Do you, gentlemen, think for one moment that myself and my co-defendant are fighting the simple question of the sale or publication of this sixpenny volume of Dr. Knowlton's? Do you think that we would have placed ourselves in the position in which we are at the present moment for the mere profit to be derived from a sixpenny pamphlet of forty-seven pages? No, it is nothing of the sort; we have a much larger interest at stake, and one of vital interest to the public, one which we shall spend our whole lives in trying to uphold. The question really is one of the right to public discussion by means of publication, and that question is bound up in the right to sell this sixpenny pamphlet which the Solicitor-General despises on account of its price. It would, however, be impossible to give, by extracts of reasonable length, an adequate idea of the striking and eloquent speech which Mrs. Besant addressed to the jury in her defence. The whole question of over-population and its consequences was examined with the greatest care and completeness. Profoundly convinced of the justice of her cause, Mrs. Besant pleaded that the teachings of New-Malthusianism, by making early marriage possible, promoted happiness and morality. She said: I think, therefore, I may fairly put it that every young man naturally desires to make a home and enter upon married life when first he comes out into the world. I do not believe that any young man sets out with the intention of rushing into fast life and dissipation, but men are frequently drawn into habits of that kind because they fear the results that follow from early marriage. Since I am told that our object is to increase immorality, and that we only use the word "marriage" to conceal the foulest designs upon the purity of society, I may say freely that I hold early marriages to be the very salvation of young men, and especially of young men in our large cities. I hold the belief with a depth of conviction which I cannot put to you in words, that for one man and one woman to help, comfort, and support one another, which they are by nature adapted to do, is a state which is to be reached, which is to be perpetuated, by marriage and in no other way. It is only by companionship, and the union between a man and a woman, that this is possible. Shut a man out from the loving influence of home, the golden institutions of the fireside, his wife's society, and the happiness of becoming a father, and you induce a life of profligacy. Gentlemen, do not be deceived. There is no talk in this book of preventing men and women from becoming parents; all that is sought here is to limit the number of their family. And we do not aim at that because we do not love children, but, on the contrary, because we do love them, and because we wish to prevent them from coming into