phical Society. The N.S.S., under his judicious and
far-sighted leadership, became a real force in the country,
theologically and politically, embracing large numbers of men and
women who were Freethinkers as well as Radicals, and forming a nucleus
of earnest workers, able to gather round them still larger numbers of
others, and thus to powerfully affect public opinion. Once a year the
society met in conference, and many a strong and lasting friendship
between men living far apart dated from these yearly gatherings, so
that all over the country spread a net-work of comradeship between the
staunch followers of "our Charlie." These were the men and women who
paid his election expenses over and over again, supported him in his
Parliamentary struggle, came up to London to swell the demonstrations
in his favour. And round them grew up a huge party--"the largest
personal following of any public man since Mr. Gladstone," it was once
said by an eminent man--who differed from him in theology, but
passionately supported him in politics; miners, cutlers, weavers,
spinners, shoemakers, operatives of every trade, strong, sturdy,
self-reliant men who loved him to the last.

CHAPTER IX.

THE KNOWLTON PAMPHLET.

The year 1877 dawned, and in its early days began a struggle which,
ending in victory all along the line, brought with it pain and anguish
that I scarcely care to recall. An American physician, Dr. Charles
Knowlton, convinced of the truth of the teaching of the Rev. Mr.
Malthus, and seeing that that teaching had either no practical value
or tended to the great increase of prostitution, unless married
people were taught to limit their families within their means of
livelihood--wrote a pamphlet on the voluntary limitation of the
family. It was published somewhere in the Thirties--about 1835, I
think--and was sold unchallenged in England as well as in America for
some forty years. Philosophers of the Bentham school, like John Stuart
Mill, endorsed its teachings, and the bearing of population on poverty
was an axiom in economic literature. Dr. Knowlton's work was a
physiological treatise, advocating conjugal prudence and parental
responsibility; it argued in favour of early marriage, with a view to
the purity of social life; but as early marriage between persons of
small means generally implies a large family, leading either to
pauperism or to lack of necessary food, clothing, education, and fair
start in life for the c