Could there be a more ridiculous assumption than that a man who braves obloquy, social ostracism, and imprisonment for his principles, is indifferent to the interest of society? Let Christianity strike Freethinkers if it will, but why add insult to injury? Why brand us as cowards when you martyr us? Why charge us with hypocrisy when we dare your hate? Persecution, like superstition, dies hard, but it dies. What though I have suffered the heaviest punishment inflicted on a Freethinker for a hundred and twenty years? Is not the night always darkest and coldest before the dawn? Is not the tiger's dying spring most fierce and terrible? My sufferings, therefore, are not without the balm of consolation. I see that the future is already brightening with a new hope. Without rising to the supreme height of Danton, who cried "Let my name be blighted that France be free," I feel a humbler pleasure in reflecting that I may have been instrumental in breaking the last fetter on the freedom of the press. G. W. FOOTE. _February 1st_, 1886. CHAPTER I. THE STORM BREWING. In the merry month of May, 1881, I started a paper called the _Freethinker_, with the avowed object of waging "relentless war against Superstition in general and the Christian Superstition in particular." I stated in the first paragraph of the first number that this new journal would have a new policy; that it would "do its best to employ the resources of Science, Scholarship, Philosophy and Ethics against the claims of the Bible as a Divine Revelation," and that it would "not scruple to employ for the same purpose any weapons of ridicule or sarcasm that might be borrowed from the armoury of Common Sense."