The Tory cheers which greeted this malicious reply suffice to condemn it. Sir William Harcourt has told many lies in his time, but this was the most brazen of all. He knew we were not prosecuted for obscenity; he knew there was not a suggestion of indecency in our indictment; and he had before him the distinct language of the Lord Chief Justice of England, exonerating us from the slander. Yet he deliberately libelled us, in a place where his utterances are privileged, in order to conciliate the Tories and please the bigots. Some of the Radical papers protested against this wanton misrepresentation, but I am not aware that a single Christian journal censured the lie which was used to justify persecution. Freethinkers have not forgotten Sir William Harcourt, nor have I. Some day we may be able to punish him for the insult. Meanwhile, I venture to think that if the member for Derby and the editor of the _Freethinker_ were placed side by side, an unprejudiced stranger would have little difficulty in deciding which of the two was the more likely to be bestial. Poor Mr. Ramsey, not knowing his man, innocently petitioned the Home Secretary from prison, pointing out that he was tried and imprisoned for _blasphemy_, asking to be released at once, and offering to supply Sir William Harcourt with fresh copies of our Christmas Number for a new trial for _obscenity_. Of course he received no reply. My counsel, Mr. Cluer, gallantly defended my reputation in the columns of the _Daily News_, and he was supported by one of the Jury, who wrote as follows: "SIR,--From the reference in your short leader on the subject, it appears that the Home Secretary, in answer to Mr. Taylor, declined to consent to the release of Messrs. Foote and Ramsey, on the ground that they had published an obscene libel. On the late trial before the Lord Chief Justice, certain numbers of the _Freethinker_, on which the prisoners were being tried, were charged by the prosecution with being (_inter alia_) blasphemous and indecent. The judge in the course of his remarks said, the articles inculpated might be blasphemous, but assuredly they were not indecent. The opinion of Sir William Harcourt, consequently, though in harmony with that of the junior counsel for the prosecution, is altogether opposed to that of Lord Coleridge, who was the judge in the case."