the attacks which have been made upon it. I doubt extremely whether if you carefully read through-not merely look at the cases and master the facts upon which the decisions were pronounced, I doubt if they will be found to be so harsh and illiberal as it has been the fashion in modern times to describe them.

But whether this is so or not, Parliament at least has altered the law on these subjects; it is no longer the law that none but professors of Christianity can take part or have rights in the State; others have now just as much right in civil matters as any member of the Church of England has. The condition of things is no longer what it was when these great judges pronounced the judgments which I think have been misunderstood, and strained to a meaning they do not warrant.

It is a comfort to think that things have been altered. I observe that in the case of The Attorney-General v. Pearson, decided by Lord Eldon in 1817 and reported in Merivale, he expressed a doubt whether the provisions of the 9 & 10 Will. III., as to persons denying the Trinity, were or were not repealed by a later statute of Geo. III. Some old things, and amongst them this statute, are shocking enough, and I do not defend them; but it must be remembered what was the state of the country when that statute passed-who was the king, what was the succession, what were the factions which divided the country, what were the feelings which naturally agitated Parliament. In these regards the statute is not perhaps defensible, but at least it is explicable. At all events, no man would dream of enacting such a statute now, and I trust that Lord Eldon's doubts will never be solved by a court pronouncing them to be well founded.

Such are the rules, as I tell you, by which you are to judge of these libels. But further, you have heard a great deal, powerfully put by Mr. Foote, about the inexpediency of these laws in any view of them, and as to the way in which they are worked. To observe on this is the least pleasant part of my unpleasant duty, and I wish I could avoid it. It might perhaps be enough to say that these are things with which you and I have nothing to do. We have to administer the law as we find it, and if we don't like it we should try to get it altered. In a free country, after full discussion and agitation, a change is always effected if it approves itself to the general sense of the community. Mr. Foote has told you that this movement against him and his friends is to be regarded as persecution; and it is true, as he has said, that persecution, unless thorough-going, seldom succeeds. Irritation, annoyance, punishment which stops short of extermination, very seldom alter men's religious convictions. Entirely without one

fragment of historical exaggeration, I may say that the penal laws which fifty or sixty years ago were enforced in Ireland were unparalleled in the history of the world. They existed 150 years; they produced upon the religious convictions of the Irish people absolutely no effect whatever. The Irish people could not be exterminated. Everything possible by law short of actual extermination and personal violence was done, and done without the smallest effect. No doubt therefore persecution, unless it is far more thorough-going than anyone in England and in this age would stand, is, speaking generally, of no avail.

It is also true, that persecution is a very easy form of virtue. A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will. It is not easy to do, and if you do it, you make but little noise in the world. But it is easy to turn on some one who differs from you in opinion, and in the guise of zeal for God's honour, to attack a man whose life perhaps may be much more pleasing to God than is your own. When it is done by men full of profession and pretension, who choose that particular form of zeal for God which consists in putting the criminal law in force against some one else, many quiet people come to sympathize not with the prosecutor but with the defendant. That will be so as human nature goes, and all the more if the prosecutors should by chance be men who enjoy the wit of Voltaire, who are not repelled by the sneer of Gibbon, and who rather relish the irony of Hume. It is still worse if the prosecutor acts not from the strange but often genuine feeling that God wants his help and that he can give it by a prosecution, but from partizan or political motives. Nothing can be more foreign from one's notions of what is high-minded, noble, or religious; and one must visit a man who would so act, not for God's honour, but using God's honour for his own purposes, with the most disdainful disapprobation that the human mind can form.

However, the question here is not with the motives, of which I know nothing, nor with the characters, of which I know if possible less, of those who instituted these proceedings, but with the proceedings themselves, and whether they are legal. The way in which Mr. Foote defends himself is able, and well worthy of your attention; and you must say, after a few words from me, what you think of it.

Mr. Foote's case, as I understand it, is this (he will excuse me if I do not state it accurately): "I am not going to maintain," says he, "that this is all in the best taste; some of it may be coarse; some of it to men of education may give offence. It is intended to be an

attack on Christianity; it is intended distinctly to be an attack on what I have seen attacked in the publications of cultivated agnosticism. It is meant to point out that in the books which your professing Christians call sacred are to be found records of detestable crimes, of horrible cruelties, of the lives of sensual, selfish, cruel men, all of which are said to have been pleasing to Almighty God. I do mean to attack your representation of Almighty God. I say your books are not true; I say your religion is what Tacitus called it-a detestable superstition. I mean this, and if I have said it in coarse language, that is because I have not sufficient culture or education to cull my words carefully. But I will bring before you a number of books sold on every bookstall of Mr. Smith, written by persons admitted to the very highest society in the land, in which not only are the same things to be found in point of matter, but I will read you passages in which there is very little difference in mannerpassages, for example, from John Stuart Mill, from Grote, from Shelley" (I mention the dead that I may not wound the feelings of the living). "No one ever dreamed of attacking Shelley." (He is wrong in fact, for Shelley's publisher was prosecuted, and Shelley himself was deprived by Lord Eldon of the custody of his children.) "I will show you things written by these men quite as strong and quite as coarse as anything to be found in these publications of mine; and it is plain the law cannot be as suggested, because it can never be true that a poor man cannot do what a rich man may; it cannot be true that you may blaspheme if you blaspheme in civil language."

Such I understand, put into my own words, to be Mr. Foote's contention. On that I have two things to say: one in Mr. Foote's favour, and one against him. He wished to have it impressed upon you that he is not, and never has been a licentious writer in the sense in which Mr. Starkie uses the word licentious. He has not, he says, pandered to the sensual passions of mankind. You will have the documents before you, and you will judge for yourselves. For myself I should say that in this matter he is right. It is a thing in his favour, and he is entitled to have it said.

But upon the other point, if the law as I have laid it down to you is correct—and I believe it has always been so—if the decencies of controversy are observed, even the fundamentals of religion may be attacked without a person being guilty of blasphemous libel. There are many great and grave writers who have attacked the foundations of Christianity. Mr. Mill undoubtedly did so; some great writers now alive have done so too; but no one can read their writings

without seeing a difference between them and the incriminated publications, which I am obliged to say is a difference not of degree but of kind. There is a grave, an earnest, a reverent, I am almost tempted to say a religious, tone in the very attacks on Christianity itself, which shows that what is aimed at is not insult to the opinions of the majority of Christians, but a real, quiet, honest pursuit of truth. If the truth at which these writers have arrived is not the truth we have been taught, and which, if we had not been taught it, we might have discovered, yet because these conclusions differ from ours, they are not to be exposed to a criminal indictment. With regard to many of these persons therefore I should say they are within the protection of the law as I understand it.

With regard to some of the others, passages from whose writings Mr. Foote read-I heard them yesterday for the first time-I do not at all question that Mr. Foote read them correctly. I confess, as I heard them, I had, and have, a difficulty in distinguishing them from the alleged libels. They do appear to me to be open to the same charge, on the same grounds, as Mr. Foote's writings. He says many of these things are written in expensive books, published by publishers of known eminence; that they are to be found in the drawing-rooms, studies, libraries, of men of high position. It may be so. If it be, I will make no distinction between Mr. Foote and anyone else; if there are men, however eminent, who use such language as Mr. Foote, and if ever I have to try them, troublesome and disagreeable as it is, if they come before me, they shall, so far as my powers go, have neither more nor less than the justice I am trying to do to Mr. Foote. If they offend against the blasphemy laws, they shall find that so long as the laws exist, whatever I may think about their wisdom, there is but one rule in this court for all who come to it. This much Mr. Foote may depend upon. So far as I can judge, some of the expressions which he read seemed to be strong, shall I say, coarse? -expressions of contempt and hatred for the generally recognized truths of Christianity and for the Hebrew Scriptures, which are said to have been inspired by God Himself. But Mr. Foote must forgive me for saying that this is no argument whatever in his favour. Let me explain.

It is no argument for a burglar or a murderer (I mean no offence to Mr. Foote; I should be unworthy of my position if I insulted anyone in his)-it is no argument, I say, in favour of a murderer or a burglar that some other person has also committed a burglary or a murder. Because in the infinite variety of human affairs some persons may have escaped, that is no reason why others should not be brought

to justice. If he is correct in his citations from these writers, it seems to me that some of them are fairly liable to such a prosecution as his. Suppose they are, that does not show that he is not. What Mr. Foote had to show was, not that other people were bad, but that he was good; not that other persons were guilty, but that he was innocent. It is no answer to bring forward these other cases. It is not enough to say these other persons have done these things, if they are not brought before us.

Gentlemen, I not only admit, but I urge upon you, and on every one who hears me, that whilst laxity in the administration of the law is bad, the most odious laxity of all is discriminating laxity, which lays hold of particular persons and lets other persons equally guilty go scot free. That may be, that is so, but it has nothing to do with this case. The question here is not whether other persons ought to be standing where Mr. Foote and Mr. Ramsey now stand, but what judgment we ought to pass on Mr. Foote and Mr. Ramsey, who do

stand here.

In short and in fine, we have to administer the law whether we like it or no. It is undoubtedly a disagreeable law, or may become so, but I have given you some reasons for thinking it not so bad nor so indefensible as Mr. Foote has argued that it is. I think it, on the contrary, a good law that persons should be obliged to respect the feelings and opinions of those amongst whom they live. I assent to the passage from Michaelis, that in a Catholic country we have no right to insult Catholic opinion, nor in a Mohammedan country have we any right to insult Mohammedan opinion. I differ from both, but I am bound as a good citizen to treat with respect opinions with which I do not agree.

Take these publications with you; look at them; if you think they are permissible attacks on the religion of the country you will find the defendants not guilty. Take these cartoons. Mr. Foote says they are not attacks upon, and are not intended for caricatures of, Almighty God. If there be such a being, says Mr. Foote, he can have no feeling for Almighty God but profound reverence and awe, but this he says is his mode of holding up to contempt what he calls a caricature of that ineffable Being as delineated in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is for you to try. Look at them and judge for yourselves whether they do or do not come within the widest limits of the law. If they do, then as with the libels find the defendants not guilty. But if you think that they do not come within the most liberal and largest view that anyone can give of the law as it exists now, then find them guilty. Whatever may be the consequences-you