e.
They proceeded to trial a second time, and wisely endeavored to secure a
special jury, feeling that as prudential restraint would raise wages by
limiting the supply of labor, they would be more likely to obtain a
verdict from a jury of "gentlemen" than from one composed of workers.
This attempt was circumvented by Mr. Truelove's legal advisers, who let a
_procedendo_ go which sent back the trial to the Old Bailey. The second
trial was held on May 16th at the Central Criminal Court before Baron
Pollock and a common jury, Professor Hunter and Mr. J.M. Davidson
appearing for the defence. The jury convicted, and the brave old man,
sixty-eight years of age, was condemned to four months' imprisonment and
L50 fine for selling a pamphlet which had been sold unchallenged, during
a period of forty-five years, by James Watson, George Jacob Holyoake,
Austin Holyoake, and Charles Watts. Mr. Grain, the counsel employed by
the Vice Society, most unfairly used against Mr. Truelove my "Law of
Population", a pamphlet which contained, Baron Pollock said, "the head
and front of the offence in the other [the Knowlton] case". I find an
indignant protest against this odious unfairness in the _National
Reformer_ for May 19th: "'My Law of Population' was used against Mr.
Truelove as an aggravation of his offence; passing over the utter
meanness--worthy only of Collette--of using against a prisoner a book
whose author has never been attacked for writing it--does Mr. Collette,
or do the authorities, imagine that the severity shown to Mr. Truelove
will in any fashion deter me from continuing the Malthusian propaganda?
Let me here assure them, one and all, that it will do nothing of the
kind; I shall continue to sell the 'Law of Population' and to advocate
scientific checks to population, just as though Mr. Collette and his Vice
Society were all dead and buried. In commonest justice they are bound to
prosecute me, and if they get, and keep, a verdict against me, and
succeed in sending me to prison, they will only make people more anxious
to read my book, and make me more personally powerful as a teacher of the
views which they attack."

A persistent attempt was made to obtain a writ of error in Mr. Truelove's
case, but the Tory Attorney-General, Sir John Holker, refused it,
although the ground on which it was asked was one of the grounds on which
a similar writ had been granted to Mr. Bradlaugh and myself. Mr. Truelove
was therefore compelled to