kilful counsel might be half-hearted and over-prudent. Every
lawyer looks to himself as well as to his client. When Erskine
made his great speech at the end of last century in a famous
trial for treason, Thomas Paine said it was a splendid speech
for Mr. Erskine, but a very poor defence of the "Rights of Man."
If Freethought is attacked it must be defended, and the charge
of Blasphemy must be retorted on those who try to suppress
liberty in the name of God. For my part, I would rather be
convicted after my own defence than after another man's; and
before I leave the court, for whatever destination, I will make
the ears of bigotry tingle, and shame the hypocrites who profess
and disbelieve."

For whatever destination! Yes, I avow that from the moment I read the
summons I never had a doubt as to my fate. I knew that prosecutions for
Blasphemy had invariably succeeded. How, indeed, could they possibly
fail? I might by skill or luck get one jury to disagree, but acquittal
was hopeless; and the prosecution could go on trying me until they found
a jury sufficiently orthodox to ensure a verdict of guilty. It was a
foregone conclusion. The prosecution played, "Heads I win, tails you
lose."

And now a word as to our prosecutor. Nominally, of course, we were
prosecuted by the Crown; and Judge North had the ignorance or impudence
to tell the Old Bailey jury that this was not only theory but fact. Lord
Coleridge, when he tried us two months later in the Court of Queen's
Bench, told the jury that although the nominal prosecutor was the Crown,
the actual prosecutor, the real plaintiff who set the Crown in motion,
was Sir Henry Tyler. _He_ provided all the necessary funds. Without his
cash, nobody would have paid for the summons, and the pious lawyers,
from Sir Hardinge Giffard downwards, who harangued the magistrates, the
judge and the jury, would have held their venal tongues, and left poor
Religion to defend herself as she could. And who is Sir Henry Tyler? or,
rather, who was he? for after emerging into public notoriety by playing
the part of a prosecutor, he fell back into his natural obscurity.
He remained a Member of Parliament, but no one heard of him in that
capacity, except now and then when he asked a foolish question, like
others of his kind, who are mysteriously permitted to sit in our
national legislature. Three years ago, however, he was a more
conspicuous pers