Soon after Mr. Malthus wrote his essay, it began to be noticed that in France families were much smaller, among the respectable classes, than they were in England; and Mr. Francis Place wrote a pamphlet in which he pointed this out and recommended the plan in place of the preventive check of late marriages. His pamphlet and remarks had much influence on the celebrated Robert Owen, and it is said that the latter philanthropist made known Place’s views to his workmen at New Lanark, in Scotland, and it was on that account that that famous socialistic experiment succeeded so well. Mr. Robert Dale Owen, son of Robert Owen, emigrated to the United States and was ambassador to Europe from that country for some years. His pamphlet entitled “Moral Physiology” was a most eloquent plea for parental prudence, or early marriages and small families. That pamphlet was written subsequently to one written by Mr. Richard Carlile, entitled “Every Woman’s Book,” and also to Dr. Charles Knowlton of Boston’s work, written in 1833, entitled the “Fruits of Philosophy.” This last work, in company with those of Owen, Carlile, and Austin Holyoake, which last was called “Large and Small Families,” were sold openly for some forty years in London and elsewhere, chiefly by the Secular party. In the year 1876, the “Fruits of Philosophy” was attacked as an obscene publication under a new Act of Parliament, called “Lord Campbell’s Act,” and a Bristol bookseller named Cook was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for selling it. Mr. Charles Watts, the London publisher of the work, was also prosecuted; but, on his submission, he was allowed to get free with the payment of costs. This did not suit the views of the more chivalrous of the Secularist party, and accordingly Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant, the leaders of that party in England, issued the work again with a preface, and invited the authorities to prosecute them. The “Fruits of Philosophy” was sold openly at 28, Stonecutter Street, London, and as the City authorities prosecuted, the case was sent up for trial to the Queen’s Bench, where it was tried before the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in June, 1877. The details of this most interesting of all trials are to be found in a work published by Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, which should be perused by all who wish to understand how our liberties are gradually acquired. Mr. Bradlaugh, in his admirable speech, maintained that the advocacy of all checks to population is lawful, except such as advise the destruction of the fœtus in utero, or the child after birth. The Lord Chief Justice admitted the truth of the principle of population, and summed up most favorably to the defendants; but the jury being quite new to the question, gave the following verdict: “We are unanimously of opinion that the book in question is calculated to deprave public morals; but at the same time we entirely exonerate the defendants from any corrupt