for fresh libels, and on proof of his previous convictions and apologies, he was sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to keep the peace, under heavy recognizances and sureties, for two years more. (A full report is given in the Chelmsford Chronicle, March 12, 1875.) Through the interest of his friends, however, he was liberated in about six months; and thereupon, in January, 1876, he brought an action against Mr. Walsh to recover his deposit of £500, and this action he won, on the grounds already stated; and as I had signed an indemnity to Mr. Walsh, I had to pay back the money, and also pay all the costs of the action, about £200 more. But as I had a judgment for £687 damages and costs in my libel suit against Hampden, I transferred this claim to Mr. Walsh as a set-off against the amount due by him. Hampden, however, had already made himself a bankrupt to prevent this claim being enforced, and had assigned all his actual or future assets to his son-in-law. There were now legal difficulties on both sides. I was advised that the bankruptcy was fraudulent, and could be annulled; but to attempt this would be costly, and the result uncertain. On the other hand, it was doubtful whether my claim against Hampden would not be treated as an ordinary creditor's claim in the bankruptcy. There was, therefore, a consultation of the solicitors, and a voluntary arrangement was arrived at. I was to pay all the costs of the suit and £120, amounting to £277; while £410 still remained nominally due to me from Hampden. These terms were formally agreed to by Hampden and his son-in-law, and were duly carried out. Of course I had also to pay Mr. Walsh's costs in the action and my own lawyer's bill for the settlement, as well as those of the action for libel, and the various criminal prosecutions of Hampden I had been compelled to undertake. Notwithstanding this settlement, however, Hampden was by no means silenced. The very day after his recognizancss expired, in 1878, he began again with his abusive post-cards, circulars, and other forms of libel. In 1885 he wrote and printed a long letter to Huxley, as President of the Royal Society, chiefly on his biblical discussion with Mr. Gladstone, in a postscript to which he writes as follows: "I have thoroughly exposed that degraded blackleg, Alfred Russel Wallace, as I would every one who publicly identifies himself with such grossly false science, which he had the audacity to claim to be true! If this man's experiment on the Bedford canal was founded on fact, then the whole of the Scriptures are false, from the first verse to the last. But your whole system is based upon falsehood and fraud, and refusal of all discussion; and such characters as Wallace seem to be your only champions." And he has an appendix on "Modern Education conducted on Wrong Principles," in which we find such gems as this :— "When Mr. Mundella and Mr. Gladstone were schoolboys, the educational professors were all newly indoctrinated with the pretentious learning of the 'Principia' of Newton. The Bible was not regarded as of any authority upon such subjects, and a flood of writers were all extolling the immortal genius of the 'incomparable mathematician.' Newton and his apple-tree were spoken of as the foundation of all true philosophy. The plausibly sounding phrases 'Attraction' and 'Gravitation' were in every pedagogue's mouth, and the poor children were birched into repeating them every hour of their lives." And so on for three closely printed pages. About this time he printed one thousand copies of a twopage leaflet, and sent them to almost every one in my neighbourhood whose address he could obtain, including most of the masters of Charterhouse School, and the residents as well as the tradesmen of Godalming. It was full of—" scientific villainy and roguery,"—"cheat, swindler, and impostor."-"My specific charge against Mr. A. R. Wallace is that he obtained possession of a cheque for £1,000 by fraud and falsehood of a party who had no authority to dispose of it."-"As Mr. Wallace seems wholly devoid of any sense of honour of his own, I shall most readily submit the whole matter to any two or more disinterested parties, and adhere most absolutely and finally to their decision.""I will compel him to acknowledge that the curvature of water which he and his dupes pretend was proved on the Bedford Level, does not exist! And this Mr. Wallace saw with his own eyes." And so on in various forms of repetition and abuse. To save trouble, I drew up a short circular stating the main facts already given here for the information of those who had received Hampden's absurdly false libels, and thereafter took no further notice of him. One day about this time we happened to have several friends with us, and as we were at luncheon, I was called to see a gentleman at the door. I went, and there was Hampden! I was so taken aback that my only idea was to get rid of him as soon as possible, but I afterwards much regretted that I did not ask him in, give him luncheon, and introduce him as the man who devoted his life to converting the world into the belief that the earth was flat. We should at least have had some amusement; and to let him say what he had to say to a lot of intelligent people might have done him good. But such "happy thoughts" come too late. He had come really to see where I lived, and as our cottage and garden at Godalming, though quite small, were very pretty, he was able to say afterwards that I (the thief, etc.) was living in luxury, while he, the martyr to true science, was in poverty. He continued to circulate his postcards and tracts, and to write to all manner of people, challenging them to prove that the earth was not flat, for several years after. The last of his efforts which I have preserved is an eight-page tract, which he distributed at the Royal Geographical Society's Exhibition of Geographical Appliances, in December, 1885, in which he attacks all geographical teaching in his usual style, and declares that "at the present moment they are cowering beneath the inquiring gaze of one single truthseeker, JOHN HAMPDEN, the well-known champion of the Mosaic cosmogony, as against the infidel theories and superstitions of the pagan mystics, who is, at the end of fifteen years' conflict, still holding his ground against all the professional authorities of England and America; and the single fact that during the whole of that time, no one but a degraded swindler has dared to make a fraudulent attempt to support the globular theory, is ample and overwhelming proofs of the worthless character of modern elementary geography." And again: "Surveyors and civil and military engineers are offered £100 for the discovery of any portion of the earth's curvature, on land or water, railway or canal, of not less than five or ten miles, within one hundred miles of the metropolis. Why does not Mr. A. R. Wallace do again what he says he has done before?" And in a list of advertisements of books, etc., supporting his views he has this one: "Scientific Information wanted. A gentleman of ample means and inquisitive disposition offers £100 for particulars setting forth conclusively the grounds on which Sir Isaac Newton's Globular Theory was presumably established or asserted to be the fact." And this man was educated at Oxford University! Seldom has so much boldness of assertion and force of invective been combined with such gross ignorance. And to this day a society exists to uphold the views of Hampden, Carpenter, and their teacher, "Parallax!" The two law suits, the four prosecutions for libel, the payments and costs of the settlement, amounted to considerably more than the £500 I received from Hampden, besides which I bore all the costs of the week's experiments, and between fifteen and twenty years of continued persecution—a tolerably severe punishment for what I did not at the time recognize as an ethical lapse. There is one other small money matter which I wish to put on record here, because, though it involves only the small sum of sixpence, it affords an example of official meanness, and what really amounts to petty larceny, which can hardly be surpassed. In 1865 the British Museum purchased from me some specimen (I think a skeleton) for which they agreed to pay £5. Two years later I received the following printed form : "Sir, "Principal Librarian and Secretary's Office. "If you will send your own stamped receipt to this Office, you will be paid the amount due to you by the Trustees of the British Museum, £5 os. od. "I am, sir, "Your very obedient Servant, "Mr. A. R. Wallace." "Assist. Secretary." I, of course, complied with the request and sent the stamped receipt, and by return of post had the following written communication: "Mr. Butler begs to transmit the enclosed P.O. order for £4 19s. 6d. to Mr. Wallace, and the amount of it, with the cost of the order (6d), makes up the sum due by the Trustees to Mr. Wallace. "British Museum, June 25, 1867." This amazing little dodge (for I can call it nothing else) completely staggered me. I was at first inclined to return the P.O. order, or to write asking for the 6d., and if necessary summon Mr. Butler (or the Trustees) to a County Court for the 6d. due. But I was busy, and did not want to enter upon what I felt sure would be a long correspondence and endless trouble and expense. I therefore determined to keep the two incriminating documents, and some day print them. That day has now come; and it may be interesting to learn whether this preposterous and utterly dishonest method of paying part of an admitted debt, after obtaining a receipt for the whole, continues to be practised in this or any other public institution. It was while these troubles in the Hampden affair were at their thickest that my earnings invested in railways and mines |