"It was but a few days ago that your notice of Secularist fraudulency, made in 1874, became known to me.
"From so dispassionate and analytic an authority as yourself, your reflection on the ethical insensibility of Secularists justifies me in asking your attention to certain facts. By what test did you know that 32 per cent of defaulters were Secularists? The names I gave you were of persons likely to take in your work if prospectuses were sent to them. But many of them were not Secularists. Some of them were ministers of religion, others Churchmen, but having individually a taste for philosophical inquiry. You do not say that these persons sent in their names as subscribers. Yet unless they did, they cannot be justly described 'as regardless of an equitable claim.' Had you informed me of any whose names I gave you, who had not paid for the work, after undertaking to do so, I could have procured you the payment, for all whose names I gave I believe to be men of good faith.—With real regard,
"George Jacob Holyoake."
Mr. Spencer sent me the following reply:
"38, Queen's Gardens, Bayswater, London, W.,
"November 16, 1885.
"Dear Mr. Holyoake,—You ask how I happen to know of certain defaulters that they were Secularists. I know them as such simply because their names came to me through you; for, as you may remember, you obtained for me, when the prospectus of the 'System of Philosophy' was issued, sundry subscribers.
"But for my own part, I would rather you did not refer to the matter. At any rate, if you do, do not do so by name. You will observe, if you turn to the 'Study of Sociology,' where the matter is referred to, that I have spoken of the thing impersonally, and not in reference to myself. Though those who knew something of the matter might suspect it referred to my own case, yet there is no proof that it did so; and I should be sorry to see myself identified by name with the matter.—Truly yours,
"Herbert Spencer."
But Mr. Spencer had identified Secularists as lacking ethical scrupulousness, and as I was the reputed founder of that form of Freethought known as Secularism, some notice became incumbent on my part. The brief article on "Intellectual Morality" in the Present Day, which I was editing in 1885, was my answer—the same as appears in my letter to Mr. Spencer, above quoted.