the teaching objected to. To those on the other hand who desire its promulgation, it must be matter of congratulation that this, like all attempted persecutions of thinkers, will defeats its own object, and that truth, like a torch, "the more it's shook it shines." As it seems to me that this book is neither obscene in its language, nor by its teaching incites people to obscenity, I am of opinion that the prohibition should go. Mr. Justice Stephen concurred in the judgment given, and the conviction of Mr. W. W. Collins was therefore set aside. We may fittingly conclude this chapter by reproducing from The Malthusian a note in which the writer briefly describes the character of Mr. Justice Windeyer: "In early life I met Mr. Windeyer at his house at Tomago, on the Hunter River. His father, then dead, had been quite a notable man in the colony, as an able, intrepid, popular and high-minded politician; and young Windeyer seemed to be his father's son--frank, open, unaffected, and with a fine gentlemanly bearing. Since then, his career has quite fulfilled its early promise; and, for you, as a warm advocate of New-Malthusianism, the strength of support and encouragement lies, I think, very much in the fact that Justice Windeyer is not only a man of great legal ability but of high moral character." CHAPTER V. PRUDENTIAL CHECKS. If the validity of the Malthusian position be admitted, there is no logical escape from the conclusion that the knowledge of innocent means by which families may be limited should be conveyed to the people. Yet, with characteristic inconsistency, the public advocacy of Malthusianism in the abstract is regarded with approval, whilst the practical application of the principle is met with the parrot-cry of "obscenity," and menaced with penal infliction. In the Windeyer judgment it will be noted that the proceedings against Mr. Collins were based not upon those portions of Mrs. Besant's pamphlet in which the subject was philosophically discussed, but upon the passages in which the preventive checks were described. An eminent English statesman, Mr. John Morley, has insisted in a public speech upon the "vital importance" of the population question, and, he added, "I wish that we did not shirk it so much." A popular English clergyman, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, has declared in a popular weekly newspaper that the most important remedy for poverty is "to control the family growth, according to the family means of support." But when the social reformer passes from vague precept to direct instruction, he is confronted by an anomalous law which threatens him as a foe to public morality.