On 11th July 1882 a new Tory battery was opened. The _Freethinker_, a penny weekly journal of a more popular character than the _National Reformer_, edited by Mr G. W. Foote and then owned by Mr W. J. Ramsey, was sold at the shop of the Freethought Publishing Company, 28 Stonecutter Street, of which Mr Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant, the partners of the Company, were the lessees. For a short time after its first issue it had been published by them, but soon they decided not to take that responsibility; and thenceforward it had been sold independently by Mr Ramsey, their manager, who, in the terms of his engagement with them, was free to do other trading on his own account. Sir Henry Tyler, supposing Bradlaugh to be the publisher all along, had bethought himself of prosecuting the _Freethinker_ for blasphemy, and so striking a possibly decisive political blow at Bradlaugh--a course which he was enabled to take by a readily granted "fiat" from the Director of Public Prosecutions. It had been made clear by his references to the _National Reformer_ in the House of Commons that he had hoped to convict Bradlaugh of blasphemy on something he had either written or published; but that hope he had had to abandon. There remained the hope of connecting Bradlaugh with the _Freethinker_; and Tyler's solicitors coolly wrote Bradlaugh on 8th July, asking whether he would personally sell the paper, so as to prevent the prosecution either of a subordinate of his, or of the editor and printer. He replied by sending the printed catalogue of all the things he published, and offering personally to sell any of these. As it did not include the _Freethinker_, the prosecution was begun against Messrs Foote and Ramsey and their printer, Mr Whittle, on 11th July, before the Lord Mayor (Sir John Whittaker Ellis), at the Mansion House; and after evidence had been led, the prosecutor's counsel applied to have Bradlaugh's name added as a defendant. The case was then adjourned, the Lord Mayor stating that he would hear the application against Bradlaugh in private--a proceeding for which the reasons will afterwards appear. It having appeared that the selling of the _Free-thinker_ in the Freethought Publishing Company's shop tended to implicate the partners of that company, Mr Ramsey at once decided to suspend its sale for some weeks till he could arrange for its publication in a distinct office, thus partly safeguarding Bradlaugh from the attempt to identify him with it. The danger was serious; for if Bradlaugh were convicted of blasphemy under the statute, he would become legally incapable of further defending himself in Clarke's or any other suit for Parliamentary penalties. This was fully recognised on the Tory side, and the _Whitehall Review_, in an indecent article, pressed the point. Tyler's move was, in fact, a new attempt to cause the ruin aimed at by Newdegate, and hitherto warded off; and Newdegate's junior counsel (and