In the merry month of May, 1881, I started a paper called the
_Freethinker_, with the avowed object of waging "relentless war
against Superstition in general and the Christian Superstition in
particular." I stated in the first paragraph of the first number
that this new journal would have a new policy; that it would
"do its best to employ the resources of Science, Scholarship,
Philosophy and Ethics against the claims of the Bible as a Divine
Revelation," and that it would "not scruple to employ for the same
purpose any weapons of ridicule or sarcasm that might be borrowed
from the armoury of Common Sense."

As the _Freethinker_ was published at the people's price of a penny,
and was always edited in a lively style, with a few short articles
and plenty of racy paragraphs, it succeeded from the first; and
becoming well known, not through profuse advertisement, but through
the recommendation of its readers, its circulation increased every
week. Within a year of its birth it had outdistanced all its
predecessors. No Freethought journal ever progressed with such
amazing rapidity. True, this was largely due to the fact that the
Freethought party had immensely increased in numbers; but much of
it was also due to the policy of the paper, which supplied, as the
advertising gentry say, "a long-felt want." Although the first
clause of its original programme was never wholly forgotten, we
gradually paid the greatest attention to the second, indulging
more and more in Ridicule and Sarcasm, and more and more cultivating
Common Sense. A dangerous policy, as I was sometimes warned; but for
that very reason all the more necessary. The more Bigotry writhed
and raged, the more I felt that our policy was telling. Borrowing