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THE PUNISHMENT FOR BLASPHEMY.—A petition praying that the remainder of the sentences of three, and four months' imprisonment passed on Thomas William Stewart and John William Gott respectively at Leeds on December 5, 1911, may be remitted has been forwarded to the Home Secretary. The petitioners urge that "in the view of great numbers of his Majesty's subjects punishment for blasphemy is a form of religious persecution and inconsistent with modern ideas of toleration," and they submit "that to punish persons for coarseness or violence in the expression of opinions which may be promulgated without punishment if soberly expressed is to make a lapse from good taste into a crime and is cruelty." The signatories of the petition include Lord Courtney of Penwith, Professor T. K. Cheyne, Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, O.M., Sir A. Conan Doyle. Mr. Frederic Harrison, Sir E. Brabrook, Sir Laurence Gomme. Mr. Zangwill, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, Mr. John Collier, and Mr. A. Hope Hawkins.