Autobiographical Sketches by Annie Besant (essential books to read txt) 📖

office. Somewhere within reach of Fleet Street the office must be; small it must be, as we had no funds and the risk of starting a business of which we knew nothing was great. Still "all things are possible to" those who are resolute; we discovered a tumble-down little place in Stonecutter Street and secured it by the good offices of our friend, Mr. Charles Herbert; we borrowed a few hundred pounds from personal friends, and made our new tenement habitable; we drew up a deed of partnership, founding the "Freethought Publishing Company", Mr. Bradlaugh and myself being the only partners; we engaged Mr. W.J. Ramsey as manager of the business; and in the _National Reformer_ of February 25th we were able to announce:

"The publishing office of the _National Reformer_ and of all the works of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant is now at 28, Stonecutter Street, E.C., three doors from Farringdon Street, where the manager, Mr. W.J. Ramsey, will be glad to receive orders for the supply of any Freethought literature".

A week later we issued the following address:

"ADDRESS FROM THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY TO THE READERS OF THE 'NATIONAL REFORMER'.

"When the prospectus of the _National Reformer_ was issued by the founder, Charles Bradlaugh, in 1859, he described its policy as 'Atheistic in theology, Republican in politics, and Malthusian in social economy', and a free platform was promised and has been maintained for the discussion of each of these topics. In ventilating the population question the stand taken by Mr. Bradlaugh, both here and on the platform, is well known to our old readers, and many works bearing on this vital subject have been advertised and reviewed in these columns. In this the _National Reformer_ has followed the course pursued by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, who in 1853 published a 'Freethought Directory', giving a list of the various books supplied from the 'Fleet Street House', and which list contained amongst others:

"'Anti-Marcus on the Population Question.'

"Fowler's Tracts on Physiology, etc.

"Dr. C. Knowlton's 'Fruits of Philosophy'.

"'Moral Physiology: a plain treatise on the Population Question.'

"In this Directory Mr. G.J. Holyoake says:

"'No. 147 Fleet Street is a Central Secular Book Depot, where all works extant in the English language on the side of Freethought in Religion, Politics, Morals, and Culture are kept in stock, or are procured at short notice.'

"We shall try to do at 28 Stonecutter Street that which Mr. Holyoake's Directory promised for Fleet Street House.

"The partners in the Freethought Publishing Company are Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, who have entered into a legal partnership for the purpose of sharing the legal responsibility of the works they publish.

"We intend to publish nothing that we do not think we can morally defend. All that we do publish we shall defend. We do not mean that we shall agree with all we publish, but we shall, so far as we can, try to keep the possibility of free utterance of earnest, honest opinion.

"It may not be out of place here to remind new readers of this journal of that which old readers well know, that no articles are editorial except those which are unsigned or bear the name of the editor, or that of the sub-editor; for each and every other article the author is allowed to say his own say in his own way; the editor only furnishes the means to address our readers, leaving to him or to her the right and responsibility of divergent thought.

"ANNIE BESANT "CHARLES BRADLAUGH."

Thus we found ourselves suddenly launched on a new undertaking, and with some amusement and much trepidation I realised that I was "in business", with business knowledge amounting to _nil_. I had, however, fair ability and plenty of goodwill, and I determined to learn my work, feeling proud that I had become one of the list of "Freethought publishers", who published for love of the cause of freedom, and risked all for the triumph of a principle ere it wore "silver slippers and walked in the sunshine with applause".

On February 8th Mr. Watts was tried at the Old Bailey. He withdrew his plea of "Not Guilty", and pleaded "Guilty". His counsel urged that he was a man of good character, that Mr. George Jacob Holyoake had sold the incriminated pamphlet, that Mr. Watts had bought the stereo-plates of it in the stock of the late Mr. Austin Holyoake, which he had taken over bodily, and that he had never read the book until after the Bristol investigation. "Mr. Watts pledges himself to me", the counsel stated, "that he was entirely ignorant of the contents of this pamphlet until he heard passages read from it in the prosecution at Bristol". The counsel for the prosecution pointed out that this statement was inaccurate, and read passages from Mr. Watts' deposition made on the first occasion at Bristol, in which Mr. Watts stated that he had perused the book, and was prepared to justify it as a medical work. He, however, did not wish to press the case, if the plates and stock were destroyed, and Mr. Watts was accordingly discharged on his own recognisances in L500 to come up for judgment when called on.

While this struggle was raging, an old friend of Mr. Bradlaugh's, Mr. George Odger, was slowly passing away; the good old man lay dying in his poor lodgings in High Street, Oxford Street, and I find recorded in the _National Reformer_ of March 4th, that on February 28th we had been to see him, and that "he is very feeble and is, apparently, sinking fast; but he is as brave and bright, facing his last enemy, as he has ever been facing his former ones". He died on March 4th, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery on the 10th of the same month.

A grave question now lay before us for decision. The Knowlton pamphlet had been surrendered; was that surrender to stand as the last word of the Freethought party on a book which had been sold by the most prominent men in its ranks for forty years? To our minds such surrender, left unchallenged, would be a stain on all who submitted to it, and we decided that faulty as the book was in many respects it had yet become the symbol of a great principle, of the right to circulate physiological knowledge among the poor in pamphlets published at a price they could afford to pay. Deliberately counting the risk, recognising that by our action we should subject ourselves to the vilest slander, knowing that Christian malice would misrepresent and ignorance would echo the misrepresentation --we yet resolved that the sacrifice must be made, and made by us in virtue of our position in the Freethought Party. If the leaders flinched how could the followers be expected to fight? The greatest sacrifice had to be made by Mr. Bradlaugh. How would an indictment for publishing an obscene book affect his candidature for Northampton? What a new weapon for his foes, what a new difficulty for his friends! I may say here that our worst forebodings were realised by the event; we have been assailed as "vendors of obscene literature", as "writers of obscene books", as "living by the circulation of filthy books". And it is because such accusations have been widely made that I here place on permanent record the facts of the case, for thus, at least, some honest opponents will learn the truth and will cease to circulate the slanders they may have repeated in ignorance.

On February 27th our determination to republish the Knowlton pamphlet was announced by Mr. Bradlaugh in an address delivered by him at the Hall of Science on "The Right of Publication". Extracts from a brief report, published in the _National Reformer_ of March 11th, will show the drift of his statement:

"Mr. Bradlaugh was most warmly welcomed to the platform, and reiterated cheers greeted him as he rose to make his speech. Few who heard him that evening will forget the passion and the pathos with which he spoke. The defence of the right to publish was put as strongly and as firmly as words could put it, and the determination to maintain that right, in dock and in jail as on the platform, rang out with no uncertain sound. Truly, as the orator said: 'The bold words I have spoken from this place would be nothing but the emptiest brag and the coward's boast, if I flinched now in the day of battle'. Every word of praise of the fighters of old would fall in disgrace on the head of him who spoke it, if when the time came to share in their peril he shrunk back from the danger of the strife.... Mr. Bradlaugh drew a graphic picture of the earlier struggles for a free press, and then dealt with the present state of the law; from that he passed on to the pamphlet which is the test-question of the hour; he pointed out how some parts of it were foolish, such as the 'philosophical proem', but remarked that he knew no right in law to forbid the publication of all save wisdom; he then showed how, had he originally been asked to publish the pamphlet, he should have raised some objections to its style, but that was a very different matter from permitting the authorities to stop its sale; the style of many books might be faulty without the books being therefore obscene. He contended the book was a perfectly moral medical work, and was no more indecent than every other medical work dealing with the same subject. The knowledge it gave was useful knowledge; many a young man might be saved from disease by such a knowledge as was contained in the book; if it was argued that such books should not be sold at so cheap a rate, he replied that it was among the masses that such physiological knowledge was needed, 'and if there is one subject above all others', he exclaimed, 'for which a man might gladly sacrifice his hopes and his life, surely it is for that which would relieve his fellow-men from poverty, the mother of crimes, and would make happy homes where now only want and suffering reign'. He had fully counted the cost; he knew all he might lose; but Carlile before him had been imprisoned for teaching the same doctrine, 'and what Carlile did for his day, I, while health and strength remain, will do for mine'."

The position we took up in republishing the pamphlet was clearly stated in the preface which we wrote for it, and which I here reprint, as it gives plainly and briefly the facts of the case:

"PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO DR. KNOWLTON'S 'FRUITS OF PHILOSOPHY'.

"The pamphlet which we now present to the public is one which has been lately prosecuted under Lord Campbell's Act, and which we now republish in order to test the right of publication. It was originally written by Charles Knowlton, M.D., an American physician, whose degree entitles him to be heard with respect on a medical question. It is openly sold and widely circulated in America at the present time. It was first published in England, about forty years ago, by James Watson, the gallant Radical who came to London and took up Richard Carlile's work when Carlile was in jail. He sold it unchallenged for many years, approved it, and recommended it. It was printed and published by Messrs. Holyoake and Co., and found its place, with other works of a similar character, in their 'Freethought Directory' of 1853, and was thus identified with Freethought literature at the then leading Freethought _depot_ . Mr. Austin Holyoake, working in conjunction with Mr. Bradlaugh at the _National Reformer_