and it impressively illustrates the evils which will sooner or later
come to any people who permit the Pharisaical element to arrogate
authority, or who legalize the infringement of liberty by authorizing
the establishment of a censorship of morals, especially when power is
lodged in the hands of persons who have a penchant for delving in
moral sewers, and are not hedged about with restrictions which make
them legally responsible for wrong doing. Mr. Britton, it will be
remembered, was long Mr. Comstock's closest counselor and most
efficient aid. In the course of time, however, he withdrew from his
former commander in order to establish an association somewhat similar
to that presided over by Mr. Comstock. Such societies will naturally
ever prove very alluring to men of a certain class, owing to the
unwarranted power given to individuals, by which they are enabled to
persecute those in no way guilty of crime, and who, after innocence is
established, have no redress for the great expense and wrongs
inflicted by the irresponsible censorship. The new organization was
styled "The Society for the Enforcement of Criminal Law," and Mr.
Britton has been from its inception its leading spirit. About a year
ago, exercising a power, which, if permitted at all, should always be
confined to a responsible judiciary, he caused the arrest of the
president of the American News Company, for selling some of the works
of Count Tolstoi and Balzac.[2]

[2] Commenting on this outrage, the New York _Herald_ said
editorially:--

"We have had too much of this meddling business--rummaging
the mails for the books of a conscientious writer like
Tolstoi, suppressing the poems of one of the gentlest and
noblest of writers, Whitman, and now taking a gentleman to
the Tombs for having on his shelves a copy of Balzac.
_American readers are not children, idiots, or slaves._ They
can govern their reading without the advice of Mr. Comstock,
Mr. Wanamaker, or this new supervisor of morals named
Britton--a kind of spawn from Comstock, we are informed, and
who begins his campaign for notoriety by an outrage upon Mr.
Farrelly."

The courts promptly dismissed the case, but Mr. Farrelly had no
redress for the expense, the harassment, and lost time incident to
this unjust arrest. Since then Mr. Britton has had much trouble with
the cou