The History Of The Last Trial By Jury For Atheism In England Part 8

After this, you will see it is clear that though a jury had before found a person guilty of the offence I am charged with, it will be no justification of your doing so too. Here Mr. Holyoake, perceiving that he would be heard fairly, and that no attempts to put him down were practised, laid aside a handful of notes, and said:--

I have to thank your lords.h.i.+p, and you, gentlemen of the jury, for the courtesy and attention with which I have been heard. Gentlemen, if I have occupied you long you will find my apology in the circ.u.mstance that your verdict against me will occupy me longer. I could wish that justice to me and your convenience had permitted brevity. The length of my defence has originated with the charge against me, and not with myself.

It is said, that when Southey was asked if he were not ashamed of having written _Wat Tyler_, he answered, no more ashamed than I am of having been young. Meaning, any man may err in youth. So I erred in being religious in my early days. If I am not religious now, deem me not criminal. Religion never did me a service, how then should I love it?

But it a.s.sailed my youth with gloomy dogmas, now it a.s.sails my liberty.

Gentlemen, if during my address to you I have offended by the frankness of my avowals, it has not proceeded from a disregard of your feelings, but from the belief that, as men, you would prefer independence to servility of speech.

Of the nature of the charge against me I add no further word. My only crime has been the discharge of what I considered a duty. For my difference in opinion with you upon the question of Deity, I offer no apology. I have made no contract to think as you do, and I owe you no obligation to do it. If I commanded you to abjure your belief, you would disregard it as impertinence, and if you punish me for not adjuring mine, how will you reconcile it with 'doing as you would wish to be done unto?'

Had I said, that there is no G.o.d, still I should not deserve the penalties of the law. If I point to the wrong I see in this Christian country, and ask, is this Christianity? you would reply, 'No; what you refer to results from men who live without G.o.d in the world.' Then, gentlemen, would you punish me for simply saying that which other men, unpunished, are every day doing?

If I have said that religious revenues should be reduced one half, I spoke only the dictates of humanity at this season of national suffering. Surely it is not blasphemous to argue that human misery should be alleviated at the expense of spiritual pride.

I ask not equal rights with yourselves. You, as Christians, can imprison those who differ from you. I do not offend your pride by asking to be admitted your equals here. I desire not such privileges. I claim merely the right to speak my convictions; to show a man the right path when I think he takes the wrong one.

It is a melancholy maxim in these courts of law, that the greater the truth the greater the libel; and so it would be with me this day could I demonstrate to you that there is no Deity. The more correct I am the severer would be my punishment, because the law regards the belief in a G.o.d to be the foundation of obedience among men. But I trust I have convinced you that my views of this question are compatible with the practice of all our duties to our fellow-men, borne out by eminent authority and long experience.

Setting aside the reprobation of persecution by Middleton, by Clarke, by Latimer, and other divines I have quoted; Leslie, Reid, and Bulwer have contended that the objections of the sceptic merely strengthen the fabric of piety they pretend to a.s.sail. Gentlemen, which is to be believed, divines and philosophers, or the common law? These persons speak as though they believed Christianity to be true; the common law punishes as though it knew it to be false.

If the state religion be true, my opinion can never overcome it; and by convicting me you publish your consciousness of error in the cause you are placed there to defend as truth. If G.o.d be truth you libel him and his power, and publish the omnipotence of error.

When in gaol, I one day opened the rules drawn up by the judges. The 167th opens thus: 'No prisoner shall lie.' Now, gentlemen, how is a man to act under these circ.u.mstances in which I am placed? If you find me guilty upon the indictment before you, my case stands in this manner--if I do not lie you imprison me, and if I do you punish me. Turning back to the morality of ancient days, and meditating with delight on their n.o.ble sincerity and love of truth, am I to count it a misfortune to live in modern times and among a Christian people?

In your churches, as I have read to you, you implore that truth and justice may descend among men, and: the supplication is a n.o.ble one.

Gentlemen, will you pray for truth in your churches and brand it in your courts?

The atmosphere of your gaols as little a.s.similates with my taste as their punishments will accord with my const.i.tution, I seek not these things, I a.s.sure you, but when they lie in the path of duty I trust I shall ever prefer them to a dereliction from it.

But, gentlemen, supposing that they are my sentiments that you are requested to punish; you should first do yourselves the justice to reflect what has been said about them and insinuated in this court.

Learned divines, and sage writers on atheism, agree that it is too absurd to need refutation--too barren to satisfy, too monstrous to attract, too fearful to allure, too dumb to speak, and too deathly not to appal its own votaries. It is styled too grave to entertain youth, and too devoid of consolation for the trembling wants of age--too abstract for the comprehension of the ignorant, and too unreasonable to gain the admiration of the intelligent. That it is alarming to the timid, and disquieting to the brave-that it negatives everything, and sets up nothing, and is so purely speculative that it can never have a practical bearing on the business of life. Gentlemen, will you disturb the harmony of these conclusions by a verdict against me, and attack that which never existed, and place upon the grave records of this court a slaying of the self-slain? Will you thus draw attention to a subject you perhaps think had better be forgotten, and create a conviction that it must be a greatly important one, since you erect it into public notice by directing the thunders of the law at young and comparatively inexperienced believer in its principle?

Would you test my opinions by my emotions on the bed of death? Let me a.s.sure you, that if men can expect to die in peace who can send their fellow men to a gaol because of honest difference of opinion, I have nothing to fear.

I am told I may hold opinions, but must keep them to myself--which means, I may know and feel what is right, but must never do it. I must see my fellow-men in error, but never put them right. Must live every day below the standard of right my sense of duty and conscience sets up, and all my life long 'prove all things' and never 'hold fast to the good.'

The indictment charges me with having 'wickedly, maliciously, and with evil design,' against the peace of the Queen, uttered certain words. What shadow of evidence has been adduced to substantiate this extravagant charge?

Will you suffer this court to proclaim the sacred nature of an oath, and openly violate it in the same hour and under the same roof? I might ask in the spirit of that Christianity you sit there to administer, how do you propose to answer to your G.o.d in that day when the secrets of all hearts are to be opened, when all dissembling is to be exposed, and all perjury punished; how do you pro-pose to answer for having invoked the name of G.o.d in this a.s.sembly only to disregard it, on the poor plea of precedent--that others have done so before? For, gentlemen, there is nothing else that even the subtlest sophistry can conjure up to justify you. But I best prefer appealing to you as honest men, in the spirit of my own reasoning, and thinking; as men with an eye to the improvement of mankind, who would break the unjust shackles that bind them, who would discard prejudice in order to be just, who will not condemn me because I am not rich, and who will listen to humanity rather than to bigotry, and respect truthfulness wherever you may find it. I believe that in every honest heart there is a sense of rect.i.tude that rises superior to creeds, that respects all virtue and protects all truth, that asks for no names and seeks no precedents before resolving to do rightly, that fears no man's frowns, and dares to be just without custom's permit.

To this feeling, gentlemen, only do I appeal, and by its verdict I am willing to abide.

Mr. Justice Erskine: Gentlemen of the jury, although the lengthened address of the defendant has demanded from you so long endurance, in this vitiated atmosphere, I still trust we shall have enough of power left to direct our minds to the parts of this case which are important.

The greater part of the time has been wasted on subjects with which you have nothing to do. We are not sitting here as a deliberative a.s.sembly to consider whether in respect of such cases as this it is politic or wise to imprison for opinions--whether men ought to be punished for uttering such sentiments--and I shall have nothing to say to you on that point. We have to decide on the law as we find it. I shall make no law--the judges made no law, but have handed it down from the earliest ages. I should have no more power to alter this than to say the eldest son is not the heir of his father. Allusion has been made to some expressions of mine, when in the course of my duty I directed the attention of the grand jury to these cases. Certainly the printed report was highly incorrect. I said nothing to prejudice them. Inasmuch as this offence directly tended to take away that foundation on which real morality can alone be safely based, I told them what I feel, that without religion there is no morality. I recommended that that foundation may be made by early education and habits of thought, but in so doing I did not mean to prejudge, nor do I seem to have been considered as doing so, I am not going to lay down as law that no man has a right to entertain opinions opposed to the religion of the state, nor to express them. Man is only responsible for his opinions to G.o.d, because G.o.d only can judge of his motives, and we arrogate his duties if we judge of men's sentiments. If men will entertain sentiments opposed to the religion of the state we require that they shall express them reverently, and philosophers who have discussed this subject all agree that this is right Mr. Archdeacon Paley has stated this in language so plain, far better than any words I could supply myself. 'Serious arguments are fair on all sides. Christianity is but ill-defended by refusing audience or toleration to the objections of unbelievers. But whilst we would have freedom of inquiry restrained by no laws but those of decency, we are ent.i.tled to demand, on behalf of a religion which holds forth to mankind a.s.surances of immortality, that its credit be a.s.sailed by no other weapons than those of sober discussion and legitimate reasoning.' Our law has adopted that as its rule, and men are not permitted to make use of indecent language in reference to G.o.d and the Christian religion, without rendering themselves liable to punishment. You have had a great number of books read to you, arguing whether it was politic to prosecute in such cases. One of the sentiments was a dignitary's reply, 'I will answer it.' That points out the difference in these cases.

Sober argument you may answer, but indecent reviling you cannot, and therefore the law steps in and punishes it. You have been told you have to consider what is blasphemy. He asked the witness what he considered blasphemy, and he gave him a very sensible answer. What you have to try is, whether the defendant wickedly and devisedly did intend to bring the Christian religion into contempt among the people, by uttering words of and concerning Almighty G.o.d, the holy Scriptures, and the Christian religion. The charge is, that he uttered these words with the intention of bringing Almighty G.o.d, the Christian religion, and the holy Scriptures, into contempt. You are not called upon to say whether in your judgment the opinions of the defendant are right or wrong--whether it is right or wrong that words like these should be punished, but whether he uttered these words with the intent charged in the indictment. These words were proved by a witness who admits that others were used, that they did not follow consecutively, and that other words were interspersed. It is right that you should have the whole set before you, for a man is not to be judged for what is partly set before you, and therefore it was necessary you should have the whole of what was said. The way in which the witness related the statements made by defendant was this: He said he had been lecturing on 'Home Colonisation, Emigration, and Poor-Laws superseded.' After the lecture had been closed, some man whose name he did not then know, said the lecturer had been speaking of our duty to our fellow-men, but he had not spoken of our duty to our G.o.d, and it is important that you should notice that the words were not the subject of the lecture, but uttered in answer to a question put to him. There is no evidence that he intended to have said anything--there is no evidence that this person is a friend of the other person, or that this question was asked so as to give him an opportunity of uttering these sentiments,* If that had been the case it would have made it worse than if he had introduced it. This challenge having been made by this person, whoever it was, the defendant said--'I am of no religion at all; I do not believe in such a thing as a G.o.d.' There is nothing in the introduction of the word 'thing' to show that he intended to-treat the subject with levity and contempt. You might take it that he said he did not believe there is such a being as a G.o.d.

* The artifice which Mr. Justice Erskine here suggested to the jury never entered into my imagination. The evidence could not have given the jury any such idea, and I was pained and astonished to hear the judge employ it.

The witness went on: 'He said the people of this country are too poor to have any religion, he would serve the Deity as the government did the subaltern officers--place him on half-pay; I was near the door; you said the reason was the expense of religion. And then he was asked as to his opinion of blasphemy. He is then cross-examined as to his knowledge of some report made by another person. You did not lay any emphasis on the word thing; you said the word in the ordinary tone of voice.' There is something which defendant has alleged himself to have stated* which gives a stronger sting than that which was given by the witness--'I flee the Bible as a viper.' The question is whether these words were uttered with the intention of bringing G.o.d and the Christian religion into contempt. Then the charge is made out, for I tell you that it is an offence at common law. If it is not an offence, the indictment is not worth the parchment it is written upon--if there is no such authority as that which I have laid down. Any man who treats with contempt the Christian religion, is guilty of an indictable misdemeanour. You have to consider the language and a pa.s.sage read to you from a charge of a learned judge. 'It may not be going too far to state, that no author or preacher is forbidden stating his opinions sincerely. By maliciously is not meant malice against any particular individual, but a mischievous intent. This is the criterion, and it is a fair criterion, if it can be collected from the offensive levity in which the subject is treated, if the matter placed in the indictment contains any such tendency.' If the words had appeared in the course of a written paper you would have entertained no doubt that the person who had uttered these words had uttered them with levity. The only thing in his favour is, that it was not a written answer. The solution given by the defendant is, that although his opinions are unhappily such that he has no belief in a G.o.d, he had no intention of bringing religion into contempt. He went on to state that he considered it the duty of the clergymen of the establishment to have reduced their incomes one-half. If he had meant this, he ought to have made use of other language. You will dismiss from your minds all statements in newspapers, or other statements made out of court, and consider it in reference to the evidence. If you are convinced that he uttered it with levity, for the purpose of treating with contempt the majesty of Almighty G.o.d he is guilty of the offence.

If you think he made use of these words in the heat of argument without any such intent, you will give him the benefit of the doubt. If you are convinced that he did it with that object you must find him guilty, despite of all that has been addressed to you. If you entertain a reasonable doubt of his intention, you will give him the benefit of it.

* In the report of my original speech to Maitland, which I read to the court from the Oracle.

The jury, after a very brief deliberation, returned a verdict of _Guilty_.

[One of the jury was a Deist, a professed friend of free speech, and who had said that he never could convict me, but he wanted courage when the hour of the verdict came, and gave in against me. For myself, I never for a moment expected an acquittal. During the few moments of the jury's consultation, I took my watch from my neck and gave it, with my keys, to my friend, Mr. Knight Hunt. My papers I consigned to my friend Mr. W. B.

Smith, as for all I knew they might the next moment become the property of the court by virtue of the sentence.]

Mr. Justice Erskine. George Jacob Holyoake, if you had been convicted as the author of that paper which Adams has been convicted of publis.h.i.+ng, my sentence must have been very severe. But, although the name is the same, there is no evidence of it.* You have been convicted of uttering language, and although yom have been adducing long arguments to show the impolicy of these prosecutions, you are convicted of having uttered these words with improper levity. The arm of the law is not stretched out to protect the character of the Almighty; we do not a.s.sume to be the protectors of our G.o.d, but to protect the people from such indecent language. And if these words had been written for deliberate circulation, I should have pa.s.sed on you a severer sentence. You uttered them in consequence of a question--I have no evidence that this question was put to draw out these words. Proceeding on the evidence that has been given, trusting that these words have been uttered in the heat of the moment, I shall think it sufficient to sentence you to be _imprisoned in the Common Gaol for Six calendar months_.

* This is another of those unwarranted suppositions in which the judge ought not to have indulged. 'That paper' was written by my friend Mr. Chilton, Editor of the Oracle in my absence, and signed with his initials. The judge might have known that I was in Gloucester Gaol when it was written and published. I should have stopped the judge and corrected him, but I feared by seeming to separate myself from Adams, to be thought capable of saving myself at his expense, or exposing him to new rigour.

Mr. Holyoake. My lord, am I to be cla.s.sed with thieves and felons?

Mr. Justice Erskine. No; thieves and felons are sentenced to the Penitentiary, you to the Common Gaol.

The court adjourned at ten o'clock.

What was advanced by the counsel and the judge has been rendered in full in the foregoing report, but I have contented myself with an abstract of what I urged myself. The _Times_ said I quoted from more than thirty authors, which is very likely; but it was not because I was not sensible of the good taste of brevity that I occupied the bench so long. I was standing that day in court fourteen hours, and, including the cross examinations, I was speaking more than eleven hours. I prepared notes to last me two days; and after the first six hours, my voice, usually shrill and weak, became full and somewhat sonorous. I could have spoken all night, and I should have done it had the judge attempted to put me down. But I willingly acknowledge that, on the whole, the conduct of the judge was fair to me, and patient to a degree that inspired me with great respect for the dignity of the bench, and I dedicated my 'Short and Easy Method with the Saints' to Mr. Justice Erskine, as an actual expression of my respect. The governor of the gaol one day said to me, that I ought not to regret six months' imprisonment after occupying the court and public so many hours. I did not regret it. Indeed, I more deserved the sentence for the length of my defence than for the words for which I was indicted. But it was the menace of the magistrates (before recounted) that I should not be heard, that did me the harm, and exposed me to the imputation of wanting good sense, which is a worse imputation than that of wanting orthodoxy. This came of inexperience in imprisonment. The menaces of magistrates will not so mislead me another time.

When I now read the notices of these proceedings which I furnished to the _Oracle_ at the time, I smile at the juvenility of comment in which I indulged. When similarly-worded reports reach me for the _Reasoner_, my practice is to extract the simple facts--and, of course, the writers remonstrate with me; but how grateful should I be now if some one had done the same by me then. The principle on which we proceeded with our _Oracle_ was that every man should express himself in his own words and in his own way, and we thought it a crime against freedom to distinguish between weak comment and the report of essential facts, or the expression of vital principle. The report of the proceedings rendered in these pages is given in some measure upon the rule of discrimination which I have described. But, in this, I have been impartial to others, and have omitted many things on the part of my opponents which I believe they would not repeat, and which I, therefore, have no wish to perpetuate. The remaining variations between this report and that which formerly appeared will be found to be partly on the side of greater accuracy in some respects, and more fulness in others. The original report presented most of the quotations, calling them a string of pearls, but left in a very unravelled state the string which tied them--and hence they read like abrupt interpolations. I have now given the connecting observations, the spirit of the extracts, and, in cases where the extracts have not since that time grown familiar to the public ear, I have given them also.

The influence of my defence upon the public at Gloucester and Cheltenham, notwithstanding the difficulties under which I laboured, was in my favour beyond my expectation. The newspapers stated that the court and jury were attentive throughout, and the numbers who thronged the court behaved in the most decorous manner, testifying their interest in the proceedings by a uniform silence, manifesting neither approbation nor disapprobation.' Several newspapers gave nine or ten columns of the proceedings, which was valuable propagandism. And it is due to the _Cheltenham Examiner_ (whose parallel between me and Francis the reader will not have forgotten), to state that it gave an effective rendering of my defence, and added these compensatory words to its report:--'The defendant spoke throughout in a temperate manner, and his defence appeared to tell in his favour, so far as regarded the honesty of his motives.'

Let me say here that my grateful acknowledgments are due to the editor of the _Cheltenham Free Press_. That paper reported whatever concerned my liberty, my conscience, or my character. It risked much in defending, alone among its local contemporaries, the freedom of speech violated in my person. It opened its columns to Goodwyn Barmby's proclamations, to Catherine Barmby's letters, to Richard Carlile's defences, and to the numerous communications of my friends on my behalf.

My acknowledgments are also due to the _Weekly Dispatch_. On my visiting London 'Publicola,' then Captain Williams, invited me to call upon him, and inform him of my position with respect to the pending trial; and his able Letters to Justice Erg-kine, after my conviction, produced great uneasiness at the gaol, and each number of the _Dispatch_ was awaited for some weeks by the authorities around me, as I learned from the gaolers, with anxiety.

My defence, considered as a defence of the wide and momentous question of atheism, was crude enough. No one can be more sensible of that than I am. On the moral aspects of atheism and its relation to public polity I feared to enter, lest in my own newness to the study of so large a subject I should compromise it by unskilfulness of statement; I therefore confined myself to pleading that the right of public expression was the sequence of the right of private judgment--that the right of expression was consonant to the common law as well as to reason, and that the right of expression being necessary to private morality, it could not be incompatible with the public peace.

CHAPTER III. AFTER THE SENTENCE

As soon as the sentence was p.r.o.nounced, I was taken to the ceils under the court. Captain Mason, the governor, said there was another prisoner to go down besides me and Adams. It was a case of felony. He said 'Would I go with him?' i replied 'I would not.' He then asked if I 'objected to go with Adams.' That I cheerfully agreed to, and, handcuffed with Adams, I walked down to the gaol. Having taken nothing since morning but a little raspberry vinegar, with which Mr. Carlile supplied me, I began to feel weak, but nothing was offered me except a little warm water, for which I asked, and this, with a very hard and bitter apple, const.i.tuted my supper. The transition from the excitement of the court to the darkness and coolness of the night-cell, made me feel as if going into a well, and my supper not serving to compose me, I continued restless till the morning.

Next day I felt so weak that I could scarcely stand upright. About twelve o'clock Mr. Bransby Cooper and the Rev. Samuel Jones came round.

When Mr. Cooper saw me, he said, 'Why, Holyoake, I did not know you yesterday.'

'Why, sir?'

'You did not seem to be the same person you were before.'

'In what respect was I different?'

'Before you were so gentle and submissive, but yesterday there was so much _hauteur_ about you.'