The History Of The Last Trial By Jury For Atheism In England Part 10

* I always said 'Prisoner for Blasphemy' in all my communications, and directed my friends so to address me, to which the magistrates objected. But if I was to be written to at a gaol, I preferred to be known as a prisoner for opinion rather than as a prisoner for crime.

** Mentioned to prevent the supposition on the part of Sir James that the time would be employed in writing blasphemy, which would be fatal to the application.

As every newspaper sent your memorialist is retained by the governor, your memorialist prays the liberty of reading them.

The visiting magistrates have said they should have no objection to grant what your memorialist asks, had they the power; and hence he prays the exercise of your authority on his behalf.

As custom attaches little weight to the opinion of a prisoner, it becomes not your memorialist to speak of his own case, but trusts he may with propriety refer to it as one in which he believes will be found little that is aggravated. Seduced in the warmth of debate to express his honest opinion on a religious question, young and inexperienced, he took not the hypocrite's crooned path, nor the dissembler's hidden way, but unwarily uttered language disingenuousness would have concealed or art have polished, and became in consequence the ready victim of Christianity. Criminal without intention, punishment brings with it no consciousness or guilt, and hence that which in other circ.u.mstances would be light, is, in his, a bitter infliction.

George Jacob Holyoake.

Sir James gave me permission to remain up till 9 o'clock after I had been three months in prison. But for the concession it required an effort to be grateful, for it was a permission to remain up without fire and without light. For unless I could pay for fire and light, I had to go without. Whether Sir James Graham intended this, I have no means of knowing; he probably expected that the magistrates would not interpret his order as a privilege to sit up in the cold and in the dark, which would be a greater punishment than going to bed. But they did put this construction upon it. As Sir James did not mention fire and light, they refused to supply them.

Mathematical studies were impossible, for the authorities also refused to allow me my instruments, lest I should commit suicide with them; but I had provided for that, as every man should who goes to gaol. There was just width enough in my cell to admit of the heavy iron bed-frame being raised on one end. By marking a circle round one of the legs, which I did with a fragment of stone, I determined the place on which the leg would fall when the frame was pulled down. My head once placed on that spot, the great weight of the frame would have sent the narrow leg through the brain, and death must have been instantaneous. I am no friend of suicide, and had a thousand reasons for living; but I had not been long in gaol before I saw many things to which none but the degraded or the weak would submit--and lest they should come to my turn, I provided against them.

About this time an event occurred in my family which converted my imprisonment into an unexpected bitterness. Against that 'love abroad which means spite (or indifference) at home,' I early set my face.

Between me and Eleanor, my wife, there always existed an understanding as to the risks I ran in my free speaking. Whatever consequences fell upon my own head alone, I had myself only to please in incurring: but those which affected others, I had no right to invoke, without their consent--and this consent I always sought from my wife, in any special case which arose. At our marriage, Eleanor very well understood that my life somewhat resembled a soldier's, and that it would often include duties and dangers not compatible with perennial fireside comfort Nor did she object to this, and I have had the sweet fortune always to be left to do whatever I should have done, had I been single and childless.

On my saying, on the imprisonment of Mr. Southwell, first editor of the _Oracle_, that it was my duty to take his place, Eleanor replied--'Do what it seems your duty to do, and I and the children will take care of ourselves as well as we can. When they grow up, I trust they will contemplate with little satisfaction any advantage they might have enjoyed at the expense of their father's duty. We can leave them no riches, but we may at least leave them a good example, and an unsoiled name.'

It was therefore that when I came to leave home, to go to my trial, all was calm and cheerful as usual, though there was much around to suggest uneven thoughts. On that day no one came to accompany me or to spend an hour of solace with those from whom I parted. Had there been a single friend present to have made up the appearance of society after I was gone, the loneliness would have been less bitter. As I left the house I heard that cry break forth which had been suppressed that it might not sadden my departure. Before I had proceeded far up Windsor Street, Ashted, I was arrested by Madeline's silvery voice calling 'good bye, dada,' and turning round I saw her large bright, black eyes (which every body praised) peering like two stars round the lintel of the door. I am glad I did not then know that I should never hear that voice again, nor see those bright eyes any more. To turn the attention of mankind in an atheistical direction may do harm to some. The propagation of all new views does harm, more or less. As in commercial speculations much capital is sunk before any returns come in, so in the improvement of the people, you sacrifice some old feeling which is good, before the new opinion, which is better, can be created. But all the new opinions I have at any time imbibed have never produced so much harm in me as the prudential doctrines of Political Economy. The doctrine that it is disreputable in the poor to have children, is salutary, no doubt--but it requires to be enforced under limitation. To regard the existence of your little ones as an expense, and the gentle love of children as a luxury in which you cannot indulge without reproach, is to sour life, dry up affection, and blight those whose tender years should be pa.s.sed in a perpetual smile of joy. To look into the face of your child and feel that the hand of death, which shall hush that gentle voice, pale those rosy cheeks, and quench those animated eyes--is a political blessing, is horrible. I look back with mute terror on the day when I was under the influence of those feelings. I cannot dwell upon it. I would burn all the books of Political Economy I ever read (and I think it the science of many blessings) if I could feel once more on my knee the gentle hand of my child from whom I parted that day, too stoical to shed a tear.

After a few weeks of my imprisonment had pa.s.sed away, hint--words came of Madeline's failing health. Out of some money sent by my private friends, John Fowler and Paul Rodgers, of Shefield, to buy better food than the gaol afforded, I saved a guinea and sent it to Birmingham to purchase Madeline a winter cloak--it was spent in buying her a coffin.

Though of perfect health and agility, she was one of those children who require entire preservation from exposure, want, or fatigue. On ten s.h.i.+llings per week, which was all that the Anti-Persecution Union could provide, this could not be done, as Eveline, then in arms, left her mother no opportunity of increasing that small income. Cold succeeded cold, when want of more means caused them all to go to live in a house ill ventilated, and where several were ill of fever, which soon attacked Madeline.

Mr. Chilton sent me several intimations to prepare for the worst, should it happen. But I could not believe in the worst happening, and indeed I had yet to realise what the worst implied. At length one morning the heavy corridor door grated on its harsh hinges, and the morose turnkey--fit messenger of misery--put a letter into my hand. As it had been, as usual, broken open--for there is no feeling, not even that of affection and death, respected in a gaol--Ogden knew its contents, and in justice to him I must say he endeavoured, as well as one whose ability lay in his moroseness could, to speak a word of apology and sympathy. The strangeness and awkwardness of the attempt drew my attention to the fatal black border, which gave me sensations such as I never received before and never shall again, for the first death of one dear to you, like that of the first love, brings with it a feeling which is never repeated. I remember that some prisoner came and covered me with a coat, for I had walked into the yard without one. Captain Mason and two friends came round, but I could not speak to them. He addressed a few words to me, but I turned away.

Then Madeline had died the death of the poor; she had perished among the people who know neither hope nor comfort, a pledge that I shall never forsake those with whose sad destiny one so dear to me is linked. Though in the death of poverty there is nothing remarkable, though hundreds of children are daily killed off in the same way, yet parents unused to this form of calamity find in it, the first time, a bitterness which can never be told. The ten s.h.i.+llings per week income of the family was made up by small subscriptions by some who knew me, and by a few outside who happened to think useful the course I had taken. One or two friends whose professions had beforetime been profuse, Eleanor met. They were cold, or to her they seemed so. She thought they feared a continued acquaintance might lay them under some tax to contribute to her support.

This she could never bear. Offering her hand to one who did not take it, she went home, and nothing induced her to subject herself to such suspicion any more. A quick and enduring sense of independence, which no privation could disturb, was an attribute in her character I had always admired, and this dreadful form of its operation I have never been able to censure. The Roman mother put on the armour of her son as he went out, and saw him brought home dead from the fight without weakness: but in that case, the strife of arms, the glory of victory, the sublimity of duty, and the applause of the senate, were so many supports to the mother's heroism; but harder far is it for a mother to bend over her child day by day and night after night, and see relentless death eat like a canker into the bud of the damask cheek of beauty, and be too poor to s.n.a.t.c.h it from the tomb--and this with no trumpet note, no clang of arms to drown the dying scream, no incense of glory to raise the sinking heart, no applause of a generous people to reward the sacrifice--without one soul near who could penetrate to the depth of that desolation, and utter those words of sympathy which is all which humanity can do to soothe in the face of death. There were indeed those near who might have done so, but some could not comprehend this grief, and others, for reasons of Political Economy, 'did not see the good of regret' at a child dying, and they will learn from these pages for the first time that these wounds existed which, after eight years, are still fresh.

There are homesteads that have witnessed deeds That battle fields, with all their bannered pomp, Have little to compare with. Life's great play May, so it have an actor great enough, Be well performed upon a humble stage.

'My dada's coming to see me,' Madeline exclaimed on the night of her death, with that full, pure, and thrilling tone which marked her when in health. 'I am sure he is coming to night, mama,' and then remembering that that could not be, she said 'write to him, mama, he will come to see me;' and these were the last words she uttered--and all that remains now is the memory of that cheerless, tireless room, and the midnight reverberation of that voice which I would give a new world to hear again.

For her father, he was debating in incoherence the vain proposition as to whether he could prevail on the Governor to let him go home for one night to smooth and watch over that dying pillow, and he would cheerfully and gratefully have expiated the privilege by six or twelve months' additional imprisonment.

O liberty! whom the nations welcome with triumphant shouts, Whom all to whom the world owes its progress have wors.h.i.+pped--over how many graves hast thou walked! Rising with the morning's dawn, making all people radiant with thy presence, the poet thrills as thy chariot is borne on the tarn's golden beams, and he hails thee as a G.o.ddess, and blesses thee as a bride, and sings of thy triumphs and benefactions! But those who serve thee--who make their lives a sad and desert waste that thy pathway through the world may be un.o.bstructed--who kneel to thee in their dungeon-churches and pour out the incense of life's young warm blood at gibbet-altars: they know thee by thy gory garments dripping with the blood of the father and the tear of the orphan, and the desolation which precedes thy progress. The anthems of thy march are hollow voices from Siberia's mines, and Vinceanes' cells--the wail of women under the Russian knout, the groans of Konarski and the whistle of bullets which slay the Bandiera and Blum--thy trophies are the fresh graves of Hungary and Rome, thy throne is on a hecatomb of earth's n.o.blest and bravest sons. Yet art thou still sacred in the eyes of man.

Queen of Genius and Progress! emblem of that suffering through which Humanity is purified and developed! Thou hast trodden on the grave of my child, and I wors.h.i.+p then still, although thou mayst yet tread on my own.

Yes, though I neither hope--for that would be presumptuous--nor expect it, seeing no foundation, I shall be pleased to find a life after this.

Not a life where those are punished who were unable to believe without evidence, and unwilling to act in spite of reason--for the prospect of annihilation is pleasanter and more profitable to contemplate: not a life where an easy faith is regarded as 'easy virtue' is regarded among some men--but a life where those we have loved and lost here are restored to us again--for there, in that Hall where those may meet who have been sacrificed in the cause of duty--where no gross, or blind, or selfish, or cruel nature mingles, where none sit but those whom human service and endurance have purified and ent.i.tled to that high company, Madeline will be a Hebe. Yes, a future life, bringing with it the admission to such companions.h.i.+p, would be a n.o.ble joy to contemplate.

But Christianity has no such dream as this.

On making arrangements for the burial, at the Birmingham Cemetery, the clerk asked whether they should provide a Minister, or whether the friends of the deceased would do so? The answer was--'A minister was not desired. 'Then I presume,' the clerk observed, 'you mean that you will provide one yourselves?' The answer again was, 'we do not require one at all. Please send the beadle merely.'

On the day of the interment the beadle attended as requested. He was instructed to conduct the burial party direct to the grave; and not into the chapel, which he did without remark: and when the coffin, plain but pretty, without tinsel or angels, was lowered, each threw a bouquet of flowers in, and when the grave was made up they returned home. Thus Madeline was buried, as became her innocence and her fate, without parade, without priest, or priestly ceremony. Had hesitation been displayed, or previous inquiries been made as to whether what was done could have been permitted, no question but that a priest would have been inflicted, as at the grave of Carlile and others--for Christianity, always officious and rude to the dissentient, is never more so than when opposition is paralysed by agony on the bed of death, or hushed in speechless sadness by the side of the grave.

As it would only be painful to Mrs. Holyoake, I never wished her to visit me; but after the death of Madeline she desired it, and she brought little 'Eveline' (a name given to her in lieu of her own because of its similarity to Madeline.) On this occasion Mr. Bransby Cooper sent to say that the magistrates' Committee-room, an elegant and cheerful apartment, should be at my service, at Mrs. Holyoake's visit. Mr. Cooper was the first of the magistrates to send a message of condolence on the death of Madeline, and in this instance his kindness was delicate and generous. As on the day Mrs. Holyoake came the magistrates happened to hold a meeting in it, an apology was sent me, and the Lodge placed at my service. No turnkey was sent in, and I was permitted to see my friends with an air of perfect freedom. My sister Caroline, who was one of the party, brought me a present of wine and cigars. As both were forbidden by the rules of the gaol, I declined to touch them. As I was trusted without restraint, I was doubly anxious to respect a liberty so generously conceded. Had they set a watch over me, I should have had less scruple, and perhaps have thought it a merit to defeat their suspicions.

Captain Mason, the governor, was a study--a type of the gentleman, official, and conventional, whose qualities were instructive. Bland, imperturbable, civil, and firm, he was never weak and never rude.

Among the uneducated, all decisive action is announced in commotion or bl.u.s.ter. The gentleman is never in a hurry, never in a contention. If you annoy him, are rude to him, impose upon him, or menace him, perhaps he quietly indicates his opinion of the impropriety, perhaps his resolution is taken without. He avoids you. His defence is prevention.

Renewal of offence, renewal of intercourse, chance of altercation or repet.i.tion, is simply impossible. Such was Captain Mason. I watched his manners with pleasure--he governed the gaol like a drawing room, excepting that the _desserts_ were not quite the same. I saw rude men baffled, they could not make out how. Possibly he had nerves and sensibility, but these articles were not in common use. They were kept under lock and key, and never brought out in the routine of official duties. As blandly and courteously as he wished me good morning, he would have conducted me to the gallows, had instruction to that effect reached him. He would have apologised for the inconvenience, but he would have hung me while I was saying 'pray don't mention it.'

Excepting in one transaction our intercourse was unruffled. When I had left the gaol, a prisoner (the Master of a Post Office) the only gentleman on my side of the prison, addressed to me a letter of accusation against the governor--an act which made me a partic.i.p.ator in his sentiments. As it pa.s.sed through the governor's hands, he wrote under the name the crime and sentence of the writer--a brief and bitter retort. I reenclosed the letter to the writer with a note to Captain Mason, observing that on leaving the gaol I had expressed to him the only opinion I entertained of him, and I should regard it as unmanly to be a party to reproaches which I did not see reason to address to him in person. He wrote me back, with a soldier's honourable frankness, that 'I had always behaved honourably in my intercourse with him, and he did not believe I would do an unmanly thing.'

The exceptional transaction with the Captain referred to was this.

One of my fellow-prisoners was an epileptic man, whose ignorance and irritability, more than any crime, had led to his imprisonment. As I kept a sort of school in our common room, and taught a few things to those about me who were disposed to learn, I had become interested in Upton, a humble and unhappy man, who learned at grammar anxiously. Some nights he would fall out of bed in an epileptic fit, and lie groaning on the stone floor for an hour or more together. It was in vain that we shouted to the turnkeys. They who can hear a man think of escaping, cannot hear when he breaks his neck. Upton representing that a little tobacco, to which he had been accustomed, would save him from the frequency of these fits, I procured him some. Smoking it one day in a corner, in a paper pipe made for the purpose out of one of my letters, the governor came upon him through a side door. Upon being asked how he procured it, he answered, 'From a man who had just come in from the Sessions.' This the governor did not believe. At night Ogden made an immense speech at me, in which that luminous functionary inserted several elephantine hints, to the effect that he knew the source whence the aforesaid tobacco came. It was a treat to hear Ogden hint; it was like a hippopotamus putting his paw out, or kicking a man down stairs.

As soon as I could get to speak to Upton, I prevailed upon him to allow me to write to the governor, tell him the truth, and take the blame upon myself, reminding Upton that a good man might be surprised into a lie, but only a bad man would persist in one. The retaliation of the governor was refined and vindictive. Instead of ordering me into a dark cell on bread and water for two or three days, which was the authorised punishment, he ordered two gates to be locked between me and my visitors, so that those who spoke were obliged to shout to me. This he continued, with slight variation, to the end of my imprisonment. This deprived me of the pleasure of seeing ladies who called, as I would never consent to see them under circ.u.mstances of so much humiliation.

Captain Mason had had previous proof that my professions might be trusted. When first imprisoned, the reader perhaps remembers I was kept (though on my way home after a journey) a fortnight while the magistrates played at bail. When at length they signified their intention of accepting it, Captain Mason took me, through the city, to Bransby Cooper's house, where the bail-deed was to be completed. On our way I asked him if it would be necessary for me to take an oath, before my own bond could be accepted, as I should object to take an oath? He turned round and replied--'Why, Holyoake, as you don't believe in any of the G.o.ds, you could have no objection to swear by them all.' I explained to him that if the Magistrate would regard my oath as a mere ceremony, by which I rendered myself liable to penalties in case of violated truth or failure in my bond, I would take the oath readily, if all the G.o.ds of the Pantheon were in it: but if it were regarded as a profession of my religious faith, I would not take it. It was better that I should go back to gaol, than to make a profession of belief which would mislead others. I told Mr. Cooper the same when we reached his house. He, however, said my signature would do.

One day I concluded a dialogue with my chaplain upon the principle of reciprocation, i. e. of retorting his language upon himself, and, I think, not without utility, for he never afterwards fell into that insensible arrogance of speech so common among pastors. On the occasion referred to, he began--'Are you really an atheist, Mr. Holyoake?'

'Really I am.'

'You deny that there is a G.o.d?'

'No; I deny that there is sufficient reason to believe that there is one.'

'I am very glad to find that you have not the temerity to say that there is no G.o.d.'

'And I am very sorry to find that you have the temerity to say there is one. If it be absurd in me to deny what I cannot demonstrate, is it not improper for you to avert so dogmatically what you cannot prove?'

'Then where would you leave the question of atheism?'

'Just where it leaves us both. 'It is a question of probability.' 'Ah!

the probabilities in favour of atheism are very few.'

'How know you that? Did you ever examine the question without prejudice, or read that written in its favour without fear? Those who dare not look at all never see far.'

'But if the atheist has so much on his side, why does he not make it known? We do not keep back our evidences.'

'Has the atheist an equal opportunity with you? Is it generous in you to taunt him with lack of evidence, when you are prepared to punish its production?'

'The reason is that your principles are so horrible; as Robert Hall has said, 'Atheism is a b.l.o.o.d.y and ferocious system.'

'Permit me, sir, to return that gentle speech--to tell you that your principles are horrible, and that Christianity is a b.l.o.o.d.y and ferocious system.'

'Really I am shocked to hear you speak so dreadfully of Christianity.'

'Why should you be shocked to hear what you are not shocked to say?'

'But atheism is so revolting.' 'But Christianity is so revolting.'

'How dangerous is it for atheism to corrupt the minds of children.'

'How pernicious is it for Christian doctrines to corrupt the thoughts of infancy.'

'But you are only a.s.serting.'

'Are you doing otherwise? I sometimes think that Christians would be more respectful in their speech if the same language could be applied to them with impunity which they apply to others.'