of all the physical agony involved in a painful and dangerous delivery and possible loss of life is immoral and unnatural. The case of the Queen versus Bradlaugh and Besant (referred to at length in the preceding chapter) had been cited as an authority in support of the contention that The Law of Population was an obscene book, inasmuch as the pamphlet which was the subject of that prosecution, and for the publication of which the defendants were convicted, advocated the adoption of preventive checks. Mr. Justice Windeyer, however, refused to accept that case as a binding precedent: As I have already pointed out, the case cannot be regarded as an authority upon that point, as there the question was whether the pamphlet was an obscene libel. Whether the verdict of the jury was right in that case is not a matter of law, but of opinion. Reading the summing-up of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn with some knowledge of judicial modes of putting criminal cases to a jury, it appears to me that, though expressing no direct opinion as to its character, the learned Chief Justice thought that the book was not an obscene libel, and was cautiously guiding the jury to that conclusion. By the opinion of a jury coming to the consideration of so delicate a question of social science as was submitted to them, probably without any previous acquaintance with subjects of the kind, I decline to be in any way bound; and I have no hesitation in saying that, had I been a member of the jury, I should have acted upon the reasoning of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, and acquitted the defendants. Not only does the whole tenor of his Lordship's summing-up appear to me argumentatively in favor of the defendants, but, from certain passages, it appears to me that the inference is clearly to be drawn that he neither thought the physiological details of the book were obscene, nor was of opinion that its teaching would promote immorality. Mr. Justice Windeyer quoted several passages from the judgment of Sir Alexander Cockburn in support of his view that the Lord Chief Justice did not regard the preventive checks recommended as immoral. How, he asked, could any reasonable man condemn as immoral the wish of married people to bring no more children into the world than they can support, and the adoption of the necessary means to effect that wish?