The blasphemy prosecution not being "expedited," went on slowly enough. Intermediate technical proceedings arose, partly out of irregularities on the part of the prosecution; and in one of Bradlaugh's visits to the Courts with his sureties, the driver of a four-wheeler who conveyed the party declined to accept any fare, declaring that it should be his contribution towards fighting Tyler. At length, on 6th November, Bradlaugh made an _ex parte_ motion before Justices Field and Stephen, to have the indictment against him quashed, mainly on the score that he ought to have been definitely sued under the statute 9 and 10 William III., and that the provisions of that statute had not been observed in the indictment. The pleadings were extremely interesting as a matter of pure law, the judges debating the points courteously but closely all along, and both commenting finally on the "candour" and "propriety" with which he had argued his case. Their decision was for the most part hostile; and this was one of his very few cases in which there can be little difficulty in taking the judge's view against him. The main point decided was that the statute had not abrogated the common law in the case in hand. They gave him a rule _nisi_ on only two counts in the indictment, on the ground of irregular procedure on the part of the prosecution; but Justice Stephen's judgment supplied a very useful conspectus of the history of the blasphemy laws, and incidentally declared that the statutory penalties could not be inflicted under a verdict on the indictment laid. Very different must be the comments passed on the treatment of the friendly action, Gurney _v._ Bradlaugh, which came on afresh before Mr Justice Mathew and a common jury on 10th November. Everything had been done that could be done to meet the criticisms formerly passed by Justices Manisty and Watkin Williams; and indeed the whole pleadings had from the first been drawn from the journals of the House of Commons, which were put in evidence. But Justice Mathew summarily decided not to hear the case, and discharged the jury, on the old ground that the action was collusive. Now Bradlaugh, in swearing himself in, had in law done exactly what Alderman Salomons did in 1851; and the action of Miller _v._ Salomons was notoriously collusive, yet it was fully heard and carefully decided. We can only do now what Bradlaugh did then--leave the judge's action to the judgment of the instructed public. The _Law Times_ of that time (November 1882) took the unusual step of declaring:-- "It is plain that it should be possible to try a friendly action to establish a constitutional right; and we regard the action of the judge as very questionable on constitutional grounds, and as being an arbitrary interference with a suitor's right to the verdict of a jury." What a law journal thus describes, plain men may well call by a plainer name.