Defences

'The defendant' consists of sixteen defences of quite common things; as Chesterton mentions in his introduction 'it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better'. So he took action, and he has 'investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in them'.
The first essay is a defence of 'penny dreadfuls' (cheap sensational books), from the attacks of literary criticism. It may be true that this vulgar fiction is not up to artistic standards, but the stories are simply human. Furthermore, these sentimental stories do have simple, truistic morality: 'courage is splendid, fidelity is noble, distressed ladies should be rescued and vanquished enemies spared'; high literary or philosophical works, on the contrary, sometimes recommend 'profligacy and pessimism'.
In another defence, Chesterton turns our head around when he describes how some words are 'used as insults when they are really compliments'. A play, for instance, should be 'theatrical', and public statues is not bad because it is 'pompous'. 'If a public monument does not meet this first supreme and obvious need, that it should be public and monumental, it fails from the outset'.