And his victory on the points of civil law was effectually secured by his acquittal in the action for blasphemy. A new excitement had been added to that issue by the commencement, on 2nd February, of a new prosecution of Mr Foote (now owner as well as editor) and Mr Ramsey (now publisher only), with Ramsey's shopman, Henry Arthur Kemp, for the publication of a special "Christmas number" of the _Freethinker_, in which there occurred certain woodcuts, ridiculing the Hebrew Deity and the Jesus of the Gospels. In this case there could be no pretence of implicating Bradlaugh, as the incriminated number had not even been sold on the Freethought Publishing Company's premises. Whether Tyler saw the necessity of putting a better colour of religious zeal on his ill-conditioned action against Bradlaugh, or whether the recent strife had stirred up smouldering bigotry independently of personal animus against Bradlaugh, this prosecution was undertaken by "the City of London." The new trial, which took place at the Central Criminal Court on 1st March 1883, before Mr Justice North and a jury, is likely to be long remembered in respect of the extraordinary display of mediæval prejudice by the judge. He repeatedly and angrily interrupted Mr Foote in his defence, declining to allow him to quote current printed matter which would show at once how much "permitted blasphemy" went on among Salvationists, and how perfectly in keeping was his freethinking blasphemy with the popular religion which it attacked. The jury, after two hours' discussion, could not agree, and the judge discharged them, arranging for a fresh trial on the 6th with a fresh jury, and refusing in the harshest and most peremptory manner to let the prisoners out on bail, though in law they were perfectly entitled to it. Applications made next day to other judges fell through on the score, not of being wrong in law, but of "want of jurisdiction" on the part of the judges applied to. The second trial was even more disgraceful to the judge than the first. At the outset, Mr Foote objected to one of the jurors as having expressed animus, and the judge, in suggesting the juryman's withdrawal, declared that "he should be sorry to have a gentleman upon the jury who had expressed himself as prejudiced." His own summing-up to the jury, however, was again scandalously prejudiced; and when the jury promptly returned a verdict of guilty, he addressed Mr Foote as follows:-- "You have been found guilty by the jury of publishing these blasphemous libels. This trial has been to me a very painful one, as I regard it as extremely sad to find that a person to whom God has given such evident intelligence and ability should have chosen to prostitute his talents to the work of the devil in the way it has been done (_sic_) under your auspices."