The whole matter was thus most inequitably postponed to the July number, primarily at Dr. Royce's instigation. But I now found that I was to be refused the freedom necessary to self-defence against the second libel--the same freedom already yielded in replying to the first. Now to answer a libel effectively requires the freedom, not of the parliament, but of the courts. A mere literary discussion admits of parliamentary freedom alone, and properly excludes all reflections upon personal character. But Dr. Royce had most unparliamentarily turned his ostensible review into a libel, and, contrary to all canons of literary discussion, had indulged himself in reflections upon my personal character as malicious as they were false. Now the only possible disproof of a libel is the proof that it _is_ a libel,--that it is either untruthful, or malicious, or both; and, since a libel is both a civil injury and a criminal offence, the proof of its libellous character cannot be established without reflecting upon the personal character of the libeller. Hence Dr. Royce himself, by writing a libel, had self-evidently raised the question of his own personal character, and bound himself beforehand, by his own act, to submit with what grace he could to the necessary consequences of that act; and to seek to shield himself from these consequences, which he should have foreseen clearly and nerved himself to bear bravely, was only to incur the ridicule invited by a timorous man who first strikes another and then runs away. Dr. Adler, moreover, as the responsible editor of the "Journal of Ethics," had laid himself, by publishing Dr. Royce's libel, under the clear moral obligation of according to the accused the same freedom of the courts which he had already accorded to the accuser; and to seek to escape this moral obligation was to incur the censure invited by any one who assumes the editorial function without properly informing himself of the duties which it imposes with reference to third parties. Both the one and the other had estopped themselves from denying to the accused in self-defence the same freedom of the courts which they had granted to themselves as accusers in attack. Notwithstanding these plain facts, Dr. Royce and Dr. Adler united in denying to me the necessary freedom of self-defence against the attack which they had united in making.