As we have shown in the preceding chapter, repeated attempts have been made to suppress, by legal process, the advocacy of New-Malthusian views. Those attempts have failed, as they were bound to fail. By the strange irony of fate, indeed, one of the most powerful, logical and convincing vindications of the prudential limitation of families has proceeded from the judicial bench. The famous judgment delivered by Mr. Justice Windeyer, Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, on December 12th, 1888, is so important a contribution to the discussion of this question that a chapter may profitably be devoted to a summary of its arguments and conclusions. A stipendiary magistrate in New South Wales convicted Mr. W. W. Collins on a charge of selling an "obscene" book, viz., The Law of Population, written by Mrs. Annie Besant. Mr. Collins appealed against this conviction to the Supreme Court, consisting of Chief Justice Darley and Justices Windeyer and Stephen. The sole question at issue was whether the work was "obscene"; and upon this the judgment of the Court (the Chief Justice dissenting) was given that the conviction should be set aside. In delivering judgment, Mr. Justice Windeyer said: A court of law has now to decide for the first time whether it is lawful to argue in a decent way with earnestness of thought and sobriety of language the right of married men and women to limit the number of the children to be begotten by them by such means as medical science says are possible and not injurious to health. Of the enormous importance of this question, not only to persons of limited means in every society and country, but to nations, the populations of which have a tendency to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence, there cannot be the slightest doubt. Since the days when Malthus first announced his views on the subject to be misrepresented and vilified, as originators of new ideas usually are by the ignorant and unthinking, the question has not only been pressing itself with increased intensity of force upon thinkers and social reformers dealing with it in the abstract, but the necessity of practically dealing with the difficulty of over-population has become a topic publicly discussed by statesmen and politicians. It is no longer a question whether it is expedient to prevent the growth of a pauper population, with all its attendant miseries following upon semi-starvation, over-crowding, disease, and an enfeebled national stamina of constitution; but how countries suffering from all these causes of national decay shall avert national disaster by checking the production of children, whose lives must be too often a misery to themselves, a burden to society, and a danger to the State.