have undertaken to establish. If you think they have failed—if you think these are matters which may fairly be discussed—that the proper answer to them is by refuting them by argument and not by prosecution, the defendants are entitled to your verdict. Or if you have any doubt as to the effect of this work you are bound to bring them in not guilty. I would only say in conclusion, that whatever outrages decency, whatever tends to corrupt the morals of society, and especially the morals and purity of women—whatever tends to have that result is, when published, an offence against the law. But that offence like every other must be made out. If you think it is made out, if there is a conviction in your minds that though they have acted from a desire to do good, yet in your opinion they have done wrong, they have then brought themselves within the definition of the statute.
Despite the powerful speeches of the defendants and the obviously sympathetic charge of the judge, the jury were not equal to their opportunity to make a clear stand for freedom of discussion. They returned a halting “special” verdict, declaring that the book was “calculated to deprave public morals,” but at the same time they entirely exonerated the defendants from any corrupt motives in publishing it. Upon this the judge reluctantly directed the jury to return a verdict of guilty.
The remainder of the story is most concisely told in Mrs. Besant’s own words: “Obviously annoyed at the verdict, the Lord Chief Justice refused to give judgment, and let us go on our own recognisances. When we came up later for judgment, he urged us to surrender the pamphlet as the jury had condemned it; said our whole course with regard to it had been right, but that we ought to yield to the judgment of the jury. We were obstinate, and I shall never forget the pathetic way in which the great judge urged us to submit, and how at last when we persisted that we would continue to sell it till the right to sell it was gained, he said that he would have let us go free if we would have yielded to the court, but our persistence compelled him to sentence us. We gave notice of appeal, promising not to sell till the appeal was decided, and he let us go on our own recognisances. On appeal we quashed the verdict, and went free; we recovered all the pamphlets seized, and publicly sold them; we continued the sale till we received an intimation that no further prosecution would be attempted against us, and then we dropped the sale of the pamphlet and never took it up again.”[2]
Having given an account of this memorable trial, we proceed to trace some of its far-reaching effects. In the first place, Dr. Knowlton’s pamphlet gained immediately an enormous circulation. Before the prosecution the annual sales were very small; within three months from the time when proceedings were instituted against the publishers, 125,000 copies were sold. But this result, startling as it appears, was by no means the most important phase of the impetus given to the public mind upon the question of population by the cause célèbre of “The Queen versus Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant.” During the trial the newspapers of this country contained lengthy reports of the proceedings, and the remarkable speeches of the defendants were thus carried far and wide. Their popular statements of the Malthusian position, their description of the evils arising from over-population and the remedies that they proposed were sent forth into many thousands of homes into which no hint of the truth would otherwise have penetrated. The press, with its myriad voices, became, for the time, a mighty organ of New-Malthusian propaganda, repeating, in tones that echoed round the world, the eloquent words of two social reformers to whom the miseries of the poor were known, and who had faced the danger of imprisonment and of social obloquy in order to proclaim that which they felt to be the only efficient remedy for poverty.