We want (he said) to make the poor more comfortable; and you tell us we are immoral. We want to prevent them bringing into the world little children to suck death, instead of life, at the breasts of their mother; and you tell us we are immoral. I should not say that, perhaps, for you, gentlemen, may judge things differently from myself; but I know the poor. I belong to them. I was born amongst them. Among them are the early associations of my life. Such little ability as I possess to-day has come to me in the hard struggle of life. I have had no University to polish my tongue; no Alma Mater to give to me any eloquence by which to move you. I plead here simply for the class to which I belong, and for the right to tell them what may redeem their poverty and alleviate their misery. And I ask you to believe in your heart of hearts, even if you deliver a verdict against us here--I ask you, at least, to try and believe both for myself and the lady who sits besides me (I hope it for myself, and I earnestly wish it for her), that all through we have meant to do right, even if you think that we have done wrong.... My co-defendant referred, in earnest language, to the letters which she had received from women, and clergymen, and others throughout the country. I, too, have received many warm words of sympathy from those who think that I am right. It is true many of them may be ignorant people, and therefore may be wrong; but they have written to encourage me with their kindly sympathy in my pleading before you. If we are branded with the offence of circulating an obscene book, many of these poor people will still think "No." They think such knowledge would prevent misery in their families, would check hunger in their families, and would hinder disease in their families. Do you know what poverty means in a poor man's house? It means that when you are reproaching a poor and ignorant man with brutality, you forget that he is merely struggling against that hardship of life which drives all chivalry and courtesy out of his existence. Do not blame poor men too much that they are rough and brutal. Think mercifully of a man such as a brick-maker, who, going home after his day's toil, finds six or seven little ones crying for bread, and clinging around his wife for the food which they cannot get. Think you such a scene as that is not sufficient to make both himself and her hungry and angry too? Gentlemen, it is for you, in your deliverance of guilty or not guilty, to say how we are to go from this court--whether, when we leave this place, if you mark us guilty, his lordship may feel it to be his duty to sentence us, and put upon us the brand of a doom such as your verdict may warrant; or whether, by your verdict of not guilty--which I hope for myself and desire