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

Liberty of the Press has, as all our readers know, ended in the entire defeat of the attacking army, and in the recapture of the position originally lost. There is no conviction--of ours--registered against the Knowlton Pamphlet, the whole of the proceedings having been swept away; and the prosecutors are left with a large sum out of pocket, and no one any the worse for all their efforts. The banker's account of the unknown prosecutor shows a long and melancholy catalogue of expenses, and there is no glory and no success to balance them on the other side of the ledger. On the contrary, our prosecutors have advertised the attacked pamphlet, and circulated it by thousands and by hundreds of thousands; they have caused it to be reprinted in Holland and in America, and have spread it over India, Australia, New Zealand, and the whole continent of Europe; they have caused the Population Question to be discussed, both at home and abroad, in the press and in the public meeting; they have crammed the largest halls in England and Scotland to listen to the preaching of Malthusianism; they have induced the publication of a modern pamphlet on the question which is selling by thousands; they have enormously increased the popularity of the defendants, and made new friends for them in every class of society; in the end, Knowlton is being circulated as vigorously as ever, and since the case was decided more copies have been sold than would have been disposed of in ten years at the old rate of sale. Truly, our prosecutors must feel delighted at the results of their labors.

"So much for the past: what as to the future? Some, fancying we should act as they themselves would do under the like circumstances, dream that we shall now give way. We have not the smallest intention of doing anything of the kind. We said, nearly a year ago, that so long as Knowlton was prosecuted we should persist in selling him; we repeated the same determination in Court, and received for it a heavy sentence; we repeat the same to-day, in spite of the injudicious threat of Lord Justice Brett. Before we went up for judgment in the Court of Appeal we had made all preparations for the renewal of the struggle; parcels were ready to be forwarded to friends who had volunteered to sell in various towns; if we had gone to jail from the Court these would at once have been sent; as we won our case, they were sent just the same. On the following day orders were given to tell any wholesale agents who inquired that the book was again on sale, and the bills at 28, Stonecutter Street, announcing the suspension, of the sale, were taken down; from that day forward all orders received have been punctually attended to, and the sale has been both rapid and steady. There is, however, one difference between the sale of Knowlton and that of our other literature: Knowlton is not sold across the counter at Stonecutter Street. When we were arrested in April 1877, we stopped the sale across counter, and we do not, at present, intend to recommence it. Our reason is very simple. The sale across counter does not, in any fashion, cause us any additional risk; the danger of it falls entirely on Mr. Ramsey and on Mr. and Mrs. Norrish; we fail to see that there is any courage in running other people into danger, and we prefer, therefore, to take the risk on ourselves. We do not intend to go down again and personally sell behind the counter; we thought it right to challenge a prosecution once, but, having done so, we intend now to go quietly on our ordinary way of business, and wait for any attack that may come.

"Meanwhile, we are not only selling the 'Fruits of Philosophy', but we also are striving to gain the legal right to do so. In the appeal from Mr. Vaughan's decision Mr. Bradlaugh again raises all the disputed questions, and that appeal will be argued as persistently as was the one just decided in our favor. We are also making efforts to obtain an alteration of the law of libel, and we hope soon to be able to announce the exact terms of the proposed Bill.

"My own pamphlet, on 'The Law of Population', is another effort in the same direction. At our trial the Lord Chief Justice said, that it was the advocacy of the preventive checks which was the assailable part of Knowlton; that advocacy is strongly and clearly to be found in the new pamphlet, together with facts useful to mothers, as to the physical injury caused by over-rapid child-bearing, which Knowlton did not give. The pamphlet has the advantage of being written fifty years later than the 'Fruits of Philosophy', and is more suitable, therefore, for circulation at the present day. We hope that it may gradually replace Knowlton as a manual for the poor. While we shall continue to print and sell Knowlton as long as any attempt is made to suppress it, we hope that the more modern pamphlet may gradually supersede the old one.

"If another prosecution should be instituted against us, our prosecutors would have a far harder task before them than they had last time. In the first place, they would be compelled to state, clearly and definitely, what it is to which they object; and we should, therefore, be able to bring our whole strength to bear on the assailed point. In the second place, they would have to find a jury who would be ready to convict, and after the full discussion of the question which has taken place the finding of such a jury would be by no means an easy thing to do. Lastly, they must be quite sure not to make any legal blunders, for they may be sure that such sins will find them out. Perhaps, on the whole, they had better leave us alone.

"I believe that our readers will be glad to have this statement of our action, and this assurance that we feel as certain of winning the battle of a Free Press as when we began it a year ago, and that our determination is as unwavering as when Serjeant Outram arrested us in the spring of last year.--ANNIE BESANT."

Several purchases were made from us by detectives, and we were more than once threatened with prosecution. At last evidence for a new prosecution was laid before the Home Office, and the Government declined to institute fresh proceedings or to have anything more to do with the matter. The battle was won. As soon as we were informed of this decision, we decided to sell only the copies we had in stock, and not to further reprint the pamphlet. Out-of-date as was much of its physiology, it was defended as a symbol, not for its intrinsic worth. We issued a circular stating that--

"The Knowlton pamphlet is now entirely out of print, and, 185,000 having been printed, the Freethought Publishing Company do not intend to continue the publication, which has never at any time been advertised by them except on the original issue to test the question. 'The Law of Population', price 6d., post free 8d., has been specially written by Mrs. Besant to supersede the Knowlton pamphlet."

Thus ended a prolonged resistance to an unfair attempt to stifle discussion, and, much as I have suffered in consequence of the part I took in that fight, I have never once regretted that battle for the saving of the poor.

In July, 1877, a side-quarrel on the pamphlet begun which lasted until December 3rd, 1878, and was fought through court after court right out to a successful issue. We had avoided a seizure warrant by removing all our stock from 28, Stonecutter Street, but 657 of the pamphlets had been seized at Mr. Truelove's, in Holborn, and that gentleman was also proceeded against for selling the work. The summons for selling was withdrawn, and Mr. Bradlaugh succeeded in having his name and mine inserted as owners of the books in the summons for their destruction. The books remained in the custody of the magistrate until after the decision of the Court of Queen's Bench, and on February 12th, 1878, Mr. Bradlaugh appeared before Mr. Vaughan at Bow Street, and claimed that the books should be restored to him. Mr. Collette, of the Vice Society, argued on the other hand that the books were obscene, and ought therefore to be destroyed. Mr. Vaughan reserved his decision, and asked for the Lord Chief Justice's summing-up in the Queen _v._ Bradlaugh and Besant. On February 19th he made an order for the destruction of the pamphlets, against which Mr. Bradlaugh appealed to the General Sessions on the following grounds:

"1st. That the said book is not an obscene book within the meaning of the 20th and 21st Victoria, cap. 83. 2nd. That the said book is a scientific treatise on the law of population and its connexion with poverty, and that there is nothing in the book which is not necessary and legitimate in the description of the question. 3rd. That the advocacy of non-life-destroying checks to population is not an offence either at common law or by statute, and that the manner in which that advocacy is raised in the said book, 'The Fruits of Philosophy', is not such as makes it an indictable offence. 4th. That the discussion and recommendation of checks to over-population after marriage is perfectly lawful, and that there is in the advocacy and recommendations contained in the book 'Fruits of Philosophy' nothing that is prurient or calculated to inflame the passions. 5th. That the physiological information in the said book is such as is absolutely necessary for understanding the subjects treated, and such information is more fully given in Carpenter's treatises on Physiology, and Kirke's 'Handbook of Physiology', which later works are used for the instruction of the young under Government sanction. 6th. That the whole of the physiological information contained in the said book, 'The Fruits of Philosophy', has been published uninterruptedly for fifty years, and still is published in dear books, and that the publication of such information in a cheap form cannot constitute an offence."

After a long argument before Mr. Edlin and a number of other Middlesex magistrates, the Bench affirmed Mr. Vaughan's order, whereupon Mr. Bradlaugh promptly obtained from the Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Mellor a writ of _certiorari_, removing their order to the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice with a view to quashing it. The matter was not argued until the following November, on the 9th of which month it came on before Mr. Justice Mellor and Mr. Justice Field. The Court decided in Mr. Bradlaugh's favor and granted a rule quashing Mr. Vaughan's order, and with this fell the order of the Middlesex magistrates. The next thing was to recover the pamphlets thus rescued from destruction, and on December 3rd Mr. Bradlaugh appeared before Mr. Vaughan at Bow Street in support of a summons against Mr. Henry Wood, a police inspector, for detaining 657 copies of the "Fruits of Philosophy". After a long argument Mr. Vaughan ordered the pamphlets to be given up to him, and he carried them off in triumph, there and then, on a cab. We labelled the rescued pamphlets and sold every one of them, in mocking defiance of the Vice Society.

The circulation of literature advocating prudential checks to population was not stopped during the temporary suspension of the sale of the Knowlton pamphlet between June, 1877, and February, 1878. In October, 1877, I commenced in the _National Reformer_ the publication of a pamphlet entitled: "The Law of Population, its consequences, and its bearing upon human conduct and