is to be the future
course of your conduct? The jury have acquitted you of any intention to
deliberately violate the law; and that, although you did publish this
book, which was a book that ought not to have been published, you were
not conscious of the effect it might have, and had no intention to
violate the law. That would induce the Court, if it saw a ready
submission on your part, to deal with the case in a very lenient way. The
jury having found that it was a violation of the law, but with a good
motive or through ignorance, the Court, in awarding punishment upon such
a state of things, would, of course, be disposed to take a most indulgent
view of the matter. But if the law has been openly set at defiance, the
matter assumes a very different aspect, and it must be dealt with as a
very grave and aggravated case." We could not, however, pledge ourselves
to do anything more than stop the sale pending the appeal on the writ of
error which we had resolved to go for. "Have you anything to say in
mitigation?" was the judge's last appeal; but Mr. Bradlaugh answered: "I
respectfully submit myself to the sentence of the Court"; and I: "I have
nothing to say in mitigation of punishment".

The sentence and the reason for its heavy character have been so
misrepresented, that I print here, from the shorthand report taken at the
time, the account of what passed:--

"The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, after having conferred for some minutes with Mr.
Justice Mellor, said: The case has now assumed a character of very, very
grave importance. We were prepared, if the defendants had announced
openly in this Court that having acted in error as the jury found--of
which finding I think they are entitled to the benefit--but still having
been, after a fair and impartial trial, found by the jury guilty of doing
of that which was an offence against the law, they were ready to submit
to the law and to do everything in their power to prevent the further
publication and circulation of a work which has been declared by the jury
to be a work calculated to deprave public morals, we should have been
prepared to discharge them on their own recognizances to be of good
behavior in the future. But we cannot help seeing in what has been said
and done pending this trial, and since the verdict of the jury was
pronounced, that the defendants, instead of submitting themselves to the
law, have set it at defiance by continuing to circulate this book. That
being so I