In pleading his case, Bradlaugh perhaps made the mistake of being too concise in putting to the jury the point that on any view of the facts no libel had been committed. Baron Huddleston was more circumspect. He turned affably to the jury, and in the most intimate manner laid before them his view that Bradlaugh had directly or indirectly accused Peters of getting up "bogus" meetings—a statement which Bradlaugh had distinctly repudiated, and which was entirely wide of the facts and the evidence. The whole drift of Bradlaugh's charge, as he stated, was "that the Conservative party were playing with edged tools in assisting any such meetings." As the summing-up went on, indeed, it became clear that Baron Huddleston felt this also, and that in his view there had been a "libellous" statement against Lord Salisbury, who, however, was not the suitor in the action. On the point of law he made no intelligible attempt to rebut Bradlaugh's plea that the statement sued on was in no sense a libel; but he thoughtfully suggested to the jury, with regard to the evidence of a witness called by Bradlaugh, that they could consider what value should be put on the evidence of a man who objected to take the oath. He further took much pains to impress on the jury that "a man could never be allowed to say things against a man, and then, when he found that they were false, to say he was very sorry, but he honestly believed them true. Such a thing would never do." On this instruction the jury found a verdict for Peters, with £300 damages. And yet in the following year (November 1889), when Mrs Besant sued the Rev. Mr Hoskyns for libelling her, during her School Board candidature, in a circular which had the statement: "A Freethinker thus describes the practical outcome of her teaching: 'Chastity is a crime; unbridled sensuality is a virtue,'" the same judge hardily instructed the jury that "the question was not whether Mrs Besant's books were obscene," but as to "the defendant's honesty of belief at the time he had published the handbills." He himself became conscious as he went on of the iniquity of this instruction, and proceeded to cite and vilify passages from Mrs Besant's works, thus doing everything in his power to prejudice the jury on the real issue. But in the end, while professing to put to them the separate issues of publication, libel, and truth in fact, he added the issue: "If untrue, then did the defendant when he published it honestly and reasonably believe it to be true, and that it was his duty to publish it, and did he do so without malice?" And yet again he urged that even if the libel were found untrue, "they would have to say whether the defendant had been guilty of mala fides in the sense he had explained." His own obtruded opinion was that a priest might justifiably issue such a circular to his parishioners. Thus he laid down for the trial of Mrs Besant's action against a priest the exactly opposite principle to that which he laid down in Peters' action against Bradlaugh. The priest was now adjudged free to do what the judge had said "would never do." The priest confessed in the witness-box that he had not read any of Mrs Besant's books when he issued his circular. He had availed himself of the libel of a pseudonymous scoundrel, making no attempt to ascertain its truth Bradlaugh in his statement as to the Fair Trade demonstration had spoken on the actual evidence of cheques which he saw, and on his knowledge of the habitual co-operation of Peters and Kelly. But the Conservative judge contrived to find the priest right and Bradlaugh wrong. And it is on the strength of a verdict thus procured that Bradlaugh has since been spoken of as "a convicted libeller."
The view taken of the case by Bradlaugh's fellow-members of Parliament was shown by their instantly getting up a subscription to pay the damages and costs in which he had been mulcted; and the view taken by the legal profession may be gathered from the following verses, which appeared in the Star:—
"HALVES.
(An Historical Poem.)
DECEMBER, 1885.
Take this cheque, my gentle Kelly,
Fill our starving London's belly:
Hie thee down with dearest Peters
To the lowly primrose eaters;
Tell the unemployed refiners
Cecil sends them of his shiners;
Let each toilworn Tory striver
Batten on this twenty-fiver.
Spread my bounty
Through the county;
But my right hand must not know
What my left hand doth; and so,
If thou value my attention,
Full details must thou not mention.
FEBRUARY, 1886.
Riots! whew! too bad of Kelly.
I must ask him what the—— Well, he
Can't at least pretend that I
Had any finger in this pie.
APRIL, 1888.
Halves, Peters, halves! Honour 'mongst us, my sonny;
Had I but tipt the wink a year ago,
You might have gone and whistled for your money,
And my straightforwardness been spared a blow.