"Many of my good friends have--during the progress of the bye-elections which have taken place at Oxford, Scarborough, Berwick, Wigton, and other boroughs--written indignantly as to the exceedingly wanton and coarse personal slanders which, chiefly for electioneering purposes, have been circulated against me by the Conservatives in order to induce votes against supporters of the Government. It is a little difficult to know how properly to deal with these most indefensible and cowardly attacks. By the law as it stands no action can be maintained for any spoken words unless an indictable offence is charged in the slander, or unless actual special pecuniary damage can be shown to have resulted, which latter is of course not in question.... Thus, Sir John D. Hay--who in the Wigton election has descended to a lower depth of coarseness and falsehood than any other Parliamentary candidate[146]--could not be sued for damages.... The journals may of course be sued; but even if this is a wise course, the case is not easy. I am now proceeding against the _Yorkshire Post_ for one very gross libel, and in the proceedings, which will be very costly, am actually required to answer voluminous interrogatories, not only as to all the doctrines I have taught and works I have published or written during the whole of my life, but also to works I happen to have referred to.... In the indictment against the editor of the _British Empire_[147] I shall probably have to bring a large number of witnesses from various parts of England to speak as to what has happened at lectures as far back as 1860. The fearful cost in this case (in which, being a criminal procedure, counsel must be employed) can only be fairly estimated by professional men.... I refrain from commenting on the infamous, most cowardly, and utterly uncalled-for attacks made on Mrs Besant by Sir John Hay and the _Glasgow News_, as these will in all probability be submitted to another tribunal." [Footnote 146: "Language fit for a Yahoo," was the description given of Hay's scurrility by the _Scotsman_.] [Footnote 147: For publishing the "watch" libel.] Some of these proceedings had to be abandoned, so enormous was the burden. A leading part had been early taken in the outcry against the Atheist by the leading representative in England of the Church of Rome, Cardinal Manning. In a highly declamatory and malevolent article contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_, that ecclesiastic took the line of appealing to the spirit of traditional national religiosity, grounding his case not on any tolerable form of Christian doctrine, but on the ignorant instinct that he knew to underlie the orthodoxy of the Protestant Churches, as of his own. He lauded the English people, regardless of its attitude to his own Church:--