Yet but for the many poor folk who have stood by me with their help and sympathy, I should have long since been ruined.

The days and weeks spent in the Law Courts, the harassing work connected with each stage of litigation, the watching daily when each hearing was imminent, the absolute hindrance of all provincial lecturing--it is hardly possible for any one to judge the terrible mental and pecuniary strain of all this long-drawn-out struggle." Aye! it killed him at last, twenty years before his time, sapping his splendid vitality, undermining his iron constitution.
The blasphemy trial of Mr.Bradlaugh, Mr.Foote, and Mr.Ramsey now came on, but this time in the Queen's Bench, before the Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.

I had the honour of sitting between Mr.Bradlaugh and Mr.Foote, charged with the duty of having ready for the former all his references, and with a duplicate brief to mark off point after point as he dealt with it.Messrs.Foote and Ramsey were brought up in custody, but were brave and bright with courage unbroken.

Mr.
Bradlaugh applied to have his case taken separately, as he denied responsibility for the paper, and the judge granted the application; it was clearly proved that he and I--the "Freethought Publishing Company"-- had never had anything to do with the production of the paper; that until November, 1881, we published it, and then refused to publish it any longer; that the reason for the refusal was the addition of comic Bible illustrations as a feature of the paper.

I was called as witness and began with a difficulty; claiming to affirm, I was asked by the judge if the oath would not be binding on my conscience; I answered that any promise was binding on me whatever the form, and after some little argument the judge found a way out of the insulting form by asking whether the "invocation of the Deity added anything to it of a binding nature--added any sanction ?" "None, my Lord," was the prompt reply, and I was allowed to affirm.