hich that advocacy is
raised in the said book, 'The Fruits of Philosophy', is not such as makes
it an indictable offence. 4th. That the discussion and recommendation of
checks to over-population after marriage is perfectly lawful, and that
there is in the advocacy and recommendations contained in the book
'Fruits of Philosophy' nothing that is prurient or calculated to inflame
the passions. 5th. That the physiological information in the said book is
such as is absolutely necessary for understanding the subjects treated,
and such information is more fully given in Carpenter's treatises on
Physiology, and Kirke's 'Handbook of Physiology', which later works are
used for the instruction of the young under Government sanction. 6th.
That the whole of the physiological information contained in the said
book, 'The Fruits of Philosophy', has been published uninterruptedly for
fifty years, and still is published in dear books, and that the
publication of such information in a cheap form cannot constitute an
offence."

After a long argument before Mr. Edlin and a number of other Middlesex
magistrates, the Bench affirmed Mr. Vaughan's order, whereupon Mr.
Bradlaugh promptly obtained from the Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Justice
Mellor a writ of _certiorari_, removing their order to the Queen's Bench
Division of the High Court of Justice with a view to quashing it. The
matter was not argued until the following November, on the 9th of which
month it came on before Mr. Justice Mellor and Mr. Justice Field. The
Court decided in Mr. Bradlaugh's favor and granted a rule quashing Mr.
Vaughan's order, and with this fell the order of the Middlesex
magistrates. The next thing was to recover the pamphlets thus rescued
from destruction, and on December 3rd Mr. Bradlaugh appeared before Mr.
Vaughan at Bow Street in support of a summons against Mr. Henry Wood, a
police inspector, for detaining 657 copies of the "Fruits of Philosophy".
After a long argument Mr. Vaughan ordered the pamphlets to be given up to
him, and he carried them off in triumph, there and then, on a cab. We
labelled the rescued pamphlets and sold every one of them, in mocking
defiance of the Vice Society.

The circulation of literature advocating prudential checks to population
was not stopped during the temporary suspension of the sale of the
Knowlton pamphlet between June, 1877, and February, 1878. In October,
1877, I commenced in the _National Reformer_ the publication of a