Northwestern University Library Evanston, Illinois 60201 THE TRIAL OF CHARLES SOUTHWELL, (CEöitor of " ©tacU of Reason ") FOR BLASPHEMY. BEFOUE SIR CHARLES WETHERALL, RECORDER OF THE CITY OF BRISTOL, JANUARY THE 14th, 1842. SPECIAI.LY EEPOETED BY WILLIAM CARPENTER. LONDON ; HETHERINGTON, WINE OFFICE COURT, FLEET STREET. 1842, Ï>REFACE. The Committee who undertook the Defence of Mr. Charles Southwell, Editor of the Oracle of Reason, charged with the imaginary crime of blas¬ phemy, have now, by the publication of this report, perfected one portion of their proposed duty. The following naiTative of Mr. Southwell's arrest, and imprisonment previously to the Trial, are extracted from a small hand-bill printed and dis¬ tributed by his partners in Bristol: "On the 6th November, 1841, appeared the first number of a periodical, entitled the Oracle of Reason ; or, Philo¬ sophy Vindicated, published by Field, Southwell, and Co., Narrow Wine Street, Bristol, and edited by Charles Southwell, who, in his opening address, declared his willingness to ' bear the brunt of the battle, and champion what he conceives to be truth, in defiance of all opposition j' it being a course, as he was well aware, full of legal and social danger. " The fourth number contained some bold comments upon the Bible, which the writer Balled the 'Jew Book,' and treated with a severity never perhaps previously equalled ; but, at the same time, in language which only conveyed his feelings in respect to it. For this he was arrested on Saturday afternoon, November 27th, about four o'clock, and, in default of bail, suiamarily com¬ mitted to gaol, charged with "having unlawfully and wickedly composed, printed, and published a eertain scandalous, blasphemous, and profane libel, of and concerning the Holy Scriptures and the Christian Religion.' Owing to the lateness of the hour, bail could not be procmed before the business at the Council House was closed; but on Monday two persons presented them¬ selves as securities, when twenty-four hours where taken by the authorities to make inquiries as to their qualifications. The course pursued upon this occa¬ sion was to ask the neighbours of the individuals whether they thought them worth £100, &c., and the result was, through the ignorance or misrepresenta¬ tion of the parties to whom the policemen apphed, that one of them was refused, though he has an interest in freehold property worth to him consider¬ ably more than the sum named. Subsequently other bail was ofiered, and the same course was again pursued by the officials, when it was discovered—that this person had not paid his taxes ! The taxes were paid the next day (their nonpayment previously resulted from an en-or), and then twenty-four hours' further time was required—when he was also rejected ; Mr. Harmar, the solicitor for the prosecution, saying he had made inquries, and the replies were not satisfactory. Both individuals offered to make oath that they were worth £100 each, after all their debts were paid." After seventeen days' imprison¬ ment, the magistrates accepted the same hail which they had refused ten days previously. The Committee, aware of the fears and prejudices of the press generally, and it being a special wish on their parts to give the utmost publicity to the entire proceedings, engaged Mr. "William Carpenter, to give a full and faithful report of the Trial. Mr. Hetheeington's presence and valuable assistance was secured ; and every step was taken under the advice of eminent legal counsel. By giving the plain unvarnished facts in connection with the Trial, they hope to arouse the public mind to a consideration of the gross injustice of such proceedings, and of the necessity, if we are to enjoy real liberty of conscience, of removing every incentive to bad and bigoted men to interfere with this liberty in its widest application, that is to say, in the expression of opinion upon any and every subject. "This," says Publicóla, "is an imaginary, impossible, and totally fictitious offence, invented for the most direful political and church purposes in days of gross ignorance and superstition ; but be it a real or imaginary offence ; be it of great magnitude, or small importance, the effect of a verdict is to invade the sacred rights of conscience, and to deprive the citizen of his freedom." PKEFACE. The truth of the assertion containeci in the Oracle of Reason, that " Trial by jury means, in nine cases out of ten, trial by bigotry," this Trial, the Trial of Mr. Hetherington, Caelile, and others,, may be fearlessly adduced as proofs. The authorities, chiefly orthodoK, quoted by the talented defendant, were sufficient in themselves, without comments, to convince intelligent men of the defendant's innocence, and a verdict of " guilty" is a national disgrace, proving as it does the immense amount of ignorance which must exist, when twelve " duly qualified householders" could be found in one city to pronounce such an award. " No nation (says " Publicóla"*) has ever had such iinmensely great ad¬ vantages of being wise and good, on the subject of religious liberty, and yet other nations that have had no advantages whatever, by far outstrip her j and, even taking the most degraded, ignorant, and enslaved people from one extreme of Europe to another, there is not a country so bigoted, and super¬ stitious, and fanatical as our own. Our vice and degradatim most exemplified in that which ought to be the emblem and palladium of English spirit and liberty—the Jury-box" If it were asked how the charge of injustice could be proved, we would simply refer to the 22nd page, where the defendant, upon the case closing for the prosecution, asked of the judge and jury, " whether or not it has been proved by the evidence that has been offered," that he had published blasphemy P To this reasonable query the judge replied, " blasphemy is not a matter of proof by witnesses ; that is a question which the jury is to deduce from the publication itself." Although, be it remembered, the jury were sworn to deliver a true verdict, according to the evidence, and the only evidence, of course, was that which was elicited from the witnesses, and sworn to by them. If blasphemy does not admit of proof, how is it known to exist ? And if purely imaginary, a mere matter of opinion, as the judge intimated, is there any justice in fining and imprisoning men for simply holding and expressing different opinions to their fellows ? The principle of interference with speculative opinions, if true, should admit of universal application. But if carried out the result would be the depopulation of the world, for every man's hand would be against his brother. It is not to conserve the general happiness of society, but from motives of individual interest with some, and to protect the prejudices of others from the scrutinizing search of inquiry that many of our noblest spirits have been sacrificed in their efforts to advance true moral and intellectual progress. Obtain a repeal of the laws under which these atrocities are committed, and you immediately destroy the power, if not the wish, to act as formerly. Many inquiries having been made respecting the reasons for not moving the Trial to London, where there was every reason to believe the defendant would have met with more enlightened treatment, the Committee beg leave to say, the Trial was not moved, because it could not have been brought within metropolitan jurisdiction ; and it was not deemed advisable to change the venue to a neighbouring county. Every step was taken by the Committee under the best legal advice. The Committee cannot but state what it becomes the most pleasing part of their duty to make known-—the prompt, zealous, and energetic réponse of various valued friends in some of the chief towns in the kingdom, viz. : Bristol Birmingham, Sheffield (where G. J. Holyoake has exerted himself in a manner which calls for especial notice), Glasgow, Edinburgh, Maidstone, and other places. The press cannot be passed over without gratefully acknowledging the kind and manly assistance of some of the enlightened journals, amongst which the Dispatch, through its valued correspondent "Publicóla" stands foremost.* On behalf of the Committee, 3, North Place, Lambeth, London. M. RYALL, Secretary. * "Another prosecution for Blasphemy," Weekly Dispatch, Jan. 23,1842. * See Dispatch, Dec. 19, J-m. 23, .and 30. THE CHARLES TRIAL of SOUTHWELL. Upon the name of the defendant being called in court, by the Clerk of the Peace, on the morning of the 14th, Mr. Southwell presented himself ill the midst of the crowd, which filled every corner of the floor and of the galleries of the Guildhall, and was desired by the learned Recorder to take his place at the table allotted to the counsel and attorneys. Mr. Southwell, however, stated that he should find it more convenient, as he had a large number of hooks to refer to, in the course of his defence, to stand in the prisoners' dock, provided his lordship would allow him the use of a table. Sir Charles Wetherall. Certainly. It was then arranged that a case or two, which had not previously been tried, should be disposed of, before the defendant was called upon to plead to the indictment. In the mean time, orders were given to have a table and chair placed in the dock, for the accommodation of the defendant, who shortly afterwards brought in, with the assistance of Mr. Hetherington and Mr. Ryall, a large number of books. The cases referred to having been disposed of, the defendant was again called, and took his place at the bar of the dock allotted to prisoners, when upon their trial. Addressing the Court, he said he had another request to prefer to his lordship ; namely, that Mr. Hetherington might be per¬ mitted to assist him in turning to his books, and otherwise ; and also that a chair might he allowed for that gentleman. Sir Charles Wetherall. Certainly. The necessary arrangements having been made, the case was formally called on. The case for the prosecution had been entrusted to Mr. Harmar, solicitor ; and it was conducted by Mr. Grace Smith, assisted by Mr. Szinner. As the names of the jurymen in the panel were called over, the defen¬ dant challenged the seventh name read, that of John Harris ; and then the solicitor for the prosecution challenged the next read, namely, that of John Thomas Fisher. The defendant wished to know whether he might insist upon a reason being given for the other side challenging a juryman ? He was quite ready to assign a reason for any challenge he himself might make ; and he thought that it was but fair that both parties should do so. A conversation was thereupon held between the Recorder and the Clerk of the peace, who ultimately stated, that although there was not, in B 2 this case, any right of peremptory challenge, it would be more convenient not to assign any reason for challenging a juryman, whose name might be read over. This having been acquiesced in by the defendant, the calling of the jurymen was resumed ; and after the defendant had chal¬ lenged another, and the solicitor for the prosecution three others, the following were sworn as of the jury: John Jones, William Hodges, Henry Hicks, Isaac Hill, Henry Harvey, William Hobes, Samuel Hassell, John Gunning, Thomas Plynn, Isaac Falder [(a quaker), William Hadden, and Thomas Gulley. The defendant was then informed by the recorder, that he might have the indictment read over at fuU length, if he so desired ; and having expressed his wish to have it so read. The Clerk op the Peace proceeded to read it. It was of great length, and charged the defendant in six counts, varying the nature of the offence, with having, as an evil-minded and wickedly-disposed person, published a scandalous and blasphemous lihel on the Old Testament, the Christian religion, and the Being and Providence of Almighty God ; and the following passages from the " Oracle of Reason" were set forth, to sustain these several allegations. From No. 2, (pp. 7, 8,) the following passage was taken from " symbol worship" : " According to Monsieur Maurey, ' Ganesa is the name of that divi¬ nity worshipped by the Hindoos as the God of Wisdom. The name is composed of two words, Isa signifying chief; and gana, meaning com¬ panion of the gods, doubtless because of the important part played by him among his brothers of the Indian Olympus. " ' The mother of Ganesa was Dourga, a great goddess of the Brahmic religion, a strangely compounded divinity, mounted upon a tiger, and furnished with four arms. " ' The father of Ganesa was called Shiva, and third member of the Indian Trinity (answering to our Holy Ghost, if it may be said he was a father), for Dourga (not unlike the Virgin Mary) was in a bath, and all of a sudden she was seized with a violent desire to have a son ; a cold sweat covered her body, and when she dried herself she found a young child in her hands : it was Ganesa. Astonished at that singular con¬ ception, Shiva cried with a loud voice, " what is that infant?" The birth of Ganesa (like that of Christ) was a cause of great joy to all the gods, and the wise men surrounded his cradle, offering him their homage with joy and gladness. Shani, or Shiva, (like Joseph) remained in the back¬ ground in discontented silence, with his eyes cast upon the earth. Dourga, much offended at seeing such a face, and considering it as a mark of the pride of Deva, who refused to honour the young Ganesa, she ordered Shani to raise his head, and to join his aompanions. Shani remained immovable ; but yielding at last to her lively entreaties, he raised his eyes, being constrained to obey the orders of a goddess, but from his countenance issued flame which speedily consumed the head of Ganesa. The poor virgin mother had forgotten (forgetfulness certainly unpardonable in a divinity) the sad knowledge of the eyes of Shani ; she grew desperate, and bitterly reproached herself for her obstinacy. Brahma, the great god, wished to console the afñicted mother, and as a mark of his favour, " Go, (said he to Shiva) and the first creature you meet with sleeping towards the north, cut off its head, and carry it to Ganesa." The genius obeyed, an elephant was the first animal he found s sleeping; he then cut off its head, which since that period has been firmly fixed upon the shoulders of Ganesa.' " The reader will, of course, believe as much or as little of this fine tale as he pleases ; but we presume Ganesa will find very few adorers in this country. The thing is not in fashion, and nothing whatever to do with the legacy of wisdom left us by our ancestors, else we should believe by hereditary right. But be this as it may, such is the history of Ganesa, the Hindoo symbol of wisdom ; which is to the full as reasonable as that of Tom Thumb, Baron Munchausen, or Jesus Christ." From No. 3, the following passage was quoted from the article on " Religion" (pp. 17, 18) : " The truth is, we are giants in science and mere babies in religion ; priding ourselves in philosophy, yet disgracefully revelling in every species of fiction. Stupendous works of art, and results all but mira¬ culous of science, are the glory of the nation—its religion is its shame! for by its accursed influence the multitude are kept in gross ignorance, fit victims for the vampires of society, men who have but to breathe upon them, and they become corrupt masses of brutalism and sensuality. What has been said of America applies equally to England, it is a home for genius of hand, but a desert for genius of head. All is show, lies, delusion, and imposture : religion dragging at her golden car the noble energies, the liberty, and happiness of humanity. Religion is a leprosy which insinuates itself into the veins and arteries of our moral, political, and social being, poisoning the very source of that pure, enlightened, and well-regulated reason, which will, in time to come, be the delight and glory of mankind. What has been falsely charged upon philosophy is admirably illustrative of religion ; for religion may be compared to powders of so corrosive a nature, that they not only eat away the proud fiesh of a wound, but the sound also, rot the bones, and pierce to the very marrow." And from the same article, the followmg passages were also quoted (p.18): " All religions are of equal value, that is, there is none of them of any value, imless we look upon them in the light of crutches for moral cripples. The cripple, when restored to the full use of his limbs, throws away his crutches ; when society shall be cured of its moral paralysis it wiU throw away religions." " Not having the fear of a god, a devil, temporal or spiritual powers, before our eyes, we venture to declare that all religions are but super¬ stitions respectableised, differing only in degree of mischievousness and absurdity. All the religions of the world, as Mr. Robert Owen once boldly declared, are founded upon falsehood ; and he might have added, all the religions that ever will be founded or established, whether they be called rational or irrational : for a rational religionist would undoubt¬ edly be as curious a being as one calmly violent, rationally absurd, or reasonably lunatic." From No. 4, the following passages were taken (pp. 25, 20) : "the 'jew book.' " ' The stupid cant, " He went too far,'' despise ; And know that to be bold is to he wise." "That revoltingly odious Jew production, called BIBLE, has been for b 2 4 ages the idol of all sorts of blockheads, the glory of knaves, and the disgust of wise men. It is a history of lust, sodomies, wholesale slaughtering, and horrible depravity, that the vilest parts of all other histories, collected into one monstrous book, could not parallel ! Priests teU us that this concentration of abominations was written by a god ; all the world believe priests, or they would rather have thought it the out¬ pourings of some devil ! " As in these times even Atheists may write without fear of being roasted, we will briefly expose this choice morceau. To our minds the Bible is one of the most contemptible and brutalizing books that ever was penned ! From Genesis to Revelations we have one string of blunders. Its heroines are strumpets, an account of whose debaucheries is fit only for the hell of human imagination ; assasinating Jezebels, the tale of whose lewdness and infamy would put Fanny HUI or Harriet Wilson to the blush. It is a book which contains passages so outrage¬ ously disgusting and scandalously indecent, that were it not called the word of a god, no modest woman would suffer it to be read in her house. Its heroes are cruel, unscrupulous, and (from Moses, the king of the conjurors, to Peter and Paul, the last of the gang)—canting, impudent impostors ; slaughtering fanatics, plundering judges, and abominable kings, who if they were to start from their graves and play their villain¬ ous pranks in these times, would be strung up to the first lamp-post. The prophets were impudent mouthers, who vomited forth their sublime balderdash, prophesying and humbugging, with a shamefid disregard to personal covering, that would be deemed scandalous among decent people ; frantic bedlamites, that the Jews, had they not been senseless idiots, would have fastened in the stocks or clapped in a pilloiy. In short, the character of the ' Jew Book' may be summed up in ' the base, bloody, and brutal' of Daniel O'Connell, and needs but to be read to be held in abhorrence. Of course the hetter-to-he-safe ' true believers,' will call this blasphemy, in which they have our full permis¬ sion ; while infidels who don't like to go too far, and have by a little diligence and manoeuvring acquired a sort of shabby-genteel character with the orthodox, will shake their crotchety heads, and talk about ' respecting prejudices,' ' public mind not prepared,' &c. or ' doing the grand,' tell of the splendid diction and overpowering eloquence of the vile thing ; probably referring to the fine passages of the ranting Isaiah, who talks of eating his own dung ; or the sublime Hosea, of infants being dashed in pieces, and women with child ripped up ; or perhaps to the extraordinary language of the old drunken Lot, before and after his incestuous intercourse with his own daughters ; or the exposé of Absalom, with the concubines of his ' holy' father rrpon the housetop, before all Israel." " The god of the Jews, could such a being exist, would be a devil— that is, a monster made up of every conceivable enormity. If we can imagine a demon god, then we can suppose the bible was written through his inspiration." " As an apology for this shockingly immoral book, it has been urged, that there are some good things in it. Heaven help the brains of such apologists ! Nothing short of moral disease could make any one suppose it possible that any book, containing such a mass of matter as is to be found from Genesis to Revelations could be written by a multitude of writers all so utterly depraved as to set down nothing but obscenity and absur- 5 dity. There is unquestionably some philosophy, and some reason in this heap of immoral rubbish, called sacred ; but like ' the few grains of wheat in the two bushels of chaff, we may search long ere we find them, and when we have found them, they are not worth the search.' Those who love the employment may satisfy their affection." Also from "Is there a God ?" same No. (pp. 28) : " 'Metaphysics (says an anonymous writer) teach us that god isa pure spirit ; but herein is modern theology superior to that of the savages ? The savages acknowledge a great spirit for the master of the world. The savages, like all ignorant people, attribute to spirits all the effects of which their experience cannot discover the true causes. Ask a savage what moves your watch. He will answer, it is a spirit. Ask our divines what moves the universe. They answer, it is a spirit.' As it is with those who call god a great spirit, so it is with the equally sage mystics who call their ideal god a great space—great space being two terms quite unintelligible. Space is something or nothing, a reality or a fiction, that which really exists, or a negation of all existence ; if the former, it cannot be a god that Christians will accept, for that which is real must be corporeal : but they reject a matter-god and will not agree with the Stoics, that god is a divine animal ; if the latter, that is, if those who will have it that space is god, are driven to admit, as they necessarily must, that space is the negation or absence of matter, an absolute nothing, why, then, we fall upon the ex nihilo nihil fit ; Englished—out of nothing nothing can come. As plain a truth as any to be found in Euclid. Which makes the question stand thus—In the first place, space cannot be a god ; if space is an actually existing something, it must be matter ; but that a matter god is no god at all, is allowed by the Christian world. In the second place, space cannot be a god ; if it signifies pure emptiness or absence of matter, because the absence of matter, could it be con¬ ceived, is a nothing; and to refine god into nothing, is to destroy the idea of such an existence, and to proclaim that Atheism we are laboiiring to teach." And from " Symbol Worship," (pp. 30) : " Moses, according to scripture, was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians ; if so, he made very bad use of it. Our own opinion is, that Moses, or whoever wrote the books bearing his name, was an ignorant blockhead, and he who would stuff the heads of the people with his nonsensical trash, more blockish still. No Jew ever was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians : this is fully proved by the Jews' book, and the history of their diabolic religion." From No. 5, the following passage was taken, from the article, " Is THERE A GOD ?"— " In Europe, an intelligence-god is Christian ; in Turkey, Moham¬ medan ; in India, Brahmin; in China, a worshipper of Fo's thumb; and so we might run round the globe, and find this intelligence-god playing the most singular pranks we can well conceive—sometimes praying, sometimes cursing, sometimes affirming, sometimes denying his own existence ; calling that blasphemy here, which he proclaims to be pure religion somewhere else ; promising heaven at the equator for that very 6 conduct and opinion that at the poles he pronounces worthy of hell. Such a god would he everything by turns, and nothing long ; at one moment the sanctified sinner, ' who plunders widows' houses, and for a pretence makes long prayers,' and at the very same moment a mocker and a scorner of all prayer, as thrice double ass-ism ; a god filling up the knowledge-box of the sentimental Deist, who feels that an intelligence- god exists, and urges on obstinate Atheists, like ourselves, who deny that such a god exists. As intelligence is very fond of praying to god, here we have a god praying to himself, which would be comical enough were it true. Certainly, nothing can be so terribly ludicrous as this notion of a mind or intelligence-god ; for as many men, whom Mandeville confesses are studious peaceable men, and, all the world knows, with a tolerable share of some sort of intelligence, who are Atheists and, like ourselves, think all that has been written about a god or gods is the veriest twaddle that ever abused and bemuddled the human intellect ; here we have a god denying his own existence, and spitefully abusing those who have scribbled so much in his glorification, which would prove the intelli¬ gence-deity not only comical, but very ungrateful. But as though, to use the cant phrase, divine providence had determined, for some cause to us unknown, to make such goddites the laughing-stock of the world ; this same intelligence-god must, if there be virtue in their divinty, be a tenant at will in the heads of calves, frogs, toads, asses, and certain insects, useful no doubt, but rather too dirty to mention. That even bugs have intelligence and strong afifections for each other, and for us, we have sometimes ¿«tolerable proof. So that here we have a pretty kettle of fish—the supreme intelligence, or a piece of him, snugly housed in the tail of a louse, the snout of a hog, the hind-quarters of a frog, or the head of an ass." In addition to the passages thus taken from the Oracle of Reason itself, the following, as constituting a separate publication, was also set out : COPY OF TPIE WAEEANT FOE THE AEEEST OF CHAELES SOUTHWELL FOE BLASPHEMY. ffiilB anîfjTb the Constables of the City and County of Bristol, and ffionntD of f fQ Governor of the Common Gaol in the Citu and County. (üfflltcwa» CHAELES SOUTHWELL is now brought be¬ fore me the undersigned one of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for the said City and County of Bristol, and charged before me the said Justice, on the oath of STEPHEN EOGEES, for that the said CHAELES SOUTHWELL, on the twenty-seventh day of November instant, at the Parish of Saint Peter, in the said City and County, did unlawfully and wickedly compose, print, and publish and cause and procure to be composed, printed, and published a certain scandalous, impious, blasphemous, and profane Libel of and concerning the Holy Scriptures and the Christian Eeligion, in one part of which there are and were contained, amongst other things, certain scandalous, impious, blasphemous profane matters and things of and concerning the Holy Scriptures and the Christian 7 Religion, according to the tenor and effect following, that is to say— 'ÍTHE 'JEW BOOK.' The stupid cant, * He went too far/ despise 5 And know that to be bold is to be wise. " That revoUingly odious Jem production^ called BIBLE, has heen for ages the idol of all sorts of blockheads, the glory of knaves, and the disgust of mise men. It is a history of lust, sodomies, mholesale slaughtering, and horrible depravity that the vilest parts of all other histories, collected into one monstrous book, could not parallel ! Priests tell us that this concentration of abominations mas mritten by a god ; all the morid believe priests, or they mould rather have thought it the outpourings of some devil!"— To the evil example &c., and against the peace, &c. And whereas I did thereupon adjudge and order the said CHARLES SOUTHWELL to enter into his own Recognizance in the sum of One Hundred Pounds, with two sufficient sureties in the sum of Fifty Pounds each, to appear at the next General Quar¬ ter Sessions of the Peace, to be holden in and for the said City and County, to answer the said offence. And whereas the said CHARLES SOUTHWELL hath omitted and neglected to enter into such recognizance with sureties as aforesaid, ®I;esc ate tijetefote in Her Majesty's name to command you the said Constables, or some one of you, to convey the said CHARLES SOUTHWELL to the said Gaol and him to deliver to the said Governor together with this warrant, and you the said Governor are hereby required to receive and safely to keep the said CHARLES SOUTHWELL in your said Gaol until he shall enter into such recognizance with such sureties as afore¬ said, or shall be sooner thence discharged by due course of law, and for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. ÍErítien under my hand and seal this twenty-seventh day of November, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-One. (Signed) JAMES WOOD. [Commitment.] The reading of the indictment having been finished, the defendant pleaded " not guilty." Mr. Skinner then stated the case to the jury ; and Mr. Grace Smith addressed the jury as follows : Gentlemen of the jury—The defendant at the bar stands there to answer for the offence of puUishing a series of blasphemous libels, with the intent and tendencies stated in the different counts of the indictment which you have heard read ; and you wiU have to decide whether he is or is not guilty of that offence, as it is there charged. Who-Mr. South¬ well is, I am unable to say, except in so far as his own writings furnish information, and describe him. He appears by the indictment, to be the editor and one of the joint-printers and publishers of the series of publi¬ cations of which those set forth in the indictment form part ; and in one of the publications put forth as part of the series since the indictment 8 was preferred, he has given some account of his intentions and motives in their publication, as well as of the nature of the defence he intends to make, and of the course he has determmed to pursue. His defence is not to be a denial of the facts charged, nor a denial that they contain blasphemy of the nature described in the indictment. On the contrary, it is to be much of the nature of the libels themselves—an attempt to call in question the law to which he has become amenable—to assail it as an unjust law—as a law intended to injure and destroy liberty in general, and especially the liberty of the press. It is in this way that he is to attempt to prejudice your minds, and to produce an eifect upon his auditors that shall be favourable, as he imagines, to the object which he has in view. If what he has published as such, is to be taken as a sketch of the outline of the defence which he is now about to fiU up, he does not intend to show that he is not guilty under this indictment, but to throw disgrace and obloquy on the law itself. He has already put forward, for the information of the public, what he thinks of the judge, of the jury, and of the court generally ; and I will read a few passages from this part of his writings, for your information and guidance. He says : "From Mr. Owen I received the first strong ray of light in my benighted intellects, and from the Social body the Promethean touch that first warmed me into public life. As our enemies would say, I was but the cockatrice's egg, you hatched it into the serpent ; so that for me, because the policy of your society is not my policy, to shower abuse and invective upon it, would, as I declared in my farewell lecture, be playing the serpent that stung the hand which warmed it into life. My judgment condemns the abandonment of principle of which the Social representa¬ tives have been guilty ; my judgment heartily despises the hesitating, shuffling, equivocating, white-feather policy, that has been pursued for some time past, but more especially since the period when the Bishop of Exeter attacked you in the House of Lords ; my judgment condemns the taking of oaths by your missionaries, as a miserable, truckling, unprinci¬ pled policy, that had nothing in its favour but its immediate convenience, no sort of apology but the wretched one, that those who took it were rescued for a season from the fangs of a vile law." The defendant, it appears, is restrained by no such motives or influ¬ ences, for he goes on to say : " All this, and much more, of which you, the Social body, have been purposely kept in utter ignorance, my deliberate judgment despises and condemns ; so that while feeling tugs at my heart-strings with complain¬ ing cries to talk me from my purpose ; honour and right reason demand that, at all hazards, and any personal sacrifices, the whole truth should be told, ' without mystery, mixture of error, or fear of man.' " That, gentlemen, is assuming to himself somewhat of an arduous task —that of publishing the whole truth, without mystery, mixture of error, or fear of man. It is what most men would be diffident in undertaking ; but the defendant has set forth his qualifications for the task ; that is, so far as talking is concerned, for he does not consider writing to be his forlc. You, gentlemen, will by and by have an opportunity of hearing him e.xhibit his power in this way. He says ; 9 " I am'no logician, and féar I never shall be, for the character of my mind is precisely that of my writings—hasty, irregular, bold, and enthu¬ siastic ; I write as I speak, and speak exactly as I think, so that my writings and speeches have always one grand merit, they are the fac- similies of my mind. My style is to have no style ; and, as a writer in the Odd Fellow shrewdly hinted, being far more apt with my tongue than with my pen, there is in all I have written the vice of oratorship, not close and connected, but rambling and discursive ■, less likely to please logicians than honest men." The defendant, gentlemen, writes to please honest men; all who believe that there is a God and a future state—all who think that man does not close his existence when he descends into the grave, are, in his estimation, dishonest men—tyrants and oppressors, who deserve the execration of mankind. His honest men are Atheists in opinion, who throw contempt and calumny on those things which mankind have ever been accustomed to hold sacred and reverence. He proceeds to say : " The pen is not my forte, I am more happy with the tongue ; writing clogs my impatient thoughts, which, whatever may be their value, are always in a hurry to display themselves, generally rushing pell-mell, helter-skelter, without regard to order, precision, and the decencies of logic. Therefore it is that I have always loved speaking better than writing, as being less troublesome, and more in harmony with my temper and feelings. I never wrote half-a-dozen lectures in my life, though I have delivered some hundreds, upon a great variety of subjects ; the most successM, and decidedly the best, of which cost least in prepara¬ tion. To be a close reasoner I never intended, still less to thé character of a first-rate logician. I do not despise those who have this happy talent, no one can more admire them, but I admire only, and do not aim at rivalry, or hope to reach the same degree of excellence." This description, gentlemen, he gives of himself, after having assumed to be the man, of all men, to teach truth, without mystery, mixture of error, or fear of man. He goes on to state what his particular vocation is ; he says : " My department in the work of reform, and my competency to fill it, is not fairly estimated at present, and how should it be, when those who criticise neither know the materials with which I have to deal, nor the great objects I have in view." It is material for the court and for you, gentlemen of the jury, to ascertain, if you can do so, what are the defendant's objects, and with what intent he puts before the public, from week to week, and in a cheap form, these publications. Let us see whether he has explained these, in any of the numbers he has put forth. In No. 6, he says : "One triumph, my bitterest enemies cannot rob me of; I am free once more : unshackled in body and mind, prepared to wage a fiercer war than ever against bigotry under all its forms; whether it assume the form of liberality, hypocrisy, or audacious and open cruelty. The Oracle will speak, shake orthodoxy's rotten bones, and make priests tremble. This I say is one of my triumphs ; and even though I never have another, it will amply repay me for all I have or may endure. Yes, through the columns of this paper I can now do what in my gloomy 10 cell most occupied my thoughts, and the hope of effecting which made an otherwise valueless life sweet and desirable." There is another passage in the same number, to the following effect : " The above remarks refer to a weekly paper, styled the Atheist and jRepuhlican, the first number of which appeared without date ; but as everybody knows, and the paper itself carries internal evidence of it, after some three or four numbers of the Oracfe were pub¬ lished. When it was announced through the press, that a paper pro¬ claiming the truth, consistency, and moral grandeur of Atheism, with the superiority of Republicanism over every or any other form of government „was about to appear, I was greatly delighted ; for my vanity led me to consider it one of the first-fruits of my labours ; for who could doubt that the Oracle of Reason opened, paved, and showed the way for the Atheist and Republican ? " These, gentlemen, are the objects to which the defendant directs his efforts ; and in the next number of his publication, we find the following words : " Religious fanatics will dare all in the cause of folly ; I should like to see a few more of the same stamp among the teachers of wisdom. A glorious band of thinkers, whose strong thoughts would only be the prelude to strong acts ; and whose courage would not require every now and then to be screwed up to the sticking place ; or like that of Bob Acres, be in danger of oozing out at their fingers' ends." Religious people, gentlemen, are not unused to the phrase, " religious fanaticism," by which they characterise that state of the mind in which the feelings predominate over the judgment ; whereas the defendant applies the phrase to all believers in the Christian rehgion. He asserts, that religious fanatics will dare everything for the cause of folly, and he expresses his desire to see a few such persons in the ranks of Atheism. Gentlemen, this man has taken the position, in the course of his writings, which is ordinarily taken by those who resemble him in opinions. He asserts the right of all men to discuss and publish their opinions, upon all conceivable subjects, without restraint or responsibility. But tbere is a great fallacy in the assumption of such a right. Is it not plain, from his own expressions, that his intents are mischievous—that he contem¬ plates the inculcation of sentiments which would produce deeds of violence, and bring about universal confusion and every evil work ? And if that be his avowed intention, in, writing and pubhshing, what folly and absurdity in any man pretending to the possession and exercise of reason, to impute to the law which restrains him, injustice or impropriety of any sort. Gentlemen, these sort of people are very much in the habit of appealing to the principles of liberty, and especially to the principles of religious liberty. But, gentlemen, what are his principles ? He insists upon the right of having no religion himself. That right he may have, if he keeps his opinions within his own bosom. The law objects not to his opinions, but only to the publication of them, when that publication is mischievous to society. Gentlemen, how is the name of liberty abused by men who, like the defendant, stand forward as the advocates of ab¬ solute liberty,—of unrestrained independence ? Gentlemen, absolute 11 independence is wholly inconsistent with, and destructive of, all the pur¬ poses for which civil government exists. There can be no such thing in society as absolute independence. Is a man to be permitted to go into the street and to strike down the first man he meets with ? Or is he to be permit¬ ted, on the plea of absolute liberty or independence, to force his way into another's house, whenever his caprice or his will may impel him so to do ? Surely, that would not be liberty, but licentiousness. No, gentle¬ men, if he claims rights, he must at the same time respect the rights of others. Such acts of absolute independence as I have referred to, cannot be allowed ; in society, men's liberty is restrained within certain limits and bounds, and the moment a man breaks these bounds, he becomes a pest to society. What is there to limit the application of the principles and opinions of liberty entertained by the defendant? Is there fto injury to be done to society, but by the employment of physical force ? Surely, there is ; and amongst the means that may be employed in etfecting such injury, what is more powerful than the press ? Gentle¬ men, what is it that educates the mind and forms the character of the young ? What regulates the conduct of society ? What inspires men with those relative virtues which are essential to social happiness ? The press. But may not the press be also used for the basest of purposes— for disseminating error—for breaking down all the safeguards of virtue— for inducing and inciting the young and inexperienced to throw off all restraint, and to follow the bent of their own passions, instead of acting upon those motives and principles which would constitute them valuable members of society, as well as of their own families ? May not the press be made the instrument of introducing and scatter¬ ing all kinds of error, and of inducing a species of conduct which will make men a disgrace to themselves, and a pest to society at large ? And will any man say, that that law is a complete law, which fails to exercise some power of control over so powerful an instrument, for good or for evil, as the press decidedly is ? Certainly not. If anything requires to be kept within proper limits, it is the press. But, gentlemen, let me not be misunderstood : no man regards the press with a more sacred veneration—that is not too strong a phrase—than I do. But, at the same time, I cannot doubt that, if the press is not to be subject to regulation and responsibility, then, instead of being anything that deserves the epithet of liberty, it would be an instrument of mischief of the worst description. Gentlemen, we shall see what kind of sentiments they are that the defendant claims the right of promulgating through the press. You will hear it asserted by him, that he has the unqualified right to insert in letter-press, and to promulgate, anything he thinks fit to say. He has published a libel upon the Bible, the most offensive, perhaps, that was ever written ; and he stands upon his right to continue the publication of such libels, for he maintains that he has the unquestionable liberty of putting into print whatever he thinks fit. He intends, it seems, to bring to the test, to day, the principle upon which he rests ; namely, the unrestrained, unqualified right, without responsibility, to write and publish and circulate, whatever he chooses to write and publish and circulate. Gentlemen, the law denies him that right, but in such a way that you will be of opinion, that it leaves the press as free as it ought to be—free enough for all the purposes of the legitimate communication of knowledge ; and also for all fair and 12 reasonable discussion. There is no censorship of the press in tl"® country ; every man is at liberty to ■write -what he thinks fit ; and to put it into print, but he is subject to that responsibility which is necessary to all true liberty. He may write what he thinks fit, but if he writes that which is likely to do mischief to society ; the law holds him responsible for it. If a man writes that which the magistrate and a grand jury deem to be injurious to the public interests, he will be put upon his defence for what he has done, and will be held responsible by the verdict of an honest and independent jury, assisted in their inquiry by a learned and independent judge. What right, gentlemen, has the defendant to complain of such a responsibility as that ? He is not brought before a secret tribunal, or put at the mercy of a single individual. He is charged with the offence in a formal and legal way, before a magistrate ; the charge is then laid before a grand jury, who say whether it ought or ought not to be made the subject of judicial inquiry ; if they think that it should be so inquired into, then the indictment is brought into court, and read, if the defendant choose to have it so, at full length ; and these important preliminaries having been gone through, the defendant is tried by twelve independent men, each of whose rights are as much involved in the question as those of the defendant himself. But, more than this, gentlemen, the defendant has a right to try and persuade the jury that he has acted properly—that he had done nothing which he ought not to have done—that in asserting his own rights, he has not violated the rights of others. And, should he succeed in this, then the jury will return a verdict of acquittal. Should the jury, however, be of another opinion—should they think that he has been guilty of an offence against the law, as charged in the indictment, and come unanimously to a con¬ clusion that he is thus guilty, then, I ask any man, whether there is not thrown around all those who choose to appear before the public in the character of writers, every sort of defence and protection to which they are entitled ? The law gives to every such man, by the legal process which I have described, the chance of an acquittal, if even he be not quite innocent ; but it ensures his acquittal, if he be not in point of law, and of truth, and of justice, really guilty. But, gentlemen, the senti¬ ments of the defendant would shield the guilty, not the innocent. Another guarantee, gentlemen, against any oppression on the part of the law, is found in the infiuence of public opinion, for the disapprobation of society, as well as that of the learned judges, would be levelled against any prosecution which was not a reasonable one on the face of it. What pretence, then, is there against the law ? What pretence is there for asserting that the freedom of the press is improperly restricted ; or, that the liberty which the defendant claims is essential to the existence of civil and religious liberty ? Gentlemen, it is to be feared that many hold the same sentiments as this man. Public meetings are held, at which these sentiments are declared. I ask, is it reasonable that there should be such a right ? The due and proper liberty of the press is no such liberty as that which the defendant claims. Gentlemen, the next question to be considered is, is the offence on the face of the indictment an indictable offence, or is it not? I shall upon this point quote two or three authorities for your information and guidance. The truth is, that it has in all civilised countries been deemed necessary that some reason¬ able limits should be prescribed for the freedom of the press. I believe 13 that there is no civilised country in which such limits have not been pre¬ scribed by the law. The first authority from which I shall quote is Holt, on The Lam of Libel. In page 64, he says— " The offences of slander, as we have above shown, are many, and various in kind ; as many, indeed, as there are modes of speech and action, to which they run parallel ; they are accordingly, distinguished, by the objects which they respect ; some are committed against God, and are offences against piety and moral duty, and become, as it were, trespasses against the light of reason and the light of nature. The first grand offence of speech and writing is speaking blasphemously against God, or reproachfully concerning religion, with an intent to subvert men's faith in God, and to impair their reverence for him. A reverence for God, and a conscientious regard for religion are the main supports of honesty, and therein of society and civil government; the sole curbs effectually restraining men from fraud and violence ; and the strongest principles leading to the performance of those actions by which common life is adorned, and public order and peace maintained." In page 65, it is stated by the same authority, that— " Offences against religion, by the common law of England, which are the subjects of speech and writing, and as such, within the marked path of our inquiry are (1) all blasphemies against God, as maligning his Being or Providence, and all contumelious reproaches of our Saviour Jesus Christ. 1 Vent. 293 ; 2 Str. 834 ; 4 Bl. Comm. 59. (2) All pro¬ fane scoffing of the Holy Scriptures, or exposing any part of them to ridicule and contempt. 11 Mod. 142; Str. 416, 788; Fitz. 65. (3) Seditious words in derogation of the established religion are indict¬ able, as tending to a breach of the peace, which in this sense implies amity, quiet, and confidence of the whole family of the state in the hope of future rewards. 2 BoU. Abr. 183 ; Cro. Jac. 24, 421. " Offences of this nature, says Flawkins, (PI. cr., cap. 5) because they tend to subvert all religion and morality, which are the foundations of government, are punishable by the temporal judges with fine and im¬ prisonment ; they are offences at common law, and the prime abuse of speech and writing." In a subsequent page of the same book, the writer, to whom I refer as an authority upon this matter, lays down very clearly the distinction between legal and illegal publication upon these grave topics ; and, gentlemen of the jury, I wish particularly to call your attention to this point, because it meets, very fully and completely, much of the assumption and argument of the defendant. In page 70, Mr. Holt says— " The law does not prohibit reasonable controversy, even upon fundamental subjects, as long as it is conducted with a tone of modera¬ tion, which shows that argument is the only purpose ; the writer abstain¬ ing from language and terms which are abusive and virulent, and, therein, indecorous, towards the establishment, and offensive to the consciences of individuals. What is argumentative may be very properly left to be replied to by argument ; what is passionate, and, therein, a disturbance of the proper harmony of the state, cannot be so safely passed over to a defence by similar weapons. Such a sufferance would be the endurance 14 of brawls. When the law is moved against such writers, it is not perse-' cation, it is a defence of the public tranquillity and decency." Gentlemen, this writer quotes what has ever since been held to be an authority in cases of this kind,—the remarks of one of the most learned and able judges that ever sat upon the bench, Mr. Justice Ashurst ; this learned judge, in passing sentence upon Williams, who was tried in the year 1797, for having published a blasphemous libel in Paine's Age of Reason, delivered himself in the following manner : " Although the Almighty does not stand in need of the feeble aid of mortals, to vindicate his honour and law, it is, nevertheless, highly fit that courts of judicature show their abhorrence and detestation of people capable of sending into the world such infamous and wicked books. Indeed, all offences of this kind are not only offences to God, but, crimes against the law of the land, and are punishable as such, inasmuch as they tend to destroy those obligations whereby civil society is bound together. And it is upon this ground that the Christian religion consti¬ tutes part of the law of England. But that law, without the means of enforcing its precepts, would be but the dead letter. Whenever these infamous works appear, they are the proper subjects of prosecution, for if the name of our Eedeemer were suffered to be traduced, and his holy religion treated with contempt, the solemnity of an oath, on which the due administration of justice depends, would be destroyed, and the law be stripped of one of its principal sanctions, the dread of future punishment." Gentlemen of the jury, if this man's opinions are true, what becomes of the sanction under which law and justice are administered ? That sanction consists of a solemn appeal to the omniscient and almighty Being, through the medium of an oath, taken upon the sacred Scriptures. If you destroy men's belief in the authority of that divine book, you at once break down all the safeguards and guarantees of justice, between man and man. Gentlemen, it is true, that there is one of you sitting in that box who did not take an oath ; but that was not because he disbelieved in the existence of God, but because he has such a profound reverence for the holy Scriptures, which, in his opinion, prohibit the taking of oaths, that he could not bring his mind to the performance of that solemnity. The very fact, then, of that gentleman's refusing to take an oath, in consequence of his deep veneration of the holy Scriptures, is in itself a complete condemnation of the opinions of the defendant. The whole scope and meaning of the law of the land, is, that it is based on a religious sanction ; and the man who seeks to subvert that sanction tends to destroy alf respect for those courts in which the law is administered, and to which we are all amenable ; and also to overturn society itself. The criminal law of England, corrected as it has been, from time to time, and administered as it is, by learned, upright, and independent judges, and by honest and intelligent juries, is, I verily believe, the very nearest approach to perfection ever yet known in the world, for the purpose of dispensing justice between man and man. But the defendant is of a different opinion. He claims a liberty for himself which is not consistent with the liberty of others. Gentlemen, see how he treats this very subject, in one of his publications, issued since the publication of the libellous matter charged in the indictment. See how he seeks to influence your verdict. After giving utterance to calumnies of the grossest kind, upon 15 the magistrates before whom the informations were originally laid, he proceeds to say,— " AU that should be said, therefore, it may be wise to say before trial ; for trial by jury means, in nine cases out of ten, trial by bigotry. When some noble spirits were carried before the French revolutionary tribunal, they opened their vests and laid bare their necks, as signifying that they came to execution, not to trial ; and those who go before a British jury, charged with sedition or blasphemy, should go prepared for the appear¬ ance, not the reality, of justice ; with a body and mind trained to suffer that torture of which the solemn mockeries of courts are but the prelude. A trial by jury for the impossible crime of blasphemy is, in fact, little more than a sort of judicial prologue to what I have before called the serio-comic farce of " Killing no murder." If then it should happen that a jury of Englishmen can now be found so lost to all sense of what is due to decency, the rights of conscience, and the liberty of the press —so inexpressibly foolish and wicked as to find me guilty of an impossi¬ ble offence, why the judge may—for it is rather difficult to say what judges may or may not do—shut me up in the cold cell of a felon's prison, denying me the sight of friends, the use of speech, or even the poor solitary satisfaction of wielding my pen, either in my own defence or in furtherance of the great principles of Civil and Eeligious Liberty." Gentlemen, what does this man mean by asserting his regard for truth, candour, and liberty, and at the same time addressing, on the very eve of his trial, such language as this to the public, and to the jury before which he is to be tried ? Gentlemen, I only quote this passage to show you the fallacy of the principle upon which the defendant professes to rest. Why, he himself everywhere violates that principle, without scruple or remorse. He has divested himself of all moral responsibility ; and, consequently, if he, and those whom he teaches, can but escape human observation, and the detection of their crimes, what may they not do ? What security have you against anything which men, pro¬ fessing these sentiments, may desire to do to gratify their inclinations or bad passions ? What hold can you have upon them ? What is to pre¬ vent them from doing just what they like, so long as they have reason to think that they can escape the penalties of human laws ? Gentlemen, the defendant asserts his right to do as he pleases, for he avers that he fears neither God nor devil. What is it that gives the criminal code, for the punishment and prevention of crime, its great sanction in the minds of men ? What, but the power of conscience, and the sense of respon¬ sibility—not to our fellow-men, but to a superior power—to an omni¬ scient eye ? The law, gentlemen, has its sanction in men's consciences, founded upon a belief that there wiU be a future reckoning—that man will be held responsible for what he thinks and what he does. If you once banish from the minds of men a belief in the existence of God, of a future state, and of their responsibility to an omniscient being, who sees the heart, and knows every motive by which the mind is inñuenced, then you at once overturn the very foundations of society. There is nothing to bind a man, holding the opinions which this man holds, to a regard for the law. He will not be checked by the reproofs of con¬ science ; for he laughs at the idea of conscience. Such men will take into account only the probable advantages they may derive from a certain course of action, and if these advantages are deemed 16 to outweigh the chances of detection and punishment, that course of action will be adopted. Gentlemen, we know, and you know, that even now, with all the aids of conscience and responsibility added to the solemn sanctions of the law, it is exceedingly difficult to restrain crime. It is well known that thieves, of every class and degree, calculate, with great nicety, the chances for an impunity of crime ; hut do we know how many are deterred from the commission of crime, where the letter of the law never comes in question, and simply by the power of their consciences ? Gentlemen, suppose that the children in our schools and families were brought to a belief that there was no god, and that their teachers and parents were monsters and tyrants, or fools and dolts, because they were attempting to inculcate the precepts of Christianity— what sort of children should we have—what kind of schools—what description of clerks, apprentices, and shopmen ? What would become of all Christian teaching, and the observance of the sabbath ? Gentle¬ men, such a belief would be the introduction of the grossest delusions, and of the most abominable errors. It would tend to the destruction of everything which constitutes the internal feeling of happiness amongst mankind. Gentlemen, such doctrines would be destructive, too, of all moral restraint. Could you trust a man who held the sentiments which this man holds ? Prudential motives might sometimes be a restraint upon him, but could you place any reliance in such a man? Could you have any confidence in his integrity, or repose in him any one of those aifeetions which adorn society ? Gentlemen, it is impossible to condemn too strongly the deplorable and ruinous consequences which would flow from the prevalence of such sentiments as those which the prisoner has adopted, and has been diffusing. Would there be anything of the virtue and liberty of which he speaks? Would not society, on the contrary, become one mass of confusion and crime? Yes, gentlemen, if the opinions of the defendant were once to become prevalent, men would become hateful and hating one another, as some are described to be in that very book which he holds up to ridicule and contempt. Gentlemen, you have heard the libels read ; the defendant will pre¬ sently have an opportunity of addressing you. It has been my painful duty, in discharging the task which devolves upon me, to wade through those libels, and I cannot help saying, that I deeply regret to see talents of such an order, and acquirements of such an extent, so greatly abused and perverted. Gentlemen, it is in vain to deny, that that man has talents which would have laid the fair field of life open to him, in any efforts which he might have made ; and with the industry which he can bring to such papers as these, from week to week, if he had followed any course of life that was calculated to benefit society, he might have made himself an honourable, a respectable, and a useful man. He has chosen his path, however, and that not without premeditation. He has adopted a deliberate and systematic course of proceeding ; and now he has made the desperate declaration, that he will still continue to pursue it. " This number" (6) he says, " the reader will please to consider as supplementary ; and in future the Priest of the Oracle will speak as usual, and proceed with the consideration of those subjects he had pro¬ posed to treat, before honoured by a notice from the authorities. Should it happen that my mouth is stopped, the paper will be edited and conducted by friends whose principles are my principles and upon whose integrity and talent I have the fullest reliance. So that whether I am 17 in or out of prison, the Oracle will still boldly pronounce nature's decrees, in spite of human decrees, and proclaim philosophy without asking the license of folly." It is proper, gentlemen, that these statements should be known to the court and the jury, and I would say, that after you, gentlemen of the jury, shall have returned your verdict of guilty, which I urge you by your reverence for everything that is sacred to do—I would say that after your verdict of guilty is pronounced, everything that the law can do should be done, to suppress such publications as this man expresses his determination to continue to publish. God forbid that I or any one else should persecute this man ! No, if he could be stopped in the publi¬ cation of these villanies, consistently with such a course of proceeding, I should be glad to send him back to a comfortable home ; but if that cannot be done in any other way than by sending him to a prison, then, in the name of public justice, in the name of everything sacred, in the name of God himself, 1 say let everything be done that can be done, to effect this object. Gentlemen, 1 shall not outrage your feelings, by reading to you the whole of the revolting passages which are charged against the defendant in this indictment ; you have heard, and you may, if you shall think proper to do so, read it for yourselves before you return your verdict ; but 1 must trouble you by reading two or three passages, for the purpose of pointing out the fallacies and the gross folly of this man's reasonings. In one of his Atheistic papers, he puts forth the following reasoning,— " Metaphysics (says an anonymous writer) teach us that god is a pure spirit ; but herein is modern theology superior to that of the savages ? 'The savages acknowledge a great spirit for the master of the world. The savages, like all ignorant people, attribute to spirits all the effects of which their experience cannot discover the true causes. Ask a savage what moves your watch. He will answer. It is a spirit." Let the savage rebuke the philosopher. The savage sees a work of art exhibiting clear marks of intelligence and design, and he infers from that, that it was made by an intelligent agent. That is what he means by say.- ing, it was made by a spirit. And it was made by a spirit, for the hands of the artificer were only the instruments of his mind. The savage therefore justly attributes the production of the watch to some intel¬ ligent agent who was capable of designing it ; and in the same way the philosopher may infer from the marks of design in the universe, that it must be the production of an infinite, a wise, and a good mind. The defendant thus proceeds :— " Ask our divines what moves the imiverse. They answer, it is a spirit. As it is with those who call god a great spirit, so it is ^vith the equally sage mystics who call their ideal god a great space—great space being two terms unintelligible. Space is something or nothing, a reality or a fiction, that which really exists, or a negation of all existence : if the former, it cannot be the god that Christians will accept, for that which is real must be corporeal ; but they reject a matter god and will not agree with the Stoics, that god is a divine animal : if the latter, that is, if those who will have it that space is god, are driven to admitas they necessarily must, that space is the negation or absence of matter, an absolute noth¬ ing, why, then, we fall upon the ex nihilo nihilßt ; Englished—out of 0 18 nothing nothing can come. As plain a truth as any to be found in Euclid. Which makes the question stand thus—In the first place, space cannot be a god ; if space is an actually existing something, it must be matter ; but that a matter god is no god at all, is allowed by the Chris¬ tian world. In the second place, spáce cannot be a god, if it signifies pure emptiness or absence of matter, because the absence of matter, could it be conceived, is a nothing ; and to refine god into nothing, is to destroy the idea of such an existence, and to proclaim that Atheism we are lahourvng to teach." So that, he asserts that there is nothing but what is material—that solid gross matter is the only thing that exists ; and yet he elsewhere affirms that the world is an " effect," not an effect produced by an infinite and intelligent mind, but a " known effect from an unknown cause." Was ever folly carried further than that, in order to get rid of the idea of the existence of a pure spirit, an intelligent Creator? When he says, there is nothing but what is material, might I venture to ask him, whether memory, or perception, or reasoning is material ; or whether, what he is so fond of talking of—our civil and political rights, are material? No, gentleman, the fact is, that although such men as these may impose upon iminformed minds, no man of reñection can fail to see that grosser absurdities never were uttered, to revile the Holy God, and his revelation, and everything sacred to the mind. But, gentlemen, the defendant assumes to himself perfect sincerity and integrity of purpose. Now, the last count but one in the indictment is founded on a sort of postscript to No. 5 of this Oracle of Reason, which postscript is entitled, " helping the lord ;" and at the head of this there is a line which purports to be quoted from Hosea, l?th chapter, 7th verse, and which is made to read thus : " He (God) loveth to oppress." Now, gentleman, Mr. Southwell is a grammarian, and you will see with what honesty and integrity he has made this pretended quotation from the Bible. In the passage, as it stands in the prophet, Ephraim, who is introduced there as the representative of one, or per¬ haps of more than one, of the tribes of Israel is being reproved for his perverseness and wickedness ; and the whole of the context shows that it is Ephraim who is described by the prophet as loving to oppress. But, as the defendant was enabled, by a little ingenuity, to make the word God, the antecedent, he has, by so doing, perverted the passage as I have read it to you ; and has made the prophet declare, that " God loveth to oppress." Now, gentlemen, what of his honesty and sincerity of purpose, in a case like that ? He must take refuge in either ignorance or dishonesty. Defendant.—My Lord, I am sorry to interrupt the learned gentle¬ man, but perhaps your lordship will allow me to state a fact, in reference to this particular passage. The truth is, my lord, that that article was not written by me—that it was written while I was shut up in prison, by whom I know not, and that I was not aware of its having been written, until some time after it had appeared in print. Mr. Smith.—Gentlemen of the jury, I am glad to hear that declaration from the defendant ; for, although, as the bookseller and publisher of this work, he is liable for all that appeared in it, during the course of its publication, I will cheerfully give him the benefit of his disavowal, and withdraw the accusation I have made against him. 19 Gentlemen of the jury, you will have to consider, simply, are these blasphemous libels, as they are described to be in the indict¬ ment, and were they published by the defendant ? If so, there can be but one result ; that is, a verdict of guilty ; and whatever the defendant may now say, allow me to say, that not only will such a verdict meet with the full approbation of every man competent to form an opinion upon such a subject, but that I think also, that the time will come, when the defendant's own conscience will approve and confirm that verdict. Gentlemen, with the fuUest confidence that there can be no other result than the verdict I have anticipated, I leave the question for your decision. The learned coimsel then called Stephen Eogers, a jxmior clerk to the magistrates' clerks, to prove the purchase of six numbers of the Oracle of Reason. Having proved the purchase of these numbers, at the ofi&ce of publication, in Wine Street, he was cross-examined by the defendant. Defendant.—When did you go into my shop ? Witness.—On the 27th of November last. Defendant.—^Did I manifest any disinclination to serve you with these numbers ? Witness.—No. Defendant.—There was some conversation, I believe, between us; was there not ? Witness.—I don't recollect any conversation. Defendant.—No ! Try if you can't recollect what passed between us, when I sold you the numbers that you have now produced. Witness.—I don't recollect, particularly, what passed upon the occasion. Defendant.—^Well, weU; never mind. Now, will you permit me to ask you, if you have read the numbers ? Witness.—Eead them? Defendant.—Yes ; have you read the numbers whieh you produced to the magistrates, and swore were blasphemous libels ? Witness.—No. Defendant.-^No ! What, did you swear that what those numbers contained constituted a blasphemous libel, when, in point of fact, you had never read it ? Witness.—I read the passage. Defendant.—Oh ! You read the passage. WeU, you swore in the information, that the passage contained a blasphemous libel on the Chris¬ tian religion ? Witness.—Yes. Defendant.—But did you find anything about the Christian religion in the passage which you read ? The witness appeared to be very much confused, and muttered some¬ thing that was inaudible in the court. Defendant.—Well, never mind ; I'll not press you any more upon that point. But as you swore that this passage constituted a blasphemous libel, will you permit me to ask you, what your opinion of a libel is ? Witness.—Of—a—l-l-l-libel ? Dependant.—^Yes ; be good enough to tell me what you mean by a libel. Witness.—Why—I mean—I mean—anything—eh—that's not true. Defendant.—Oh ! then you don't consider anything that's true to be a libel ? e 2 20 The Recouuer said, that if any fact rested upon this inquiry, he would not stop it. If the defendant by his mode of cross-examination, thought that he could achieve any practical object, as to his defence, he would not prevent him from pursuing this course. The Defendant said his object had a practical operation on the pro¬ ceedings of the day. He wanted to get at this young man's amount of knowledge, and he thought it necessary that the jury shbuld attend to his replies. He should ask the witness how he knew that he, defendant, had published, as he, witness, had sworn that he had done, a wicked and blasphemous libel ? The Recorder said he could not see how this tended in any way to the defence. The question the defendant now raised was altogether immaterial for the purposes of a defence, as against this indictment. It was not what the amount of this young man's knowledge was ; his opinion one way or the other could not form matter of defence. It was the opinion of the jury that was to be looked for, and not the opinion of the witness. The Defendant said, that in deference to his lordship's opinion, he would not further pursue the inquiry, and the witness left the box, evidently well pleased to escape the ordeal through which it seemed he had been about to pass. William Reynolds, a policeman, proved the purchase of six copies of a " copy of the warrant for the arrest of Charles Southwell for blasphemy," at the shop of Field, Southwell, & Co., in Narrow Wine Street. Defendant.—Did you obtain these copies of me ? Witness.—No, but you were standing by when I was served with them. Defendant.—Did you know, at the time you purchased them, that I had been but twenty-four hours out of prison ? Witness.-—I knew nothing about it. Defendant.—Did you not understand that the magistrates intended to proceed against me, for the publication of this copy of the warrant, while I was in prison ? Witness.—I don't know anything about it. Defendant.—You say you did not buy these copies of me. Whom did you buy them of? Witness.—Ah, that's what I want to know. Defendant.—Oh, you want to know, do you? Well, now, but you do know, don't jmu ? Witness.—Why, I want to know him a little better than I do now.* (Laughter.) Defendant.—I suppose you know all about the magistrates refusing my bail ? Recorder.—I really cannot see what relevancy this has to the defence. Defendant.—Well, my lord, I'll not pursue it. But the truth is, that this copy of the warrant, as well as the article referred to by thé learned counsel, was published while I was in prison, and without my knowledge, although, had I known it, I should not have known its publi¬ cation to be illegal. * The witness here discloses that he had been unsuccessful in executing his instruc¬ tions to entrap mother of the parties concerned. 21 Haruy Burgess, an ex-policeman, proved the purchase of three numbers of the Oracle of Reason, of Mr. John Field, at the office of publication, in Narrow Wine Street, after which he was cross-examined by the defendant. Defendant.—Who employed you to purchase these numbers of the Oracle of Reason ? Witness.—I was employed by Mr. Harmar. Dependant.—Oh ! what, did Mr. Harmar instruct you to purchase these three numbers ? Witness.—No, he instructed me to go and buy a dozen copies of the Oracle of Reason. Defendant.—Well, when you had purchased these numbers did you read them ? Witness.—No—not particularly. Defendant.—Not particularly ? Well, but did you read them ? Witness.—I read some parts of them. Defendant.— Oh! only some parts of them. You didn't read them through, then ? Witness.—No. Defendant.—Well, wiU you permit me to ask you, what impression the parts you did read, made upon your mind ? [The witness seemed to be sadly posed by this question, either not knowing what answer to make, for fear of committing himself, in some way, or not comprehending the question. After sideling about in the witness-box, stammering, and scratching his head, for some seconds, he drawled out, in a sort of half-smothered tone—I don't know.] Defendant.—Why, surely they must have made some impression upon your mind, if you read them? Witness.—No, they didn't make any particular impression. Defendant.—Well, then, what did you think of them ? Witness.—Oh—I—don't know, I'm sure. I thought they brought a scandal on the religion of the magistrates. (Great laughter, during which the witness was ordered to withdraw.) Mr. Smith having stated that he had no other witnesses to call, the Clerk of the Peace suggested to Mr. Southwell, that he had a right to see, if he liked to do so, that the passages from the several publications were correctly set out in the indictment. Mr. Southwell having ex¬ pressed a wish to do so, the indictment was then handed up to him, and the clerk of the peace proceeded to read from the publications themselves, the several passages charged as libellous in the indictment. This reading being completed, and the defendant taking no exception to the accuracy of the indictment, Mr. Smith stated, that that completed the case for the prosecution. The Defendant then addressed the jury as follows. Gentlemen of the jury, I was not a little astonished when I heard that the case for the prose¬ cution was at an end ; and, if I mistake not, if there be not better evidence brought forward to make out the case than that you have already heard, the prosecution must be at an end also. Gentlemen, I submit that you have sworn that you would a true verdict give according to the evidence, and I will presently, if it be necessary, show that you are clothed with exclusive authority—that as jurymen you have the right, and that it is your duty to do so. I repeat, that you have sworn that you will 22 give a true verdict according to the evidence ; and I further submit, that there is not, at this stage of the proceedings, one particle of evidence proving that I have published a wicked and blasphemous libel. Gentle¬ men, what does the evidence that you have heard amount to ? It is that some parties went to a shop in Wine Street and purchased certain papers, called the Oracle of Reason. What else has been shown ? The contents have not been yet examined ; it has not been shown that they contain a tittle of blasphemy. It may be said, perhaps, that, in the opinion of Stephen Eogers, those papers do contain blasphemy ; but, gentlemen, you wül not send me to a dimgeon, because that happens to be the opinion of Stephen Eogers. I, therefore, venture to submit to you at this early stage of the proceedings, that up to the present moment there has not been a tittle of evidence given to convict me of having written or published a blasphemous libel. Gentlemen, the truth is, that this offence of blasphemy has not been defined ; and further, it cannot be defined ; and, therefore, whatever may be said as to the purchase of the publica¬ tion, that cannot affect the question as to whether I have published a wicked and blasphemous libel. I will, therefore, submit now to his lordship and the jury, the question, whether or not it has been proved by the evidence that has been offered that I have published blasphemy ? Eecordbe.—The proof of blasphemy is not a matter of proof by witnesses ; that is a question which the jury is to deduce from the publi¬ cation itself. The objèction, therefore, is disallowed. Dependant.—My lord, and gentlemen of the jury, I thought it my duty to make this objection at the commencement, because if I had made it at a later stage of the proceedings, I might have been told that it was quite out of order. But I bow to the decision of the court, and shall now proceed to defend myself, as well as I am able, from the charge that has been brought against me. Gentlemen, I agree with the learned counsel for the prosecution, that we live in an age of comparative light and civilization. I agree with him, and I rejoice to agree with him, that we have no secret tribunals—that it is the privilege of every man to have an open, fair, and honourable trial. I feel much pleasure in saying this, because from what has been said by the learned counsel, in the course of his speech you might be led to infer that I do not prize, as I do, the trial by jury, and the privilege of defending myself against charges such as those with which I now stand accused. Gentlemen, I fear it will be perceived, that although long used to speak upon a rostrum, I labour under great disadvantages when addressing a jury ; and, gentlemen, bear this in mind, that if you went into that box, as I believe you did, with the intention of doing me full justice, you can only do that by the exer¬ cise of your reason ; and I maintain that it is your business to discard mere passion and prejudice, so that your decision may be, as far as is possible, a pure deduction from the arguments advanced by the counsel for the prosecution on the one side, and those advanced by me on the other. Gentlemen, it is the common custom, and I regret that the learned counsel did not step out of custom's road more fully than he has done it is the common custom in proceedings of this description, to appeal to vulgar passions and prejudices ; but when these are excited, then it is that reason is engulphed, as it were, and men are tempted to commit those acts which in their cooler moments they would shudder at the idea of performing. Gentlemen, enough has been already urged to remind you 23 that it is your duty to discard all preconceived notions, àud to do me full justice, by hearing me patiently, and then, coolly weighing my motives, reasons, and general conduct. And, gentlemen, if you do this, I am sure you will see that it is necessary, and that it will be useful to the fullest extent, honourably to acquit me of the charge which I stand here to answer to. Gentlemen, it wiU be well before I proceed further, to notice some of the steps that have been taken to prejudice your minds against me. When I speak of prejudice, I wish it to be understood that men may pre¬ judge truly as well as falsely. To prejudge is simply to make Up one's mind beforehand ; and there may be a making up of the mind before¬ hand to that which is true as well as to that which is false. But, never¬ theless, this prejudice or prejudgment is extremely hurtful to truth ; that is, it stands in many cases between the mind and the truth. Well has it been said, that prejudice is the spider of the mind ; and I may add, tha,t prejudice, if compared to the spider, like the spider, always weaves its web in desolate and ruinous habitations. I hope, therefore, gentlemen, that you will do me fuU justice, and as I shall avoid, as far as possible, everything that can give offence to even the most sensitive mind, I trust that you wiU bear with me. I know that you are not of that class who would rather " hang the guiltless than eat their mutton cold." Before I proceed to consider the opening speech of the learned counsel, I must give you some authorities touching your duties as jurymen ; and, I do this, not so mUch in reference to you, gentlemen, as because juries do not always know their duties. Mr. Smith interrupted the defendant, and, addressing the recorder, said, he thought it but fair to give the defendartt notice, that if he adduced anything like evidence in the course of his defence, he, Mr. Smith, should claim, and would have the right of, a reply. The Défendant said he was not well schooled in legal matters, but he had learned so much as this, that unless this were a government prosecution and the learned gentleman represented the Attorney-General, he would have no right of reply, unless he, defendant, called witnesses, which he had no intention of doing. But if he was wrong in this, he was quité sure that his lordship woidd set him right and do him justice. The Recohder said he could not decide the question a priori. The Defendant then resumed as follows : Gentlemen of the jury, I am anxious to call your attention to a portion of a pamphlet which I hold in my hand. It is in the form of a letter addressed to Jeremy Bentham, and it treats of the question of juries, their rights and duties. From this pamphlet I shall read a passage or two, and comment upon them, perhaps, as I proceed. The first passage to which I beg your attention is the following : " Of matter of law, as well as of matter of fact, by express written law, the jury are the sole judges in trials for lihel, in whatever shape brought before them, by means of criminal process, as infoiTnation, in¬ dictment, or by means of civil process, as an action at law for damages." Next, gentlemen, let me request your attention to the following : " For the commission of injustice, the law assumes guiltiness—why should not the jury assume non-guUtiness, to serve the ends of justice, until the right means be accorded, to enable them to administer justice ? 24 To arrive at a just decision, equally fair to the accuser, and to the accused, there ought to be no anticipations, either of guilt or of inno¬ cence. The law assumes guiltiness without proof ; let juries, by way of counterpoise, assume non-guiltiness without proof—by such an assump¬ tion they simply avoid anticipation, and put themselves in the way of arriving at truth, and doing justice, which cannot be done, unless non- guiltiness of facts without proof be assumed, as without proof they are charged to be criminal." " A juryman is bound to do justice, and in cases of libel, being at once judge of both law and fact, legislator and administrator, making, in one capacity, the law he administers in the other, both capacities being miited in his person ; it is in a great measure within his own power to arrive at justice, by aiming at tru(,h." These passages, gentlemen, are of great importance ; they carry with them their own proofs, but I shall back them up by the authorities of those great men, Erskine, Pitt, and Fox, I shall show by these authori¬ ties, as by the one I have read from, that you have to decide both as to the law and the fact. But before I do that, I would read to you one or two more passages from this same pamphlet. The defendant then read the following passages : " In point of fact, discussion being, indirectly, the law-made crime, the aiming too openly to suppress it, was the cause of judge-made libel law being altered. Mr. Justice Buller, whose intemperance and violence have outlived the reputation of his learning, in the trial of the Dean of St. Asaph for libel, by stretching the reins too tightly caused them to snap. He threatened to commit Erskine, the defendant's counsel, for in¬ sisting that the verdict of publishing only should be recorded. That trial, the conduct of the presiding judge, and that of his brethren of the King's Bench, were the immediate causes of the statute being passed, declaratory of what the common law had been, until altered by judicial authority ; and the common law was, that in matters of libel, juries were judges both of the law and the fact; the statute not, indeed, conferring on juries any new power, but re-investing them with that legal power of which they had been deprived, by judicial chicanery and corruption, in as well as out of courts of Star-chamber. " By law, jurymen, in matters of libel, do not, they ought not, at least, to take the law from, but they ought to give the law to, the judge. In actions of libel, the jurymen are the judges ; for them it is to decide, respecting no man's opinion, libel or no libel, and there is an end ; for after such decision, the judge and Iiis brethren of the superior court are then powerless. In the matter of the judge's opinion, it is competent to the jury to pronounce libel or no libel. If, in accordance with the statute, the judge, in delivering his opinion, should say, ' I am of opinion this is a libel,' (and excepting for the purposes of power, when, indeed, is a judge of any other opinion ?) by their verdict the jury may say, ' 'We are of opinion that.it is no libel ;' and such a ver¬ dict is impregnable, although in direct contradiction to, or in contempt and derision of, the opinion of the presiding judge, or of the opinion of any, and of all the judges, because the judicial opinion, unless adopted by the jury, in law has no force—is an absolute nullity. " Hence, then, in despite of the judge by law the jury are the sole arbitrators of what is and what is not libel ; and although the judge i^ 25 bound by statute to deliver his opinion, the jury are bound to pay uo attention to it ; and to his judicial opinion, in ninety-nine cases in the hundred—and in the hundreth the propriety of following that opinion is so doubtful—they will do wisely and well to value it at less than nothing, turning a deaf ear to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely, and trusting to their own plain sense and moral per¬ ceptions of right and wrong, for guiding them to a just conclusion. " Notwithstanding the air, or, it may be, the menaces of authority, it (the judge's opinion) has been made to assume, the jury are free to act —for in authority they are above the judge, by express enactment, with them is lodged the absolute and sole power of making and giving effect to whatever law they determine to be applicable to the case before them ; it rests with themselves only to condemn or absolve ; it is for them, and them only, to say what is, and what is not libel." I have now read to you a sufficient number of paragraphs to illus¬ trate my position. I proceed, therefore, with the authorities I have just named to you. During the discussion, in the House of Commons, on Mr. Fox's libel bill, of 1791, that gentleman entered into a long argu¬ mentative speech, on the doctrine of libels, in which he contended that the jury ought not only to find the publication and the inuendo, but to decide upon the intention ; that they were judges as well of law as of fact.—Mr. Erskine, who seconded the motion, said, that to diminish the privileges of juries, was in his idea to throw away the only security which the people possessed against the overwhelming prerogatives of the crown. In civil cases, he remarked, it was the undoubted province of the judge to decide upon the question of law, matters of property being too intricate for the decision of a jury; but this rule ought never to obtain in criminal cases, where the guilt, consisting in the intention, seemed a point peculiarly adapted to the consideration of a jury, and could only be properly ascertained by their verdict.—Mr. Pitt supported the same argument. He declared, that although he should with great diffidence set up his own opinions against the established practice of the judges, yet, he could not but confess, that it went directly against that practice ; for he saw no reason why^ on the trial of a crime, the whole consideration of the case might not precisely go to the unfettered judg¬ ment of twelve men who were sworn to give their verdict honestly and conscientiously. Gentlemen, continued the defendant, as that libel-bill, which is now the law of the land, is very short, I beg your attention while I proceed to read it. This is it : t " Whereas doubts have arisen whether, on the trial of an indictment or information for the making or publishing any libel, when an issue or issues are joined between the king and defendant or defendants, on the plea of not guilty pleaded, it be competent to the jury empanneled to try the same, to give their verdict upon the whole matter in issue ; be it therefore declared and enacted by the king's most excellent majesty, by and with the consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that on every such trial, the jury sworn to try the issue may give a general verdict of guilty or not guilty, upon the whole matter here in ■issue upon each indictment or information, and shall not be required or directed, by the court or judge before whom such indictment or informa- 26 tion shall be tried, to find the defendant or defendants guilty, merely on the proof of the publication, by such defendant or defendants, of the paper charged to be a libel, and of (he sense ascribed to the same on such indictment or information." Gentlemen, I need say but little in addition, continued the defendant, for it must be clear to all of you, that the doctrine laid down by the authorities I have cited, is not only rational, but just and necessary. It must be obvious to every man, that civilization itself would be checked,' and that we should have nothing but a mental despotism, if trial by juiy did not involve all that it is said to involve by these authorities. And, gentlemen, I am sure that you will consider, when reviewing my conduct, what was my object, and what were my intentions. These, I am sure, will weigh with you, and if you shordd be of opinion that my objects are even injurious to society, yet, if you believe my motives to have been good, you wül give me the benefit of your verdict ; nay, gentlemen, if you should believe my teaching to be ever so false, and my motives to he ever so questionable, I hope you wül think that the best way to meet my false teaching, is by better teaching ; and that you will, upon this occasion, set an example to all succeeding juries. Gentlemen, I spoke of the prejudice that had been excited against me. It is well known to most of you, that some weeks since, a gentleman who has rendered himself very notorious in this city, issued large placards announcing that the Rev. Mr. Bromley would deliver a course of lectures on the blasphemies of Charles Southwell. I know not whether the Rev. Mr. Bromley is a religious man, but sure I am that no moral man would have done that, while I lay in a dungeon. It was, to say the least of it, exceedingly cruel, to try to inñuence the public mind to my prejudice. Even tbe law assumes a man to be innocent rmtil he is found guilty ; but not so this reverend gentleman. He, no doubt, had a double object in view, tbe one was to excite prejudice againsfrme, and the other to fill his own pockets. And, gentlemen, there is another person, equally notorious with the Rev. Mr. Bromley, who has used his puny efforts to increase the preju¬ dice against me ; and he has even taken the liberty to address a letter to his lordship on the bench. Recorder.—What is that you say ; a letter addressed to me relative to this trial ? I have seen no such letter. Defendant.—No, my lord, I felt certain that your lordship had not. It was printed in that person's publication, the JlritiSocial Gazette ; anti-social it is, indeed ! Recorder.—Oh, I supposed you to mean that some person had taken the liberty to send me a letter upon the subject of this trial. Had any¬ one done so, I can only say, that I should not have read it, but should have thrown it behind the fire. I have never seen such letter, nor did I know Of the existence of such a publication as the one you have named. Dependant.—I could not for a moment suppose that your lordship would have taken any other course than that you have spoken of. The letter, gentlemen, and my lord, is addressed, "To Sir Charles Wether- all, Bart., Recorder of the city of Bristol, on the approaching trial of Southwell, for blasphemy," and is to the following effect ; " Sir,—As it is a privilege in the English law, that every man charged 27 with crime, be accounted innocent until found guilty by a jury^ I shall not do more than respectfully call your attention to the extent to which Infidelity and Atheism have already spread their mischievous influences under the banners of Socialism. The letter to Sir Eobert Peel, at page 57, the Report of the Socialist movements at page 62, and the article detailing the present proceedings in Hampshire, at page 66, will con¬ vince you of the frightful character of the Socialist principles. The very decided terms in which the Bible is attacked, places it beyond all doubt that blasphemy is contained in Southwell's pubhcation. It there¬ fore wiU be a matter of the highest importance to consider under what circumstances it was put forth. It is one thing for an obscure indi¬ vidual to put forth privately dangerous sentiments ; and it is another and a very different thing for a man who has forced himself into publicity as the disciple and advocate of a wide-spread society, to utter those sentiments in open defiance of the law, and to publish those to the world. If Southwell is found guity of blasphemy. Socialism is found guilty of blasphemy. And Socialism is an organized society, using every energy to difinse its principles throughout the length and breadth of the land. As the mischief therefore is great, so should the promoter of it be met with proportionate reprobation. It is one thing to injure an individual ; it is another thing to endanger the peace and good order of society at large. You have, therefore, to regard this unhappy man in the capacity of a public teacher of an organized system of evil, and not in his individual capacity of a private defamer. I would not have it thought, however, that I wish to call down heavy punishments on the man ; I desire rather to see the matter taken up as one of deep public interest, so that the system meet with the most unqualified condemna¬ tion. For if the principles are allowed to be openly inculcated, how can we expect but that some, through ignorance or depravity, will be drawn into the snare ? It wiU be of little use, and indeed scarcely com¬ mon justice, to punish individuals for the expression of sentiments we have openly permitted them to imbibe. " The country, sir, will look with deep interest to the manner in which the forthcoming case is regarded. I doubt not but your experience and Christian duty wiU dictate a course consistent with justice, and adequate to meet the case in question." Gentlemen, this person thought to kill two birds with one stone— to strike me down, and while doing that, to make a stab at a society, the principles of which he is as ignorant of as any sucking dove. It gene¬ rally happens that men are malicious in the ratio of their ignorance. You will perceive that this letter meant mischief to me, and I am com¬ pelled, in order to do justice to myself and to the society with which I have been connected, to trouble you with a few remarks upon it. In the first place, my case should stand upon its own merits. Because it happens that I was formerly a member of a certain society, that is no reason why you should pimish me, in order that you may disgrace and punish that society. Gentlemen, I was once proud to be a member of that society, of which Mr. Owen is the founder and leader ; for, what¬ ever may be said of Mr. Owen's religious opinions, it is to him that I am indebted for the little knowledge I possess, and I never can think of him without feelings of gratitude. I never learned from him anything of immorality ; I learned from him to abhor falsehood, and 28 to love truth. This I say at the risk of exciting in your minds feelings that should not be excited. But I would say here what I would say elsewhere ; my principle being a straightforward and honest course of action. Gentlemen, if 1 cannot get your verdict by honest means I cannot get it by dishonest ones. But, this attempt to excite every kind of prejudice against me, by connecting me with the Socialist body, renders it necessary that I should lay before you, as shortly and suc¬ cinctly as possible, what Mr. Owen's opinions really are. From an address delivered by him at an adjourned meeting, held at the City of London Tavern, in 1817, I shall quote what may be re¬ garded as exhibiting his two fundamental principles. He asks, " Why should so many countless millions of our fellow-creatures, through each successive generation, have been the victims of ignorance, superstition^ of mental degradation, and of wretchedness? My friends, I tell you, that hitherto you have been prevented from even knowing what happiness really is, solely in consequence of the errors— gross errors—that have been combined with the fundemental notions of every religion that has hitherto been taught to man. And, in conse¬ quence, they have made man the most inconsistent and the most miser¬ able being in existence. By the errors of these systems, he has been made a weak, imbecile animal ; a furiotis bigot and fanatic ; or a miser¬ able hypocrite ; and should these qualities be carried not only into the projected villages, but into paradise itself, a paradise would be no longer found. That is his first principle ; the second is thus stated : " The improvement I now advocate, will remove many evils from all, and not introduce one to any. The change contemplated has no tendency, even in the slightest degree, to remove those who enjoy any supposed advantages in eminent stations they have attained. No one will envy those privileges, whatever they may be, and every hair of their heads will be securely guarded, by the rapidly improving condition of the great mass of the people. This gradual and well-prepared change, now advocated, has no tendency whatever to drag down from their stations those whom a course of events, far, far, beyond their control, has placed there. It has solely for its object to raise from abject poverty, misery, and degradation, those whom the same course of events has now sunk to the depths of wretchedness. If the principles for which I con¬ tend be true, then there can be no permanent and beneficial change in human society, that does not enable every one among the working classes to produce his own subsistence ; to improve his bodily and mental powers; and to secure to himself the natural comforts of life ; and which, by his own labour properly directed, will be very easily attainable. I hastily notice these particulars, in order that you may understand, that a mere change of sufferers, whether it be from one part of a class to another— from one entire class to another—or from one nation to another, is no remedy for the great and increasing evils from which the world now suffers. But this is the dilemma to which the systems that have hitherto regulated the conduct of men have reduced them ; and while these systems shall be acted upon, the choice of severe evils only lies before them." Gentlemen, I have read these passages, to show that Mr. Owen, was, in 1817, discontented with the present managen^ent of society, and that 29 he proposed a plan by the adoption of which he believed it would be improved ; and I may observe to you, that the last passage, particularly, exhibits the moral animus—the humane and just intentions, as well as the benevolent feelings, of that gentleman. I am sure, gentlemen, you will excuse me for having read these para¬ graphs. I am not a favourer of authority, nevertheless, it is my habit to give to authority what is due to authority. It will be seen that unless, on this occasion, I can show from those of repute that my posi¬ tion is a good one, and that some of the greatest men that ever lived have acted as I have acted (but much better)—I know I shall be accused of vanity, for it is the vice of little minds to impute vanity to all who aspire to go beyond themselves—I say, then, that unless I can show you, that some of the greatest and best men that ever lived, acted as I have acted, I shall fail in making out such a case as is likely to satisfy you I am right. But, gentlemen, I shall only quote such authorities as are absolutely necessary to support the position I desire to maintain. Before I do this, however, I shall proceed to consider the remarks that have been addressed to you by the learned counsel who opened the case. I shall take them seriatim, excepting the first two on the Christian religion, as I shall have abundant opportmiities of remarking upon them, before I come to a close. Gentlemen, let me first advert to the assertions which the learned counsel made, to the effect, that I held all men who were opposed to me in opinion, to be dishonest men. Gentlemen, I repudiate that charge ; and I deny that there is a single line in any one of my pamphlets, or that I ever uttered a single word, that will bear such an interpretation. On the contrary, there are many men of all parties in the Christian world whom I highly honour, for their talents and their sincerity. There is only one class whom I can sincerely say I heartily abhor, (I mean their conduct) that is, the class of hypocrites, who go about, from town to town, and from village to village, thrusting themselves into places where they are not wished for, and introducing discord and misery wherever they appear—a class of fanatics, whom Jesus Christ compared to poisonous and loathsome vipers. These are the men I despise. I despise no man who is honourable in his feelings and his conduct—I care not what his creed may be, whether he is of one reli¬ gion, or of no religion. If he be but a good man and a lover of truth, I'll take him by the right hand of fellowship ; for an honest man—if there be a work of God—is the noblest work of God. It is not true, therefore, gentlemen, that I set down all men as dishonest, who happen to disagree with me. Not only do I not think them dishonest, but I have the highest veneration for the talents of many of them. For example, there's the Edinburgh Review, and Blackwood's Magazine, and I hold it to be impossible, whatever a man's political or religious opinions may be, for him to read those publications without being greatly delighted, and having his admiration excited for the writers who pro¬ duced them. I repeat, that I admire virtue and talent wherever I find it ; and I wish to rub from your minds the impression which the learned counsel, in all probability, produced there, when he told you that I set all men down as dishonest, if they did not agree with me in opinion. Gentlemen, the learned counsel told you, that I think myself a first rate philosopher. I think myself no such thing ; but I will tell you what I am—an honest man ; and I agree with that ancient philosopher who 30 said, that that commonwealth was happy, which minded the law more than the lawyer. Gentlemen, 1 call upon you to attend more to the law than to what that learned gentleman has addressed to you. Gentleinen, I do not wish to destroy your happiness, whatever it may consist in, or to persecute men for their opinions ; and if I make you to see that, I am sure you will act in accordance with your convictions. The learned gentleman spoke of my objects in the publication of these pamphlets. I wiU state to you what those objects were and are. In the first place, my object is to destroy superstition. And hare it maybe said, that I not only destroy superstition, but that I give a vital stab to religion itself. Gentlemen, let me remark here on the difficulty in which I am placed. There are twelve of you in that box ; and I dare say there are no two of you who are of precisely the same opinion, as to what true religion is. There can be no two true religions ; suppose that a thousand religions are taught in the world, it is plain that nine hundred and ninety-nine of them must be false; and the thousandth may be false also. When men speak of true religion, they speak of their own religion ; and when I published the Oracle of Reason I only declared for the common right of man, the right to publish my opinion. Gentlemen, I contend for that right, as the Unitarian, the Jew, the Quaker, the Puritan, and others, did in times past. I support that right for others, to the same extent that I claim it for myself. But, gentlemen, you have been told, by the learned counsel, that we do enjoy freedom of discussion—that we are as free as the air ; but that we must not complain, if, when we exercise that freedom, the law pounces upon us, and drags us to a dungeon. Gentlemen, I don't com¬ plain in this instance ; the conduct of the learned judge, and your own conduct, leaves me no room to complain ; and before I took a single step in the course I am pursuing, I had prepared myself for the worst. I believed that my course of conduct would tend to the welfare of the whole of society ; and I said, if this course, which is morally right, is proved to be legally wrong, I will give authorities which shall bear me out in this course of conduct—authorities about which there can be no mistake or disputation, and which declare that the highest duty of every man—^that the particular and most imperative duty of every man—is to examine the grounds of his religion ; and further, that no man can be a true Christian, who has not examined the grounds of his religion, and determined it by the exercise of his reason. Gentlemen, the learned counsel told you that I wished to reduce man to a level with the brutes. No : I wish to elevate man from what is very little better than the condition of the brutes, to his own proper place in the scale of being ; for as it is said—" What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty of the world ; the paragon of animals !" Yes, gentlemen, this is what man ought to be, but what he never yet has been ; and I tell the learned gentleman who opened this case, that if he thinks that knowledge or reason can brutify men, then, do I wish to brutify them—^not otherwise. What does the history of the world prove ? That the more fanatical the people, the more miser¬ able the people. Show me a fanatical people, and I will show you a miserable and an enslaved people. But show me a nation where the 31 people are good, because it is their interest to be good, and I will show you a state of society like the Paradise of Adam. When the learned counsel quoted from the Oracle of Beason, he, of course, as it was his business to do, quoted some of the worst passages— that is, the best for his own case. Gentlemen, you know how much dealing with the law acts upon the moral feelings of men. You know how these gentlemen try to niake the worse appear the better reason. I do not say that, in derogation of the learned gentleman, for I think him the best I ever heard ; but he did, nevertheless, give me some unpleasant stabs, because not just ones ; in fact, the weapon he employed was a foul one. He said I wanted religious fanaticism put down, and had recom¬ mended another species of fanaticism in its stead—one that did not base itself on the good of mankind, bnt which, on the contrary, undermined the very foundations of social order. He said that I wished to overturn society ; and, at the same time, he hinted, that as I wished to do that, I shonld probably take advantage of the confusion I created, and not only help myself but induce others to do the same. You recollect, gentle¬ men, that he talked about men who hold the opinions I hold, helping themselves to the property of others, and. bringing about those scenes of violence which bewildered and confounded the minds of men during the first French revolntion. Gentlemen, I say these things to induce you to see what has moved me to sacrifice home, and friendships, and everything which men hold most dear, and to stand before you in the character of a criminal. The learned counsel cannot understand me, or he would not have spoken of me as he has done to-day. His understanding is so " cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," that he does not see that another may be equally as honest as himself, although he happens to differ from him in opinion. If he thinks religion is a benefit to society, I think philosophy is a benefit to society ; if he thinks religion necessary to society, I think morality necessary to society. He cannot understand how I should thus differ from him; and, because he cannot imderstand it, he would send me to a dungeon. Gentlemen, there may be a race, compared with which the present race are mere dwarfs ; there may be a race spring up who shall be induced to do good, because they love the good. Is there no pain in vice? Do you never feel remorse, or what the learned gentleman calls conscience, when you have done the thing that is wrong ? Do you abstain fi;om crime—from injuring others—from injuring society—from overturning authority—from violating the law—merely from fear of hell-fire ? What ! does the learned counsel so far debase human nature as to say there can be no love of virtue—^no respect for morality—no regard for propriety—no observance of decency—no hatred of oppres¬ sion—without the hope of heaven, or the fear of hell ? Who would not serve his friend ? Who would not aid the oppressed ? Who woidd not save the wife of his bosom, without hope of reward, or fear of pmiish- ment ? Gentlemen, the time may come, when we shall be better edu¬ cated than we now are, and when there shall be a state of society essen¬ tially different from what now exists. As, in short, all social and political arrangements are consequences of human intellect, so, as this advances, will human institutions progress to perfection. The learned counsel would have you particularly guard yourselves against misunderstanding him on the subject of the press. He has a great veneration for the press, it seems. He says he is most anxious to 32 preserve the liberty of the press; he would have a free press; but then it must be under some restraint or limitation. Who ever heard of a free press placed under restraint ? Why, gentlemen, the idea is absurd ; it is a contradiction in terms. The learned gentleman is mighty liberal. _ He says he would not restrain us from thinking. Oh, no ; we may think ; but we must keep our thinkings to ourselves. We must take care not to let any one know how we think, or what we think about ; or, if we do, we must lay our account with prosecution and imprisonment. The truth is, that he is like the bigots and fanatics have been in all ages —he is willing to allow men to express their opinions, so long as those opinions are not hostile to his. And that is what he calls liberty and free discussion ! It is, indeed, matter of astonishment, that the learned counsel should have supposed that, because I have none of the fears belonging to reli¬ gious people, I can be under no inducement to perform moral actions. Gentlemen, I can find scores who will vouch for my morality : some of the first gentlemen in this land would come forward, if it were necessary, and give me a character for sterling honesty and purity of conduct. But that is not the question ; the question is, whether I was not actuated by as pure and laudable motives, in the writing and publication of these pamphlets, as the learned gentleman can be, in the prosecution of them ? Gentlemen, most of you have heard of the celebrated Shelley; he is now acknowledged, by the literati of this country, to rank among the very first of its poets ; and what says he ? There needeth not the hell that big;ot3 frame To punish those who err : earth in itself Contains at once the evil aud the cure ; And all-sulficing nature can chastise Those who transgress her law ; she only knows How justly to proportion to the fault The punishment it merits. But do not misunderstand me, or suppose that because I contend that Nature is the best instructress, I am not as tremblingly alive to the necessity of laws for the protection of society, in our present state, as the learned counsel himself is. Gentlemen, the man who would strike at themajesty of thelawmustbe mad. I know, as well as he does, that society, in its present state, cannot exist without law ; that there must be law to restrain and punish evU, until men are so far advanced in knowledge and morality as to become a law unto themselves. But it is one thing to have laws, and another to have good laws. I contend that the laws of a nation should be the expression of the will of a nation. I know that society is necessary for human happiness, and that the necessity for laws springs out of that association. I agree that every individual, when he becomes a member of society, merges his individual right in the great stream of public right. I understand how the laws sho^d be respected, as long as they are useful in subserving the ends of society ; but I understand, also, that while we respect good laws and those that admin¬ ister them, there is another, and an equally sacred duty—that of resisting had laws. Gentlemen, this is a duty which we owe alike to ourselves, to society, and to civilization itself. Suppose that Luther, Calvin, Knox, and other great reformers, both in modern aud in ancient times, had acted upon the principle, that it was bad to resist the law, whatever the law might be—that it was bad to put forward opinions that shook 33 other men's notions ;—every man must see that if they had acted upon that principle, society could not have progressed as it has done. Why, if Luther had not been hold enough to resist the authority of Eome, where would have been our boasted Reformation ? Gentlemen, if he had not stood forward, and in his single person withstood the power of the Roman pontiif, you, in all probability, would not have been here to-day, professing the religion in which you now believe. Nay, I may go further, and say, there was a time when Christianity itself did not exist ; and that, subsequently, there was a time when Christians were in as bad odour as I am in now—when they were called the professors of a de¬ structive superstition—the professors of Atheism. There was a time when, because of their opinions, and of their giving utterance to those opinions, they were tortured in body and mind, thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheatre at Rome ; when, in a word, they were persecuted and tortured by every conceivable mode of torture, that the most diabolical ingenuity could invent. There was a time when, to be known as a Christian, was to be known »s a bad man. There was a time, and not long since, when, what you now believe to be divine, and essential to the very existence of society, was believed to be false and pernicious to the best interests of society. Gentlemen, a charge has been made—a charge quite irrelevant to that which ought to have occupied your attention. I did expect that the learned counsel would confine himself to the matter which is charged to be libellous ; but as he has run here, and there, and everywhere, I am forced into an attempt to follow him. Gentlemen, I had expected, that when I expressed myself opposed to the opinions of the majority of the people of this country, I should be looked upon as a pest to society, and that an attempt would be made to put me down by persecution. I thus speak, because you have no more right to hurt my little finger, than you have to burn my whole body. If you confine me, for but twenty-four hours, or for a single hour, you act upon precisely the same principle as that upon which your cruel forefathers acted, when they sacrificed at the stake, and in the dungeon, whole hecatombs of human victims, because those victims opposed the prevailing religious opinions. Those who thus persecuted and put to death the persons who opposed the prevailing opinions, did it for the good of society; nay, they believed that they did God service by sweeping the heretics from the face of the earth. Gen¬ tlemen, therefore it is, that I think it necessary to show you, that some of the purest-minded men that ever lived—that some of the best men the world has ever known—entertained the same opinions that I enter¬ tain, and acted as I am acting, though not men who spouted abottt " true religion." They were men who acted religiously, however ; if by that we are to understand men who acted righteously and well. Yes, gentlemen, what we want is a nation of good men and women, who have been taught to love truth, as the pearl above all price ; and who, there¬ fore, hate insincerity, and disdain to practise it. And unless you give liberty to thought and expression, you fetter the mind, and destroy that which alone can give moral health to society. The learned counsel said, that no nation had ever allowed the full liberty of the press. I know it ; and I contend that, whatever they may have professed to do, no nation ever yet allowed men to speak sincerely what they thought and meant ; and I further contend, that, unless men are sincere, they cannot be happy; and that, unless they be allowed to express their D 34 opinions, they cannot be sincere. I say it is the proper business of government to protect all opinions, biit to dictate none ; because it is the duty of government to protect all men in their rights of citizenship, but not to interfere with their feelings, thoughts, or . opinions. Is it nof clear that, although you may prevent me from expressing my opinions, you cannot change my sentiments ? It must be ; and I tell you further, that the more you persecute me, the more tenaciously do you make me cling to my opinions. Gentlemen, when you call upon the law to put down that which it cannot put down, the only effect is, to make men hypocrites. Those who set these persecutions on foot should imderstand thus much—that persecuted opinions always gather strength ; and that, if you want men to fall in love with new doctrines, you need only persecute the men who promulgate them. Gentlemen, it would be well for those who are for maintaining the Christian religion, as by law established, to understand that the way to maintain it, is not to persecute the authors of books written against it, but to write better than they have written, and to act better than they have acted. If the professors of religion would but thus let their light shine before men, we could not long sit in dark¬ ness. If they did this, as they say they are enjoined to do, we should never more hear of Infidelity. But the tree is to be known by its fruits ; and the fruits of all these trees are bitter. It has been said by the learned counsel, that it is impossible for a man, who is not of one of the religions, as now taught—who has not said to reason, " Get thee behind me, Satan 1"—to he honest, moral, or just. He entertains a notion, that such people could not live in harmony or peace. Gentlemen, I dare say you have all heard of the ancients—of the noble Romans, and the noble Greeks—and if I can show you that those men who gave laws to Grecian and Roman learning, who shhie conspicu¬ ously on the page of history, whose eloquence thrills our souls, and whose actions we cannot read of, without thinking that they were rather gods than men ; if I can show you that some of the best of these men were disbelievers in aU the religions then taught ; and, further, that they believed in no religion at all, that many of them were put to death for their opinions, and that their example is now looked up to, as among the most glorious of the world ; if I can make aU this appear, I trust I shaU make it out that I am as good a man, and one as little disposed to do evil, as any of you sitting in that box. Gentlemen, I shall read to you something of the opinions of these men from a book, known as Stanley's " History of Philosophy and I shaU show you, from this, that such men as Thaïes, Epicurus, Zeno, Aristotle, and Socrates, who did not know anything of the Christian religion, because it was not then in existence ; and who, moreover, knew nothing, or cared nothing, about the Jewish religion—for the Jews were an insignificant and a despised race ; I shall show you, I say, that these men, notwithstanding that they were thus destitute of what you deem to be the true religion, were, nevertheless, most moral, patriotic, and excel¬ lent men. The ancient philosophers, gentlemen, had one philosophy for them¬ selves, and another for the vulgar. Gibbon, speaking in reference to this, said that the ancient religions were thought, by the vulgar, to be equaUy true ; by the philosophers, to he equaUy false ; and by the magis¬ trates, to be equaUy useful. Nor do we want modern authority upon this subject. Lord Brougham said, in the course of his inauguration 35 speech at the university of Glasgow, some years since, that the time had at length arrived, when it bad gone forth throughout the land, that it would be as absurd to persecute men for the form of their creed, as for the height of their stature, or for the colour of their hair. Gentlemen, let me now proceed to the review of these ancient philosophers. " Thaïes being demanded what God was," says Clemens Alexandrinus, " gave an equivocal reply." It would have been safer for him to chime in with the vulgar opinion. Being demanded what was most strong, that same philosopher answered, " Necessity, for it rules all the world." Aristotle, who was dignified with the title of Prince of Philosophers, and who gave laws to modern learning, was acknowledged to be one of the finest intellects whom Greece produced—a man to whom all the world looks up with reverence. Gentlemen, you will be anxious to know whether this Aristotle dared to entertain the doctrine of the eternity of matter. Aristotle taught publicly, and was at last banished from Greece, or was obliged to leave it, and travel about from place to place, in order to avoid the consequences of what they, in his days, called his impiety ; for he was then considered, what I am now considered—an impious man ; he was, in short, an Atheist, for all men who contend for the eternity of matter, are Atheists. Aristotle maintained that the world is eternal; and further, that. The race of gods and man is one. From nature both alike begun. You see, therefore, that a man may be a good man, and extensively useful to society, although he dissent from all the rest of the world in his religious opinions. In point of fact, gentlemen, it is seen from all past history, that in almost all countries, the common people have been, as they now are, plunged in error. Look at Spain, in the present day, for example, and what do you there see? You see, only in a grosser and more striking form, a specimen of the popular mind almost every, where, as superstition has prevailed. And do you not also see, that the philosophers amongst them are compelled, by the force of popular opinion, to hide behind the thick veil of hypocrisy, the opinions they really hold ? Let me read to you a few sentiments from the founder of the Stoic sect. Zeno, speaking of Fate, says, '■'■Jupiter is Fate, for Jupiter is first, next Nature, then Fate. They call Fate a concatenation of causes ; that is, an order and connexion which cannot be transgressed. Fate is a cause depending on laws, an ordering by laws, or a reason by which the world is ordered." Fate is, according to Zeno, " the motive power of matter, disposing so and so, not much differing from Nature and Providence." He means, that matter acts in some way of which we know nothing, only seeing its effects. And that he calls Fate. Else¬ where he says, " The substance of God is the whole world and hea¬ ven God is an operative, artificial fire, methodically ordering and effecting the generation of the world, comprehending in himself all prolific reason, by which everything is produced according to Fate." Gentlemen, the learned counsel said, in reference to a passage in the Oracle of Reason, that I had spoken of the universe being an effect. It is a great pity, that when the learned gentleman wandered so far from his legitimate object, he did not wander to some purpose. But he did wander ; and he laid to my charge a false opinion. In fact, I would say, of what he imputed to me generally, that his argument would have 36 been veïy well, if it had but been true. The learned gentleman said that I had stated the universe to be an effect. I stated no such thing ; I merely put forward what Zeno, Aristotle, and others had put forth; namely, that there must be something not produced ; and that that something was the miiverse. I never said that the universe was an effect ; it was other people who said that. What I said was, that there must be something not produced ; and that that something was the universe. If I ever uttered the nonsense which the learned counsel has thought fit to impute to me, there is good reason for you to think me a fool, whether you punish me or not. Gentlemen, that same Zeno, who speaks of Fate moving everything, taught admirable moral precepts. Zeno belonged to a sect remarkable for its austerity ; a sect which taught that virtue was to be attained only by resisting temptations to evil, and by sustaining all sorts of sufferings with patience. So far, in fact, did they carry this doctrine, as to main¬ tain that men, by a patient submission to suflfering, might become lovers of pain. One or two of this philosopher's moral precepts I will read :— " Stretching out the fingers of his right hand, he said, such is phantasy; then contracting them a little, such is assent ; then closing them quite, and shutting his fist, such is comprehension ; then putting to it his left hand, and shutting it close and hard, such (saith he) is science, of which none is capable hut a wise man.'" You perceive that he spoke of science last, and with his clenched fists ; and said, at the same time, that none but wise men were capable of science. Gentlemen, I must now read to you a few of the moral principles pro¬ mulgated by Thales, whose religious opinions I have already stated. His moral precepts are thus delivered by Demetrius Phalereus. " If thou art a surety, loss is nigh. Be equally mindful of friends, present and absent. Study not to beautify thy face, but thy mind. Enrich not thyself by unjust means. Let not any words fall from thee which may accuse thee to him who hath committed anything in trust to thee. Cherish thy parents. Entertain not evil. What thou bestowest on thy parents thou shalt receive from thy children in thy old age. It is hard to understand well. The sweetest thing is to enjoy our desire. Idleness is troublesome, intemperance hurtful ; ignorance intolerable. Learn and teach better things. Be not idle, though rich. To avoid envy, be not pitiable. Use moderation. Believe not all. If a governor, rule thyself." Gentlemen, I wish to show you that these men, although Atheists, pro¬ mulgated great moral principles—principles equally useful to individuals and society. The sentiments I have now read to you are of great value ; and they will be received by you, I have no doubt, as being of such. In like manner, Solon—Solon the wise—who is said to have been skil¬ ful in that kind of learning that establishes a state—said many fine moral things. Of his apothegms, Laertius recites thus : " Speech is the image of action. He is a king who has power. Laws are like cobwebs which entangle the lesser sort; the greater break through. Those who are in favour- with princes resemble counters used in casting accounts, which sometimes stand for a great number, some- 37 times for a lesser; so those are sometimes honoured, sometimes cast down." Solon defined the happy to he those " who are competently furnished with outwards things, act honestly, and live temperately." " Cherish thy friend," he observes, " reverence thy parents. Make reason thy guide." Epicurus, Gentleman, wrote the following sentences, amongst others, on the being and providence of God. He said, " I think it may not be ill argued thus : Either God would take away ills, and cannot : or he can and will not ; or he neither will nor can ; or he both will and can. If he could and cannot, he is impotent, and consequently not God ; if he can and will not, envious, which is equally contrary to God's nature ; if he neither wiU nor can, he is both envious and impotent, and conse¬ quently not God ; if he both will and can, which only agrees with God, whence then are the ills ? Or, why does he not take them away ?" But, listen to the moral teaching of this same Epicurus. Observe, gentlemen, what valuable and salutary principles he promulgates and inculcates on society. He says, " It is, therefore, worth our pams, by the benefit of this philosophy, (which treats of the £nd and of Felicity,) to cleanse and mend our heart, that it may be satisfied with a little, and be pleased in the enjoy¬ ing ; we must philosophise not for show, hut seriously ; for it is requi¬ site, not that we seem sound, hut that we he sound. We must philoso¬ phise forthwith, and not defer it to the morrow ; for even to-day it concerns us to live happily, and it is a mischief of folly that it always begins to lice, or defers to begin, but in the mean time it liveth never. A strange thing it is ! We hace heen horn once, we cannot he horn twice, and .Age must hace an end ; yet thou, O man, though the mor¬ row he not in thy power, in confidence of licing to-morrow, puttest thyself off to the future, and losest the present. So men's lices waste ruith delay ; and hence it is, that some of us die in the midst of busi¬ ness. Every man leaves the world as if he had but newly entered it ; and, therefore, old men are upbraided with infancy, because, as if employed in business that concerns them not, they do not take notice that they live ; and so their whole life passeth away without the benefit of life. Let ns endeavour so to live, that we may not repent of the time past; and so enjoy the present, as if the morrow nothing concerned us. He most sweetly attains the morrow, who least needs or desires the morrow ; and that hour overtakes a man most welcome, whereof he had framed to himself the least hope. And since it is troublesome to begin life, let life be always to us, as it were, perfect and absolute, and as if there wanted nothing to its measure. The life of a fool is unpleasant— it is timorous—it is wholly carried on to the future ; let us endeavour that ours be pleasant, secure, not only present, but even now settled in safety." The philosophers of old, gentlemen, as I have aheady intimated to you, held the religions of Greece and Rome to have been phantasies ; as we know them to have been ; though it was sometimes very dangerous to express that opinion. In consideration for you, gentlemen of the jury, and his lordship, I will not proceed further in this argument ; suffice it to say, that I could cite a score of the most gigantic intellects, who, if ever men were, were 38 a law unto themselves, who held that men could be happy, only by acting virtuously and promoting the happiness of others. Is it not madness, gentlemen, to be persecuting each other, on account of opinions, when our true business is to be assisting each other—to love mercy, do justly, and to make on earth that Paradise which religion teaches is to come after death ? Surely, a knowledge of truth cannot diminish our reward after death. If there be a God in heaven, he must, assuredly, love truth and sincerity ; and if I were called to his bar at this hour, I could conscientiously lay my hand upon my heart, and sayj that I never wilfully inflicted pain upon a human creature—told a de¬ liberate falsehood—or did anything that could be injurious to a fellow- being. Therefore, when I am appealed to, to consider the consequences of my opinions, I cannot faü to notice that the appeal is generally made by half-witted people. Gentlemen, you will generally find that those who talk about the bad consequences of certain opinions, like the light well enough for themselves ; the darkness they want is darkness for the people. But, as the late WiUiam Cobbett said, " what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander;" and I will prove to you, before I con¬ clude, that it is your highest interest to protect me, and all other men, in the free exercise and expression of opinion. My opinions may be bad, but if you persecute me, the remedy is worse than the disease ; and if you consign me to a dungeon, I shall speak far more eloquently from my dungeon walls than I ever did from a rostrum. The people of this country now begin to read. Knowledge is no longer locked up in the cabinets of princes ; it takes the road of itself ; and, gentlemen, we should not now legislate, or otherwise act, as if we were living in the fifth or the tenth century of the Christian era. The time has come when opinions should be freely expressed ; if wrong, they should be refuted ; and, surely, there are enough to answer every objection that may be devised against the Christian religion. We pay a clergy, and in no niggardly way ; and for what do we pay them, if not to keep men's minds from being contaminated with error, by a full and convincing exhibition of the truth ? What moral right have you to dictate what my opinions shall be ? I say, what moral right, for I cannot but distinguish between brute power and moral influence. Gentlemen, the learned counsel said, that there was no such thing as absolute independence. I agree with him. A man might as well expect to be independent of the wind that blows, of the food he eats, or of the ground he walks upon, as of his fellow-creatures. We are aU com¬ pelled, from our very nature, to be dependent upon each other, and upon social arrangements. But this is the very best reason why you should not persecute me. How do you educate your children? By locking them up, and keeping them as ignorant as brutes ; or, by en¬ lightening their minds ? But, gentlemen, how do you enfighten their minds, but by exercising their reason ? And if they should chance to entertain different opinions from your own, after you have taught them to think and to reason, would you for that hand them over to the strong arm of the law ? I, gentlemen, like yourselves, was bom in this Protestant country, and my first notions were the prevailing ones. Gentlemen, if I am at present in error, it is involuntary error, as you will see when I state to you the siinple fact that operated a change in my opinions. In the neighbourhood in which I resided when a youth, there lived an excellent 39 gentleman, who, finding me to be fond of reading, and given to thinking, was in the habit of lending me books. Upon one occasion, he lent me a volume of the works of a man with whose name you are, no doubt, all familiar—a man of great learning, and more than common eloquence—I mean the great writer Timothy Dwight. This gentleman, as I have said béfore, lent me a volume of Dwight's Theology, a great storehouse of divinity, equally popular in this country and America. I read it with deep interest ; and this very book, which was intended to explain, to illustrate, and to enforce the Christian religion, was the book that made me an Atheist. In that book I found a powerfully written passage on the awful sin of blaspheming God ; and, in order to impress the heinous nature of the sin more strongly upon the minds of his readers, the theolo¬ gian reminded the blasphemer, that he received from, and was dependent upon the Almighty for the very power by which he^ committed the sin. I read this, and a feeling, like an electric shock, struck through my frame ; aU my thoughts and feelings underwent a change, and I became, involuntarily and without any choice of my own, what I now am—an Atheist. Gentlemen, I ask you, after this, whether you have any right to send me to a dungeon for holding those opinions which were thus forced upon me ? " How vain," said Dwight " must be aU resistance to God, for the very desire and power to resist him must all proceed from Him." That was the assertion that first led me to scepticism, and rdti- mately to the settling down into those opinions which I now believe to be true, and necessary to be known by the bulk of mankind, in order that they may be made moral and, consequently, happy. The other points touched upon by the leanred counsel will come under review as I proceed with my own defence. I shall endeavour to show that the opinions he is desirous of spreading, with regard to my views, although they may serve his present purpose, are not accordant with common sense or common justice. But, gentlemen, I will now call your attention to principles ; and I do this because every man has principles of some kind or other, as every nation has principles of some kind or other. By principles, I mean conclusions of the mind. For example, you are of opinion that the Christian religion is a pure and a divine [religion, and that it is necessary to be believed in by individuals, in order that they may enjoy immortal bhss. This is a conclusion of your reason. I also have my principles, which are these ; that if we could show to men that they would get more happiness by doing good than by doing evil—as aU men love pleasure, and abhor pain—they would do good, and avoid evil. No one of you can love pain, or abhor pleasure, and therefore, if you were convinced of the truth of what I say, and took a wrong course, you would take it from ignorance, and not^from design. Gentlemen, it is the principle of most engaged in trade, that They should take who have the powei'. And they should keep who can. That is the general principle upon which such men act; and it can scarcely be otherwise, in our present state of antagonism ; and while I agree with the prosecutors, that in dealing with such a state of society, it is impossible to deal with it as if it were a perfect State, I, neverthe¬ less, maintain, that, with the increase of knowledge, there will be an increase of the means of human happiness. Well, then, you have prin¬ ciples, and I have principles, and I feel much pleasure in being able 40 to read, from some publications which have recently made a great noise in the world—I mean Tracts for the Times—a passage on the force of principle. It is in page 77, and is to the following effect : " The effect of a principle is, for the most part, subtle and imper¬ ceptible in its operations, but exceedingly powerful. A proof of this may be seen in the circumstance, that in times of any great excitement, when systems are broken up and principles set affoat, the animosity and zeal on behalf of opinions becomes such as to counterbalance any other consideration whatever ; and forms bonds of xmion or causes of differ¬ ence the most violent, from an instinctive sense which nature has given us of the power and value of principle. Slight and unimportant as the point in dispute may be, it is often of more might than the choicest external connections or apparent advantages." Gentlemen, the history of the last half century, more especially, has proved to us how dangerous it is for a people to be without principle— how dangerous it is to suddenly emancipate a people from the yoke and curse of superstition—how dangerous it is to give to a people who are without principle, and who have long been bowed down under the yoke of superstition, political power, without a previous preparation for its exercise. The fkct is, that governments have not done their duty in times past, and the consequence is, that the people have been induced, at various times, and in various countries, to rise in a mass to overthrow the government, and cover the country with devastation and ruin. Let it never be forgotten, however, that all this is the consequence of governments having neglected to perform their duty. Gentlemen, I hold in my hand a book, written by a Eoman Catholic— the Eev. Dr. Wiseman; and I may say, that if any book could have convinced me of the necessity for an authority to preside over the notions of men, this is that book. The argument is so lucidly set forth, and the charity with which he treats the subject is so obvious, that but few who are not weU grounded in reason, can resist his conclusions. I say this the more freely, gentlemen, because it has been said, that I cannot endure anything that is opposed to my own opinions. The introductory paragraph of this book states, that, " The fundamental principle of protestantism is this, that the word of God alone is the true standard and rule of faith. But, to arrive at this, there is a long course of complicated and severe inquiry. You must, step by step, have satisfied yourselves, not merely of the existence of a revelation ; but, that that revelation is really confided to man in these very books ; that these books have been handed down with such testi¬ monials of their authority, that it is impossible for you to doubt that they are the word of God ; that they have been given to you in such a state, that the originals have been so preserved, that the translations have been so made, that you are confident, that in reading them, you are reading those words which the Spirit of God dictated to prophets and apostles ; that you have acquired, or that you possess, some particular lights which are necessary to you, to be able to understand these books ; you must be satisfied, not merely that it (the Bible) has been given as the word of God ; but you must meet the innumerable and complicated difficulties which are brought by others against the inspiration of parti¬ cular books, or individual passages : so that you can say, that you are of 41 yourselves, of your own knowledge and experience, internally convinced, that you have in that book the inspired word of God, in the first place ; and, in the second, that you are not only authorised, but competent, to understand it For, you will observe, that the grounds on which a great many—I will say, almost the quarter part of those who differ from us—profess their rehgion, are grounds, as I have said before, rather of adherence, than of conviction. It will be observed, that those which lead to the first, do not necessarily, lead to the latter ; that is to say, that a person may be all his life a member of a protestant church, without once taking the pains to examine, in the serious, and minute, and difficult method which is required, all the doctrines which he beheves ; he may possess, therefore, those principles which keep him in communion with that church, without his ever being led by them to the adoption of that course which they imply, as fundamental to his religion. Not only so; but I will say, that the first is contradictory to the second; for, if any man tells me, that he remains a protestant, simply because he has been so born and educated ; that, because of the account which he has heard in sermons, or which he has read in books, he is satisfied that no other sect of Christianity has any grounds to go upon—I reply to him at once, that he is acting in direct contradiction to the principles whereby alone his religion allows him to be convinced ; for conviction, according to that, must be based upon individual research, upon indi¬ vidual inquiry ; and not merely, therefore, upon having been born in it, or having been educated in it by others ; not in having heard certain doctrines delivered from pulpits, by men as fallible as himself; and, cer¬ tainly, still more, not by having heard the doctrines of others represented in a manner which, I have no hesitation in saying, is almost always incorrect, and often such as to deserve perhaps a harsher name." Here, then, we have the protestant rule of faith, which is, that the Bible is the true and only word of God. Protestants do not admit that there are traditions—they do not believe that anything has been added to the bible—they do not believe that the Eomish church, or any other chm'ch, is the depository of interpretation. But mark what Dr. Wise¬ man states, and that truly, that to have our rule of faith, or, in order to be true protestants, we must examine the Bible—search into it—ask what is really God's word—how much of it is Apocryphal, and how much of it truly sacred ; and, gentlemen, I should like to ask you, how you can do that, without the free use of your reason? You may say, that we should examine the Bible in the true spirit ; that is, examine it, fully impressed with a conviction, that the Bible, and the Bible only, is the true word of God. But, gentlemen, you must not deceive yourselves. When we examine the Bible, we must use our reason, and that will bring us to this conclusion, that it is our reason that must determine our faith. When a man says " I have founded my faith on the Bible," I say that he ought to say, if indeed he has founded his faith on anything, that he has founded his faith on reason. Nay, the advocates of popery them¬ selves argued that Eomanism, when looked into, was reasonable enough ; and that if men thought it to be wrong, it was only because their reason was wrong. They said that a man had no right to set up his individual reason against the aggregate reason of the chureh ; which reason, more¬ over, had been given to tbe church by Jesus Christ himself. So it appears, that every protestant is expected to inquire what the Bible 4t contains—to separate the wheat from the chaff ; for, gentlemen, a whilö ago there was a great deal of chaff—a great many books allowed by the church to be forgeries—a great many mistranslations—a great many false readings,—a great many errors, in fact, of almost every conceiv- áble kind. And, gentlemen, let me remind you of this fact, that if what I have now stated, had been'stated some time ago, the man stating it, would have been prosecuted for so doing. Now, however, the fact is acknowledged by the church itself. Gentlemen, I have given you cathoHc authority, but I do not want pro¬ testant authority for the argument I am now addressing to you. I have the authority of Bishop Bevekiîjge, a most learned and orthodox minister of the Church of England, who, in his Private Thoughts, writes as foUows : " The reason of this my inquiry is, not that I am in the least dis¬ satisfied with that religion I have already embraced ; but, because it is natural for all men to have an over-bearing opinion and esteem for that particular religion they are born and bred up in. That, therefore, I may not seem biassed by the prejudice of education, I am resolved to prove and examine them all, that I may see and hold fast that which is best. For, though I do not in the least question, but that I shall, upon inquiry, find the Christian religion to be the only true religion in the world, yet I cannot say it is, imless I find it, upon good grounds, to be so indeed. For, to profess myself a Christian, and believe that Christians are only in the right, because my forefathers were so, is no more than the heathens and Mahometans have to say for themselves. To be a Christian, only upon the grounds of birth and education, is all one, as if I were a Turk or a heathen ; for, if I had been born amongst them, I should have had the same reason for their religion as now I have for my own ; the pre¬ mises are the same, though the conclusion be never so difierent. It is still upon the same grounds that I profess religion, though it be another religion which I profess upon these grounds. So that I can see but very little différence between a Turk by profession, and a Christian only by education ; which commonly is the means and occasion, but ought by no means, to be the ground of any religion." It is properly said, by Dr. Wiseman, that the ground upon which you, supposing you to be Protestants, adhere to your religion, and the grounds upon which you adopted your religion, are two distinct things. Suppose a man to be born at Constantinople ; he is a Turk in all essentials, by birth. He never examined into the grounds of his religion, but took it upon trust, as thousands in this country have always done. They have never taken the pains to search into the grounds of their religion ; never, in fact, had good reason for professing Christianity, any more than they had for professing Heathenism, or Mahommedanism. In short, they have taken their opinions, as I said, upon trust, and they think it criminal to examine into the groimds, or reasons, upon which they rest. And, further, if they find others who are not so indolent, or irrational, as they are, they fall to persecuting them. Gentlemen, I trust that your verdict upon this occasion, will, at once and for ever, put an end to this ; for it wants but one honest jury to do so. Dr. Wiseman has asked this question— " Now my brethren, allow me to ask you, how many of those who 43 profess the Protestant religion, have made this examination? HoVtmany can say, that they have satisfied themselves, in the first places that the canon of Scripture put into their hands, or the collection of sacred truths which we call the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, really consists of genuine authentic works ; that it is completedj arid excludes none which have a claim to an equal position ?" There is another passage, which T will trouble you with. He says " We are to Suppose, then, that God gave his holy word to be the only rule of faith to all men ; it must be a rule, therefore, easy to be procured, easy to be understood. God himself must have made the necessary provisions, that all men should have the rule, that they should be able to apply it. And what then does he do ? He gives us a large volume, written chiefly in two languages—One kno'vra to a small limited portion of the world only ; he allows that language to become a dead tongue, so that innumerable difficulties and obscurities shall spring up regarding the meaning of almost every word used in it ; he gives the other, also, in a tongue peculiar to a larger portion of the world, but a very small fragment of it, compared with the extent of those to whom the blessings of Christianity were intended to be communicated. And he gives it us, then, as the satisfactory and sufficient rule. He expects, therefore, in the first place, that it must be translated into all languages, that all men may have access to it ; he means, in the second place, that it should be so distributed, that all men should have possession of it ; and, in the third plaee, that it should be so easy that all men can use it. Are these the characteristics of that rule ? Do you suppose that it is to be the rule to all men who believe in Christ ; that consequently it has to be ti-ans- lated into every language ? Now, perhaps, you are not aware of the difiiculties of this undertaking; you are not aware, that wherever the attempt, almost, has been made, it has, in the first instance, failed ; that, after repeated attempts, it still has proved unsatisfactory. Had I time, or were it at all necessary, to enter into detail, I couldjshow you, from the very Eeports of the Bible Society, from the acknowledgment of its mem¬ bers, that many versions, after having been diffused and extended to a certain degree among a number of the community intended to he con¬ verted to the faith, have been obliged to be withdrawn, on account of the absurdities, on account of the impieties, and on account of the innumerable inaccuracies which they contain." If this had been written by an Infidel, it could not have had the force it must have, in coming from one who is acknowledged to be a learned man, and a shhiing ornament of the Catholic church. His authority is good authority, whether Catholic or Protestant, because he has paid special attention to all that relates to the Bible. The object of his book is to show that the Protestant principle, for which our forefathers fought and bled, is bad ; his object is to prove that the Protestant church is based upon a false principle ; none of you would think of going to him with the attorney-general; and of putting him down by force ; although he attacks all you hold to be sacred. He maintains that the right of private judgment is fruitful of all sorts of errors, and vices, and miseries; aridj further, that unless you are inducted into the Cathofic church, there is no salvation for you here or hereafter. You cannot agree with that, and you say that you would rather lay down your lives in defence of your 44 xeligion, than surrender up your reason and judgment in the way he demands. You believe that as Protestants you have a right, individually, to examine the Scriptures ; Dr. Wiseman, however, ridicules the idea. He says that, in former times, it was held í)y philosophers that man was a microcosm ; he adds that our modern teachers would make man a little church in himself; and he maintains that both are wrong. He asks, how should a chair-maker, a carpenter, a tailor, or such like persons, be able to understand these matters ? He asserts that what is called the Bible, teems with inaccuracies—spurious readings, interpolations, false trans¬ lations, and similar errors. He says, that we had it in two languages which are unknown to most men ; and if so, how, he asks, shall they be able to compare the translation with the originals? You see, then, my friends, that you, after all, are obliged to base yom- faith on the trans¬ lations of others, which translations, as Dr. Wiseman asserts, teem with inaccuracies. But he also insists upon what I insist ; namely, that if God has given a rule of faith to man, it seems only reasonable to suppose that that rule of faith should be clear and obvious. To suppose it otherwise, is to attribute to God a notion that will be repudiated by all present. Dr. Wiseman's remarks are the pivot, therefore, upon which all turns. You are Protestants ; you maintain that you have a right to examine the Bible. But have not I an equal right ? And if I examine the Bible, have I not the same right that you have, to get my rule of faith there ? But you say, I reject the Bible altogether. Well; but I take all I find to he true there, as I do from every other book—as I should from the Koran. I would seize upon truth wherever I found it, whether upon Christian or upon Heathen ground. I should separate the wheat from the chaff, the reasonable from the unreasonable, the useful from the useless. Gentlemen, there is another thing I wish to impress upon your minds ; it is this. Suppose that you twelve were to go to Constantinople, and preach to the Turks, impressed with a conviction that it was good, and also your duty, to teach the Christian religion, as the Jesuits of old, prepared to lay down your lives for the gospel. You must think, as I think, that it would be grossly unjust for the Turkish goverment to thrust you into dungeons, in consequence of what you did. You may say, that Christians have a right to go there or any where else to expound their opinions ; hut, gentlemen, this question of right must be looked at, in all points of view. History proves, that attempting to put down opinions by force, tends only to strengthen and invigorate opinions. If left to itself error will fall, from its own intrinsic weakness. Depend upon it, that the best way to fortify the mind against error is to give it a good education ; as the best way to guard against sedition is to make the people happy. If, then, you demand the right to examine the Scriptures, and to express your opinions thereupon, upon what principle of justice can you deny to me the same right ? I spoke of the necessity of giving to authority that which belongs to authority ; but I would not give to it one tittle more ; and I would much rather have appealed to the authority of common sense, than to the authority of any man's opinion. But you will see it necessary that I should refer to authorities, from which you will not dissent, to show you that the position I take is the position that they, also, take. I do not mean, gentlemen, to set myself up as a great reformer, but I mean to say that the persons to whom I now refer, acted upon precisely the same 45 principles that I am acting upon, and that in persecuting them, your fore¬ fathers acted only the same part that you will act, if you consent to perse¬ cute me. If you do not imderstand that, you do not understand your own principle—that is, the principle of Protestantism ; or, understanding it, you will fail to act upon it. The first extract upon this point, that I wish to read, is from the Christian Reformer, and it is to the following effect; " In all but religion, men know their true interests, and use their own understandings. Nobody takes anything on trust at market; nor would anybody do so at churcb, if there was but a hundredth part the care for truth which there is for money." That, my friends, is a pithy extract, and I will say, with the writer, that if men, generally cared as much for truth as for money, there would be no prosecutions for blasphemy. Gentlemen, all these prosecutions have their origin in the spirit fostered in a false state of society ; they are instituted that certain opinions may be bolstered up, for the profit of men who are more long-sighted than their neighbours. GenÜemeu, I will give you a passage from Bishop Porteus, who says, " Always observe this rule : stick to common sense against the world ; and whenever a man would persuade you of anything evidently contrary to it, never be moved by his tricks and fetches of sophistry, let him use ever so many." The next authority, gentlemen, is Dr. Belsham, who was a most eloquent and learned minister of the Unitarians. Some of you may not think this authority very high authority ; but you should not fail to bear in mind, that the Unitarians are now a respectable sect. There was a time when men holding Unitarian opinions were persecuted, as Dr. Priestly, to wit ; but it is no longer so, and Unitarian authority is now considered to be of great weight. Belsham, gentlemen, undoubtedly stands in the first class of Unitarian writers, and now, listen to what he says.— " Let us begin with the Old Testament. Is the canon, or exact num¬ ber of books, which constitute this inspired volume, clearly ascertained? It is on the authority of the Jews that we receive it; but even they are not unanimous. The Samaritan Jews, like the ancient Sadducees, reject aU but the Pentateuch. The Apocrypha is received by the Catholics, but is rejected by the Protestants. The Canticles also have been rejected by Whiston, and Jonah and Daniel by Eickhorn, Aikin, &c., as ' legends and romances.' Ten entire books are excluded by the Swedenborgians ; and, in the laws of Moses, ' what is genuine bears but a small proportion to what is spurious.' " Campbell says, " So negligent have the Jews been in the preservation of their sacred books, that many of them are irrecoverably lost." This is, indeed, matter for grave reflection. We are told that some Christian sects reject ten entire books ; and you will perceive that this is one consequence of admitting the principle of the right of private judg¬ ment. Yes, gentlemen, and I shall have to show you, that you will have to choose between Puseyism and Romanism, and Complete Religious 46 Liberty. It is laid down as a principle by these authorities, that certain: persons are entrusted with the sacred books, to explain them for us ; and that we are not allowed to do this for ourselves. " What de- pendence," it is asked, " can be placed upon the Old Testainent? But little indeed," says the orthodox Bellamy, 'iif our. Hebrew Scriptures are not now as pure as when they were given to the inspired writers." But where are the inspired originals to be seen ? Nowhere! They have aU been lost, nobody knows when, " but it is supposed," says Haetwell Hokne, " in the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar." The difficulties, you see, which beset the examination of the subjeçt are great, indeed ; and you perceive that all these authorities agree that there are these many and complicated difficulties to overcome. But, my friends, although there are these difficulties, which, to overcome, call for inquiiy, examination, and comparison, that is no reason, say those who adopt the Protestant principle, why we should not attempt it—that is no reason why we should surrender up our judgment to others, and not think for ourselves at aU. A Protestant will say, we should use the reason that God has given us. This is the language of orthodox Pro¬ testantism ; and although I might not use the same language, I would promulgate the same opinion. Man's superiority lies ip. his power of grasping truth, and in acting upon it. If he has not this to boast of, he has little to boast of above the inferior creatures. I must read one or two more authorities to show on what a slender thread your faith in particular books depends. If you take but one tithe the pains that I have taken, at the sacrifice of what the world calls happi¬ ness—as recreation, sleep, and so forth—in reading these books, you will agree with me, that all the truth is not to be found in them, and that aU is not truth, moreover, that is found in them ; and, further, that if you want aU the truth, you must go to nature, from whence truth springs, as from an inexhaustible fountain. Truth itself is eternal ; and each suc¬ cessive age gets more truth than preceding ages could have.—But let me proceed : " Of the author of the Pentateuch, nothing positive is known. Sir Isaac Newton, and Lord Barrington, conjecture that it was compiled by Samuel; Dr. Geddes, by Solomon; and others, by Ezra, after the Babylonish captivity. In the books of the Old Testament, we ha,Ve abundant proofs that it was written in an age posterior to that of Moses." " That the early part of Genesis is a compilation of ancient documents, and not the writing of Moses, has been the opinion of some of the most able divines and sincere believers," says the Eev. W. J. Fox.—(June, 1819.) Yet it is on this part that the doctrine of the faU of man, and, consequently, the whole scheme of redemption, are founded. Recent geological discoveries prove that the Mosaic account of the flood, and of all that preceded it, as the seven days' creation, must be false, or else an allegory or parable. What then is to become of the fall of man, there recorded? " a figurative fall, requiring a figurative redemption,"— says the Eev. H. Home. That, gentlemen, was written by a Christian critic, in his closet—not for party purposes, or to excite the multitude, but for the purpose of edification. Yet, we are here told, that the account of the fall of man is an allegory—^that is, a fable; and he legitimately says, that a figurative 47 fall requires a figm-ative redemption. And, my friends, some of the early ' saints' have written to show that the greater part of what is written in the Bible is allegorical—^that we must look for a hidden sense, and not take the mere words, as they stand in the book. And, gentlemen, many reasons might be adduced to show that Chkist himself (supposing that what is written of him is true,) spoke in parables—and you aU know that parables are dark sayings—that is, he used words that were imder- stood by the wise, but which were incomprehensible by the common people ; acting upon the principle he himself laid down—" Cast not your pearls before swine." He conveyed wisdom to the wise ; but he so enveloped it in an outer covering, that while it was perfectly trans¬ parent to those who could see, it was undiscernible to those who could not. If I err, therefore, I err on the Protestant prmciple. That is my opinion. No man is infallible. Show me a man who so sets himself up, and I will show you a man who is not in his right senses, upon one point, at all events, for all history shows that men have been wrong, upon some point or other. All I contend for, is that you should combat opinion with opinion. Make your laws as strong as you please to restrain acts ; make them good, and they will be respected. The only way to make men truly moral is to make them reasonable. If you do this, they will be well founded in the principles of morality ; and they wiU never depart from them in their practice. Gentlemen, I will next call your attention to a short paragraph in the Rev. George Hamilton's Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures : " We know that the Jews never were, and indeed, never could be, accounted historians, as their frequent dispensions and prosecutions must have destroyed all authentic documents, and prevented their preserving any faithful tradition of even the most remarkable events." The following occurs in Dr. John Tavlor's Tracts.— " Every dispensation of God must be consistent with what he has actually discovered to us in the nature of things, and the certain deduc¬ tions of reason from them." So, you perceive, that there can be nothing in that which is divine, that contradicts your reason. One truth never can oppose another truth. Truth must ever be consistent, not only with itself, but with every other truth. Tell me a truth in mathematics, and I can bring no other truth, either from the heavens above, or the earth beneath, that win be in opposition to it. Well, then, enlightened reason can never bring down divine revelation—if there be such a thing. Morris says, " It is impossible that anything should be theologically true which is philosophically false." If you admit that, you admit everything. If you admit that what is philosophically true, cannot be theologically false, then you must admit that true religion cannot suffer by the promulgation of philosophy. And here I would take the liberty to call your attention to what fell from the Rev. Francis Close, at a meeting held at Cheltenham, not long since. He said, that " the more a man is advanced in human knowledge, the more is he opposed to religion, and the more deadly enemy he is to the truth of God." Gentlemen, I cannot conceive of anything more vicious than that—anything tending to give such a stab to every kind of religion, 48 as that assertion. For if it is to be believed, that we must give up all knowledge, in order to become religious, there are very few,' I hope and' believe, who wiU be willing to do it. Knowledge may be a bad anchor of safety ; but it is our only one ; and it is to that we owe our science and arts—our social and political advancement. I repeat, therefore, that those who affirm, that the more we advance in knowledge, the more opposed we are to religion, do more to injure the church and the cause of religion, than all the infidels in the world could effect. And this reminds me of what was once said by a well known minister,—that if the church should ever be destroyed, it would be, not by infidels, but by those connected with her. Yes, gentlemen, you will find that the church suffers more from its injudicious friends, that from its worst enemies. Well may it exclaim—" Save me from my friends!" What¬ ever judges may decree, or parliaments enact, it is clear that no power on earth can keep back knowledge. Knowledge will sweep on as civilisation will progress. The arts and sciences are of that character, that it is impossible for any human fiat to say, " Thus far shalt thou goj and no farther." Truly may it be said, " The dove has gone forth from the ark, never to return." Gentlemen, I will read to you another passage from the Kev. Francis Close. He says, " I know I tread on tender ground ; but I am sorry to see a sort of coquetting on the part of the church with human know¬ ledge and philosophy. It is a leprosy infecting true religion, and pollutes the garb of the church." When Berkeley mentioned at a public meeting what Close had said, it was received with hissing and groaning. The good sense of the people saw at once its fallaciousness. Some two or three more pithy extracts remain, gentlemen, in this little book I am quoting from—an excellent little book, the title of which is Theology Displayed ; and I must trouble you with them : " In the Hebrew Scriptures," says Dr. Geddes, " are many beauties and excellent precepts ; but there are many things in great abundance, which I can neither admire nor admit, without renouncing common sense, and superseding reason—a sacrifice which I am not disposed to make for any writing in the world." Bishop Van Mildeet says, " Reason is not a competent judge of the wisdom and fitness of what is revealed. What God reveals, must |be consistent with rectitude and fitness ; and reason has henceforth nothing to do, but to believe and obey." I say that we deceive ourselves if we pretend that we receive any book as " revealed," without exercising our reason upon it. What would you think of a man who said he believed in the Bible, without having ever read a single line of it ? What woiild you say of a man who said the same thing, without having ever heard of the Bible before? Why, gentlemen, you would say to him—" Either you are a madman or a hypocrite." Before a man can believe, he must" have reasons for his belief. He must first believe that the Bible is a revelation; and he must have some good reason for that, or his belief is not worth the havino-. Can you believe that God, who watches over the welfare of his creatures, is better pleased with the sacrifices of an ignorant people than with the sincere convictions of those who do not believe in the Bible ? If there be a power that brought me into existence—that caused the grass to grow—that placed the planets in the heavens—and that orders all other 49 things in the universe—it must be a power having wisdom and intelli¬ gence ; and if it have real intelligence, it can never find fault with me, for exercising the intelligence which itself has given me. Our believing or not believing necessarily depends upon things which are wholly beyond our control. "We are certain," says Bishop Williams, "that if a revelation fails in a consonancy to the principles of nature, or to the true and certain notions of mankind concerning good and evil, it is false, and not of divine inspiration. For, these things are from God ; and to suppose a revelation to be opposite to them, is to make him contradict himself." Gentlemen, my next quotation is from Locke, whose work on the Human Understanding has done more than almost any other book for the advancement of moral philosophy. The following is from that great authority : " I find that every sect, as far as reason will help them, gladly use it ; but when it fails them, they cry out, it is matter of faith and above reason." So that he is of opinion, that men of all sects and creeds will use reason, as far as it is necessary for their purpose, that when it is not necessary for their purpose to use reason, they then take refuge in faith ; and in this sense, faith may be called the refuge for the destitute—that is, for men who are destitute of real knowledge. You don't say, " I be¬ lieve the candle is burning." You hnom it; and you only say 7 when you do not know it. And yet it is lamentable, that you are more angry when that is called in question which you only helieve, than you are when that is caRed in question which you hnom. Gentlemen, if any one of you, who is acquainted with the matter, should describe to a person the component parts of ñame, he would, in all probability,! exhibit much scepticism upon the subject ; and although you might laugh at him, you would not cast him into prison. You might pity him, as you do a cripple, whether of mind or body ; and, gentlemen, you act upon this principle, that where Nature has done little, you will do more ; but if you do this in regard to the body, should you not do it in regard to the mind ? If it be a inisfortune to have a crooked body, is it not a greater misfortune to have a crooked mind ? But then, a man can no more help the one than the other. I contend, therefore, that there should be no such thing as prosecutions of this nature ; and I repeat what I have already said, that by prosecuting opinions, be they what they may, you succeed only in giving them greater currency. If you were Christians, you wordd act upon the principle of Jesus ; you would remember his saying, that " whoso taketh the sword, shaU perish by the sword ;" you would remember that Christianity first sprung up and flourished mider persecu¬ tion ; you would remember, in the history of all the sects down to our own times, that each of them flourished as it was persecuted, while many others, not subjected to the same treatment, perished. Gentlemen, I hold in my hand a work of great repute ; the Lectures on Rhetoric and BeRes-lettres, by Dr. Hugh Blair, a great authority in the church and the universities, and, indeed, with most men, even with those called Infidels. Dr. Blair, gentlemen, points out some of the difficulties which Protestants have in carrying out their principle, and shows very clearly that those difficulties are to be overcome only by severe study, and the exercise of reason. The extracts, to which I am about to call £ 50 your attention, treat of the formatioti of language, and they sjiow that the Bible abounds, in the language of passion and imagination ; in other words that it abounds in poetiy, which he has defined to be the language of passion and imagination, in contradistinction to prose, which is the language of reason and judgment. That you may have a clear view of the argument, let me begin with the following passage : " Supposing language to have a divine original, we cannot, however, suppose that a perfect system of it was all at once given to man. It is much more natural to think that God taught our first parents only such language as suited their present occasion ; leaving them, as he did iii other things, to enlarge and improve it, as their future necessities should require. Consequently, those first rudiments of speech must have been poor and narrow; and we are at full liberty to inquire in what manner^ and by what steps, language advanced to the state in which, we now find it." You perceive that Dr. Blair does not suppose, as many have suppose^ that God gave to man the gift of speech in perfection, as it is stated, in the book of Genesis. For my part, as I am led to think, and reálly believe, it must have been as Dr. Blair assumes. It seems to me, frorn the very nature of man, and his connection with other things, that the power of speech- was the result of exercise. Perhaps if was many ages before human beings could speak distinctly. We gradually learn to speak, and hear, and feel; we know with what difficulty infants and foreigners get h(jd of a language. It is thprefore but reasonable to think that human language must, at first, have been exceedingly imperfect, little better, perhaps, than the snorting of a horse, or the chattering of à monkey, J Language, as we now find it, is the consequence of human asso¬ ciation, only. To a considerable extent, no doubt, the first language must have been a language of signs, in fact, if you refer to the history of savage nations, even in modern times, you will find it to be their prac¬ tice to express themselves, in very many cases, m the language of signs. It is the utility of language that developes its capabilities, in the same way as the utility of the arts and sciences so admirably developes the genius of this country. ; Gentlemen, Dr. Blair, this high authority that I am now quoting to you, thus speaks upon this point : " Language in its infaiicy, must have been extremely barren ; and there certainly was a period, among all nations, when conversation was carried on by very few words, intermixed with many exclamations and earnest gestures." " The style of all the most early languages, among nations who are in the first and rude period of society, is found, without exception, to be full of figures ; hyperbolical and picturesque in a high degree. We have a striking instance of this in the American languages, which are known by the most authentic accounts to be figurative to excess." Again, he says, " Another remarkable instance is, the style of the Qld Testament, which is carried on by allusions to sensible objects. Iniquity, or guilt, is expressed by ' a spotted garment ;' misery, by ' drinking the cup of astonishment vain pursuits, by ' feeding on ashes.;' a sinful Ijfe, by ' a 51 crooked path prosperity, by ' the caudle of the Lord shining on our head;' and the like, in innumerable instances. Hence we have been accustomed to call this style, the Oriental Style ; as fancying it to be peculiar to the nations of the East ; whereas, from the American style, and from many other ingfcances, it plainly appears not to have been pecu¬ liar^ to a,ny one region or climate; but to have been common to all nations, in certain periods of society and language." Elsewhere he says, " It is, generally speaking, among the'most ancient authors, that we are to look for the most striking instances of the sublime. I am inclined to think that the early ages of the world, and the rude unimproved state of society, are peculiarly favourable to the strong emotions of sublimity. The genius of men is then much turned to admiration and astonishment. Meeting with many objects, to them new and strange, their imagination IS kept glowing, and their passions are often raised to the utmost. They think, and express themselves boldly, and without restraint. In the pro¬ gress of society, the genius and manners of men midergo a change more favourable to accuracy, than to strength or sublimity." Gentlemen, I have a right to apply that reasoning to the Bible. I know that the Catholic church would stop me short, and say, "you have no right to reason ; your reason is to be founded on the church ; yoii have no right to dictate to the church, but to learn from the church." But, gentlemen, we are Protestants, and it is our duty to act as Dr. Blair acted. I say that according to this reasoning, it must appear that the Bible, even among such men as Dr. Blair, caimot be above all criticism. It is criticism that caused many of the passages to be expunged ; it is criticism that led to the better translation of other passages. ; Gentlemen, you have heard that Dr. Blair speaks of the imperfection of language, and that, supposing it to have had a divine original, it was nevertheless imperfect ; that it grew with civilization, and strengthened with its strength ; for " language in its infancy must have been extremely barren." And here I would say, that it would not be a bad thing, if we had less of language and more of good sense. The North American Indians say that we are " much book and little knowledge ;" and I think, that if we had more knowledge and less book, we should be happier thair we are. In that case, we should be less likely to be distracted by a multiplicity of opinions. There is groat force in what Dr. Pusey says, that if the Bible is conceived of as the word of the great Jehovah, then we must act upon the principle of reserve, and not throw it into the hands of common people. One of two things is necessary in reference to the Bible ; either it ought not to be read at all, or it should be read: by men of intelligent minds—by those who can undertake a critical analysis of what they read, and not by those who are likely to be cor¬ rupted by what they may read. The Bible contains many things that shoidd be read only by an instmcted mind. To be read with profit, it should be read by a philosophic mind—a mind divested of those feel¬ ings which are engendered by a corrupt state of society. If wé read the Bible as a book of splendid diction and of sdbhme language—if we read and inwardly digest such things, and cast aside that which is not pure^ and calculated to mislead weak minds, then I say that we should do weB. The truth is, that Pusey and those who think with him have never been 52 answered on that point. The people must be better educated than they have been, or it will be dangerous to let them seek thek rule of faith in the scriptures. Dr. Blair, gentlemen, further says, " It was not necessity alone that gave rise^o this figurative style. Other circumstances also, at the commencement of language, contributed to it. In the infancy of all societies, men are much under the dominion of imagination and passion. They are unacquainted with the course of things; they are, every day, meeting with men and strange objeçts. Fear and surprise, wonder and astonishment, are their most frequent passions. Their language will necessarily partake of this character of their nmids. They will be prone to exaggeration and hyperbole. They will be given to describe everything with the strongest colours and most vehement expressions ; infinitely more than men living in the advanced and cultivated periods of society, when' their imagination is more chastened, and their passions are more tamed, and a wider experience has rendered the objects of life more familiar to them. Even the man¬ ner in which I before showed that the first tribes of men uttered their words, would have considerable infiuence on their style. Wherever strong exclamations, tones, and gestures, enter much into conversation, the imagination is always more exercised ; a greater effort of fancy and passion is excited. Consequently, the fancy, kept awake and rendered more sprightly by this mode of utterance, operates upon style, and enlivens it more." As an instance of the singular slyle of the North American nations, Blair gives the following conversation which occurred between the chiefs of the five nations of Canada, and the representatives of Great Britain, when a treaty of peace was agreed upon between them ;— "We are happy in having buried under ground the red axe, that has so often been dyed with the blood of our brethren. Now, in this fort, we inter the axe, and plant the tree of peace. We plant a tree, whose top will reach the sun ; and its branches spread abroad, so that it shall be seen afar off. May its growth never be stifled and choked ; but may it shade both your comitry and our's with it leaves ! Let us make fast it roots, and extend them to the utmost of your colo¬ nies. If the French should come to shake this tree, we should know it by the motion of its roots reaching into our country. May the Great Spirit allow us to rest in tranquility upon our mats, and never again dig up the axe to cut down the tree of peace ! Let the earth be trod hard over it, where it is buried. Let a strong stream run under the pit, to wash the evil away out of our sight and remem¬ brance. The fire that had long burned in Albany is extinguished. The bloody bed is washed clean, and the tears are wiped from our eyes. We now renew the covenant chain of friendship. Let it be kept bright and clean as silver, and not.' suffered to contract any rust. Let not any one pull away his aim from it." Such is the specimen furnished of the North American Indian style of speech ; and, in many points, it may be said to resemble the style of the Jewish scriptures. There is in the Bible a constant usé of tropes, metaphors, and other figurative modes of speech ; and that is what characterises all infant languages. 53 Gentlemen, I have written very harshly about the Bible, which I have called "The Jew Book." It is enough, that at present you under¬ stand that this book has been reviewed and criticised by men of the church, and has been stated by them to abound in figures of speech, tropes, and similes ; and to be in great part, moreover, the language of passion and imagination. And I need not remark, that the language of passion and imagination is not that which should direct us in the sober matters of life ; for, as Dr. Blair says, after speaking on the character of the languages of Judea: " So strong is that impression of life which is made upon us, by the more magnificent and striking objects of nature especially, that I doubt not, in the least, of this having been one cause of the multipli¬ cation of divinities in the heathen world. The belief of dryads and naiads, of the genius of the wood, and the god of the river, among men of lively imaginations, in the early ages of the world, easily arose from this turn of mind. When their favourite aural objects had often been animated in their fancy, it was an an easy transition, to attribute to them some real divinity, some unseen power or genius which inhabited them, or in some peculiar manner belonged to them. Imagination was highly gratified, by thus gaining somewhat to rest upon with more stability; and when belief coincided so much with imagination, very slight causes, would be sufficient to establish it." This leads us to infer, that when the imagination is excited and the passion is strong, men are not by any means in so good a condition to establish truth, or to establish systems of religion, as when the mind is more sober. Indeed, we have the best proof that the Jews were a highly imaginative people, in the denunciations of their prophets, in their pre¬ dictions of the coming of Christ, and in the denunciations of Christ himself. All must be aware that the Jews, especially after the Baby- Ionian captivity, fell into every conceivable species of enormity ; and that, as a consequence of this, they were doomed to be scattered, and to wander and be persecuted amongst men. I shall presently have to give you my conceptions—my honest convictions—as to what the Bible is ; and also my reason for writing " the Jew Book" article. But I wish to prepare the way, and the jury to understand. me, before I proceed to a matter of so much importance. I wish you to understand that, as Dr. Blair says, a great part of the language of the Old Testament is the language of passion and imagination. In fact, gentlemen. Dr. Blair makes a comparison between Milton and Shakspere, and the writers of the Old Testament. He says : " Among the ancients, we find higher conceptions, greater simplicity, more original fancy. Among the moderns, sometimes more art and correctness, but feebler exertions of genius. But, though this be a general mark of distinction between the ancients and moderns, yet, like all general observations, it must be understood with some exceptions ; for, in point of poetical and original genius, Milton and Shakspere are inferior to no poets in any age." Now, if that which is divine is in no way superior to that which is human, how are we to distinguish between them ? If a high authority tells me that there is often poetry in the Bible, but higher poetry in Milton and Shakspere, that staggers my faith. I should have.supposed 54 that a divine work would have beeii perfection, incomparable, unimprov¬ able. If it be the language of divinity, it must surely excel all human language, and cannot be improved by human means. Dr. Blair says, that " amongst the ancients, we find higher conceptions, greater sim¬ plicity more original fancy ; among the moderns, sometimes more art and correctness, but feebler exertions of genius." tji • c Gentlemen, yon have as much right to run a tilt at Dr. Blair, for thus criticising the Bible, as you have to run a tilt at me. I will now read to you a passage from a profane poet ; and I do not think that you can find, from Genesis to Revelation, a more beautiful or sublime composition ; I say a more beautiful or sublime composition, for I acknowledge that there is much that is beautiful and sublime in the Bible, it is a translation from the Iliad, and is made by Pope. This is it : Now, through the trembling shores Minerva calls, And now she thunders from the Grecian walls, Mars hov'ring o'er his Troy, his terror shrouds In gloomy tempests, and a night of clouds ; Now through each Trojan heart he fury pours. With voice divine, from Ilion's topmost towers— Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls. And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles. Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground, The forests wave, the mountains nod around ; Through all her summits tremble Ida's woods. And from their sources boil her hundred floods. Troy's turrets totter on the rocking plain. And the toss'd navies beat the heaving main. Deep in the dismal region of the dead, Th' infernal monarch rear'd his horrid head. Leapt from his throne, lest Neptune's arms should lay His dark dominions open to the day ; And pour in light on Pluto's drear abodes, Abhorr'd by men, and dreadful ev'n to gods : Such wars th' immortals wage ; such horrors rend The world's vast concave, when the gods contend, I said, that as a specimen of truly poetic composition, there is no single passage that can be said to excel that. But this, as a poetic com¬ position, is innoxious; it is perfectly harmless, to read it as poetry; but suppose you put the book out of which it is to be taken, into the hands of your children, and teach them that these gods and god¬ desses literally existed, and were occupied as they are here represented to be; that Minerva, Neptune, and Pluto were, one shouting out, the other shaking the earth, and the third, leaping from his throne with affright, lest Neptune should lay his dark domininions open to mortal eye. If these things were taught, then, you perceive, that a very differ¬ ent result would be produced. To read it as poetry, I get pleasure from it ; but not so, if I read it as prose. I know that Plato and other wise men have maintained that it would be better if there were no poetry at all ; but that is not what I am arguing. Mr. Smith rose and said, he thought it right, after four hours and a half argument of this description, to interfere, and ask if any limit was to be put to the scope which the defendant took ? He took in a large inass of wholly irrelevant matter ; and what he was now arguing had really nothing to do with his defence. o & 33 ,TRe E,EfiOED-EK agreed with the learned counsel. He could not see Vhat a dissertation on poetry had to do with the defence of the defendant. Mr. Southwell said he woidd not wilhngly trespass upon the tinle of ■the court, and he would not, have taken this course, if he had not Jïelievéd that it had an immediáte or remote hearing on his defence. He eould easily understand why the learned counsel for the prosecution should be .in a hurry. The Eecorder said he begged to remarie, that he did not think the learned counsel had been in any hurry ; nor had the court been. It was ¡the duty of counsel, where a diffusive subject was entered upon, which hád no apparent relation to the question before tbe court, to interfere, as the learned counsel had done here. ' Defendant.—I thank you, my lord : I am always gla'd to be set right, ■I was endeavouring to show what I conceived to be a valuable fact ; namely, that Dr. Blair, a veiy high authority among Christians, has critically examined the Scriptures, and has declared that which I have read to you, and which Strongly bears upon my case. And if what he lias stated be correct, I am justified in proceeding, on the ground that the Bible is a fair subject ibr criticism. If I can show that, then I have as much right to criticise the Bible as he has ; and I think I am not wast¬ ing the time of the jury or of the court, in ' attempting to show that. I shall, however, be as brief as possible, consistently with making an efficient defence. í Dr. Blair says, " I need not spend many words in showing, that among the books of the Old Testament there is such an apparent diversity in style as suffi¬ ciently discovers, which of them are to be considered as poetical, and 'which as prose, compositions. While the historical books, and legislative writings of MoseS, are evidently prosaic in the composition, the book of Job, the Psalms of David, the Sorig of Solomon, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, a great part of the prophetical writings, and several passages scattered occasionally through the historical books, early most plain and distinguishing marks of poetic writing." " So much, gentlemen, byway of authority in support of the proposition I have laid down as, to the character of the Old Testament books. You will find them to be of much importance as we proceed. I am very anxious to dissipate, what I hope to prove, a prejudice which is now hanging over the public mind, with regard to the manner in which I seem to have treated the Jewish péople, in the article Set forth in the indictment. I have spoken of them as a nation of vagabonds. I have treated them as murderers ; and in the Scripture history I am fully borne out. It Will there be found that the Jews were literally a wander¬ ing people. But I wish to call your attention to the fact, that I have not the slightest hostility to Jew or Gentile ; and in speaking of the Jews as I did, I did it to enlighten the public mind ; I did it to teach them that the Jewish people mas hut a people, although they always supposed that they were the peculiar people of a God ; and that their books mere hut hooks, although they always supposed them to be divine books—books written by the finger of a God. It almost always happens that each nation thinks itself the wisest of all nations. The Jews did this ki. com- . mon with almost all other .people. I do not put forward this opinion rashly, or without examination, as to the results which might be produoed. I believe that no course Of conduct is warrantable, which is taken without 56 regard to the happiness of society, and I wish you to understand that I am armed with authorities to show that learned men who have travelled in the East, believed the Jews to be a comparatively modern race, and not the most ancient people on the earth. It has been shown that they obtained the bulk of their knowledge from the Egyptians ; and these, again, from the Assyrians. Gentlemen, I would shake no man's preju¬ dices, if I did not believe that to do so was for the good of all. Let me now read to you a passage from Volney : " According to Manetho,|' the ancestors of the Jewish people were a mixture of men of different casts, even of those of the Egyptian priests, who for impurity, for canonical pollutions, and especially for the leprosy, were, by order of an oracle, expelled from Egypt by a king named Amenoph.' The Jewish books are not in contradiction with this account, when they say (in Exodus) that many of the common people and strangers followed the house of Israel ; the reiterated ordinances of Leviticus against the leprosy, prove that all these diseases prevailed. Another reproach of impurity from an Egyptian, is the pastoral life ; and the Jews avow that they were pastors ; Manetho values their number at eighty thousand, who, from the environs of Pelusium, went into Judea to Hierusalem." 1 In another place, he says, " It is probable that the Jewish nation owes its origin to a first little tribe of Chaldean origin, since the Chaldean idiom continued to be its language. As to the positive dates, since the Jews themselves were unable to give them ; since they show themselves, on the contrary, totally ignorant of the whole period of their stay, and of the çtate of Egypt at their departure, we must content ourselves by those pointed out to us by reasoning ; but let us not neglect remarking before we end this article, that it will be always very extraordinary to see the author of Genesis, whoever he was, affecting to be so well informed of so many minutions details concerning Abram, Jacob, and Joseph, while he is so ignorant of all that concerns the residence in Egypt, the emigration under Moses, and the wandering life of the desert, until the moment of crossing the Jordan: this is contrary to any probable state of monuments: and this confirms us in the opinion already expressed, to wit, that the materials of Genesis are entirely foreign to the Jews, and are an artificial compound of Chaldean legends, in which the allegorical genius of the Arabs repre¬ sented the history of the astronomical personages of the calendar under anthropomorphical forms." That Volney is not orthodox, I know ; but that fact cannot impeach his learning, nor affect the agency of his reasoning upon these historical matters. The same writer says, when speaking critically of the books of the Jews, " Now, we repeat it, any impartial-reader who attentively peruses these different narrations, vague, unconnected, and having no date, will acknow¬ ledge them to be the work of different authors ; who very probably were neither witnesses of, nor contemporary with, the events, but compiled them afterwards, from popular traditions ; that at a later period a com¬ piler, equally unknown, selected these scraps, and composed the confused mass called the Book of Judges The general results presented by the writer, of the state of the nation during all the period of the Judges, are an additional proof of his having written late, çonse- 57 quently more than four hundred years after Joshua, and at least one hundred after the confused events that preceded the judicature of Eli. Now, we ask on what documents, after, what monuments, could he have written ? what archives, what annals, could he possess ? If he had any, why is everything so vague and so confused ? To answer these questions, we must consider that all the space of time, called 'the period of the Judges, was spent in a stormy and violent anarchy, during which the Hebrews, as ferocious and superstitious as the Wahabees, never ceased to be agitated by civil or foreign wars ; we must consider that this small nation, divided into independent and jealous tribes, subdivided into families equally independent, was a turbulent democracy of armed peasants, stirred up rather than governed by ambitious Brahmins and inspired fanatics : that in those times of perpetual wars and ignorance resulting from them, the art of writing unencouraged, unestcemed, was difficult and rare, and that the little instruction that existed was concen¬ trated in the families of the Levites ; that on account of this stormy, precarious life, no one had either leisure or an interest to investigate the past or futurity ; that,* therefore, no historical works could be composed : that, for want of a central government, there could exist no other public archives than the succession of the pontiffs. We must consider that it was not until David's reign that a system more regular, more tranquil, more fit for the culture of the mind, began to be formed : that then they had a chancery and archives, and could apply themselves to history : that then, and better under Solomon, inquiries might be made of the past ; and that, as at that time, nothing could be found or imagined better than what we have in the two works entitled Joshua and the Judges, we have a right to conclude—first, that no authentic and regular record had been composed; secondly, that the books of Joshua and the Judges are solely the literary productions of unknown writers, without any public authority, like the chronicles of our monks in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, in which they inserted relations entirely fabulous, amidst many historical facts." I have now said enough of the origin of the Jews. My opinion is, that they were a sort of compound or middle race or nation. In North America, we find that some of the tribes are sworn to exterminate all other triljes. But it is not always so ; and we find that there has been a sort of mixing up of various people—a sort of hotch-potch. That is my opinion of the Jews. I will now read to you a catalogue of books, at one time or other held to be— Kecordeu.—The jury has now been here nearly ten hours, and this trial has occupied six or seven hours ; and I can see no chance of the defence being concluded at any part of the night at which I could call upon the jury to consider of their verdict. Nor should it go on without the full attention of the jury and of myself being given to it. There is another thing which I have to attend to; namely, the defence of the defendant, for although I may think that many parts of what he has said have no connection with the defence, yet, whatever my private judgment may be, it does not belong to my office to lay down an arbi¬ trary rule. On these grounds I feel myself authorised to suggest to the jury, whether they do not, in the exercise of their duty, think that the time has arrived when they should ask the defendant's permission to 58 retire to rest, so that they may be able to come in the morning» with minds imfatigued tô attend to the rest of this very long defence. The jury having expressed their concurrence in his lordship's^sugges- tion, and the defendant offering no opposition, the recorder dismissed ■the jury for the night, reminding them of their duty to abstain from all discussion with other persons, upon the issue which they had to try ; and, at the same time, giving the defendant permission to retire from the bar, upon condition of his bail entering into fresh securities for his appearance on the following morning. The court was then cleared. SECOND DAY, Saturday, Jammry 15iä. At ten o'clock, the Recorder took his seat ; and the names of the jury were called over, and they were re-sworn. The court, as on the previous .day, was much crowded. Several of the city magistrates also were present. Silence having been obtained, the recorder called upon Mr. Southwell to proceed with his defence. The Defendant said, I shall seize upon the present opportmiity to observe, that I am not insensible to the kind consideration of his lordship and the jury, during the proceedings of yesterday ; and further, that I wish his lordship not ?to be offended at any expression which may have escaped from me ; for whatever my speculative opinions may be— whether good or bad—-I am not insensible to integrity, whether it be found in a peasant's hut, or on the judgment-seat. I was not prepared for any such consideration, and this has induced me to overlook my books, and see if I could not study the convenience of the court, by making my defence briefer, if possible. I wü1 now proceed ; and to put the matter in a fair train, I will state that, yesterday, I commenced by referring to what was stated in the opening address of the leai-ned counsel. I stated then, that at that stage of the proceedings I would merely glance at a few of the leading points which he advanced, and reserve myself for a fuller consideration of some of his remarks. I then passed on to a consideration of the rights and duties of jurymen ; and I am satisfied that matter so important as that was, cannot have escaped your recollection. I subsequently spoke on " principle," and I showed, by argument and by authority drawn from men well known in the religious world, and respected for their unfeigned piety (and I include both Catholic and Protestant in the remark), that as Protestants you have to find your rule of faith in the scriptures ; but that, as Catholics, you have to find your mle of faith in the church, said to have been established by Christ; and I said, as plainly as I could, that there was this distinction : that whereas the Catholic believes, and has full faith, that the church can do no wrong—that the church is infallible —and that, at the sacrament of baptism there was a grace infused into him, so that when the truth is placed before him, by the church, he is enabled, 69 by that grace or faith, to believe whatever»that church máy teach representing this as the condition of the Catholic, I passed oh, to place in juxta-position with it the principle of the Protestant, who prides him¬ self on the "right of private judgment. If you are sincere Protestants, you will be ready to lay down your lives in defence of that which appears to you, and which appears to me, to be the only sacred principle of action. I am now about to proceed with the main body of the argument. It is necessary here, as in agriculture, to turn up the ground before we sow the seed ; and, having accomplished that, I shall now go on to put in the seed which I think necessary for my purpose. You will remember that, upon the high authority of Doctor Blair, I showed that the Bible is an ancient book, and that it has faults—very great faults—^in common with all other ancient books ; that it was Written at a period when language was narrow or confined, because men's ideas were narrow or confined. Ideas .give birth to language, not language to ideas ; language is invented because men want to give expression to their ideas. It is, therefore, obvious that Dr. Blair wiU justify me in my conclusion; for I sustain it by his authority, as well as by my own reasonings. In fact, gentlemen, I could bring authorities by the score ; but it is not necessary : the common sense of every gentleman in that box will make it clear to him, that if Dr. Blair put forward such a theory, as to the formation, growth, and imperfection of language, as I have shown ^oU that he did, I have as much right to pass my opinion upon the subject, and to apply that opinion to the Bible, as he had. Your lorship was kind enough to adjourn the court yesterday, just as I was about to read a catalogue that I have transcribed from Du Pin, on the Canon—a very scarce work, which I could not bring into court, but which I have faithfully copied—showing A TABLE or' TUB CANONICAL AND APOCRYPHAL BOOKS WHICH BELONG TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. Boolcs nom considered Canonical hy Jems and Christians. The five Books of Moses. The Book of Joshua. The Book of Judges. The Book of Samuel, or the first and second Books of Kings. The third and fourth Books of :Kings. Isaiah. Jeremiah. Ezekiel. The Twelve Minor Prophets. The Book of Job. The Hundred and Tifty Psalms. The Proverbs of Solomon. The Ecclesiastes. The Can¬ ticles. Daniel. The Chronicles. Esdras, divided into two Books. Books received as Canonical hy some Jems, and rejected ly others. Esther. Ruth. Books exclttded the Jewish Canon, and reckoned as Apocryphal by some of the ancient Christians, hut allowed as Canonical, of late, hy the Church of Borne. Baruch. Tobit. Judith. The Book of Wisdom. Ecclesiasticus. The Two Books of the Maccabees. The Song of the three Children in the fiery furnace. The History of Susanna. The History of Bell and the Dragon, Books lost, cited in the Old Testament. The Book of the Wars of the Lord, Numbers xxi. 4. The Book of 60 the Covenant, Exodus xxi\t 7. The Book of Jasher or the Upright, Joshua X. 13; 2 Samuel i. 18. The Books of Nathan, Gad, Shemaiah, Iddo, Ahijah, and Jehu, Chronicles. The Chronicles of the Acts of the Kings of Judah and Israel, cited in the Book of Kings. The History of the Kings of Judah and Israel, cited in the Chronicles. The Book of Samuel, cited in Chronicles xxix. 29. The Acts of Uzziah, mentioned in 2 Chronicles xxvi. 22. Three thousand Proverbs of Solomon, men¬ tioned 1 Kings iv. 32. A Thousand and Five Songs, mentioned ibid. Several other volumes, by the same author, mentioned ibid. The Pro¬ phecy of Jeremiah, torn in pieces by Jehoiakim, cited Jeremiah xxxvi. Another Prophecy of his upon the city of Babylon, mentioned Jeremiah li. Memoirs or Descriptions of the same author, mentioned 1 Macca¬ bees ii. The Prophecy of Jonah, mentioned in the Book of Jonah. The Memoirs of Hircaiius, mentioned I Maccabees. The Books of Jason, mentioned 2 Maccabees ii. BooTcs that are excluded the Canon ; though not apparently had. The Prayer of Manasseh, inserted in the Apocrypha. The third and fourth Book of Esdras, ibid. The third and fourth Book of Maccabees, in the Septuagint Bible. The Genealogy of Job, and his wife's Speech, at the end of the Greek text of the Book of Job. The One Hundred and Fifty-First Psalm, at the end of the Greek Psalms. A Discourse of King Solomon, at the end of the Book of Wisdom. The Preface before the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in the vulgar Latin and Greek text. Other Apocryphal Boohs of the same nature, which are lost. The Book of Enoch. The Book of Assumption of the Moses. The Assumption, Apocalypse or Secrets of Elias. The Secrets of Jeremiah. Boohs full of fables and errors, which are lost. The Generations, or the Creation of Adam. The Révélation of Adam. Of the Genealogy, or the Sons and Daughters of Adam. Cham's Book of Magic. A Treatise entitled Seth. The Assumption of Abraham. Jetsirah, or concerning the creation, ascribed to Abraham. The Book of the twelve Patriarchs. The Discourses of Jacob and Joseph. The Prophecy of Habbakkuk. A Collection of Prophecies of Ezekiel. The Prophecy of Eldad and Medad. The Treatise of Jannes and Jambres. The Book of King Og. Jacob's Ladder, and several other Tracts. A TABLE OF THE BOOK.S WHICH BELONG TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. Boohs owned as Canonical at all times, and by all Christians. ? The Four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Acts of the Apostles. Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul. The First Epistle of St. Peter. The First Epistle of St. John. Boohs questioned, but afterwards admitted by the Church as Canonical. The Epistle to the Hebrews. The Epistle of St. James. The Second Epistle of St. Peter. The Second and Third Epistles of St.-John. The Epistle of St. Jude. The Apocalypse or Eevelátions of St. John, which was a long time before it was admitted as Canopical. The end of the 61 last chapter of St, Matthew's Gospel. The History of the Angel and the agony of our Saviour related, Luke xxii. The History of the wo¬ man taken in adultery, related in the 8th chapter of St. John's Gospel. The end of St. John's Gospel. The passage concerning the Trinity, taken out of tlie 5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. John. Apocryphal roritings which are not full of errors. The Letter of Jesus Christ to Abgarus. The Letter of the Blessed Virgin. The Gospel according to the Egyptians. The Gospel according to the Hebrews. Additions to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, in the Cambridge manuscript. The Proto-Evangelium of St. James. The Gospel of Nicodemus. The ancient acts of Paul and Thecla. The Epistle of the Laodiceans. The Epistles of St. Paul to Seneca. The Epistle to St. Barnabas. The Liturgies of St. Peter. The Liturgies of St. Mark. The Liturgies of St. James. The Liturgies of St. Mat., thew. The Canons and Constitutions of the Apostles. The Treatise of Prochorus. The Books of St. Linus. The Treatise of Abdias. The Acts of the Passion of St. Andrew. Boohs full of errors, almost all of them lost. The Gospel of St. Peter. The Gospel of St. Thomas. The Gospel of St. Matthias. The Gospel of St. Bartholomew. The Gospel of St. Philip. The Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The Gospel of Thaddeus. The Gospel of Barnabas. The Gospel of Truth by the Valentinians. The Go.spel of Perfection by the Gnosticks. The Gospel of Eve by the Gnosticks. A Book concerning the infancy of Jesus Christ. A Treatise concerning the birth of our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and her Midwife. A Treatise concerning the Virgin's lying-in, and the questions she asked. A Treatise of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, cited by St. Jerome. The Apocryphal Treatise of the life of the Virgin, cited by St. Gregory Nyssene. Another Apocryphal Book on the Virgin, cited by Faustus. The writings of Jesus Christ about Miracles. The Acts of St. Peter. The Acts of St. Paul. The Acts of St. Andrew. The Acts of St. John. The Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of St. Philip. The Acts of St. Thomas. The Doctrine, Preachings, and Itinerary of St. Peter. The Bapture of St. Paul. The Memoirs of the Apostles. The Lots of the Apostles. The Itinerary of the Apostles. The Treatise concerning the Priesthood of Jesus Christ. The Apostolical Tract. The Treatise of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin. The Apocalypses or Eeve- lations of St. Peter. The Kevelations of St. Paul. The Eevelations of St. Thomas. The Eevelations of St. Stephen. The Eevelations of the Great Apostle. The Eevelations of Abraham. The Eevelations of Seth. The. Eevelations of N oriah. I have thus read to you a list of books which, at one time or other, were deemed sacred by a very large number of Christians ; and you will perceive from that list, that we have now only a portion—only a small portion—of the books that were some years ago considered to be divine. So that if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the books received as divine at the periods alluded to, were really divine, by cutting them off, we have cut off what has been properly called a moiety of inspira¬ tion. Now, it must appear to you to be something more than ludicrous, that God's word could be thus cut and backed about by human beings. 62 This shows to you how necessary it is, to he wary'and cautious, lest we fall into error by relying upon any kind of books too implicitely. It i? evident that books which in times past were held to'be sacred and divine, and for the defence of whiçfh thousands would have died, are now cast aside by us, as absurd, and worthy only of contempt, I will not dwell further on this, but proceed to other considerations, more especially those which were suggested to my mind in consequence of the course taken by the learned counsel ; and here allow me to say, that after a calm review of yesterday's proceedings, and weighing all thé chcumstances of the case, it gives me much pleasure to say, that he acted more the part of a man than of a mere lawyer. I feel much pleasure in saying this. What I mean to say, is, that when he proceeded to consider this question, he did not, to the same extent as others might have done, seek to inflame your passions and prejudices ; although I am also compelled to say, that he did that to some extent. He took, upon the whole, what may be called a philosophical review of my views ; at aU events, he. took a common sense, view of many of the questions in. the Oracle of Reason ; and I shall proceed now to expose what I conceive to be the errors into which he has fallen ; and if I can clearly and explicitly show that upon the topics he treated of, he did not understand the questions involved, and that he came to the conclusions of one but half informed ; if I can show to you, in short, that what he stated is not true —that is, that he did not convey to you just ideas—I shall then cut the ground from under him, and you will honourably acqmt me. Gentlemen, you may remember that he stated, amongst other things, or rather reiterated what I had stated in one of the Oracles ; namely^ that it was from the body of men called Socialists that I received what I called the Promethean touch that warmed me into public hfe. But he proceeded to say something not perfecly true ; namely, that I left that body because the members of it did not wish to go the same lengths that I did. Now, I wül proceed to show you that this is not true; that is, that in saying that, he did not convey to your minds an accurate idea. It is known to almost all of you, that the Socialists have certain definite objects; whether right or wrong, is not the question—I am not here to defend or to repudiate them. I am here simply to state the fact. What they call the fundamentals of their philosophy are these : that it is in the power of society, if it had the knowledge requisite thereto, greatly to improve its moral and physical condition ; that the character of every individual is a result, and that if we take judicious measures—in short, if we educate the people—we may improve them ; that, to make a nation happy, we should well employ and well educate its population. These they call their fundamental principles ; and they hold the position, that it is far better for men to co-operate together to" do good to each other, than, as now, all over the globe, to oppose and injm-e each other. I was a social missionary. It is a principle with them, that every individual should be free—that no one should dictate to another. That is the great and healthy principle on which all of them act. But, as a missionary,-ag an accredited agent of that society, I had many considerations which occupied my mind, for their purpose being to effect practical objects, I had to reflect whether I, who held certain speculative opinions which were not fashionable, and which it was dangerous to propose, but which I felt to be useful to society ; this being the case, I had to reflect, that if I remained a member of the social body, I had no right to give 63 utterence to my speculations, if they tended to injure the body. My opinions are "antagonist to all religions, and I think that mere morality is all-sufficient for human purposes ; but there are many conscientious Socialists who think otherwise. To use parliamentary language, the question of religion is, with the Socialists, an open question ; a,nd, as I would not compromise their interests, I resigned my mission, and took the course which has led me here. Therefore it is not because the Socialists did not go, or did not wish to go, the length I go ; but because I did not wish them to go those lengths, that I ceased to be a member of their body. So that, be it understood, the step that I took, I took with their concurrence, and that previously to that, they knew no more of my private speculations than you knew, and therefore they ought not to be held responsible for them. The learned counsel then proceeded to say, that my assumption has been shown in the description which I have given of myself in the Oracle of Reason ; in which I have stated that I was not as ready with my pen as with my tongue—that I was more accustomed to speaking than to writing, arid so forth. But the learned gentleman mistakes altogether the tenor of that passage. I agree, that of all prides which are abominable, that which apes humility is the worst. But I did not, in that passage, as any one who wiU take the text with the context will see, exhibit one particle of that assumption or presumption with which he charges me. And then yon wiU remember, he proceeded to sny, that although I gave »so bad a character of myself, 1 went on to promise that I would teach the truth without mystery, mixtiu'e of error, or fear of man. Gentlemen, I always promised to teach as much truth as I knew ; I never pretended that I had aU the truth ; but all that I did know I spoke, and all I db know I will continue to speak, without mystery, or mixture of error ;—and I think I have not displayed much fear of man. The learned counsel next proceeded to say, that the world—that is, the religious world distinguishes fanaticism from reasonable belief. Here it is necessary to say, that no one thinks himself a fanatic (at least there are but few, if any, who do so), although I called myself such, in the cause of philosophy. But it is necessary for you to know what I mean by the term fanatic, I mean simply this, a man who is an enthusiast, without adequate knowledge. Gentlemen, I am an enthusiast ; I have not a thousandth or a millionth part of the knowledge I wish to have, or which is necessary to carry out the object I have in view. But the knowledge I have, I wiU always employ honestly, and never, if I know it, will I speak an untruth. And the chaplain of your jail here, will bear me testimony, that, when in a cold cell he asked me my opinions, I told him honestly what they were. I challenge the whole world to say that I ever wantonly or wilfully deceived any one. But, gentlemen, there is another view to be taken of this part of the subject. It is this—all religionists call other religionists fanatics, if they are not' of the same religion as they are. That is the common vice, as experience proves ; men condemn all other men who do not think as they do ; and, as some French author has said, all men believe them¬ selves to be the wisest in the world, and that if we could search well into ourselves, we should come to the conclusion, that we think, as fai- as we go, we are the wisest of human beings ; that is, we think we have the whole truth. The error lies in not admitting that other men have even a Uttlç truth. I am prepared to say, that in all sects and parties, 64 political and religious, there are what are called truths ; and I will give a specimen of what I mean. I am not in politics a Tory, yet I believe that the Tories have a great truth in their keeping. The Tories—the educated Tories—^hold that the minority are morally superior to the majo¬ rity—they hold that to be a principle. I may not agree with them in the deductions they draw from their principle ; but my way is to take the principle or truth from every party—to collect all the mites or atoms together, and make, as it were, one great mountain of truth that may defy aU opposition. And, my friends, if we could do this, we should collect a great mass of happiness, also. The learned gentleman proceeded to say, that he advocates the entire right of opinion, and also the free expression of it, when it is not in¬ jurious or mischievous to society. But that is really laughable, for it amounts to this, that he advocates perfect liberty of opinion, so long as he thinks the opinions expressed are not injurious. He thinks what he pleases ; and he says, I'll give you the same liberty, so long as your opinions are not what I deem to be injurious to society. Why, do you not know that when martyrs were burnt in Smithfield, those who tor¬ tured and destroyed them, always spoke of the necessity of curbing the licentiousness of opinion? Yes, necessity is always the tyrant's plea ; so that the learned gentleman is liberal enough, hut only after the grant's fashion. He says he will let us express our opmions, so long as he does not think them injurious to society. Why, gentlemen, the very question to settle is this, why is he to set himself up as the judge—the infallible judge—of what is good or injurious to society? I deny that he has any right or authority to do so ; and, I for one, will not submit to his dictum. The learned counsel then proceeded to say that my intentions should be looked to, in the expression of my opinions ; and he asked, were they not subversive of all social order ? That is a great question ; and you are, it seems, to determine it. But who is thus to search men's hearts ? —who, in the opinion of the Christian, hut the great searcher of all hearts ? Who is to dive into the consciences of man ? Who is to pluck out the very heart of their mystery ? Who is to sit in judgment upon motives, and say, " This man is honest ; that man is dishonest?" Why, gentlemen, that is the way in which all the inquisitors of Spain and Italy proceeded. They used their own weights and scales to determine what the purity of men's motives was. But how would you like that mode of proceeding, if applied to yourselves? How would you like, if a change should take place—and if; may be even in your times, for the elements of the storm are gathering—to be placed as I am now, only because you held to your present opinions ? Gentlemen, are you safe, do you think ? Might there not be a junction formed between two parties in the state, which would throw power into the hands of those who would bear down every species of religious liberty ? If you consign me to a dungeon, with what face could you condemn those who might gain authority, and use their power as you do now ? How could you say to them—"I ought not to violate my conscience?" They might turn round and say—" What right had you to condemn Charles Southwell ? As you administered the law then, so do we now." A.nd then, with regard to what was said aboutmy opinions being noxious, mischievous, and injurious to society ; why, that is the common cant indulged in by all counsellors since prosecution began. They talk 65 aböut opinions injurious to society, and then try to alarm you about your property ; but they never tell you how dangerous and terrible it is to have an ignorant population. No, this they keep in the back ground ; they have but one song, and that is to the tune of " Danger ! Danger ! Beware of Innovation !" This, I repeat, is the common cant indulged in by all those men who have, in all times past, resorted to the law to put down freedom of opinion. When we hear of these opinions being- dangerous, and those opinions being dangerous, we cannot help thinking that if some of those now in local authority had their way, there would be very little sedition or blasphemy. No, gentlemen, they would cram your dungeons with victims, and your scaffolds would be again stream¬ ing with blood. Yes, there are men in authority; or who, if not in authority, would stand by those who are, and attempt to crush by brute force the rising spirit of liberty. If any of you happen to be Chartists, do you not know that the governing powers are opposed to all proceed¬ ings tending to enlighten the people, and that, if they could, they would put down every Chartist in existence ? This bears upon my case, for depend upon it—without any consideration as to the goodness or badness of the opinion—that unless you put a bit in Tyranny's mouth it will devour you all. The learned counsel said, that if a man asserts his own rights, he should respect the rights of others. When did I ever, by word or deed, violate tbe rights of others ? If he says, I write that which shocks his feelings, I say he writes that which shocks my feelings. If you say, I put my opinions forward in an objectionable style, I say the same thing of you ; and who is to decide between us ? I am sure that you, by your verdict, will give the proper answer to that question, and teach the learned gentleman, and those that are engaged with him, in an attempt to put down opinion, that though they may, for the time, profit by ignorance, this is a most dangerous game for them to play. It was asked, by the learned counsel, whetherwe are to limij the injury that may be done to society, to the employment of physical force ? I say, no ; and I say, that if it could be clearly shown that it is better to stifle inquiry and to crush opinion than -permit them, then, I should say you would be justified, on the principle of utility, in consigning me to a dun¬ geon. Bnt there is not yet a particle of evidence that I have propounded any opinions that are dangerous or injurious to society; and you are to give a verdict according to the evidence. It yet remains for the learned gentleman to show that it would be better for society, that you should consign me to a dnngeon, than to leave me to the enjoyment cf that liberty which is my right. I repeat what I before said, that if you havq a clergy receiving six millions a-year, it is the clergy's business so to act upon the public mind, as to render it impregnable to error—so to fortify it with truth, that error cannot enter it. Where is the fear"? As Milton eloquently expresses himself : " Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so that Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and pro¬ hibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter ? Her refuting is the best and surest prohibiting." Why do you not act in the spirit of wisdom which dictated this fine thought to the mind of Milton ? Because you fear that your system will not stand the test of examination, and think that the best way of arguing the question, is to send those F 66 who differ from you to the fagot or the prison. If you say that putting me in prison is not so bad as putting me on the fagot, I say that the man who would send me to prison, because I differ from him in opinion, acts upon the same principle as Bonner did, when, in Mary's reign, he consigned men to the fagot, because they were not true Protestants. The learned gentleman spoke of thieves and vagabonds—those poor creatures who are made thieves and vagabonds by a bad system, and are then punished by it, because they are thieves and vagabonds—he spoke of those poor creatures as not capable of being kept in order without the fear of hell being always before their eyes. But what would become of society, if its order rested upon the fear of heU-fire ? Why, gentle¬ men, it is the fear of the immediate punishment which the law denounces, that represses crime, and not the fear of an hereafter. It may be an ele¬ ment, but it must be an unimportant one, in the consideration of those who abstain from violating the laws of society, that there is some place of punishment to which men are amenable in the world to come. Yes ; we owe our safety to the efficacy of laws which, being rendered less cruel, day by day, and hour by hour, command, more and more, the moral feelings of society. The civilisation of nations may always be known by the condition or character of their laws. If a nation's laws are written in blood, be sure that the people are vicious and unhappy. If its laws are mild and merciful, then its people are comparatively happy. I need not add, that where law begins, libeity ends ; nevertheless, there must always be laws, unless, indeed, we may look forward to the period when men shall be a law unto themselves. The learned gentleman stated that the press required a curb, lest it should be made an instrument of wide-spread mischief. I have already alluded to the fallacy of this position ; it is just the sort of reason that can be urged by any man, when he wants to do a glaring wrong. He says, let the press be perfectly free ; but let it have a curb. Why, gentlemen, who ever heard of a free press with a curb ? No, gentle¬ men, if the learned counsel wishes to put down a corrupt press, it must be by means of a free press. This should weigh with you ; that if you want to put down bad opinions, it must be by the promulgation of good opinions. This is the difference between us : he is not content with his right to designate my opinions as bad, blasphemous, and wicked ; no, he must have me here, and not content, even with that, he now insists upon your sending me to prison. He says, "respect my right:" Ido; but he does not respect mine. Suppose this—suppose that a sufficient number— (and I have a right to suppose it, for there is nothing like the argu¬ mentum ad liominem, that is, bringing the matter home to ourselves,) suppose that a sufficient number of persons entertained the opinions that I entertain, to give them a preponderance of power in society, and that you were placed in this dock, before twelve men agreeing with me in opinion, would you suppose it just or a right application of power—a right action in principle—if those twelve men were to proceed to condemn you, and to punish you for then holding the opinions which you now hold ? Do you feel that they would be justified, as moral men, or upon any other ground, in torturing you, because you could not believe as they believed ? And, my friends, this might happen—the disbelievers might get the power. Bear this in mind, and do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. If you do this, I know what ver¬ dict you will give—an unanimous one of not guilty. 67 The learned gentleman has made one great admission, and I would call your attention to it. He has said that God requires no human tribunals to vindicate his cause. Agreed. And he has further said, that although God requires no such vindication of his cause, we are, never¬ theless, justified in publicly expressing our abhorrence of these opinions. Agreed again. He has a right to express his abhorrence of these opinions. Let him express that abhorrence to his heart's content. He may expatiate upon the evils which would result to society from the adoption of my opinions ; but do not fail to bear this in mind, that ex¬ pression is one thing, and persecution another. He has a right to declare my opinions to be bad, but it is another thing to torture my body, be¬ cause I hold those opinions. Let him, then, consider, that while I grant that he should to the full have—as every man should have—the right to express his abhorrence, or his acquiescence in any opinion, he has no right to use carnal weapons, when he should use spiritual ones. If God requires no human tribunal to vindicate his cause—surely, when the name of God is thus introduced, it must amount to something like blasphemy, if there can be such a thing ; for it is the name of God put forth to furnish something like a rational reason for consigning me to a dungeon, and did I believe in a God, I could not believe that he loved to torture any one of bis creatures ;—but the learned counsel says, the almighty does not require human tribunals to vindicate his cause— Hecorder.—Defendant, it is my duty to stop you, and to state to you, that the statement upon which you remark was not the statement of the learned coimsel, but of one of the most learned and exemplary judges that ever sat upon the bench—Mr. Justice Ashurst. The learned gentle¬ man did not use the name of God as a basis on which any human judg¬ ment is to be built, and I will not allow you to go on with such an argument. Defendaht.—I thought, my lord, that the learned gentleman, having adopted the argument, left me at fidl liberty to comment upon it. Recorder.—What fell from him was an extract from the address of Mr. Justice Ashurst. Defendant.—^Your lordship says it is not legitimate for me to pro¬ ceed in this course. I was not aware that there was anything wrong in what I was saying. I spoke with emphasis, and perhaps with some degree of warmth ; but I do not know that I said anything that was derogatory either to the court, or to the character of Mr. Justice Ashurst. As your lordship, however, has said that you camiot allow me to pursue this argument, I will pass it over, for I am not desirous of saying any¬ thing that may outrage the feelings of any man. The learned gentleman stated, that we spoke now—^meaning the Chris¬ tian world—under the sanction of an oath, but that a denial of religion, or of the existence of a God, would destroy this, that is, the sanction of an oath. I will venture to assert that it will be a very excellent thing for society, when fewer oaths are taken, and fewer violated, than at present. My opinion is, that a man's word, without an oath, should be his bond. A simple yea, or nay, should in all cases—and it would in a healthy state of society—be as binding upon him who used it as an oath. It may be true, therefore, that the prevalence of my opinions would tend to destroy the sacredness of an oath ; but it would not tend to destroy the word of an honest man. Gentlemen, I will venture to say that you are acquainted 68 with men who, should they swear, even by all sorts of oaths, would not obtain credit with you ; whereas, you know other men of such a high sense of morahty, that, if they only said such a thing shall be, they would induce you to repose upon it, with as much confidence as if it were done. I have many friends, who, like myself, are without the fear of future punishment ; yet, if they tell me anything, I always rely upon them better than I can upon myself. If this be acknowledged, it leads to very important considerations. If it be acknowledged that there are good moral men, who are not moved by the principle of fear, but of love—men who discharge the legitimate duties of humanity, then you have to consider, that although religion may sometimes be important, it is not essential in a commonwealth. Let me take an example, that of the noble and truth-loving Regulus, who preferred truth and duty to liberty and life. You recollect, no doubt, that while Regulus, after having been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, was lying in his dungeon, the Car¬ thaginian authorities, wishing to establish peace with the Romans, set him at liberty, and sent him on a mission to Rome, promising him that if he prevailed upon the Roman people not to continue the war, his life should be spared. Regulus went to Rome, but his love of truth, and his love of country, impelled him to urge upon the Romans the necessity of prosecuting the war with increased vigour ; and, having succeeded in this, he returned to Carthage. He had tacitly accepted his liberty, upon a condition which was incompatible with the love of his country, and he preferred to die rather than forfeit his word. Thus perished Regulus, not a Christian, but a moralist. He died, rather than tell a lie. Would you take fifty oath-takers' words, rather than the word of Regulus ? The learned counsel, after stating that the sacredness of an oath would be destroyed by allowing such opinions as mine to be freely circulated, seemed suddenly to remember that there was a Quaker in the jury-box—a man belonging to a sect which suffered much more than I can suffer for con- science-sake—who refused, conscientiously, to take an oath. And there is not an enlightened Quaker in existence who does not know that the sys¬ tem of oath-taking is an abomination, and refuses to submit toit, because, in addition to this, it is prohibited in Scripture. And, if I may say so much, I would remind the jury of the men, aye, and of the women, whom they have seen during the sitting of this court taking oaths in that witness-box, and ask them, where is the sacredness of an oath ? You have seen people jump up there, without even the external show of decency, and swear that they would speak the truth, although they immediately afterwards proceeded point-blank to contradict one another. Every gentleman must be impressed with the conviction, that when we become more moral than we are now, there will be no oaths taken in society. The learned gentleman dwelt with great effect on attacks upon religion destroying respect for the law, which, the more it is known, the more it must be admired. The learned gentleman is a lawyer, and he is, of course, much better able to judge than I am of what the law is ; but I may be permitted to say, that it has been thought that law and law- courts are only pit-falls, into which the unwary tumble. Who does not know, that the payment of five guineas will make a criminal to-day, and the like payment, an honest man to-morrow ? But while I admit that 69 the law may be very good, I do not admit that the more a man reflects and inquires into religious opinions, the less likely he is to obey the law. I will venture to say that the learned gentleman has not more respect for the law or for those who administer it, than I have ; and I would rather that my tongue should blister than wag disrespectfully of the judge or of you. Why do I respect the law ? Because I feel, as you must, that without law no society could exist. If I could suppose a nation of perfect beings, then I can suppose a case in which there would be no necessity for law; but perfection is a chimera. We may progress, but to suppose that men will become something more than angels, is absurd. Though not men of wisdom, there are very good men who believe otherwise ; but, my friends, there is something in the very nature of man that has a tendency to error. I say that I agree with the learned gentleman that the law should be supported ; and he misled you, when he represented that I desired to violate the law, or to withdraw from society those influences which are necessary for its preservation and im¬ provement. I must again call your attention to the conduct of juries. The learned gentleman said, that I had spoken of trial by jury, in a case like this, as of a farce, which might be called " Killing no Murder." Gentlemen, I offer no disrespect to you, but my experience has taught me, that juries have very often sacriflced the liberties of their country—that they have often been led by bad judges, and have given way to motives that were not good. You see that whatever may be said against my prudence, not much can be said against my honesty. I knew well when I wrote that sentence about trial by jury, that it would be read here ; so that if it is to be taken as proof of anything, it is to be taken, I say, as proof of my honesty. My convictions were, that seeing the prejudice which had been excited against me, by fanatics and ill-disposed men, it was about a himdred to one that you would be prejudiced, and flnd me guilty. And had such been the case, I should not have been very wrong in speaking of you in the terms which I then employed. Allusion was made by the learned gentleman, to the passage in the Orach of Beason, and it was dwelt upon by him—to the effect, that whether I was consigned to a dungeon or a tomb—the Orach would stiU continue to speak. And, gentlemen, I should deceive you, if I told you anything else. The Orach of Beason wiU be published, for I have many friends, more determined, perhaps, than I am, who having put their hand to the plough, will not look back. They think that the business of authority is, not to crush error by law, but by well educating the people, to put down false opinions. I have thus run through the speech of the learned gentleman, omitting only two points—that which he said with regard to the Bible and with regard to the effects of Christianity ; and here I am fortified with very excellent authority. I will just read to you a passage from a pamphlet which I hold in my hand, written by Wilberforce—a name which, when heard, must inspire feelings of the deepest respect ; for he was, if there ever was one, a practical Christian. I feel assured that whatever comes from such a man, wiU have great weight with you. The learned gentleman spoke of the effects of Christianity. I am agreed with him, that—to use scriptural language—-the tree should be judged by its fruits. And if Christianity is a tree which has produced what he says it has 70 produced, and will produce what he predicts, then, I would rather suffer death than speak anything against it. But you Will see what has been the practical results of Christianity, as shown in the conduct of many of its professors. The language of Mr. Wilberforce is very guarded ; but it is on that account the more cutting. He says, " It seems in our days to be the commonly received opinion, that provided a man admit in general terms the truth of Christianity, though he neither know nor consider mUch concerning the particulars of the system, and if he be not habitually guilty of any of the grosser vices against his fellow-creatures, we have no great reason to be dissatisfied with him, or to question the validity of his claiin to the name and privi¬ leges of a Christian. The title implies no more than a sort of formal, general, assent to Christianity in the gross, and a degree of morality in practice, little, if at all, superior to that for which we look in a goOd Deist, Mussulman, or Hindoo. Should any be disposed to deny that this is a fair representation of the religion of the bulk Of the Christian world, they might be asked, whether, if it were proved to them beyond dispute, that Christianity is a mete forgery, this would OcBasion any great change in their conduct or habit of mind? Would àny alteratiofi be made in consequence Of this discovery, except in a few of their speculative opinions, which, ti'hen distinct from práctico, it is a part Of their own system to think of little consequence ; and with regard to public worship (knowing the good effects of religion upoil the lower orders of people^ they might still think it better to attend occasionally, for example's sake ? Would not a regard for their character, their health, their domestic and social comforts still continue to restrain them froin vicious excesses, and prompt them to persist in the discharge, according to their present measure, Of the various duties of their stations ? Would they find themselves dispossessed of what had been to them, hitherto, the repository of counsel and instruction, the rule of their conduct, the source of their peace, hope, and consolation ? It were needless to put these. They are answered, in fact, by the lives of many known Unbe¬ lievers, between whom and these professed Christians, even thé familiar associates of both, though men of discernment and observation, would discover little difference, either in conduct of temper or of mind. How little, then does Christianity deserve that title to novelty and superiority which has been almost universally admitted—that pre-eminence as à practical code, over all other systems of ethics ! How unmerited are the praises which have been lavished UpoU it by its friends—praises in which even its enemies (not in gênerai disposed to make concessions in its favour) have so often been unwarily drawn in to acquiesce !" I maintain, that nothing I could Say, if I spoke till the next flood, could show more clearly and completely, that Christianity, as a practical code, does not deserve the praises that have been lavished Upon it—that have been lavished upon it, as he observes, even by its opponents. So you perceive that Wilberforce, himself a practical Christian, states ex¬ plicitly, that Christianity is a very imperfect moral code. Again, he says— " As there is a sober sensuality, so there is a sober avarice, and a sober ambition. The commercial and the professional world compose 71 the chief sphere of their influence. They are often recognised, and openly avowed as just master-principles of action. But where this is not the case, they assume such plausible shapes, are called by such specious names, and urge such powerful pleas, that they are received with cordi¬ ality, and are suflered to gather strength without suspicion. The seducing considerations of diligence in our callings, of success in our profession, of making handsome provisions for our children, beguile our better judgments. ' We rise early, and late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness.' In our few intervals of leisure, our exhausted spirits require refreshments ; the serious concerns of our immortal souls are specula¬ tions too grave and gloomy to answer the purpose ; and we fly to some¬ thing that may better deserve the name of relaxation, till we are again summoned to the daily labours of our employment." Gentlemen, as it is a principle with me, that when the nail is driven home, all after-blows tend only to loosen it, I shall say not a word more upon this point. Let it be remembered, that Wilberforce was an enlightened patriot, a great, and a good man, who desired that Christi¬ anity should be applauded. I have now to call your attention to what you will conceive to be of prime importance—what, indeed, may properly be called the leading feature of this trial ; I allude to what you will call, and perhaps justly, the rash manner—the absurd manner, perhaps I may say—in which I have written the article headed, " The ilew Book." That article has been found fault with, because its was conceived, that though it might be true, it was not written in a right style—that the proper spirit was not manifest in it; and there are many friends to free inquiry who were shocked to see opinions, which, in themselves, might be true and useful, put forward in so objectionable a manner. But, gentlemen, you have no more right to persecute a man because his style is not proper, than you have to perse¬ cute a man because his features are not in proper style ; and you will admit, that to persecute a man because he is an ugly man, would be a very ugly thing. Speaking of style, it is obvious to remark, that it is all matter of taste, and I am sure you would say so, if you were to look into our old English writers. It generally happens that the people who are shocked with the style of a writer are men of corrupt ideas. In the old English writers, you will find a roughness combined with their reasoning, which makes it very pleasant. But I will not distract your attention by too many subjects ; I will come at once to an authority which you will immediately recognise—an authority which you will deem all-sufficient —for I am supposing you to be Protestants, and though you may differ as to the character of the man whom I am going to quote, you will agree with me, that he was a man of extraordinary character—I mean Martin Luther; and though he was not the man who first put the prin¬ ciple of the Keformation in motion, he has, nevertheless, great claims on the admiration of the Protestant world. He 'was one of those powerful spirits who seem born to regenerate society. What did Martin Luther say ? What has he taught me to do ? Why, he has taught me to state all the truth—to state it boldly, and to conceal nothing. He says, " I am for tearing off every mask, for managing nothing, for extenu¬ ating nothing, for shutting the eyes to nothing, that truth may be transparent and unadulterated, and may have a free course." 72 * Gentlemen, that is a splendid passage, and that is just my principle. I am for tearing off every mask ; and I shall he borne out by the judge on the bench, and by the jury, in saying, that there are passages in the ■yForks of that great reformer, ■which it -would not be consistent with the rules of propriety for me to read in this court—'that there ate passages which would he considered indecent ; and if I were to attempt to read them, his lordship would, probably, stop me, and say they are not fit to be read-here, as they tend to shock public decency. I shall now proceed to give you the language of the celebrated Burke, in speaking of the Bible—a man who was the most extraordinary orator of, his own or of any^-other times—and when I speak of a great orator, I speak of a man who unites in himself almost every species of learning, as well as the highest order of intellect. Gentlemen, listen to the senti¬ ments of Burke, who knew the Bible well. He says, " The Scripture is no one summary of doctrine regularly digested, in which a man could not mistake his way. It is a most venerable, hut most multifarious, collection of the records of the divine economy—a collection of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology, history, prophecy, psalmady, morality, apologues, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different hooks, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes." Why, a more important extract could not he read. We here have it on the authority of Burke, that the Bible is no summary of doctrine— that it is not regularly digested—that it is not a hook in which a man trying to search his way, could find his way—that it is a collection of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology, history, biography, doctrine, morality; that it is, in one word, a merely human production, written by different men, at different times, for different ends and purposes. It will be observed, that, with the exception of one or two quotations, all I have yet made, have been from men who were Christians, and who aided Christianity according to their ability. I have not drawn the opinions I read to you from heterodox sources, but from the highest authority on the religious side of the question ; so that no one can say I have been dealing unfairly with the subject. I have here the opinion, pithily set forth, of the present Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whately, known to be a man of first-rate ability, and I do not know of the slightest whisper against his orthodoxy. He is admitted to he, not only an elo¬ quent writer, hut also a sound and learned divine. He says, " God has not revealed to us a system of morality, such as would have been needed for a being who had no other means of distinguishing right and ^rong. On the contrary, the inculcation of virtue and reprobation of vice, in Scripture, are in such a tone as seems to presuppose a natural power, or a capacity for acquiring the power, to distinguish them. And if a man, denying or renouncing all claims of natural conscience, should practice without sample everything he did not find expressly forbidden in Scripture, and think himself not hound to do anything that is not there expressly enjoined, exclaiming, at every turn— * Is it SO nominated in tlie Bond ?' he -would be leading a life very unlike what a Christian's should be. Since, then, we are bound to use our natural faculties in the search after 73 all truth, that is within the reach of those faculties, most especially ought we to try, by their own proper evidence, questions which form no part of revelation, properly so called, but which are incidentally alluded to in the sacred writings. If we appeal to the Scriptures on any such points, it should be merely as to an ancient book, not in reference to their sacred character ; in short, not as Scripture." He is speaking of the Bible, and he says—"if we appeal to the Scrip¬ tures on any such points, it should be merely as to an ancient book." He says, that our natural faculties are sufficient to discern the truth, and that if we appeal to the Scripture, we should appeal to it as to an ancient book. That is precisely the position I wish to prove. If you are reasonable men—if you are Protestant Christians, then I say that in looking into the book, the sacred book, as you consider it, you have a right to use your reason—to consider it as a book made up, as Burke says, of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology, history, doctrine, biography, and various other matters. While upon this part of the question, I cannot forbear quoting from a work written by the Rev. Adam Sedgwick, of the University of Cam¬ bridge, who says, " A Brahmin crushed with a stone the microscope that first showed him living things among the vegetables of his daily food. The spirit of the Brahmin lives in Christendom. The bad principles of our nature are not bounded by caste or climate ; and men are still to be found, who, if not restrained by the wise and humane laws of their country, would try to stifle, by personal violence, and crush by brute force, every truth not hatched among their own conceits, and confined within the narrow fences of their own ignorance." This shows to you how necessary it is that you should destroy those bad Brahminical principles—that you should not be confined in your ideas, and not be ready at all times and seasons to destroy that truth which may happen not to be hatched in your own conceits. If this were the case, we should hear no more of such prosecutions as these. I have now to call your attention to the opinion of a man, not deemed orthodox by you, but who was, in the estimation of Doctor Blair, one of the most moral and philosophical of poets—Voltaire. It may be thought strange that Voltaire, who has such a character for infidelity, should be spoken of by Blair, as the most moral and religious of all tragic poets. But so it is ; and therefore you will deem his testimony to be of some weight. Voltaire's opinion is quoted in the article on " the Jew Book," as it is called. I will read it to you, that you may judge whether anything in that article is stronger, more powerful, or so strong and powerful, as what he says in a pamphlet on the authenticity of the Scrip¬ tures. This is what Voltaire says, " These tales have been written by fools"— Mr. Smith here rose, and said he must really now interfere. The defendant thought fit to meet the charge preferred against him, by reading these exceptionable books. He was now going to read from Voltaire, blasphemies, perhaps, very much like his own. He (Mr. Smith) wished to know whether the court would permit this ? The Recordek said, I have once interposed already, where the matter 74 the defendant was urging was obviously improper. If the passage in Voltaire is an attack on the Bible, I shall certainly stop the reading of it. If it was even the passage of a writer in this comitry, I should stop it ; and certainly we are not to have the opinions of Voltaire read, where they are of a nature that would not be tolerated, if from an English author. That would be making this trial a vehicle for diffusing the Atheistical opinion of other men, and not of deciding upon the charge before us. The Defendant said, my lord, I was about to quote a passage which I deem to be of some importance to my defence. I wish to convince the jury, that a man of undoubted talent^one like Voltaire—who, in poetry and history, has taken so high a rank among the great men of the earth ; I wanted to show the jiuy that men of undoubted talent had said quite as strong things as I have said, or ever could say ; and though this may not, perhaps, be admitted as any reason why I should say strong things, yet you must acknowledge, that if some of the finest writers do give vent to what the learned counsel has stated to be blasphemy, it becomes necessary that you should consider more deeply than you have, perhaps, been accustomed to do, what blasphemy is ; and whether it may not be a good thing. You are to determine according to the evidence, and how can you do so, if I am thus to be stopped by the learned counsel ? Eecordee.—^Your argument is, that men of talent have been Atheists; but I will not let you read the speeches of Atheists in the French conven- tien. I did not stop you in any argument, nor did the learned counsel. He stopped you, as it was his duty to do, when you were about to read from an Atheistical writer, in defence of your own Atheistical publi¬ cations. Defendant.—I shall not persevere, my lord. But I have now an authority which none here will object to—an authority of no less a per¬ sonage than Eichard Lalor Sheil, an ex-vice-president of the board of trade. Mr. Sheil is a Eoman Catholic (for the Eoman Catholics are now permitted to hold office), I am about to read from his speech de¬ livered in Ireland, just before the discussion which took place on the relative merits of Eoman Catholicism and Protestantism, between Pope and Maguire. He says— "The Bible contains tales of atrocity at which human nature shudders. Part of the holy writings consists of history, and of the narration of facts of a kind that cannot be mentioned in the presence of a virtuous woman, without exciting horror. Should a woman be permitted to read in her chamber, what she would tremble to hear at her domestic board ? Should she con over and resolve, what she would rather die than utter ?" It is for you to say, whether a book which contains details of atrocity at which human nature shudders, is a book that should be put into the hands of your children. It is for you to say, whether you would allow your daughters to read those passages in a book, which, after having read, they would rather die than utter. It is for you to determine, not less than this, whether a man is immoral, because he points' out this fact. Gentlemen, I will go so far as to say, that I do not believe there is a single man connected with the churcb, or a dissenter, who would venture to read to his own family, the tales that are to be found in the Bible. But I have another authority on this subject—a catholic authority— and one so much to the point, that I feel sure the reading of it will 75 effectually and for ever settle the question. During the fifth day's discus¬ sion between the Kiev. Mr. Gregg and Mr. Maguire, the latter thus appealed to the former, " I beg of you not to continue such a practice ; it is disreputable. I will ask the Bev. Mr. Gregg a question, and I beg of you, my brethren of the Protestant chUrch, to bear this in mind. I will ask him, if he dare to take up the Bible, and read from the Book of Genesis, the fact of Onias. I ask him, will he read that ? Will he read the fact relative to Lot and his two daughters? Will he read those, and many other passages which I can point out to him in the Holy Bible, which I would not take one thousand guineas, nay, all the money in the world, and read here to-day ?" And, gentlemen, if a Christian—a Catholic Christian—says, at a public meeting, that there are passages in the Bible of so indecent a nature—of so outrageous a nature, as necessarily to wound the moral feelings of all who hear them ; if there are passages of such a nature in that book, that he would not, for all the money in the world, read them in an open assembly, why am I placed here to-day, to answer to the charge of having spoken of that book in depreciatory language ? If what I have read to you could be stated by a Christian minister, at a public meeting, I do say that it is both cruel and unjust for me to be placed here, for haying used language less strong than that is. But it may be said, that I am not to be permitted to revile the Bible ; that, although I may be permitted to use strong language, I cannot be allowed to be witty at the expense of that which is held to be sacred. I will grant, for the sake of argument, that it is not right to do this ; yet, I will show you, that you, as Christians, ought not to persecute me on that account. I will show you, that, in the early ages of the church, the Christians were persecuted not so much on account of their own opinions and practices, as because they openly reviled the religion of the Boman empire ; and if I can show you that, I cannot see how you who admire the early Christians, can punish me for doing that which you admire in them. Cecilius, the heathen, in Minutius Poelix, accuses the Christians of being " a desperate, undone, and unlawful faction, which, by way of contempt, did sniff and spit at the mention of their (the Boman) gods, deride their worship, scoff at their priests, and despise their temples, as no better than charnel-houses, and heaps of bones and ashes of the dead ; for these, and such like reasons, the Christians were everywhere accounted a pack of Atheists, and their religion the Atheism : seldom it is that Julian, the emperor, calls it by any other name." " But if there are found some passages which excite laughter," says Du Pin, " 'tis because the very subject causes it. There are many things which deserve to be jeered and ridiculed "at this rate, but if we should confute them Seriously, we should seem to lay too great stress upon them. Nothing is more due to vanity than laughter, and to laugh does properly belong to the truth, because it is pleasant ; and to sport with its enemies, because it is certain of its victory." Here, a great ecclesiastical writer says, that it is good to sport with the opinions of other men, when those opinions are so absurd as to provoke laughter. I am only stating that these were the opinions held by the first Christians, and it is for you to judge whether you can be justified in 76 consigning me to a prison, for only doing, with regard to the present religion, what the early Christians did with regard to the Eoman religion? It is in vain to tell me, that your's is the real religion, and that the Eoman religion was a false one, for that would be begging the whole question. Mr. Smith rose and said, he regretted that he should again feel it necessary to interfere with the course which the defendant was taking, but he must do so, and appeal to the rules which govern the administra¬ tion of justice, to determine whether the defendant was to be allowed to carry on a discussion, as to the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion? The Eecorder said, he could not at present decide whether the de¬ fendant was so doing : undoubtedly, he would stop him, if he attempted to disprove the truth of Christianity. The Defendant resumed—^My lord, I was only intending to show the jury, that the early Christians were accused of the very same offence as that of which I am accused. I will now read from Mosheim ; and the learned counsel cannot object to such authority as that, however much it may tell against him. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, is a work referred to by the most eminent Christians, he being thought to be one of the pillars of the church, and a writer who has contributed eminently to the advancement of Christianity. He says, " Before I proceed further in this part of the history, a very natural curiosity calls us to inquire, how it happened that the Eomans, who were troublesome to no nation on account of their religion, and who suffered even the Jews to live under their own laws, and follow their own method of religion, treated the Christians alone with such severity ? This im¬ portant question seems still more diilicult to be solved, when we consider, that the excellent nature of the Christian religion, and its admirable tendency to promote both the public welfare of the state, and the private felicity of the individual, entitled it in a singular manner to the favour and protection of the reigning powers. One of the principal reasons of the severity with which the Eomans persecuted the Christians, notwith¬ standing these considerations, seems to have been, the abhorrence and contempt with which the latter regarded the religion of the empire, which was intimately connected with the form, and, indeed, with the very essence of its political constitution. For, though the Eomans gave an unlimited toleration to all religions which had nothing in their tenets dangerous to the commonwealth, yet they would not permit that of their ancestors, which was established by the laws of the state, to be turned into derision, nor the people to be driven away from their attachment to it. These, however, were the two things which the Christians were charged with, and that justly, though to their honour. They dared to ridicule the absurdities of the Pagan superstition, and they were ardent and assiduous in gaining proselytes to the truth. Nor did they only attack the religion of Rome, but also all the different shapes and forms under which superstition appeared in the various countries where they exercised their mfnistry. From thence the Eomans concluded, that the Christian sect was not only unsupportably daring and arrogant, but, moreover, an enemy to the public tranquility, and every way proper to excite civil wars and commotions in the empire. " It is, probably, on this account, that Tacitus reproaches them with the odious character of haters of mankind, and styles the religion of Jesus 77 a DESTRUCTIVE SUPERSTITION ; and that Suetonius speaks of the Christians, and their doctrine, in terms of the same kind." So you perceive that the Christians were charged with turning the gods and systems of religion into ridicule ; and Mosheim says that they were charged justly with this, though to their honour. That is, it was honourable in them to scoff at the gods held sacred at Rome, and at those institutions which were thought to be necessary to the well-being of the commonwealth. That is the only paragraph with which I will trouble you, by way of authority, although I could have found fifty or sixty additional, which would equally have served my cause. I shall now, after having shown you, as far as the learned judge would permit me, the opinions of learned men as to the Scriptures, proceed to show you, that putting the scriptures into ignorant men's hands is the cause of many evils, and leads to numerous crimes. In past times we have seen men who played all sorts of pranks in the name of religion ; so far so, that if any men should have been locked up they should, because they were evidently mad. I will read to you an account of one of these fanatics. The writer says, " The authority of the apostles themselves could not prevent some of the first Christians from ' wresting the Scriptures to their own destruction.' The first centuries of the Christian era present to our view the endless contentions of rival sects, professing to derive their respective opinions from the sources of holy writ. These controversies were maintained, both parties appealing to the Scriptures, with equal con¬ fidence, till papal Rome, in the plenitude of her power, produced an apparent conformity of sentiment, by suppressing all discussion : but, after the trumpet of Reformation sounded in the ear of Europe, and men reflect¬ ed with shame and surprise on the degrading servitude which bad chained down their understandings for so many ages, the mind, recovering its energies, and rallying its powers, dared once more to think and to reason. The spirit of papal usurpation fled before the dawn of returning light— the Bible re-appeared, and resumed its authority over the consciences of Christians. In opposition to the church of Rome, the first reformers loudly and justly asserted the right of private judgment, in expounding the Scriptures. Duly understood, there is no right more certain than this ; but anxious to emancipate the people from the authority of the Roman pontiff, they proclaimed it without explanation or restriction, and the consequences were dreadful. " The private judgment of Munzer discovered in the Scriptures, that titles of nobility and large estates were ' impious encroachments on the natural equality of the faithful,' and invited his followers ' to examine the Scriptures, whether these things were so.' They examined—praised God—and proceeded with fire and sword to the extirpation of the ungodly, and the seizure of their property. Private judgment, also, thought it discovered in the Bible, that established laws were ' standing restraints on Christian liberty ;' that the ' elect of God were incapable of sinning,' and may innocently obey all the propensities of their nature. " John of Leyden, laying down his thimble, and taking up his Bible, surprised the city of Munster, at the head of a rabble of frantic enthusiasts, proclaimed himself ' King of Zion,' and ran naked through 78 the streets, vociferating, that ' whatever was highest on earth shpuliî be brought low, and whatever was lowest should be exalted.' "to keep'his word he made the common executioner his minister of state» and the minister of state his common executioner. Improving on the example of the patriarchs, he ' took unto him' ifpurteen wives at pnce, aftrming, that ' polygamy was Christian liberty, and the privilege pf the saints.-' " But if the flagitious madness of fpyeign peasants, interpTetinff, Bible for themselves, be afflicting to the friends of hutnanity and rational piety, the history of England, during a considerable part pf the seven¬ teenth century, oifers little to console them. In that place and period countless enthusiasts sprung up successively and contemporaneously, endued with extravagant doctrines and noxipus propensities, in various degrees, from the wild ravings of Fox to the methodical madness pf Barclay, from the formidable fanaticism of Cromwell to the drivelling impiety of Praise-God-Barebones. Piety, reason, and common sense, seemed to be driven from the world to make room for canting jargon religious frenzy, and fiery zeal. All quoted Scripture, all made preten¬ sions to illuminations, visions, revelations, and iUapses of the Spirit, and the pretensions of all were equally well-founded, " The expediency of abolishing the clerical and regal functions were strenuously maintained ; ' priests being the servants of Satan, kings the delegates of the whore of Babylon, and the offices of both inconsistent with the kingdom of the Redeemer.' Convinced that intellectual im¬ provement is the greatest enemy to fanaticism and religious imposture, the ruling zealots denounced learning as ' an heathenish invention,' and the ' universities as seminaries of anti-Christian impiety.' The sanctity of his office was no protection to the prelate 5 the sacredness of majesty no defence to the king ; both were scoffed at, denounced, pnd finally murdered by merciless fanatics, whose only book was the Bible, ' without note or comment.' " At this time prayer, and preaching, and reading the Scriptures, were at their height : every man prayed : every man preached : every man read, and no man listened. In the religious drama, all were performers —there was no audience. Scripture authority was pleaded for every atrocity. The ordinary business of life was transacted in Scripture lan¬ guage. Words of high and sacred import were polluted by fhe vulgar lips of ignorant enthusiasts. In Scripture phrase were discussed the internal state of the nation, and its external relations. In the language of Scripture, conspiracies were formed, proscriptions planned, treasons hatched, and by Scripture authorities they were not only justified, but consecrated. ' To your tents, 0 Israel !' was the rebel war-whoop. The rebel officer assured his men that, as ' dominion was founded in grace, the Lord would deliver the Philistines into their hands.' This harangue was answered by the general shout—' Let us follow our Joshua, and snjite the ungodly with the edge of the sword.' To make way for ' the Mng- dom of Christ,' the constitution was subverted, the church destroyed, the throne overturned, and the whole frame and texture of society rent and dissolved." I hope, gentlemen, you will not consider that, upon the present occa¬ sion, I have wilfully trespassed upon your patience, or read one passage more than I thought absolutely necessary for my defence ; and I should wish you to bear in mind, that though it may tire your patience to sit 79 there an hour or two longer than usual, it will tire my patience still more if you consign me to a dungeon. Therefore I wish you to be put into a condition to judge—as I hope you will—by the consideration of all the arguments I may employ, whether proceedings of this kind are not most injurious to the cause of true religion and morality. I dare say I shall be excused, if I mention that there is on the jury a quaker; and I rejoice at it exceedingly, because I am satisfied that I shall show him, if I have not already done so, that he cannot be a consistent quaker, and persecute any living being for his opinion. I wiU show him what his forefathers suffered for conscience sake. I wiU speak to him of times when non¬ conformists dare not, without risk of being hanged, come within five mUes of a corporation ; of a time when it was usual to drag quakers, jews, and others from their abodes, and to hang them up like dogs ; to seize their property, and subject them to every description of suffering ; and all this was done—all this persecution set on foot—in order to pre¬ vent men from expressing their opinions. I will prove all this ; and I would call that gentleman's attention more particularly to the opinions of William'Howitt, who is a well known quaker of high repute, universally respected for his talents, and who, from his youth up, has been one of the most strenuous advocates for freedom of opinion. The passage I am about to read, is from William Howitt's History of Priestcraft. He says, " The history of the Society of Friends is full of the most singular persecutions on the part of the clergy, and of the magistracy, incited by them. The state clergy saw, that if this body succeeded, priestcraft was gone for ever ; royalty, on its restoration, saw that it would lop off the right arm of despotisni—a craft, paid to preach the divine right of kings, and passive obedience of the people. Seeing how a royal religion dis¬ turbed the church of Christ, and neutralised all its benign doctrines, they determined, cost what it would, to hold no communion with it. They would neither marry at its altars, nor bury in its soil ; and for this their dead were torn out of their graves by the parish priests and their minions ; and they were not only heavily fined and imprisoned for their marrying, but their children were declared bastards. The whole fury of the executive power was let loose upon them. They were given up a prey to vindictive parsons, and ignorant, priest-ridden justices of the peace ; and to the whole greedy race of informers, constables, and the lowest of the rabble. In 1670, the king issued an order in council, signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and thirteen others, command¬ ing Christopher Wren, Esq., to pull down their meeting-house at Horsley- dowu, which was done, and the materials sold. The same was done to other meeting-houses. But the Friends still met on the ruins of those places, where they were assailed by soldiers, who fell upon them with the butt-end of their muskets, and maltreated them so dreadfully, that the blood lay in the streets, and several died in consequence. Old age was not spared ; the women in particular were treated with brutal inde¬ cency, and finally, all their places of worship were nailed up, and soldiers set to keep them away. Nothing, however, could prevent them meeting ; and often, especially all the hard winter of 1683, they collected in the streets, and suffered incredible hardships from the cold, the soldiers, and the mob. They were ruinously, fined under Elizabeth's statute t)f £20 a month. Twenty-eight individuals alone paid £520 15s. 2d. Their houses were broken open, without ceremony, with sledge-hammers and 80 screws, and their property plundered by wholesale, under the plea of collecting tithes, church-rates, and fines for non-attendance at church. One person declared, ' he would rather see all the Quakers hanged than lose a sixpence by them.' For shillings they generally took pounds, leaving, in many instances, not a tool or a piece of goods for a man to work his fai-m with. This one specimen may serve as an illustration of the general mode : The fines for non-attendance of church at Bristol, £8,360 For 38 men, for eleven months ... - 220 For two of their wives, for the same time - - 6,660 For 40 of their wives, for the same time - - 1,200 £16,440 " The amount of property taken from them for these fines, church- rates, tithes, and some few military demands, but chiefly the former, given in to the society, from 1655 to 1133, is £1,192,820. Besides this, a great quantity of property was given in with no value attached to it, which, with the utter ruin of trade, and wanton destruction of the effects of many families, cannot amount to less than one million and a half—a sum which is still increasing, from distraints on this small society, at an average of £14,000 a-year. " These suflerings lasted for thirty years ; and the simple, and mere matter-of-fact recital of them, fills two thick folio volumes, containing upwards of 1400 closely-printed pages. They consist of every imagin¬ able species of outrage and insult, petty vexation, and agonizing suffer¬ ing; every species of legal and illegal plunder; loss of estates, friends, liberty, and life itself ; such as the same number of Englishmen scarcely ever suffered, or suffered with such invincible firmness. In London they filled the prisons in suffocating crowds, where, in 1622, twenty died, and seven more soon after their liberation, in consequence of their treatment ; in 1664, twenty-five more, and in the following year fifty- two others. Through the whole kingdom the same inhuman persecutions were practised ; and the number which perished under them was three hundred and sixty-nine." I will read another paragraph upon the same subject, from a report of the discussion between Mr. Barker and Mr. Lloyd Jones. It is confir¬ matory of what is said by Howitt; but it relates to the Quakers of America. It is thus : " In Boston, in 1656, the Puritans passed a law to banish from the colony the followers of Penn, whereby it was enacted, that ' whosoever of the inhabitants should, directly or indirectly, cause any of the Quakers to come into that jurisdiction, he should forfeit £100 to the country, and be committed to prison, there to remain till the penalty should be satisfied ; and whosoever should entertain them, knowing them to be so, should forfeit forty shillings to the country, for every hour's entertainment, and be committed to prison till the forfeiture should be fully paid and satisfied. And, further, that all and every of those people that should arise amongst them there, should be dealt withal and suffer the like punishment as the laws provided for those that c^re in ; viz., that for the first offence, if a man, one of his ears should be cut off, and he be kept at work in the house of correction as afore¬ said. If a woman, then to be severely whipped, and kept as aforesaid 81 as well, -for tliG first ; and for the second offence, to be de dealt withall as the first. And ibr the third, he or she should have their tongues bored through with an hot iron, and he kept in the house of correction close at work, till they be sent away at their own discharge." I have now given you a plain and unvarnished account, not of my own, but a plain and circumstantial account of the persecutions that have been suffered by the Quakers ; and there is not a gentleman present who will not agree with me, that the great reason why the Quakers are held to be so truly respectable, and have such influence in society is, that they acknowledged principle, and held by it through good report, and through evil report. I do no more than they did. I am just as honest as Fox or Penn. Then how can a Quaker lay his hand on his heart, and consign me to a dungeon, for doing only that which his forefathers taught me to do so well ? He is no Quaker, or he will not do this. I have spoken of the persecutions as exhibited in various ages of the world, but more especially as exemplified in the case of the Quakers ; and might have spoken of the Unitarians, and of various classes of Dissenters, of the Jews and others, of the many atrocities committed on their persons by those who called themselves Christians, though not im¬ bued with the spirit of Jesus. I admit that they were but pretending to practise Christianity, while they were practising the most enormous and revolting cruelties on their fellow-creatures, because they did not agree with them in opinion. I will now read an extract from The Fenny Magazine, under the head Chubb, who was a Deistical writer, and an eminent critic : " The Eev. W. Hoales, in his ' Memoirs of Mr. Chubb ; or a fuller and more faithful account of his Life, Writings, Character, and Death,' pub¬ lished in 1747, after asserting, without the slightest evidence, that Chubb was addicted to the most abominable vices, declared that he would have his corpse, and that of every similar sceptic, instead of being decently buried, ' dragged by a halter round the neck to a gibbet, where the hangman, after having cut out the heart, pllicked out the tongue by the roots, and chopped off the right hand, should burn the whole in a fire made with the works which he wrote ; and his ashes being thrown into the air, with execration and contempt, would make all those who bow the knee at the name of Jesus, ñ/lt up their hands with joy and great glad¬ ness.' " This spirit was manifested, by whom do you think ? By the Eev. Mr. Hoales, a Christian minister of Winchester. He recommended that all this should be done, because Chubb did not agree with him in opinion. You will agi-ee with me, that such a spirit as this is truly diabolical, for if anything can be said to be truly diabolic, it is tbe spirit of cruel perse¬ cution. As some wise men have said, there is no other devil than that in the human heart ; and if there be one devil more ferocious than another, it is the spirit of persecution. They thought they did God good service in persecuting their fellow-creatures ; forgetting that other men have their rights as well as themselves ; that other men may be'as sincere in their opinions as they are. I think I have now shown that the spirit of persecution is inimical to the public weal, as well as to public liberty. The learned counsel regretted that the talents he credited me for, should be so misapplied, or perverted from their proper use ; for, said he, if the 82 defendant had rightly applied the talents he possesses, he might have cut out a path for himself, much better for his own interests than the one he has dehberately chosen. Gentlemen, how ought this to affect you? If it he true, it afibrds the clearest proof of my sincerity. It is the same as saying that I adhere to principle, above all things—that I proclaim what I deem to be great truths, not with a view to increase my fortune—^not to obtain the praises of the multitude—but with a view to the advance¬ ment of the good and happiness of mankind. When you are considering my intention, you will not consider merely whether I have put forward certain opinions, but whether I have put them forward with a wicked or a good intention. And when you come to consider this, you will not overlook what the learned gentleman has said, as to what I might have done for myself, had I preferred to do so. It is for you to look at this. Can you bring in a verdict, that I have pubhshed these opinions with a wicked intention, when I have, in so doing, sacrificed (according to the learned gentleman's statement) such prospects in life ? It is stated in the indictment that I published them scandalously, wickedly, and with evil intent. That I utterly deny. I never did so. I never, in the whole course of my life, knowingly committed a wicked action : I therefore, with all the force I can, repudiate the charge. If, therefore, my prose¬ cutors could even define what blasphemy is, they would have a still greater difficulty to achieve. They say that I have published blasphemy, micJcedly. Here, then, is the very gist or marrow of the question ; for you are bound to determine according to the evidence, whether I have published anything wickedly, or with a view to injure society, and over¬ turn the foundations of human morality. I have not yet dwelt with any emphasis upon the obvious truth—a truth with which, if you are not yet acquainted, you have yet to be ; it is, that all belief is the result of human organism ; that a man cannot tell, for example, when opening a book, for the first time, whether he shall believe or disbelieve, agree or disagree, with the contents of it. No man has power to believe at his will. No man can love at his wiU, or hate at his wUl. These feelings are involuntary. Belief cannot he criminal, though it may be mistaken. If you do not understand this, you have not yet got to the a, b, c, of philosophy. Though this may seem presumptuous, I trust it will be deemed a sufiicient excuse that, standing as I do here, and having thought, perhaps, more than others upon this subject, I may speak with more confidence. But, gentlemen, I am fortified by such men as Aristotle, Locke, Bacon, and others. I am fortified by all these, not to speak of my own observa¬ tion, that all human belief is a result, that man can no more regulate his belief than he can the stars of heaven ; that man is obliged to beUeve according to his organisation, and the circumstances by which he is sur¬ rounded, from the time of his birth to the time he sinks into his grave. What, then, do I find ? That a great sect is rising up in society, called Fuseyites, who deplore, as many others do, that there should lie such irreverence for the Scriptures, that there must be a great reform in the church ; that the teachers of religion must be much more reserved in teaching of the Scriptures than they have been from the time of the Eeformation. And if, from the revolution of 1688, you have been in the habit of thinking difierently, you can scarce think that these are other than sincere men. They seem to me honestly to think that the Bible being put into every man's hand, every man not being a competent judge 83 of its contents, has been the cause of a great deal of evil. I wiU read to you, from No 87 of Tracts for the Times, a very important passage ; "There is smother point in which all due fear of God's awful presence is lost, very far beyond what many are aware of, and that is in regard for the Holy Scripture. Some, indeed, who profess to uphold and value them, in order to do so, depreciate tlie Apocryphal books, and all others of less plenary inspiration, as if, by so doing, they were exalting the Scriptures. But in fact, they do but lower their own standard of what is holy, and then lower the Scriptures also, to meet it. The effect, also, of setting aside the Cathohc Church, as the interpreter of Holy Scripture, as if it needed none, is of the same kind; it incalculably lowers the reverence for Scripture, by making it subject to the individual judgment." This is tolerably plain, and there are many alarmists amongst the religionists, who hold that these views are exceedingly dangerous ; as it is by no means impossible that the Puseyites wiU merge into the Eoman Catholic Church, seemg that they both agree in this, that it is not good that the people should examine the Scriptures. Good Protestants think other-wise. Here is, therefore, a bone of contention, which makes good my observation as to the danger which you yourselves run, if you sacrifice me. If the Puseyites and the Eoman Catholics should join, and get into power, I do not expect the stars to fall, but this is possible ; and it there¬ fore becomes you to look about you. The principle of Catholicism and the principle of Protestantism are irreconcileable. That I may not mis¬ represent these opinions, I would just read to you what they say, very lately (for though in a difficult position, wishing to run with the hare, and hold with Üie hounds, that is, not wishing to shock public prejudice, or what is called such, they have said some very striking things) ; I would just read to you what they have said when speaking of the Eeformation. " Not to adduce other proofs of this, we have the memorable one in this country, when there broke in upon us an age, which has been well called one of 'light, but not of love;' when the knowledge of divine truths was forced upon men of corrupt fives, and put forward without their sacred reserve. The consequence of this indelicate exposure of religion was the perpetration of crime, almost unequalled in the annals of the world." Elsewhere, speaking of the present time, they say, " There seems also an impatience at any book being held back from any person, as too high and sacred for them ; it is a thing not understood. And so far from its being considered necessary to keep persons from church on account of irreligious fives, it is usually thought that every¬ thing is done if they can be brought to it. There is also an inclination to put aside the Old Testament, for the more exclusive use of the gospel itself, which is contained in it. And, indeed, full statements of religious truth have been thought so necessary, as to have produced ways of thinking often unnatural." They seem to understand very well that a great change has come over the spirit of the national dream ; they seem to understand that the school-master has been abroad, and not only so, but that he has again G 2 84 come home; they seem to think that the Bible should be protected from those whose education will not enable them to exercise the right of private judgment, with advantage to themselves and to the common¬ wealth. They say, " When we lift up our eyes upon the present state of the world, an extraordinary aspect of things meets our view. The knowledge of God, hastening to cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea ; and a remark¬ able combination of circumstances at work, to produce effects the oppo¬ site of what has been hitherto witnessed in the world. The art of printing bringing home this knowledge to all ; the means which Provi¬ dence has formerly allowed to hide it, not only from the heathen and the Jew, but from the Christian (by a mysterious economy which has .been long permitted in the Church of Eome), we see now removetí..; men of various creeds, opposed in principle and opposed in discipline, we might almost say. Christians and unbelievers, combining together hi the'circu¬ lation of the Scriptures. Add to this, preachers and teachers of various parties and from various motives, all busily engaged in imparting reli¬ gious instruction. Schools, moreover, and many on an extensive national system. Churches and altars thrown open to aU, from the loss of church discipline ; and, what is worthy of notice, Christianity acknowledged as true by persons of the worst principles." Here is what is indeed worthy of notice—that Christianity is professed by men of the very worst principles ; by men who, by their advocacy, would disgrae^ny cause. Yes, Christianity is wounded in its vital parts by those who pretend to protect it. These are high authorities—as to their learning, at all events—and they are worthy, therefore, of your serious notice. They bear, more¬ over, very hard upon the present question ; for we are now in a position when it is to be determined, perhaps for ever, in this country, whether we should have the reality, or only the mockery of freedom—freedom of conscience ; that is, the right of expression, for it is a miserable thing to talk about freedom of opinion, if we have not freedom of expression. But in the Tract, No. 87, the writer has some very curious observa¬ tions, on the " pui-pose of God to conceal himself from some, and to reveal himself to others." This is the passage : " It was the purpose of God to redeem mankind, and to extend salva¬ tion to those who will seek it. But men render themselves so unworthy of it, that he is equitable in refusing to some, because of the hardness of their hearts, that which he bestows on others, by a mercy to which they have no claim. Had he chosen to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, he could have done so, by revealing himself to them so dis¬ tinctly, that they could no longer doubt the truth of his existence. And he will so appear at the last day, with such an awful storm, and such a destruction of the frame of nature, that the most blind must see him. " He did not, however, choose thus to appear at the advent of grace,, because, as so many men rendered themselves unworthy of his clemency, he determined that they should remain strangers to the blessings which they did not desire. It would not then have been just to appear in a mode manifestly divine, and such as absolutely to convince all men; nor would it have been just, on the other hand, to come in a mode so hidden, that he could not have been recognised by those who sought him in 85 sincerity. It was his will to make himself perfectly cognizable to all such : and hence, willing to be revealed to those who seek him with their whole heart, and hidden from those who as cordially fly from him, he has so regulated the means of knowing him, as to give indications of himself, which are plain to those who seek him, and shrouded to them who seek him not. " There is light enough for those whose main wish it is to see ; and darkness enough to confound those of an opposite disposition. There is brightness enough to enlighten the elect ; and sufficient obscurity to keep them humble. There is mystery enough to blind the reprobate; but hght enough to condemn them, and to make them jnexcusable." These sentences are from Pascal, whose admirable letters against the Jesuits are so well known. The writer evidently wishes to convey the idea, that the purpose of God is to reveal himself to some, and to conceal himself from others ; and, of course, if that was the purpose of God, and Pascal, or any other person, is acquainted with it, it follows, that those who are organized to receive the truth, though they may be fortunate, cannot be iqeritorious. A man born blind may be unfortunate because he cannot perceive colours, but he is not to be blamed for that. Have we not sometimes, in the course of our daily walks, met with an idiot, who, standing in cold water, has found himself very cold, but who knew not that it was the water that produced the coldness ? When I have looked on such an one, my heart has bled for him. What would you thmk of me, if I had seized upon him by violence, and thrown him into a madhouse? You would no doubt have said that such a course was highly censurable. Well, then, if to take this authority, God intended from the beginning that some should believe, and some not ; then, of course, there could be neither merit nor demerit in those who believed and who disbeheved. Pascal, therefore, says, " Let them not reproach us any longer with the want of clearness in our evidence. We own the fact as part of our system. But let them recognise the truth of our reli¬ gion, even in its obscurities, in the little light that we have, and in the indifference respecting the drawing of it, which is generally manifested. Had there been but one religion, God would have heen too manifest. The case were the same, if our religion only had its martyrs We can know nothmg of the work of God, if we do not admit as a flrst principle, that he blinds some, while he enlightens others." So that, according to his meaning, if there had heen but one religion, God would have been too well known. I apprehend that all sincere believers will say that God cannot be too well known ; but such is the vagrant opinions of men, who are even right on some good things, that they get from one quagmire of sophistry to another, until they have no basis of common sense left whereon to repose. These opinions are put forward by that new party which is now making very rapid strides in the church. Just now, in fact, there are two kinds of tmth ; high-church-truth, and low-church-truth ; so that truth is, in the opinion at least of certain persons, divisible. It is clear that both cannot be right ; one of them must be wrong. But I have now to do with the tracts of this party, in reference only to my defence. The i'ollowing, in number 86, relates to the Bible. It is entitled. On Renerve, in Communicating Religious Knowledge ;— " God is not apprehended, as he is set forth in Scriptures, as of infinite 86 holiness, but as a fiction of the imagination, as each man feigns the idea of God according to his own heart, which was shown visibly in the idols of old, and alluded to in the expression, ' Thou thoughest wickedly, that God was such an one as thyself.' " This is very strong language ; and if we dissect the human mind, we shall discover, I think, that men in general do as the Romans and Greeks did, and as the Hindoos do—attribute to the gods the very passions which animate themselves. They imagine the gods to be just as vicious and as revengeful as they are themselves. They dress up their gods in the very body of humanity. That is what is deprecated by these writers ; and so it should be, by every sound-minded man. We should, my friends, carefully distinguish between what belongs to reason, and what to faith ; for, unless we do that, we have little of that philosophy which is likely to be useful to the cause of truth and humanity. For this I have contended. I have said. Reason is all in all, or. Faith is all in all. I think knowledge good ; others say knowledge is comparatively useless, and that men should wholly follow faith. I say, that, without reason, life is but a dreary waste, and that the grave swallows up all we vaunt of humanity. I hold that it is by giving men knowledge, we fortify their minds against all the vice and infamy by which they are surrounded, and render them the instruments of reducing its amount. The same writer states that " religion does not, under such circum- stances, produce its genuine effect of humbling the natural man. To have a knowledge of God, without a knowledge of our own guilt and misery, has (as Pascal mentions) the effect of puffing up. And there is a great deal in religion which the natural man may eagerly take hold of, in order to exalt himself." That is, that when men imqualified for it, attempt to explore the Bible, they only get to be made stiff-necked—that the Bible should be read only by those who are competent to read it—and that the vulgar, or common people, should take it upon the ipse dixit of those. All our teachers talk of men being puffed up ; and they say that men should be very humble—though, by the way, they do not set them the example. You wiU perceive, from what I have read, what is the general scope and object of these new lights in the church—these new PMse^-lights. They have set their candle on a hill ; it is no longer hid under a bushel ; but there it shines, to show the way in which we should be taught the lessons of revelation. Gentlemen, I am one of those who love the truth, and I hope they may succeed in their mission, for I am sure that what¬ ever is true—whether it agrees or not with human institutions as they now exist, or with any of the religions as now taught—will ultimately work out huihan redemption from sin and misery. I agree with Dr. Johnson, that " truth is the basis of all excellence I should add, it is the basis of all morals. We have heard of nations very wise in their own estimation, but we have never yet heard of a nation pre-eminently wise and happy ; for, as it is said in Scripture, there are no nations, or men, who are truly good and virtuous ; that is, they know very little of philosophical principles. I hope your lordship will not consider, that in the paragraph I am about to read from the Dictionnaire Philosophical Portatif, I have any intention of refiecting upon your lordship, for, I assuré yóu, I have no such intention ; and I take thi« hpportunity of saying to those who hear 87 me, that with the conduct of the learned judge on the hench I am more than satisfied, and that, whatever the event of this trial may be, I can never lose my respect for him. I say this, lest any one should think that what I am about to read may be iiitended to apply to his lordship. I read it more particularly for the jury ; not so much for this jury as for jmies in general. The following is the passage ;— " There are fanatics in cool blood ; these are the judges who condemn to death those whose only crime is not thinking as they think ; and these judges are so much the more culpable, so much the more worthy of the execration of mankind, as, not being under the influence of fury, hke the Clements, the Châtals, the EavaiUacs, the Gérards, the Damiens it seems that they might listen to reason." " Fanaticism is to superstition, what transport is to fever, what rage is to anger. He who has extacies and visions, who takes dreams for reali¬ ties, and his imagination for prophecies, is an enthusiast ; he who main¬ tains his folly by murder, is a fanatic." "Themost detestable example of fanaticism is that of the citizens of Paris, who, on St. Bartholomew's night flew to assassinate such of their fellow-citizens as did not go to mass." I have quoted this, because it is exceedingly powerful and to the ques¬ tion. This author has also some very sage and admirable reflections in reference to extreme opinions, but more especially in reference to Atheism. You wiU at once perceive that he is no Atheist. He abuses Atheists as men of shallow minds—us men who are hiiried in the depths of their own ignorance ; you will therefore perceive that he is an authority who, if at aU in favour of those he opposes, must come with a crushing weight. I will first read his denunciation of those who hold these opinions. He says, " Atheists are generally bold, learned, but misled, men, who reason falsely, and who, being unable to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and of other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eter¬ nity of things, and of necessity." " It is, then, absolutely necessary for princes and for the people, that the idea of a supreme creator, governor, remunerator, and avenger, should be deeply graven in the mind." So that he is not at all in favour of Atheism. But he says, here, under the head Atheism ; "But, with the Gentiles, many sects knew no bounds; the sceptics doubted everything ; the académiciens suspended their judgment upon everything ; the Epicureans were pursuaded that the Divinity conld not mix himself up with the affairs of men ; and at the bottom, they admitted no divinity at all. They were convinced that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is born and perishes with the body ; consequently, they knew no obligation but that of morality and of honour. The Eoman senators and knights were real Atheists ; for, the gods existed not to men who neither feared nor hoped anything from them. The Eoman senate was really an assembly of Atheists in the time of Caesar and of Cicero. This great orator in his harangue for Cluentius, said to the assembled senate, what harm does deatlh do him ? We reject all those foolish fables about hell: whßt, then, has death taken from him? Nothing but the 8ts remembrance of his sorrows. Did not Csesar, the friend of Cataline, endeavouring to save the life of his friend, against this same Cicero, object that to make a criminal suffer death was not punishing him, that death is nothing, that it is only the end of our evils, that it is a inoment rather happy than fatal ? And did not Cicero and aU the rest yield to these arguments ? The conquerors and legislators of the known world, then, evidently formed a society of men who feared nothing from the gods, who were truly Atheists." I have read these passages, in order that your memory inay he re¬ freshed with the fact, that there have been great men, in all times, who have held Atheistical opinions. And, if you compare Cicero, for example, with any man of modern times, you will gain nothing for modern society by the comparison, for no modem writer can be com¬ pared with him. Then, as for Caesar, we have had our Napoleon, to be sure ; but Caesar was a man of far more extraordinary powers of mind than Napoleon. Then, as to Cataline, though he committed acts which all must deplore, he was, beyond all doubt, a most extraordinary man. Sufficient has now been said to show, that in Greece and Rome great men, and good men, and moral men, existed, although they were Atheists. Cicero was a moral man ; as for Caesar, I can't say much for him, for I think a man who cuts throats by thousands cannot he a moral man. You are all aware that there has sprung up in Germany, of late, a race of writers who have done great mischief to old opinions ; and all will agree with me, that the palm of critical acumen is to be given to the Germans. I hold in my hand the review of a new work lately written by the celebrated Dr. Strauss, on the origin of Christianity. Its title is, " The Christian Doctrines Illustrated—their Historical Develop¬ ment, and in Opposition with Modern Science." Most of you are aware that this same Dr. Strauss published, some years ago, the Life of Jesus, which has subsequently been republished in England. I allude to this, because when Strauss published that work, he was accused of being a Deist ; and certainly, the whole tendency of his writings was what would have subjected him here to a prosecution for blasphemy. Nevertheless, he is a great German doctor ; and I can vouch for his Life of Jesus, that, as a critical book, it is one of the best books tbat ever existed. If you believe him, Jesus Christ was a mere mystic character— Recorder.—Defendant, I shall stop anything of that sort. You might as well quote from the Age of Reason, or from any other book, that has been pronounced to be blasphemous. I shall not permit you to go on. Defendant.—I was going to read a passage, merely in confirmation of my position—that some of the greatest scholars that ever lived had been charged with Atheism, for the Foreign Quarterly Reviere, in a criticism of Strauss' work, says : " The work before us may be said to contain subtleties fully worthy of the reputation of the society of the Jesuits, Spinoza's absurdest vagaries and speculations, with all the beautiful dreaminess of mystifica¬ tion, the heir-loom of the author's hand, a little heightened by every¬ thing that the Sophists and Platonists could lend to make light darkness, and the intelligible obscure. In it the author has at once and boldly thrown off the mask, and from the Deist, which the "Leben Jesu" demonstrated him to be, he-has, by aii easy mutation, passed into the 8y Atheist. Still, do we deeply regret that a mind of unquestionable power, an ^ esprit fort,' in two senses, assuredly widely different from most of his class, to whom the term ' esprit foihle' is more applicable, should be induced to propagate the desolating dogmas of his book. This book, of course, is framed on the supposition that human reason is adequate to discover anything, that man does not need any exterior aid, expressly denies any such communication, and is, consequently, opposed to all revelation, all systems of faith, all the world's hope in God." I merely read this, to confirm, as I have said, my argument, that many eminent men have propounded the same opinions that I have pro¬ pounded. I come now to the most critical part of my task ; that is, to clear my¬ self in the estimation of aU candid men—of all who dare inquire— from the imputation of having published a libel on the Bible. That I shall do, I think, unless it be held here, as laid down by some lawyer— that the greater the truth the greater the libel. If it be acknowledged, and I think it will be, by all moralists, that that which is true cannot be a libel, although it sometimes may, by law courts, be tortured into a libel, if it be acknowledged here, as I think it will be—for, as the learned gentleman said in a case in which he was engaged, some days since, we should not foUow bad rules—if it be acknowledged, then, upon this occasion, that the truth is no libel, then I have no doubt that you will pronounce what I have said about the Bible to be no libel at all. Gentlemen, I shall proceed to read from the Bible those passages which I consider to be confirmatory of the views I take of the subject. I read them that you may know I have not written the article in question, without having examined the Bible—that you may know I have not libelled it, in speaking of it as a book—that you may know that my anxiety is not to find fault with any people or with any book, but to protect society from having books thrust into the hands of people not prepared to properly understand them. If I shall show you that the Bible, however valuable in other respects, does contain immoral matter—that it is a book which unaided ignorance should not be allowed to read— that it is a book which should not be read with the bodily eyes, but with the eyes of the understanding, which so few can properly use ; if you agree with me in this, then I think you will come to the conclusion, that I ought not to be pronounced guilty of having published a wicked and blasphemous libel, tor having said so. I would observe, gentlemen, that I did not wish for this prosecution— that I am not the cause of standing here to-day—that I have been forced here—that I was taken from my home, and kept in a damp cell, just as if I had been a thief or a murderer, for seventeen days—and that this task, which to me is a most unpleasant one, has been, as I said, forced upon me. My object was to establish the right-of discussion, and if those who say that we have not that right, will resort to the law to prevent it, why, they must take all the consequences that follow there¬ upon. Gentlemen, I will now proceed to read from the Bible, the several passages to which I have referred. [Here the numerous females in the court withdrew.] The first passage is the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, from the fifth to the eighth verse : 90 ''' " And they eaUed unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men •which came into thee"— A Juryman (the Quaker) said, he wished the defendant to read from the first verse. Defendant.—Certainly ; I can have no objection : my only motive was to avoid taking up your time unnecessarily. The defendant then read the passages as follows :— " And there came two angels to Sodom at even ; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom : and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them ; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground ; and he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay ; but we will abide in the street all night. And he pressed upon them greatly ; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house ; and he made them a feast, and did bake un¬ leavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter : and they called unto Lot, and said unto him. Where are the men which came in to thee this night ? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, and said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man ; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes : only unto these men do nothing ; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof." In calling your attention to this passage, I would state, upon an autho¬ rity before quoted, that the very existence of angels, which is here stated, has been doubted by some of the most learned men of ancient and modern times. But, to confine myself to the present time, Dr. Strauss, speaking of angels, says : " Not only their appearance and intervention in the afiairs of humanity, but also their very existence, has been held as doubtful ; because that the principle end of their existence ought to be arrived at in the functions themselves. Eelatively to the question of the reality of angels, the criticism of Schleiermacher"— Mr. Smith here rose and said, that this was not only obviously objec¬ tionable, from its total irrelevancy to the question to be tried ; but also, from the direct tendency of the quotation to prove' the non-existence of angels, whose existence and office was one of the truths revealed in the Bible. Eecorder.—I agree with the learned counsel, that this is not only no defence, but that it is also attacking one of the truths of our holy religiœi. And that it is what I will not sit here and listen to. Defendant.—My lord, I was not attempting to show that this writer was not right in his opinion, I was only showing to the jury, that the existence of angels had been denied by very learned and able men- May I not, my lord, proceed to read to the end of the passage ? Eecorder.—Certainly not. Defendant.—If this course is to be adopted, my lord, in every case where I make an extract that js poti approved of, I may be stopped at every step I take. 91 Becordeh.—I am to judge of the propriety, or non-propriety of any extract you may make; and, I repeat it, I cannot allow you to attempt to prove the non-existence of angels. Besides, it is utterly irrelevant, as the learned counsel has observed, to the matter of your defence. Depenbant.—My lord, I repeat that I was not attempting to prove or to disprove the existence of angels. Mr. Smith said he understood the extract to be introduced by the defendant as a comment on the history which he had previously read from the Bible ; and that he introduced it to throw a doubt on the very existence of angels, their existence and acts being part of the Bible- history. Eecorder.—I so understood him to state it—I may err, but I so understood him. Dependant.—My lord, in reading that passage, my object, as I have already said, was not to disprove the existence of angels, nor even to caE their existence into question, but only to show that learned men had thought that such an idea could not take root in modem society. Eecorder.—That is the same thing, in other words. Dependant.—As your lordship is of opinion that I should not pursue that course, I shaE bow before your decision ; but I trust that before the learned gentleman again pronounces a distinct opinion, as to what I mean, he wiE aEow me to be heard, as I must know better what I mean than he does.* "The criticism of Schleiermacher may certainly be considered as terminating the discussion ; because he expresses exactly the result of modem inteEigence, in opposition to the ancient. In truth, says Schleier¬ macher; we cannot prove the impossibility of the existence of the angels ; nevertheless, that conception is such that it can never rise again in our time ; it belongs exclusively to the idea that antiquity conceived of the world. We may presume, that the belief in angels has a double source ; the one in the desire natural to our minds to suppose in the whole world more of spiritual substances than we commonly behold in¬ corporated in the human kind ; but that desire, says Schleiermacher, so strong in us who now live, is satisfied when we represent to ourselves that other celestial globes are peopled like this we inhabit, and by that thought is dried up the first source of the belief in angels. The second source is in the idea men form to themselves of God—as of a monarch sur¬ rounded by his court ; that idea is no longer ours. We know now how to explain the natural causes of the changes in the world, and in humanity, that in former times were imagined to be the work of God himself, acting by the ministry of angels. Thus, the belief in angels has not one single point by which it may fix itself firmly and truly in the soil of modem ideas ; and now it no longer exists than as a dead tradition." The second passage which I shall read, relates the story of Lot and his daughters. It is in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, from the thirty- first to the thirty-eighth verse. " And the first-bom said unto the younger. Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth : come let us make our father drink wine, and we wiE he with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father. And they made their * The ifoHowing ie the coaclusion of the passage from Straass, 92 father drink wine that night : and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father ; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said to the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father : let us make him drink wine this night also ; and go thou in and lie with him ; that we may preserve the seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also : and the younger arose, and lay with him ; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the firstborn hare a son, and called his name Moah : the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also hare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi : the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day." I shaU make no observations, or hut very few, upon this passage, for it tells its own tale; and if that does not justify me, as a moral man, or as a man having reference to the moral condition of society, anything that I might say would fail to convince you. The next passage I shall read is in the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis, from the eighteenth to the thirtieth verse.—" And he said"— Mr. Smith.—This man is now reading from the Bible those passages which he has selected for the purpose of proving that what he has stated, in a blasphemous libel, is true. Is that to he permitted ? Eecokder.—I do not think that I can object to the reading of the passages. Dependant then proceeded to read the passage as follows ; " And he said, What pledge shall I give thee ? And she said. Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staflT that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand : hut he found her not. Then he asked the men of that place, saying. Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side "? And they said. There was no harlot in this place. And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her ; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place. And Judah said. Let her take it to her, lest we he shamed : behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter-in-law hath played the harlot; and also, she is'with child by whoredom. And Judah said, bring her forth, and let her he burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father-in-law, say¬ ing, By the man whose these are, am I with child : and she said. Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said. She hath been more righteous than I ; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more. And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass that when she travailed, that one put out his hand : and the midwife took and hound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, this came out first. And it came to pass, as he drew hack his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said. How hast thou broken forth? this breach he upon thee : therefore his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out hjs 93 brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand : and his name was called Zarah." The next passage is part of the second chapter of Exodus, the twelfth verse— " And he looked this way and that way and when he saw there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand." In the thirty-first chapter of the same hook, verses fifteen to eighteen, we read as follows : " Six days may work he done ; hut in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord : whosoever doeth any work on the sabbath day, he shall surely he put to death. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout theii- generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever : for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed." In the first book of Samriel, chapter nineteen, and the twenty-fourth verse, we read thus ; " And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say. Is Saul among the prophets ?" In the second book of Samuel, chapter six, and the twentieth to the twenty-second verse, we read a similar thing about David : "Then David retm-ned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said. How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids,of his servants, as one of the vain fellows that uncovereth himself! And David said unto Michal, It was before the Lord, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel : therefore will I play before the Lord. And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight ; and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honour." The passage I am now about to read, is from the thirteenth chapter of the second book of Samuel, the eighth to the fourteenth verse : " So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house ; and he was laid dowm. And she took flour, and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and did bake the cakes. And she took a pan, and poured them out before him ; but he refused to eat. And Amnon said. Have out all men from me. And they went out every man from him. And Amnon said unto Tamar, Bring the meat into the chamber, that I may eat at thine hand. And Tamar took the cakes which she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her. Come lie with me, my sister. And she answered him. Nay, my brother, do not force me ; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly. And I, whither shall I cause my shame to go ? and as for thee thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now, therefore, I pray thee| speak unto the king ; for he will not withhold me from thee. How. 94 beit he would not hearken unto her voice : hut being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her." In the second hook of Kings, chapter thirteen, and at the twentieth and twenty-first verses, we have this account of Ehsha's hones resusci¬ tating a dead man : " And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the hands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a hand of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha : and when the man was let down, and touched the hones of Ehsha, he revived, and stood upon his feet." I have read these few passages, and only a few, because I am not at all desirous to lacerate your feelings by reading many such passages. I have read these in order to show you, that it must he highly imprudent to put such a hook into the hands of ill-instructed persons, whose minds are not fortified by truth and virtue ; and also to show that I was fully justified in speaking of that book in the terms which I employed in the article in question. ' I shall now draw to a close. I have to thank you heartily for your attention : it is much more than I could have calculated upon. I shall, consider only one great point ; that is, the nature and meaning of blasr phemy. It is what all attorney-generals, and aU who set on foot such prosecutions as these, carefully avoid explaining or defining. It is always assumed that certain things, obnoxious to authority, are blasphemous : but the question for you to try is, first, whether what I have written and published is a blasphemous libel ? and secondly, whether I pubhshed it with a wicked intention ? For if one of you say it may not have been wickedly pubhshed, or not published with a wicked intent, but that it is wicked, inasmuch as it has a pernicious influence upon society, and that the writer and pubhsher should be punished as an example to others —if any one of you should thus reason, I beg to remind you that you have no moral right to do so. Your duty is to abide by that you have sworn ; that is, to give a verdict according to the evidence. And what are you to understand by evidence in a case like this, if not evidence in proof of the allegation, that I have published the article alleged'to be libellous, with a mischievous and wicked intent ? It is for you to com¬ pare the arguments I have advanced, and the authorities by which I have supported them, with the arguments and authorities produced by the learned gentleman. You have to bear in mind, that the question is simply this—have I published blasphemy ? and has blasphemy been de¬ fined ? Do we know as well what it is, as we know what murder, robbery, arson, or other ofifences against society are ? Certainly not. All men who have published new opinions upon religious matters, have invariably been called blasphemers. Were not Socrates and Aristides blasphemers ? Nay, was not Jesus Christ a blasphemer"? That is, these great men were called blasphemers, by those men in authority. They were called blasphemers by the priests of those times, who acted as many priests act in these times ; that is, they cried out " Blasphemy ! Blasphemy !" when ever any opinion was put forth at aU likely to overturn the opinions upon which they lived. _ I stated at the beginning, that I was no lawyer—^that I was not accus- 95 tomed to special pleading; and now repeat it; and I will therefore take a common sense view of the subject. h irst, I have to state, that blasphemy was not a statuteable offence up to the time of William the Third. Prior to that period, blasphemers were punished by common-law, which is called, by Jeremy Bentham, " Judge-made law." That is to say, common law is traditional law—the law derived from precedent ; and its study is a very difficult and intricate subject. In the time of William the Third, it was thought desirable by those in authority to check certain opinions then taking root in the public mind ; and certain severe laws were enacted against blasphemers. I shall call your attention to this grand fact, that precisely as nations have been in a state of darkness and ignorance, so the laws against blasphemers have been stringent and cruel. Up to the time of WUliam the Third, as I have said, blasphemers were, in this country, pimished at common law. It depended upon the caprice or discretion, or peculiar opinions, of the judge, what the amount of punishment should be. Presently, however, the Unitarians became an important body ; they became rich, and com¬ paratively powerful ; and during the reign of George the Third, the legislature saw the necessity of having a new law touching the crime of blasphemy. I wül just read to you, from the Penny Encyclopedia, under the head of blasphemy, " The common law on the subject of blasphemy, is thus laid down in Hawkins' Pleas of the Crown, page 9 :—' All blasphemies against God, as denying his being or providence, and all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ; aU profane scoffing at the holy scriptures, or exposing any part thereof to contempt or ridicule ; all imposters in religion, as falsely pretending to extraordinary commissions from God, and terrifying or abusing the people with false denunciations of judgments ; and aU open lewdness, grossly scandalous, inasmuch as they tend to subvert all religion or morality, which are the foundation of government, are punish¬ able by the temporal judges with fine and imprisonment ; and also such corporeal infamous punishment as to the court in its discretion shall seem meet, according to the heinousness of the crime.' " In addition to this, by the 9th and 10th W. c. 32, it is enacted, that if any person, having heen educated in, or at any time having made profession of the Christian religion in this realm, shall, by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, deny any one of the persons in the holy trinity, to be God ; or shall assert or maintain there are more gods than one ; or shall deny the Christian rehgion to be true, or the holy scriptmes of the Old and New Testament, to be of divine authority; and shaU, upon indictment or information in any of his majesty's courts of Westminster, or at the assises, be thereof lawfully convicted by the oaths of two or more witnesses, he shaU, for the first offence, be disabled from having any office or employment, or any profit appertaining there¬ unto ; for the second offence, shall be disabled to prosecute any action or information in any court of law or equity, or to be guardian of any child, or executor or administrator of any person, or capable of any legacy or deed of gift, or to bear any office for ever within this realm ; and shall also suffer imprisonment for the space of three years from the time of such conviction." So that, you perceive, although certain statutes were passed, they did hot, at least in their own opinion, take away the discretionary power of 96 the judges ; and you have the anomaly of a judge, in most cases, having the discretionary power of what the punishment should be. And the judges, furthermore, have the power, if they have the inclination, to declare that certain opinions may be constructively blasphemous, a doc¬ trine too inimical to the liberty of the subject to be permitted to remain long in fashion. Here we are brought to an important consideration, which is this. Suppose for the sake of argument, that the learned judge, is averse, upon principle, to such prosecutions as these—that he has no wish to punish me ; yet, if you bring me in guilty of the offence with which I stand charged, you force his lordship to thrust me into prison. You are all acquainted, no doubt, with the case of my friend, Mr. Hetherington, which occurred last December twelvemonths. He was tried before Lord Denman and a special jury ; and all persons who were present at that trial, more especially all who knew Lord Denman's character, must have known that he, upon principle, was wholly averse to prosecutions for opinion. He has given proof that his mind is too com¬ prehensive to be amused by the dull twaddle talked about blasphemy ; but when Mr. Hetherington was tried, although he made a luminous defence, and made it clear that it was absurd and unjust to hold him answerable for the vending of any particular opinions, yet the jury having brought in a verdict of guilty. Lord Denman, having no choice, awarded a sentence of four months' imprisonment. He made the punish¬ ment as light as possible, and his conduct upon that occasion reflects the highest honour upon him. It was, however, a great disgrace to the jury, who thus compelled his lordship to punish a man, against the con¬ viction of his own mind, for an imaginary offence. It is for you to consider whether you wiU force on the judge here, the necessity of acting in a similar way. If you deliver a verdict of guilty, you will consign me to a prison. I will now call your attention to a few facts of great value on this subject of prosecution for blasphemy, which I flnd in the same work : " As knowledge has increased, the severity of these punishments has been mitigated ; though Üíq principle is not yet conceded the practice is less bitter, the punishmeilt less severe than formerly ; and an attempt lias been made to amend the law, which failed only because the movers were wanting, according to the judges, in legal depth. If, however, we may anticipate the progress of the spirit of charity in the next century, by its advances since the Reformation placed the scriptures in the hands of the laity, and the spirit and character of Jesus before them, we may reasonably believe, that another century will see all penal laws against opinions or the expression of them repealed, and that men will be satis¬ fied of the impossibility of diffusing the spirit of benevolence, by fine and imprisonment, branding, pilloring, and tongue-boring." What I wish to convey to your minds is simply this, and it is a valu¬ able fact that it is in ages of bloated ignorance, that these proceedings take place—that some have been hanged—some burnt—some confined until actually starved to death—in short, that every species of cruelty has been inflicted to produce uniformity of opinion, but without effect, I trust you will, to-day, let it be seen by your verdict that you are con¬ vinced of the inutility as well as of the injustice of such prosecutions. I agree with the great Guizot, that if we cannot have spiritual unity, 97 we must be content with harmony and liberty. You have read of an emperor who tried, and tried in vain, to make two watches go alike ; and who, when he could not succeed, discovered what he had never dis¬ covered before—that he could never make two men think alike. He was cured of his vain and cruel attempt, by two simple watches. No pains on earth can make men think alike on things not known ; and no power on earth should prevent them from thinking, or from speaking what they think ; and if by your verdict to-day, you say, practically, that men may think, but that they shall not speak—that religion must be propped up by the strong arm of the law—then, I do say, you will do that which you will repent to the latest hour of your existence ; and I say, further, that no one of you, if he has a heart worthy of the name of one, can consign me to a dungeon, and not suffer the bitterness of re¬ morse for the rest of his life. I protest I could not rest at night, if (I was going to say) I was so infamous as to consign a man to punishment, because he did not agree with me in opinion. Gentlemen, I trust you' will do your duty. I ask for no mercy. I never beg. I ask for simple justice. If you consign me to a dungeon, it shall be without a groan from me. I will suffer cheerfully, and without the slightest complaint. Only do not suppose that by putting me into prison you will put down the opinions which I believe to be true. No ; you will make men sym¬ pathise and inquire. And you will do more for the advancement of these opinions than I could do, if I lived for a thousand years. As it is one of the bulwarks—nay, as the hulwarh of English liberty, I look to that box for a verdict which shall for ever establish the right of man to exercise full freedom of opinion. I appeal to you, to do an act that shall be remembered in all time, and that shall be greeted by all lips. Let not the bigots, but the liberal and enlightened men, who look on this day's proceedings with intense anxiety, say that your verdict is one which at once does yourselves honour, and serves mankind. The defendant having concluded his address, Mr. Smith rose to reply, but this was objected to by the defendant, who said, that as he had not called any witnesses, there was no right of reply on the part of the learned gentleman. Mr. Smith argued, that as the defendant had introduced authorities into his defence, that those authorities were to be regarded as evidence, and that the decision in the King v. Carlile, and other cases, established the right of reply, where documents had been introduced into the defence without having been put in evidence. The Eecorder said the defendant had not adduced anything equiva¬ lent to the documents produced in the cases which the learned counsel had referred to. What he had introduced came rather under the de¬ scription of argument than of evidence. Mr. Smith said the defendant had undoubtedly used various books as authorities to influence the jury in his defence. As he had used them they were to be viewed not so much as matter of argument as of authority ; and it had been held, in the cases he had referred to, as well as in others, that the mere reading of authorities or documents, which ought to be put in evidence, would not deprive the plaintiff of the right of reply. But independently of that, the defendant had introduced new matter into his defence ; and that alone would give him (Mr. Smith) the right of reply. He should be glad enough to be relieved from the duty of replying, but he felt it to be his duty to insist upon it, as a matter of right. 98 The Recorder said he did not think that the decisions referred to governed this case. If the defendant had cited any legal authority, as matter of legal authority, then the learned counsel would have a right to oh- serve upon it,because it would, in that case, have been cited as matter of law. Mr. Smith contended that the defendant had cited legal authority, in the pamphlet addressed to Jeremy Bentham. The Recorder repeated his opinion, that if the defendant had quoted legal authority, as legal authority, then the learned counsel would mi- doubtedly have a right to reply upon that ; but to reply to arguments read from various writers, was, he thought, a very different thing. The decisions, as far as he recollected them, did not come up to the present case. Using a thing as matter of argument, and using it as matter of evidence, were very different. The quotations the defendant had made, were made merely to the purposes of argument and opinions. He should therefore say, unless some decision existed to the contrary, that what had been read would not give the right of reply. Where a letter or any other written document was introduced, as matter of fact, that would stand upon a very different footing. Mr. Smith said he fully admitted the distinction, as laid down, but he thought that the authorities went to the extent of authorising a reply in this case. The cases to be found in Dickinsoris Guide to Quarter Ses¬ sions he thought sufficient ; but he relied most on the King versus Garble. The Recorder said that letters were put in, in that case. If the defendant here had put in documents, winch was a quasi production of evidence, then the counsel for the prosecution would have had the same right of reply as if the documents had been put in evidence. Though the case might not actually have been proved by the documents, they were, nevertheless, evidence. But no quotation here made, came up to that standard ; all was made as matter of theological opinion, "or meta¬ physical discussion, or as matter of history, and so on. Mr. Smith contended that the matter adduced was not so confined in its application, but that the defendant had read documents to the court of the nature of evidence, which he was bound to prove, or which the court should receive as quasi evidence. In either case, it gave him the right of reply. He referred particularly to the passages read from the Bible by the defendant, in order to show that the representations he had given of the Bible in the libels, was a correct representation. That, therefore, was strictly in the nature of evidence to support his defence. He had alsp read authorities to throw light on the question, JVhat is hlaspliemy ? That was directly to the issue. If the defendant had adduced authorities to show what is, and what is not, blasphemy, that, surely, was in the nature of evidence, and was used to influence the judgment of the court and the jury. The Recorder said, if the defendant had quoted any authority, that is, any legal authority, to show what blasphemy was, then, that would give the learned counsel the right of reply. But was it so ? Then, as to the quotations from the Bible, the learned counsel had no doubt the right of reply upon that point, by reading passages from the same holy book, to show with what object the passages, read by the defendant, had been therein introduced. Still, he thought, upon full consideration, that this case would hardly come within the rule laid down. And he therefore ruled that the passages read from the Bible would fall under the general rule, and that there was no right of reply. 99 Mr. Smith said, he was quite satisfied with his lordship's decision, but though he was ijot to reply, he must beg permission to say a word, in reference to the letter that had been addressed to his lordship, relative to this prosecution, and to which the attention of the court had been called by the defendant. He begged to say, that the prosecutors were no parties to that letter, and that they knew nothing of it. The Kecorder then proceeded to address the jury. He said, the defendant was prosecuted in this indictment, as a wicked and evil-dis¬ posed person, who had wickedly and with evil-intent written and published a blasphemous libel on the holy scriptures, the Christian reli¬ gion, and the being and providence of almighty God. That was the general allegation which, with some trifling variations, constituted the several passages of this indictment. The general allegation was a little altered, but not materially so. It therefore divided itself into three parts : first, the intention of wickedly vilifying the holy scriptures, the Christian religion, and the being and providence of almighty God; secondly, the fact of publishing a book containing passages having that efiect ; and thirdly, whether the fact of printing and publishing such matter, coupled with the eflfect, did not clearly exhibit the writing ? Such being the offence as alleged, proceeded his lordship, I shall trouble you very shortly upon the subject of the law. By the common law of the land, blasphemous attacks upon the Christian religion, which is the established rehgion of the kingdom, is an indictable offence ; and it has been so held for many centuries, by the common law. In early times, offences of this kind were probably punished in the ecclesiastical courts ; but, to use the words of one of the most learned judges who ever sat upon the bench. Lord Chief Justice Hale, Christianity being part and parcel of the law of the land—the very basis, in fact, of our constitution and governmeiit, the power of punishing persons guilty of this offence was given to ordinary courts of law. That the crime, therefore, exists, it would be waste of time further to discuss. That the crime exists is so clear, that the courts will not allow it to be controverted. In a recent case, the Court of Queen's Bench laid down the same principle as that laid down by Lord Chief Justice Hale, and said, it would not allow it to be argued that this was not an offence punishable in the courts of law of this kingdom. I thought it necessary to call your attention to this rule, that is laid down and universally acted on in the courts. The indictment is for intending blasphemously to attack the holy Bible and the Christian religion, as well as the being and providence of almighty God. It is not for differing from the church or the government, upon any particular tenet or doctrine ; it is not for wilfully or errone¬ ously calling into question particular doctrines, but for an attack in ioto on the Christian religion. It is not for differing from the established forms of religion, or for attacking any particular text, or book, or part of the holy Bible ; but for an attack upon, the Christian religion and the holy Bible, as a whole—for attacking them, as being false and of no value. The prosecutors are, therefore, free from any imputation of desiring to suppress any fair discussion on theological matters. For as I have said, it is not even for a blasphemous attack on the holy Bible, but for a wicked libel on the holy Bible, the Christian religion, and the being and providence of God. _ ■ n I think it necessary, to call your attention again to the prosecution ot the OracU of Reason, which propounded doctrines precisely similar to 100 what the defendant has insisted upon throughout his defence ; namely, that Christianity is a fiction ; on which occasion Mr. Justice Ashurst laid it down as a principle, that a blasphemous attack on Christianity is an oifence, not only against God, but against society also, as it tends to dis¬ solve all the bonds and obligations of society, inasmuch as Christianity runs through every part and department of the laws and the constitution of the country. There is another thing I feel it necessary to notice. The defendant appealed to you as a jury—and he properly enough made that appeal. It is my duty also to make the same appeal. There was only one point in which I concur with him, and that is, that you are the judges to say whether this is an attack on the Bible and on Christianity. If you should think, that although such an attack on the Bible and on the Christian religion is an oifence punishable by law, yet that in this particular case it is not proved, you will then, of course, return a verdict of not guilty. It is my duty, however, to offer to you some remarks on the whole matter of the case. You know that it is your province to determine, in the first place, whether this is a blasphemous libel or not. I shall call it a blasphemous libel, and in justification of doing so, I shedl select a few passages from it. The first of these is from No. 4 of the Oracle of lieason, and I think it fully sustains the allegation I have read to you from the indictment :— " That revoltingly odious Jew production, called Bible, has been for ages the idol of all sorts of blockheads, the glory of knaves, and the disgust of wise men. It is a history of lusts, sodomi"'s, wholesale slaughtering, and horrible depravity, that the vilest parts of all other histories, collected into one monstrous book, could scarcely parallel." What I am now about to read is another passage from the same number, in which, as my learned friend at the bar reminded me. Atheism is promulgated ; I shall not read the whole of it ; but it ends thus : " ' Metaphysics (says an annonymous writer) teach us that god is a, pure spirit ; but herein is modern theology superior to that of the savages '? The savages acknowledge a preat spirit for the master of the world. The savages, like all ignorant people, attribute to spirits all the effects of which their experience cannot discover the true causes. Ask a savage what moves your watch. He will answer, it is a spirit. Ask our divines what moves the universe. They answer, it is a spirit.^ As it is with those who call god a great spirit, so it is with the equally sage mystics who call their ideal god a great space—great space being two terms quite unintelligible. Space is something or nothing, a reality or fiction, that which really exists, or a negation of all existence ; if the former, it cannot be a god that Christians will accept, for that which is real must be corporeal : but they reject a matter-god and will not agree with the Stoics, that god is a divine animal ; if the latter, that is, if those who will have it that space is god, are driven to admit, as they necessarily must, that space is the negation or absence of matter, an absolute nothing, why, then, we fall upon the ex nihilo nihil fit ; Englished—out of nothing nothing can come. As plain a truth as any to be found in Euclid. Which makes the question stand thus—In the first place, space cannot be a god ; if space be an actually existing something, it must be matter ; but that a matter god is no god at all, is allowed by the Christian world. 101 In the second place, space cannot be a god ; if it signifies pure emptiness or absence of matter, because the absence of matter, could it be con¬ ceived, is a nothing; and to refine god into nothing, is to destroy the idea of sueh an existence, and to proclaim that Atheism we are labouring to teach" So that Atheism is declared to be the result which the writer desires to aim at. Is it in the City of Bristol alone that the question is to be raised, whether that is a blasphemous attack upon the holy Bible, in which, in the most offensive terms, that holy book is ascribed, not to a divine origin, but to a diabolical origin—for that is the meaning of the passage, " All the world believe priests, or they would rather have thought it the outpourings of some devil?" I shall not read another syllable out of the various passages which com¬ pose the matter of this indictment. They have been twice read already, and therefore the judge is not obliged to travel through them a third time. I have selected these passages as an example ; and if every other line were out of the indictment, and it was founded alone on what I have read, I should call the libel the concentration of everything scandalous, blasphemous, and atrocious—a ^vicked attack upon everything held sacred in this country. I have another reason also for not going through these passages ; that is, that when I have selected that passage which is in language perhaps the strongest, it is not necessary to follow out the same ideas, in some places more laboriously and in some more plausibly expressed. It is here put forward in all its features of wickedness and deformity. It is here concentrated in language as abominable and execrable as is the principle inculcated. These are my opinions, but if you are of opinion that it is not blasphemy, it is your opinion that is to carry the verdict, not mine. The performance of my duty, from obvious reasons, should be confined within as narrow limits as possible, because, from the nature of the subject, one's mind wishes to have some ease and repose and consolation, after that state in which it has been kept throughout the whole course of this long defence. I will therefore only say, in general, that if all the passages which have been read from the indictment follow up those which I have selected, as in my judgment the most odious in which these doctrines are propounded—and which I hope you will concur with me in thinking—then you wUl admit that I am not required to travel through them for the third time. But, that you may not take my general assertion or general view of the case, you are at liberty—and I should perhaps desire that you should take into your hands these documents, and review them, if you think fit. That is for you to do, if you please ; or if you doubt your own recollec¬ tion with reference to the other passages which have been read. If you feel any doubt as to their import and meaning, you are at liberty to take the indictment in your hands, and read over the passages to yourselves. You may also call for the printed publications given in evidence, if you think fit, and go from line to line, and from passage to passage, through those infamous books, which I have abstained from, in deference to your feehngs, and to the feelings of every person in this court. It is obvious that to the defence made I can have lit1;le to say. It 102 might have been a mercy to the prisoner if some friend had told him that his defence was a confirmation of the crime imputed to him, in that the whole of it, instead of ameliorating the character of the publication, asserted the same proposition which forms the subject of his offence, which is, that Christianity is to be overturned, to set up Eeason, involving a denial of the Deity, and the establishment of Atheism. What he has written, he has endeavoured to sustain by arguing from what he calls reason, to the utter subversion of Christianity, and the existence of the Almighty Being whose existence, and power, and works, we are to learn from that revelation. These preliminary points being disposed of, and the crime being an indictable one, it is for you, by your verdict, to state whether you are prepared to go along with the writer of these publications, in the estab, lishment of Atheism. Though at liberty to comment, in his defence, on the various topics which he has introduced, this is a point upon which Ï feel it my duty to make a remark ; that is, the defendant's call upon you to agree to go with him in his blasphemy, and in the destruction of that from which alone comfort in this world and hope of another are to be drawn. He calls upon you to declare, by your verdict, that this is not a blasphemous attack on Christianity and on the being and providence of God. He urges you to proclaim, that there is no Almighty Being—^that Christianity is no truth, but the invention of the devil—that Atheisrn may be established, and that an atheistical press may issue a course of the most atrocious and execrable blasphemies. The verdict, gentlemen, is with you, and it is for you, by that verdict, to say whether you will become participators in the very wicked, blasphemous, and atrocious objects of the defendant. His lordship having closed his address, the jury requested permission to retire, and after having been absent for ten minutes, returned into court, and delivered a verdict of guilty. The Eecoedeb, then addressed the defendant as follows : Prisoner at the bar, you have been, after a full and long inquiry, convicted by a jury of the city of Bristol of having written, printed, and published a wicked áhd blasphemous libel ; and you have only been convicted of that which would be deemed to be blasphemy in every city and town of the king¬ dom. The jury have declared by their verdict, their determination to act in consonance with all those who in every other part of the country will uphold the Christian religion, which is part and parcel of our law and government. The sentence of the court upon you is (what you anticipated, when you assured us that you had devoted yourself as a martyr for religious liberty—you are at liberty, however, to entertain your own sentiments upon that subject), the sentence of the court is, that you be confined for twelve calendar months in the goal of the city and county of Bristol, and, at the end of that time, that you pay a fine to her majesty of one hundred •pounds and be further imprisoned until that fine is paid. Defendant.—May I be allowed to put a question to the judge ? I wish to know, my lord, whether I am to be treated as a felon or a thief, as was the case when I was before carried to this prison? Eecordek.—I have already given directions that you should be placed with the first-class prisoners. I can do nothmg beyond that. Defendant.—I am much obliged to your lordship. The prisoner was then removed from the bar in custody. THE POLLOWtNG EXTRACTS ARE EROM THE PEN OP THE TALENTED "PUBLICOLA," Correspondent of the " Weekly Dispatch." Common, or Judge-made, Law.—^What with that disgrace and curse of the country, called " Common Law," or Judge-made Law—what with the immense number of old and barbarous laws on our statute books—and what with the privilege that every spy and informer has of setting himself up as a sort of attorney-general and commencing prose¬ cutions, the liberty of the subject is always in the most precarious state. * * It is the boast of our constitution that no man can be amerced, or fined, or imprisoned in the smallest degree, except by parliamentary law, of course passed by the three states of the realm, and it is a doctrine with law-writers that a man ought not to be punished in purse or person, except by a law clear and so generally published as to be cognizable as a warning against the offence. But in cases like these, we have known men ruinously fined and severely punished under long imprisonments, not by a law obsolete, obscure, or disputed, in letter or spirit, but actually by no lam at all, for the worst of all social states Of slavery that can exist, is that in which an individual can substitute his dictum for law, espe¬ cially when the polity of the nation prescribest he only source from which law can emanate—-king, lords, and commons. * * With parliamentary law, one session may repeal what the previous session had passed ; but if a judge, even in a tempnrary ebullition,, makes a law, all future judges consider themselves bound to adhere to it, and precluded from any right or power to annul, or even modify it. Such an irrevocable, irresponsi¬ ble, and unauthorized system of law-making never before existed on earth, and never will again. If our juries were not the most craven, sneaking, dastardly men that ever dishonoured the human form, they woidd soon put a stop to such indictments, as ex-officio informations, for directly the indictment or information was read, a juryman would thus address the bench—"My lord, rmder what act of parliament is the prisoner indicted?" The judge would be obliged to answer, " under no act of parliament whatever; but under the ipse dixit, the sudden ebullition of a single judge." An honest juryman would then rejoin— "My lord, np Englishman can be imprisoned, except by an act of the legislature, and I will not so violate my oath, and so betray public liberty, as to inquire whether a man be guilty or not of any offence, when there is no law whatever to punish him, except the mere self-made law of an individual judge." Not all the judges of England are competent to make a criminal law, according to the theory of our supposed constitu¬ tion ; and yet, here we have one of the most important laws that can exist in society, passed by one solitary judge ; and he, moreover, per¬ sonally, a disgrace to the bench. Is this liberty ? Is this the liberty of rational beings ? The theory of juryism is beautiful, exalted, and in¬ valuable, the practice of it in such cases in England is a, disgrace to man. A fellow-citizen is to be tried under a law which has no existence, and in a country that possesses the golden rule, that no man can be tried, except by a law ; he is to be punished cruelly, under a suppositious law, even the supposition of its existence being a crime against the crown : an act of high treason. The judge that tries him is solemnly sworn to 104 administer the law, and nothing but the law ;. and yet, in direct violation of his oath, he administers his brother judge's dictum as a law, when his brother judge, in substituting such a dictum for an act of parlia¬ ment, broke his oath, and became a traitor to his sovereign, and, after all this long series of absurdities, contradictions, crimes, cruelties and per¬ juries, the judge defends, or justifies himself, on the plea that he is wading through his career of guilt in defence of the Almighty, and in the vidi- cation of religion. The only shield that reason, justice, and humanity, and the law itself throws over the victim is, the juryman; and he, hi violation of his oath, in desertion of his duty, and in outrage against all common sense, and in violation of mercy, betrays the object of per¬ secution, and delivers him over a victim to the sacrifice. If but six jurymen would, consecutively, act like men, in six sequent trials for blas¬ phemous libels, they would establish religious liberty, and do by far more service in the cause of freedom, than such measures as repealing the Test and Corporation Acts, or even emancipating the Catholics, great as these measures were.—Dec. 19, 1841. Eespecting Prejudices.—AU religions are contests of prejudices, and unhappily it is of an extremely recent date, and still confined to a few countries of Europe that men may contend about their prejudices, and settle their own disputes, without the interference of magistrates and criminal laws. A short illustration of this now occurs to me. The pre¬ sent King of Prussia, placed on the throne by English money, bayonets, and blood, is a great saint, a sort of a Sir. Andrew Agnew or Sir Robert Inglis saint, and in appointing Dr. Niander, a saint likewise, to the Bishopric of Berlin, lie iminedicttdy consxtltcd Btc prelate upon prose¬ cuting the learned Dr. Strauss, who, in his " Life of Jesus," certainly goes even beyond our justly celebrated Mr. Paine. The bishop, however, was more just, rational, and humane, than the king ; and he replied that he would not prosecute, for criminal proceedings were not a test of truth, but a presumption of conscious weakness or guilt in those that instituted them ; and he added to the king, that he differed conscientiously from this great divine, Strauss, and would do his utmost to refute him by the press. The learned contest arose between these eminent divines—the one a palpable Deist, and the other a Prussian orthodox Christian, and Dr. Strauss never condescended to reply to any other than this learned antagonist, and had the manhood to retract many of his opinions, although he still retained his general Deism. In England we have no idea of any such mode of seeking truth, and whenever the orthodox side is beaten, or afraid of a contest, the resort is to a booby jury, through the medium of an attorney-general, who, for a fee, would with equal warmth attack or defend either side. This is a noble Englishman's idea of searching after truth. •-? All prejudices are successive. Our Epis¬ copal Church owes its religion to the destruction of Catholic prejudices, which owed their existence to something antecedent. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland owes its existence to its very laudable destruction of Popery and English Episcopacy. Not a sect that exists in England, from the Wesleyan Methodists to the Jumponians, the Skippites, and the Hop- pites, and the innumerable ites and isites that are swarming, or beginning to swarm, through our fanatical country, cotild have had the faintes't breath of existence but by offending and attackina; some pre-existinff prejudiee.—J&'d. & f 6