motives in publishing it.” It turned out that the indictment was faulty; and, on appeal to a higher court, the defendants were set free from the fine and imprisonment imposed on them by Chief Justice Cockburn, which he sentenced them to because they went on selling the pamphlet. In the year 1877 the Malthusian League, a society for the propagation of Malthusian literature, was inaugurated. In February, 1878, Mr. Edward Truelove, bookseller, of Holborn, London, was prosecuted by the authorities of the City of London, for the publication of the Hon. R. D. Owen’s pamphlet “Moral Physiology,” and another pamphlet entitled “Individual, Family, and National Poverty.” His case was admirably defended by Mr. William Hunter, and Mr. Truelove was set free; but a second trial took place shortly after this at the Old Bailey, and the jury then gave a verdict of guilty, on which the judge sentenced the defendant to a fine of £200 and a period of four months’ imprisonment. Fortunately, Mr. Truelove’s health was excellent, and he supported his period of imprisonment without injury, emerging from his prison a hero to all those who understand the immense value of the cause for which he suffered. No further trials have taken place of such works in London, although Mrs. Annie Besant’s new pamphlet, the “Law of Population,” and others have had a quite enormous sale of recent years. In the North of England and in Scotland, there is still a remnant of the old persecuting spirit, for a travelling hawker named Mr. Williamson has been imprisoned at Goole and in Lincolnshire for selling Mrs. Besant’s pamphlet in 1887. In the same year Dr. Henry Arthur Allbutt of Leeds, published a medical work called “The Wife’s Handbook,” which gave details of how the size of a family might be controlled by married people; and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1887 summoned him in March to come up in three months time, to show cause why he should not be deprived of his diploma for this act of common humanity. A host of protests and petitions were at once despatched to the Fellows of the College, showing them the gross wickedness of this action of theirs; and the consequence of this was that up to July, 1887, Dr. H. Arthur Allbutt had heard nothing more of this atrocious persecution by the governing body of a noble profession against one of its members for telling the poor how to get rid of poverty. Hopes are entertained that not only may that body of physicians withdraw its opposition to Dr. H. A. Allbutt’s work; but that they may even see fit to act the generous part, and, whilst confessing their error, ask for forgiveness from outraged humanity. [Illustration] APPENDIX. At the Annual Meeting of the Malthusian League in May, 1887, held in London at the South Place Institute, Finsbury, DR. CHARLES R. DRYSDALE, President of the Malthusian League, read the Presidential Address, which contained the following passages:—