"Some twelve years ago was commenced a serial publication, limited in its circulation to the well educated. It was issued to subscribers, from each of whom was due a small sum for every four numbers. The notification periodically made of another subscription due received from some prompt attention, from others an attention less tardy than before, and from others no attention at all. After a lapse of ten years, a digest was made of the original list, when it was found that those who finally declined paying for what they had year after year received, constituted, among others, the following percentages: Christian defaulters............. 31 per cent. Secularist defaulters............ 32 per cent." I wrote to Mr. Spencer as follows: "Eastern Lodge, Brighton, "_December_ 1, 1885. "My dear Mr. Spencer,--I am like the sailor who knocked down the Jew, and when he was remonstrated with said, 'He did it because he had crucified his Lord and Saviour.' When told that that occurred 2,000 years ago he answered, 'But I only heard of it last night.' "It was but a few days ago that your notice of Secularist fraudulency, made in 1874, became known to me. "From so dispassionate and analytic an authority as yourself, your reflection on the ethical insensibility of Secularists justifies me in asking your attention to certain facts. By what test did you know that 32 per cent of defaulters were Secularists? The names I gave you were of persons likely to take in your work if prospectuses were sent to them. But many of them were not Secularists. Some of them were ministers of religion, others Churchmen, but having individually a taste for philosophical inquiry. You do not say that these persons sent in their names as subscribers. Yet unless they did, they cannot be justly described 'as regardless of an equitable claim.' Had you informed me of any whose names I gave you, who had not paid for the work, after undertaking to do so, I could have procured you the payment, for all whose names I gave I believe to be men of good faith.--With real regard, "George Jacob Holyoake." Mr. Spencer sent me the following reply: "38, Queen's Gardens, Bayswater, London, W., "_November_ 16, 1885. "Dear Mr. Holyoake,--You ask how I happen to know of certain defaulters that they were Secularists. I know them as such simply because their names came to me through you; for, as you may remember, you obtained for me, when the prospectus of the 'System of Philosophy' was issued, sundry subscribers.