Let us be faithful to our convictions, and shun paltering in a double sense.
Truth, as Renan says, can dispense with politeness; and while we shall never stoop to personal slander or innuendo, we shall assail error without tenderness or mercy.

And if, as we believe, ridicule is the most potent weapon against superstition, we shall not scruple to use it." These extracts from my old manifestoes may possess little other value, but they at least show this, that the peculiar policy of the _Freethinker_ was not adopted in a moment of levity, but was from the first deliberately pursued; and that while I held on the even tenor of my way, I was fully conscious of its dangers.
Early in January there fell into my hands a copy of a circular to Members of Parliament by Henry Varley, the Notting Hill revivalist.
This person was a notorious trader in scandal, and he still pursues that avocation.

Many of his discourses are "delivered to men only," an advertisement which is sure to attract a large audience; and one of them, which he has published, is just on a level with the quack publications that are thrust into young men's hands in the street.

Henry Varley had already issued one private circular about Mr.Bradlaugh, full of the most brazen falsehoods and the grossest defamation; and containing, as it did, garbled extracts from Mr.Bradlaugh's writings, and artfully-manipulated quotations from books he had never written or published, it undoubtedly did him a serious injury.

The new circular was worthy of the author of the first.