Chief
Justice of England". After this odious misrepresentation, I was not
surprised to hear from him words of brutal insult to myself. I print here
an article on him written at the time, not one word of which I now
regret, and which I am glad to place on record in permanent form, now
that only his memory remains for me to hate.

"SIR GEORGE JESSEL.

"During the long struggle which began in March, 1877, no word has escaped
me against the respective judges before whom I have had to plead. Some
have been harsh, but, at least, they have been fairly just, and even if a
sign of prejudice appeared, it was yet not sufficient to be a scandal to
the Bench. Of Sir George Jessel, however, I cannot speak in terms even of
respect, for in his conduct towards myself he has been rough, coarse, and
unfair, to an extent that I never expected to see in any English judge.
Sir George Jessel is subtle and acute, but he is rude, overbearing, and
coarse; he has the sneer of a Mephistopheles, mingled with a curious
monkeyish pleasure in inflicting pain. Sir George Jessel prides himself
on being 'a man of the world', and he expresses the low morality common
to that class when the phrase is taken in its worst sense; he holds, like
the 'men of the world', who 'see life' in Leicester Square and the
Haymarket, that women are kept chaste only through fear and from lack of
opportunity; that men may be loose in morals if they will, and that women
are divided into two classes for their use--one to be the victims and the
toys of the moment, the others to be kept ignorant and strictly guarded,
so as to be worthy of being selected as wives. Sir George Jessel
considers that a woman becomes an outcast from society because she thinks
that women would be happier, healthier, safer, if they had some slight
acquaintance with physiology, and were not condemned, through ignorance,
to give birth to human lives foredoomed to misery, to disease, and to
starvation. Sir George Jessel says that no 'modest woman' will associate
with one who spreads among her sex the knowledge which will enable her
sisters to limit their families within their means. The old brutal Jewish
spirit, regarding women as the mere slaves of men, breaks out in the
coarse language which disgraced himself rather than the woman at whom it
was aimed. Sir George Jessel might have been surprised, had he been in
the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on the following day, and had seen it
filled with men and wom