a fresh libel; there
is nothing in it to which I cannot easily and effectually reply. But
what _right_ is there in refusing to me the opportunity of answering
one libel at a time? Or in compelling me to be silent nine months
[from October to July], in order to save him from being silent three
months [from April to July]? It will be a bitter comment on the
sincerity of the 'ethical culture movement' to make so unethical a
judgment in so grave a case as this."

But the April number of the "Journal of Ethics," nevertheless, was
published without my article. The latter was all in type, and the
proof-sheets had been corrected; nothing prevented its publication in
April except (1) Dr. Royce's insistence that my reply to his first
libel should _not be published at all without his second libel_, and
(2) Dr. Adler's weak submission to this unjust and pusillanimous
demand of his associate.

The whole matter was thus most inequitably postponed to the July
number, primarily at Dr. Royce's instigation. But I now found that I
was to be refused the freedom necessary to self-defence against the
second libel--the same freedom already yielded in replying to the
first. Now to answer a libel effectively requires the freedom, not of
the parliament, but of the courts. A mere literary discussion admits
of parliamentary freedom alone, and properly excludes all reflections
upon personal character. But Dr. Royce had most unparliamentarily
turned his ostensible review into a libel, and, contrary to all canons
of literary discussion, had indulged himself in reflections upon my
personal character as malicious as they were false. Now the only
possible disproof of a libel is the proof that it _is_ a libel,--that
it is either untruthful, or malicious, or both; and, since a libel is
both a civil injury and a criminal offence, the proof of its libellous
character cannot be established without reflecting upon the personal
character of the libeller. Hence Dr. Royce himself, by writing a
libel, had self-evidently raised the question of his own personal
character, and bound himself beforehand, by his own act, to submit
with what grace he could to the necessary consequences of that act;
and to seek to shield himself from these consequences, which he should
have foreseen clearly and nerved himself to bear bravely, was only to
incur the ridicule invited by a timorous man who first strikes
another and then runs away. Dr. Adler, moreover, as the responsible
e