Writers are at present hampered and restricted in the treatment of ordinary sexual relations by many of the more important subscription libraries. A writer has to consider his publisher, and the publisher has to give some thought to his market. What has sometimes been described as “the library ban” curtails the field of description to a greater extent than the public authorities. Whether or not all these bulwarks improve or protect the morals of the kingdom is a moot question. To the ruthless mind, they seem to savour of excess. Why any one body of persons, of no particular qualification, should decide what is good and what is harmful for another superior order to read is fantastic and even stupid to a degree. This _quasi_-censorship may be beneficial in theoretically protecting the young and innocent mind from coming into too early contact with pages from life, but it is hardly considerate of those maturer readers who may be anxious to be drawn from their own _ennuis_ by the light treatment of other people’s. The suppression of all printed matter relating to sexual difficulties, from divorce reports to novels and plays, from classics to social memoirs, might tend perhaps to check an increase of knowledge in the very young, though as long as we are human beings and not metallic automata it may be presumed with some safety that sexual relations will scarcely become extinct! Why the adolescent mind should have to be rescued from a problematic contact with certain printed matter, when, _per se_, proper upbringing should turn it against depravity, one almost fails to see. Of course, questions of morality and immorality have their degrees. For instance, the most ardent supporters of freedom in connection with literary works would not be able to give countenance to such gross indecency as that exhibited in John Cleland’s notorious book. There are similar publications, secretly distributed at the present day, which would revolt the most worldly libertine. Indeed, the dissemination of descriptive debauch should not stand on a legal par with the publication and distribution of ordinarily indecent books, such productions, for instance, as those named in the recent Bow Street case. With regard to these latter publications, all of which, in their original state, were examined and condemned by the present writer, prior to the police prosecution, crudity of tone and workmanship were as conspicuous as defective decency. The novel translated from the French of Marcel Prévost was almost as careless and rough in its finish as the English novels which fell under the destruction order at the same time. Though all of these publications were in places definitely indecent, unquestionably so, they did not approximate the filth which finds a more secret means of distribution.