I then thought, as I now do, that this court could find nobler means than the employment of brute force to counteract anything I could attempt--which I never have done--to bring the truly sacred into contempt. I thought I never should be called upon to stand in this dock, with all its polluting and disgusting associations, to answer for mere matters of speculative opinion. I did think that such persons possessed a sense of the powers of the human mind that would have prevented the interposition of penal judges upon such subjects. But to Mr. Grantley Berkeley, as foreman of the grand jury who found a true bill against me, I beg to draw your attention. Mr. Grantley Berkeley, as you are aware, is brother to the member, Mr. C. Berkeley, who attempted to vindicate the conduct of the Cheltenham magistrates from the allegations against them by Sir James Graham in the House of Commons. In the recent case of Mr. Mason, who was taken from a meeting, as I was at Cheltenham, by a policeman, illegally, without a warrant, the doctrine was laid down by a cabinet minister, in the House of Commons, that if the person so arrested was subsequently found guilty by a jury, the illegal apprehension was justified. See how this applies to my case. I was taken from a public meeting a week after the objectionable words were spoken; was taken by a policeman at near midnight; without a warrant. This was justly deemed illegal. I sat in the gallery of the House of Commons when the Hon. Member for Bath brought forward my case, and when Sir James Graham, in reference to the correspondence which had taken place with the magistrates, had the frankness to say, 'there had been serious irregularities and unnecessary harshness used in the case of Holyoake.' In this country four thousand applications are annually made to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and out of that four thousand my case is spoken of as one in which serious irregularities had occurred, and unnecessary harshness been employed. And that amid the numerous affairs of this great empire it should have received this distinct notice is presumptive evidence that it contained much that should be corrected. On Thursday, July 21, the Hon. Mr. C. Berkeley, addressing the Speaker of the House of Commons, said, 'I wish to ask the Right Hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department a question, but in order to make it intelligible to the House, it will be necessary for me to refer to what took place on Tuesday last. It appears that upon that day the Hon. member for Bath stated, "that as a person named Holyoake had been committed to prison, at Cheltenham, in an improper manner, he wished to know whether the Right Hon. the Secretary for the Home Department had any objection to produce the correspondence which had taken place upon that subject"--to which the Right Hon. Baronet replied that, "he felt called on in the discharge of his duty to inquire into the circumstances of the