As the days flew by Mr Bradlaugh grew more and more confident that he had a good case to go before the judges in asking for his rule, and he notes that "a feeling in favour of my ultimate success seems gaining ground in many competent quarters, although the utmost surprise is felt that a Liberal Government should persist in such a prosecution." A petition was drawn up setting forth the chief points in the prosecution, and praying that all such enactments as create differences between high and low priced publications to the detriment of the latter might be repealed. Mr Bradlaugh sent his petition to Viscount Enfield, Member for Middlesex, who duly presented it. For thus doing his bare duty to one of his constituents, Viscount Enfield was most virulently attacked by the _Blue Budget_. Lord Enfield and Mr Bradlaugh were unknown to each other, and the former had merely fulfilled the obligation of his Parliamentary membership; for this he was accused of being the apologist for Mr Bradlaugh, for whom he did "not object to risk his reputation." On Thursday, April 15th, Lord Chief Baron Kelly, Baron Bramwell, and Baron Cleasby, sitting in the Exchequer Court, heard the motion for a new rule. The three judges listened to Mr Bradlaugh with the greatest attention, and took the utmost care to fully comprehend the bearing of every argument he put forward, although their continuous interruptions were rather embarrassing to him. Having heard what he had to urge, a rule _nisi_ was granted him on three points; if he succeeded in maintaining his rule on either of two points, the prosecution was at an end; if he failed in these, but succeeded in the third, then there would have to be a new trial. It is hardly wonderful that, having gained so much, he began to feel fairly sanguine of success; nor is it less wonderful that, with all the worry and all the work, he should be feeling rather bitter against the Government, which had actually brought in a Bill on April 8th to repeal those enactments which they were at that very moment trying to enforce against him. "If the Gladstone Cabinet had been a generous one," he wrote, "it would have abandoned a prosecution which, when carried on by the late Government, some of the members of the present Cabinet had already emphatically condemned. If the Gladstone Government had been just and consistent, it should at least, when bringing in a Bill to repeal the very laws under which we are prosecuted, have delayed the legal proceedings in this case until after the debate in the House upon this Bill, which has now actually passed its second reading."