Part 2

"_Dr. Whitby_, in his _Last Thoughts_, tells us, "that belief or disbelief can neither be a virtue or a crime, in any one who uses the best means in his power of being informed.

"If a proposition is _evident_, we cannot avoid believing it; _and where is the merit or piety of a necessary assent?_ If it is _not evident_, we cannot help rejecting it, or doubting of it; _and where is the crime of not performing impossibilities, or not believing what does not appear to us to be true?_"

Gentlemen of the Jury, can you dispute the truth of the passage I have quoted from Dr. Whitby? Will you, by your verdict, pronounce it to be "_a crime_ not to perform _impossibilities_, and endeavour to _force us to believe_ what does not appear to us to be true?" Gentlemen, you cannot do it. Let us briefly trace the operations of the human mind, and we shall find that the mind is governed by a law of necessity. Are we not definitely and necessarily' affected by the circumstances which surround us? Have we power to avoid receiving impressions from the objects presented to us? If we have not, which is now universally admitted by intelligent men, then the act of _perceiving_, or _forming ideas_, is a necessary mental operation. Can we, for instance, have an idea of a man when a monkey is presented to us? Or of colours other than those which are placed before our visual organs? We cannot, if the eye be not diseased, perceive red to be green, or green red. The power of _perception_, therefore, appears to be perfectly involuntary--it is governed by a law of necessity.

The next operation of the mind is to form a judgment of the things perceived; and it is these two things--_perceiving_ and _judging_--which constitute a man's knowledge or experience. If two bodies of different magnitudes are presented to our view, are we not compelled to judge of them according to the impression they respectively make upon the mind? It is precisely the same with _men, manners, and opinions_. Must we not conclude that things are what they appear to be, till we know the contrary? I would appeal to your own experience, Gentlemen, whether you do not invariably and necessarily judge of men and things according to their inherent or imaginary qualities? Some men, indeed, are puzzled to account for the diversity of judgment observable where different men examine the same subject, and from the same data; but this circumstance is easily accounted for. It results simply from this fact, that men judge of things precisely as they appear to them: and the different judgments formed of the same things are ascribable wholly to the different degrees of strength in the power of perception, and to the extent and variety of knowledge previously acquired. _Perception and judgment_, therefore, appear to be involuntary and necessary.

Gentlemen, if this be true, is a man who has arrived at conclusions adverse to the _received opinions_ of society a fit subject of punishment? If not, how much less so is the bookseller who merely sells his book?

Mr. Haslam calls upon the Clergy to enter into the controversy with him, and to let _reason_ decide between them. Why do not the Government, and the learned Attorney-General, adopt Mr. Haslam's recommendation, instead of instituting a prosecution against a bookseller who never read a line of the book till his attention was called to it by this unjust prosecution? Why do not the Government,--who patronise penny literature--who affect to be friendly to free discussion, call on the Bishop of Exeter, and other well-paid bigots, to defend the Bible against the assaults of Mr. Haslam? For the learned Attorney-General to attempt to crush the free expression of opinion by prosecutions of this nature, is most unjust and impolitic. I maintain that two out of the three passages read would not support the indictment at all; and the third passage--set forth in the first count of the indictment--so far from being blasphemy, declares that the author _rejects the Bible, because he looks upon it as containing statements that were insulting to God_. In the passage immediately following that which is prosecuted, the author admits that the book contains some good precepts, but declares that he deems mere precepts to be useless. I will take the liberty of reading the passage to the Jury.

"I allow that there are some good precepts in it, but I contend that these precepts are useless. I contend that _all_ precepts are useless. Of what use have all the precepts in the world been to the human race? Have they made man wiser, or better, or happier? Have they lessened the amount of his vice and his misery? 1 contend that they have not. Vice and misery have been increasing, although these precepts have been more and more preached to the people. Precepts, reverend ministers of the gospel, are mere wind; they are as empty as the vapour issuing from the kettle's spout; they have no effect whatever in making man wise, or good, or happy; the present wretchedness of the world is a proof of it. The way, reverend sirs, to make man wise, and good, and happy, is, not to preach precepts to the people, but to abolish the present irrational system of individual property; to arrange society in such a manner that the interest of one man will be the interest of the whole. Until this be done, all the precepts in the world, preached, too, with all the eloquence in the world, will never remove man from his present deplorable condition."

Gentlemen, you will perceive by this extract that the author is a socialist. It is not necessary for me to maintain that he is right in these opinions. All that I have to do is to show that these opinions were sincerely believed by Mr. Haslam. I have clearly shown that belief is involuntary. No man can tell one day what his belief will be the next. In my own person I furnish an instance of this. I married young, and having formed in my mind a standard of ideal perfection, I determined that my children should equal that standard, as far as human means could make them. I tried to effect my object by severity. Acting upon wrong principles, of course, I failed; but at that time I was young and ignorant, and believed myself to be right. However, a friend who knew better than myself, and who had had much experience, lent me Miss Williams's Letters on the Philosophy of Education, and the reading of that book put new ideas into my mind. It produced, in fact, a mental revolution;--I changed my opinion and my system, and did so with the happiest success. From that time I banished coercion as a principle of education. I repeat, then, that belief is not voluntary, and that compulsion is not a good means of producing good belief or good conduct.

Gentlemen, I will now quote the opinion of Bishop Marsh, as to the importance of free inquiry. I quote from the Bishops as persons of the greatest authority on this subject, far greater than the Attorney-General, or any of his legal brethren.

"Investigation, it is said, frequently leads to doubts where there were none before. So much the better. If a thing is false, _it ought not to be received_; if a thing is true, _it can never lose in the end by inquiry_."--_Bishop Marsh's First Lecture_.

Gentlemen, you have heard the opinion of Bishop Marsh. You cannot suppose that the Bishops are adverse to the Church--they are great supporters of it, and so, perhaps, might I be if I got so much by it--(a laugh)--as like circumstances produce like effects. Well, Gentlemen, Bishop Marsh maintains that "if a thing is _false_, it ought not to be received; if it is true, it can never lose in the end by inquiry." Why, then, should the Attorney-General prosecute a person who rejects a thing that does not appear to him to be true?

Gentlemen, let me now submit to your attention the opinion of Sir William Temple.

_Sir William Temple_ says, "They may make me do things which are in my power, and depend on my will; but to believe _this_ or _that_ to be true depends not on my will, but upon the light, and evidence, and information which I have. And will civil discouragements and incapacities, fines and confiscations, stripes and imprisonment, enlighten the understanding, convince men's minds of error, and inform them of the truth? Can they have any such efficacy as to make men change the inward judgment they have framed of things? _Nothing can do this but reason and argument_: this is what our minds and understandings will naturally yield to, but they _cannot_ be compelled to believe any thing by outward force. So that the promoting of _true_ religion is plainly out of the magistrate's _reach_, as well as beside _his office_."

Here, Gentlemen, you have the opinion of Sir William Temple, that men cannot be forced to believe anything by outward force and persecution, so that the promoting of true religion is out of the magistrate's power, as well as beside his office. This is a most true and proper declaration; and if the Attorney-General had reflected upon this passage, I am sure he must have fully appreciated its truth, and then this prosecution would not have been instituted. I appeal to the learned Attorney-General, whether my being ruined and sent to a dungeon will alter the state of things? Will it alter the opinion of Mr. Haslam? Will it make me believe that I ought to be prosecuted for selling this book; or that a man has not a right to promulgate his opinions? I am placed in an awkward position in having to defend a man's right to publish, while I dissent from some of Mr. Haslam's opinions, and the manner in which he has thought proper to express them. I have been told that the Attorney-General is a good kind of a man, who has no wish to press severely upon persons in my situation; and some friends--not my true friends--have urged me to forward a memorial to him on the subject of this prosecution. Now what could I do? There was no way of inducing the Attorney-General to stay this prosecution, but by pleading guilty; and although I am well aware that your verdict, if adverse to me, will be my ruin, yet I would rather terminate my existence on the floor of this court than plead guilty to this lying indictment, or admit that I am a wicked, malicious, and evil-disposed person, when I know that to the best of my judgment and ability I am an upright, honest, well-intentioned man. If I believed myself to be the man described, in the indictment--which I must do before I could consent to plead guilty--I would fly to the uttermost parts of the earth; for a man is totally destroyed when he has lost all feeling of self-respect, and the esteem and regard of his friends and associates.

Gentleman of the Jury, I have yet a host of authorities before me, but I will not waste time by quoting them; as I am convinced you must now be quite satisfied, from what I have already adduced, that every Englishman has an undoubted right to investigate all subjects--whether religious or political--and to publish the result of the investigation for the benefit of society at large; but, Gentlemen, in closing what I have to say on this part of the subject, I beg to lay before you two striking and convincing passages from Lord Brougham and Dr. Southwood Smith--two of the most intellectual and eminent individuals of the present day.

Gentlemen, the first passage I will quote is from Dr. Southwood Smith, who strikingly and beautifully describes the proper boundary of human investigation; and I beg the particular attention of the learned Attorney-General to this passage.

"There is no proper boundary to human investigation," says the doctor, "but the capacity of the human mind. Whatever the faculties enable it to understand, it ought to examine without any restraint on the freedom of its inquiry, and without any other limit to its extent than that which its great Author has fixed, by withholding from it the power to proceed farther. When the means of conducting the human understanding to its highest perfection shall have become generally understood, this freedom of inquiry will not only be universally allowed, but early and anxiously inculcated, _as a duty_ of primary and essential obligation."

Gentlemen, I now beg you to listen to the extract I am about to read from _Lord Brougham's Inaugural Address to the University of Glasgow_.

"As men will no longer suffer themselves to be led blindfold in Ignorance, so will they no more yield to the vile principle of judging and treating their fellow-creatures, not according to the intrinsic merit of their actions, but according to the accidental and involuntary coincidence of their opinions. The great truth has finally gone forth to the ends of the earth, _that man shall no more render_ ACCOUNT TO MAN FOR HIS BELIEF, OVER WHICH HE HAS HIMSELF NO CONTROL.

"Henceforward nothing shall prevail upon us to praise or to blame any one for that which he can no more change than he can the hue of his skin or the height of his stature. Henceforward, treating with entire respect those who conscientiously differ from ourselves, the only practical effect of the difference will be, to make us enlighten the ignorance, on one side or the other, from which it springs, by instructing them, if it be theirs, ourselves, if it be our own; to the end that the only kind of unanimity may be produced which is desirable among rational beings,--the agreement proceeding from full conviction after the freest discussion."--_Lord Brougham._

Gentlemen, after hearing these splendid passages, will it be possible for you to sanction a renewal of persecution to crush freedom of opinion?

Gentlemen of the Jury,--I now come to the next point in the argument. Having, I hope, successfully proved the right of free inquiry and the free publication of opinions, I will proceed to show, by a reference to past events, that it is highly important that this right should be preserved, and handed down to our latest posterity unimpaired. Gentlemen, it has been a uniform practice, from the earliest records of time, to stigmatize those who introduce new truths, or who attack the existing institutions of a country, as infidels, and to fix upon them all sorts of opprobious epithets.

"In all ages _new doctrines_ have been branded as impious; and Christianity itself has offered no exception to this rule. The Greeks and Romans charged Christianity with 'impiety and novelty.' In _Cave's Primitive Christianity_ we are informed 'that the Christians were everywhere accounted a pack of _Atheists_, and their religion _the Atheism._' _They were denominated; 'mountebank impostors,' and 'men of a desperate and unlawful faction.' They were represented as 'destructive and pernicious to human society,' and were accused of 'sacrilege, sedition, and high treason.' The same system of misrepresentation and abuse was practised by the Roman Catholics against the Protestants at the Reformation. Some called their dogs Calvin; and others transformed Calvin into Cain,' In France, 'the old stale calumnies, formerly invented against the first Christians, were again revived by Demochares, a doctor of the Sorbonne, pretending that all the disasters of the state were to be attributed to Protestants alone.'"--*Combe on the Constitution of Man_.

In our own enlightened country, where the importance of truth--and free inquiry as a means of its attainment--is beginning to be appreciated, a different practice should prevail. We ought not to persist in this unmanly course. Recollect, Gentlemen, the Prophets of the Jews were _blasphemers_ against the established religions of their day. Did that deter them from denouncing the idolatry and false religions of the surrounding nations? Elijah is represented as ridiculing the God of the Moabites in a most offensive manner: "_And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, 'Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking f or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked._'" 1 Kings xviii. 27. And in Judea, Jesus and his Apostles were charged as blasphemers against Judaism, or the religion established by Moses. We have a remarkable proof of this in the case of Stephen, recorded in the 6th and 7th chapters of the Acts of the Apostles.

"And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.

"Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak _blasphemous_ words against Moses, and against God.

"And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council,

"And set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law:

"For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us."--Acts vi, 10--14.

And Stephen defending himself before the Council, boldly asks them,

"Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; _of whom ye have_ BEEN NOW THE BETRAYERS AND MURDERERS.

"When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.

"And they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,

"And cast him out of the city, and stoned him." Acts vii; 51, 52, 54,57,58.

Now, Gentlemen, is it just or politic that the proclaimers of new truths, and new systems, should be treated in this manner? Would it not be far more rational to hear what a man has to say, and answer him, than to "gnash at him with the teeth," to "stop your ears," to "run at him with one accord," and to "stone him to death?" Can you, Gentlemen, by your verdict give your sanction to a course of proceeding similar to that which deprived Stephen of life? All persecution is the same in spirit--highly unjust and impolitic--whether it be exercised against the Apostle Stephen, or the humble individual who now addresses you.

Gentlemen, the supporters of the established religion in the days of the Apostles, pursued the same course that the bigots of the present day are pursuing. They applied to the High Priest, or to the Attorney-General of that day, to prosecute Stephen for _blasphemy_, and stirred up the people. In the present case the Bishop of Exeter did not stir up the people, but he stirred up the Government. He sent a packet of papers to Lord Normanby, who handed them to the Attorney-General, and he appears to have considered it to be his duty to institute the present prosecution. The learned Attorney-General, as was the case with the priests and rulers of the Jews, would not allow any discussion to take place that was likely to change existing customs. I will do the Government the justice to say, however, that I do not believe they are disposed to put a stop to the full investigation of any subject, if conducted with decency. I readily admit that the passage in the eighth number of Mr. Haslam's Letters is highly objectionable in phraseology--it is in very bad taste--but is that a reason for sending a bookseller to prison, because he has sold a book written in bad taste? It cannot be--all published works must be left to the fiat of public opinion to determine their merit.

Gentlemen, the same spirit was evinced by the wicked and corrupt rulers of the Jews against the founder of Christianity. They sought false witnesses against him; but at length, Jesus having spoken out explicitly, the High Priest rent his clothes, saying, "_He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. What think ye? They answered and said_, *HE is guilty to death.*" (Matt. 26; 65.) Will you, Gentlemen--a Christian Jury--considering Christianity part and parcel of the law of the land, by your verdict say, that Jesus was rightly treated by the Jews? Ought the constituted authorities of that day to have obstructed the glorious truths of Christianity, and have put to death the Messenger of Man's salvation? Unless you deliver a verdict of acquittal, in my case, you in effect sanction and justify all the cruelties exercised against Jesus and his Apostles by the rulers of the Jews?

The learned Counsel for the prosecution will, perhaps, think that there is no analogy between the cases cited and my own case--that Jesus and his Apostles introduced truths of the greatest magnitude and importance, while I am indicted for selling a book that denies the truth of the Jewish Scriptures. Why, Gentlemen, Dr. Adam Clarke says, "There is some reason to fear that they (the Jews) _no longer consider the Old Testament as divinely inspired, but believe that Moses had recourse to pious frauds_." And, Gentlemen, Jesus and his Apostles denied the _truth_ of the Jewish Scriptures--_as understood by the rulers of the Jews_,--and for denying the orthodox and received sense of the Jewish Scriptures were accused of blasphemy, and received the fate of martyrs! That cannot be disputed. Was it just, then,--was it politic, I ask, to settle this controversy by force and cruelty? To _scourg or imprison, and destroy_ those glorious men who had important truths to impart to the world? If England has embraced Christianity--and we are not a nation of hypocrites--let us act upon the spirit of his religion. He says plainly and emphatically, that we are not to root up error by force or cruelty.

In the parable of the tares of the field, he sets forth our duty. "The Kingdom of Heaven," he says, "is likened unto a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, there appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares! He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servant said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, _Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them_. *Let both grow together until the harvest.*" Matt, xiii; 25--30.

When his disciples demanded an explanation of this parable, he said, "The field is the world: the good seed are the children of the Kingdom: but the tares are the children of the wicked one: the enemy that sowed them in the devil: the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the Angels. The Son of Man shall send forth his Angels, and They shall gather out of his Kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity." Matt, xiii; 38, 39. 41.

Gentlemen, how unjust and impolitic, then, are these prosecutions. Do they stop the progress of truth? Persecution for matters of opinion is the same in every case--impolitic--for it never yet succeeded in stopping the circulation of a correct opinion or a prohibited book? Why should _Christians_ prosecute men for disbelieving the _Jewish_ Scriptures, when, according to Dr. Adam Clarke, the Jews disbelieve parts of the Old Testament themselves? Why should professed Christians take up and defend that which the Jews themselves reject? Paul, himself, teaches us that the Jewish law has been superseded by a superior system. He tells us that the Jewish law "was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ (or Christianity), but after that we are no longer under a schoolmaster." Gal. iii; 24, 25.