WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE?
“O call back yesterday, bid time return.”
Richard II. iii., 2.
Dozing in a railway carriage on a journey to Wales I listened dreamily to the faint echoes of an argument between a gentleman of the old school who contended that the country was going to the dogs, and a younger enthusiast who was optimistic as to the present and future of our race. It was at Deganwy that the older man, who had, I thought, somewhat the worst of the argument, pointed to the sea and said, with the air of one who uttered a new thought, that it was impossible for those who stood on the shore to say at the moment which way the tide was setting. The younger man accepted the stale simile with the courteous reverence that is the debt we willingly pay to age when we know that we know better.
A few days afterwards a friend handed me a copy of an old newspaper. His wife had discovered it with other of its fellows during the Spring cleaning. “The things,” she said in her practical way, “were harbouring dirt.” But from my point of view they were also harbouring history, and turning over the single sheet it occurred to me that it might help one to a conclusion about the ever interesting problem “which way is the tide?” The newspaper was, to be exact, the Manchester Guardian, of Saturday, January 24th, 1824, No. 143 of Vol. IV. The price was sevenpence or seven and sixpence a quarter if paid in advance, and eight shillings on credit. In the matter of price the tide was clearly with the moderns. There was an excellent wood-cut on the front page, a semi-advertisement—as I took it—of Messrs. David Bellhouse and Sons, of Eagle Quay, Oxford Road, who “respectfully informed the public that they have commenced carriers of timber by water betwixt Liverpool and Manchester” by means of a paddle steam tug “The Eagle,” with a funnel, the height of its mast and a huge square sail and two Union Jacks, one floating at the masthead and the other astern, and accompanying rafts of timber following the tug. In another column Fredk. and Chas. Barry, sworn brokers, of Vine Street, America Square, London, advertise that the fine fast sailing new brig, Walworth Castle, 240 tons, A.1. coppered, I. Wrentmore, Commander, will sail for Vera Cruz from London, and had only room for about fifty tons of goods. Certainly in the matter of the carriage of goods at sea and by canal we seem to have made progress. When you come to the matter of passenger traffic, it is interesting to read of “The Telegraph,” which leaves every afternoon at 3.30 for London through Macclesfield, Leek, Derby, Leicester, and Northampton to the White Horse, Fetter Lane. In the same column we read of the “North Briton” and “Robert Burns,” which leave every morning at 4.30, and run through Chorley, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal, and Carlisle, to the Buck Inn, Glasgow, and the splendid service of six coaches to Liverpool, starting at intervals from 5 a.m. to 5.30 in the evening. This column of coach advertisements is fine picturesque reading, but it is a little old-fashioned by the side of a sixpenny Bradshaw of to-day.
Again, if we turn to the report of the Salford Epiphany Quarter Sessions, Thomas Starkie, Esquire, Chairman, we have much to be thankful for in latter-day records. It must be remembered of course that the Sessions of to-day are more frequent, and different Sessions are held in small areas. Still, in January, 1824, there were no less than 240 prisoners, a number far in excess of anything we read of to-day. Nearly all the cases seem to have been cases of stealing, and there were few acquittals. The sentences were terrible, and only those who remember sentences given by some of the minor tribunals in comparatively recent years can credit the fact that such sentences were passed by humane and thoughtful men, in what was genuinely believed to be the interest of society. A long list of sentences begins thus: “Transported for life, William Thomas (16), for stealing one pocket handkerchief.” Lower down we find that Thomas Kinsey (21), for stealing thirty pieces of cotton cloth, gets off with transportation for fourteen years. The number of young people that are transported for small thefts is astonishing. Martha Jowett (30), for stealing a purse; John Webster (19) and John Drinkwater (24), for stealing a gun; Martha Myers (16), for stealing wearing apparel, and Mary Mason (24), for stealing a purse, are all among the list of those transported for seven years. More aristocratic sinners had a better chance of acquittal, and the receivers of the Birmingham notes stolen from the Balloon coach were respited because the jury found that the receiving “was elsewhere than in the County of Lancaster,” and counsel successfully contended that they must be discharged. Certainly in these matters the tide has flowed towards less crime and more humanity to prisoners since 1824.
But whereas human institutions seem to have improved, human nature seems to have been much as it is to-day. Dr. Lamert—the predecessor of many twentieth century quacks—is at No. 68 Piccadilly, ready to be consulted about and to cure “all diseases incidental to the human frame,” and has his testimonials and affidavits as to the success of his treatment almost in the very language in which we can read them to-day. “The greatest discovery in the memory of man is universally allowed to be the celebrated Cordial Balm of Rakasiri,” whose name is “blown on the bottle” and whose properties will cure any disease from “headache to consumptions.” “Smith’s Genuine Leamington Salts are confidently offered to the public under the recommendation of Dr. Kerr, Northampton,” and other eminent medical men, whilst from Mottershead and other chemists you can obtain Black Currant Lozenges “in which are concentrated all the well-known virtues of that fruit.” In this backwater of life the tide seems to be running, if at all, the other way. In the matter of gambling, too, it would be hard to say whether State lotteries, well protected from private imitations, were worse for our morals than free trade in bookmaking, coupled by uncertain and unequally worked police supervision. In the paper before me, “T. Bish, of the Old State Lottery Office, 4 Cornhill, respectfully reminds his best friends the public that the State lottery begins the 19th of next month.” There are to be seven £20,000 prizes and many others, and “in the very last Lottery Bish shared and sold 18,564, a prize of £20,000, 1379 a prize of £10,000, and several other capitals.” Bish of 1824 was but one evil more or less honest in his dealings and controlled by the State. Bish of 1911 is a legion of bookmakers, more or less dishonest and wholly uncontrolled. Still I am far from saying things are not better so, and even here could we discern it clearly the tide may be flowing the right way.
In the interest taken in art and literature it would be hard to say that we do not see signs of earnestness and enthusiasm in this one newspaper of 1824 that it would be hard to find in a single copy of a journal of to-day. The people of Liverpool are sinking sectarian differences and starting a mechanics and apprentices’ library, and already have 1,500 volumes. It is true that the whole thing was done very much on the lines of the gospel according to Mr. Barlow and Mr. Fairchild, but it was being done with enthusiasm. The elder Mr. Gladstone sent ten pounds and a letter of “correct ideas,” which was read to the meeting, but unfortunately we shall never read the “correct ideas” which were “basketed” by the then subeditor. The Library was to contain no works of controversial theology or politics, and the Liverpool Advertiser sees with regret that “Egan’s Sporting Anecdotes” was amongst a number of volumes contributed by an American gentleman. The Pharisee, we must admit, is with us to-day, and even in well governed cities sometimes finds a place on Library Committees. But here is another announcement in this wonderful number of the newspaper which lovers of art will read with pious interest. “There is to be a General Meeting of the Governors of the Manchester Institution, to consider a report to be submitted with reference to the building and to the general welfare of the Institution.” Below this is printed “amounts already advertised £14,610,” and then follows a list of between thirty and forty new hereditary members subscribing forty guineas apiece.
A hundred years hence a newspaper of our own day will be unearthed to tell future generations of a City Council refusing supplies for continuing the great work that these city fathers started with their own monies. Could we to-day from a far richer Manchester and far wealthier citizens obtain hereditary subscribers at forty guineas apiece for a new theatre or opera house or art gallery, if such were required in Manchester? It is at least doubtful.
Two other announcements that cannot rightly be evidence of human progress, but which may make us worthily envious of the good old days that are gone:—at the Theatre Royal, Mr. Matthews is playing in “The Road to Ruin” and the musical farce of “The Bee Hive,” and on Wednesday he will have a benefit with three musical farces including “The Review.” It would be worth owning one of Mr. Wells’s time machines to take the chance of dropping into Manchester in 1824, if only to go to the Royal and see the show. And here is another echo of glad tidings. “We have been informed that the author of Waverley has contracted with his bookseller to furnish him with three novels a year for three years, and that he is to have ten thousand pounds a year for the supply, and that four novels have actually been delivered as per contract.”
When one reads an announcement such as that, and thinks of the joy of unpacking the parcel of books when it arrives, and cutting and reading three new masterpieces a year hot from the press, the novel reader of to-day may be excused if he sighs over a golden age that will never return. Nevertheless, man cannot live by Waverley novels alone; and what is this we read a little lower down the column? “Average price of corn from the returns received in the week ending January 10:
Wheat, 57s. 4d.”
Of a truth in essential things the tide has flowed steadily in the right direction since this year of 1824, and is not on the turn—as yet.
KISSING THE BOOK.[4]
“The evidence you shall give to the Court touching the matter in question shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—So help you God.”
The Oath.
When the clerk in an English Court of Justice administers the usual oath, he finishes with the words “Kiss the Book,” spoken in an imperative mood, and if the witness shows any hesitation in carrying out the unsavoury ceremony, he does his best to compel performance. The imperative mood of the clerk has not, to my thinking, any legal sanction. Kissing the Book is not, and never has been, as far as I can learn, a necessary legal incident of the oath of a Christian witness or juror. Why, then, does the twentieth-century Englishman kiss the Book by way of assuring his fellow-citizens that he is not going to lie if he can help it? The answer is probably akin to the answer given to the question: “Why does a dog walk round and round in a circle before he flings himself upon the hearth-rug?” Naturalists tell us that it is because the wild dog of prehistoric days made his bed in the contemporary grass of the forest after that fashion. Both man and dog are victims of hereditary habit. Probably the majority of men and dogs never consider for a moment how they came by the habit. But when, as in the case of kissing the Book, the habit is so insanitary, superstitious and objectionable, it is worth a few moments to consider its history, origin, and practical purpose, and then to further consider whether mankind is not old enough to give it up, and whether we should not make an effort at reform in the healthy spirit that a growing schoolboy approaches the manly problem of ceasing to bite his nails.
In a modern English Encyclopædia of Law it is suggested that the habit of kissing the Book did not become recognised in the English Courts until the middle of the seventeenth century, and that it only became general in the latter part of the eighteenth century. For my part, I cannot subscribe to that view. It is true that there is very little direct authority in any ancient law book on practice which enables one to say what the practice was. But that is because the old lawyers did not consider “kissing the Book” essential to the oath, and the practice was so universally followed that there was no need to describe it.
Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest” about 1613. He gives Stephano, when offering Caliban the bottle, these lines: “Come, swear to this; kiss the book:—I will furnish it anon with new contents:—swear. (Gives Caliban drink.)” And a few lines later on Caliban says, “I’ll kiss thy foot; I’ll swear myself thy subject.” To me, reading the scene to-day, and bearing in mind that it was a low-comedy scene written to amuse the groundlings, the conclusion is irresistible that Shakespeare drew his simile from the common stock of everyday affairs, and that the idea of kissing the Book was as familiar to the average playgoer at the Globe or the Curtain as it is to-day to the pittite at His Majesty’s. Beaumont and Fletcher, too, in Women Pleased, II, vi, have the lines: “Oaths I swear to you ... and kiss the book, too”; and no doubt, if diligent search were made in the Elizabethan writers other such popular references could be found.
Samuel Butler, who, we must remember, was clerk to Sir Samuel Luke, of Bedfordshire, and other Puritan Justices of the Peace, and therefore had administered the oath many hundreds of times prior to the Restoration, has the following passage in “Hudibras” concerning a perjurer:—
“Can make the Gospel serve his turn,
And helps him out; to be forsworn;
When ’tis laid hands upon and kiss’d;
To be betrayed and sold like Christ.”
This is, I think, conclusive that in 1660, in the common form of oath, the practice was for the witness to lay the hand upon the Book and afterwards to kiss it.
Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, writing to Lord Burghley, describing Serjeant Anderson taking his seat as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1582, notes that: “Then the clarke of the corone, Powle, did read hym his oathe, and after, he himself read the oathe of the supremacie, and so kist the booke.” This, of course, was a ceremonial oath, but it throws light upon the custom. Although the direct references to kissing the Book are few and far between, several interesting specimens are given in Notes and Queries from early Irish records, showing that oaths were taken both upon holy relics and upon the Holy Gospels, corporaliter tacta et deosculata, in the time of Henry VI., and that in the reign of Edward I. kissing the Book was an incident of the official oath of the Exchequer. It is possible that a close study of the records of a Catholic country would throw light upon the origin of kissing the Book, which, from a Protestant point of view, is doubtless as superstitious a custom as kissing relics or the Pope’s toe or a crucifix. It was said by John Coltus, the Archbishop of Armagh, in 1397, that the English introduced the custom of swearing on the Holy Evangelists into Ireland, and that in earlier days the Irish resorted to croziers, bells, and other sacred reliquaries to give solemnity to their declarations. That kissing the Book is directly evolved from the superstitious but reverential worship of holy relics can scarcely be doubted. When Harold pledged his solemn oath to William the Conqueror, we learn in the old French Roman de Rou how William piled up a reliquary with holy bodies and put a pall over them to conceal them, and, having persuaded Harold to take the oath upon these hidden relics, he afterwards showed Harold what he had done, and Heraut forment s’espoanta, Harold was sadly alarmed. Curious, but interesting, is the form of oath here described. Harold first of all suz sa main tendi, held his hand over the reliquary, then he repeated the words of his oath, and then li sainz beisiez kissed the relics. It is almost the same ceremony that we have to-day, and in the same order. The Book is held in the hand, the words of the oath are repeated, and then the Book is kissed.
The Rev. James Tyler, in his interesting book on oaths, quotes an eleventh-century oath of Ingeltrude, wife of Boston, that she swore to Pope Nicholas, as one of the earliest examples of kissing the Book. It runs thus: “I, Ingeltrude, swear to my Lord Nicholas, the chief Pontiff and universal Pope, by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and these four Evangelists of Christ our God which I hold in my hands and kiss with my mouth.” This early example of the habit shows that kissing the Book was contemporaneous with kissing bells, crucifixes and relics, and that the religious origin of the custom is similar. In the Roman Catholic ritual the priest still kisses the Gospel after he has read it, and I have been told that this is done in some Anglican churches. It is curious that the ceremony should survive in the law courts and have died out in most of the churches. But in these things the average man violently strains at gnats and complacently swallows camels. The Roman ceremony of kissing the Book—which is done reverently by the priest as part of a religious ceremony—would distress a Protestant, who watches the kissing of the same Book in a modern police court without the least sign of moral or mental disturbance.
Of the ultimate origin of kissing as a sign and pledge of truth much could be written, and it would be an interesting task to trace the history of the ceremonial kiss to its earliest source. The perjury of Judas was signed by a kiss, and Jacob deceived his father with the same pledge of faith. So also false, fleeting, perjured Clarence swears to his brother: “In sign of truth I kiss your highness’ hand.” The kiss as a pledge or symbol of truth is probably as old in the world as the degraded ceremony of spitting on a coin for luck, and is what students of folk-lore call a saliva custom, the origin of which seems to have been a desire on the part of the devotee for a union with the divine or holy thing.
So much for the ancient origin of the kissing portion of this ceremony. It is shown to be of superstitious if not idolatrous origin, and I hope to show beyond doubt that in the view of English lawyers it is not, and never has been, an essential part of the English Christian oath. That is to say, an English Christian has a legal right to take the oath by merely laying his hand upon the Book, and the act of kissing the Book afterwards is a work of supererogation, and of no legal force or effect whatever.
No lawyer that I know of has ever suggested that a witness or juror must kiss the Book. Nor, on the contrary, has any lawyer sought to forbid a man to kiss the Book. I take it that any reverent and decent use of the Book as a voluntary addition to the oath would be allowed. The general rule of English law is that all witnesses ought to be sworn according to the peculiar ceremonies of their own religion, or in such manner as they deem binding on their consciences. If, therefore, a Christian wishes to kiss the Book he may do so, but the only formality that need be legally observed is the laying of hands upon the Book. As Lord Hale says, “the regular oath as is allowed by the laws of England is Tactis sacrosanctis Dei Evangeliis.” Lord Coke, too, says “It is called a corporal oath because he toucheth with his hand some part of the Holy Scripture.” Modern antiquarians have sought to show that the word corporal was used in connection with the ritual of an oath, and referred to the “Corporale Linteum” on which the sacred Elements were placed, and by which they were covered. Some suggest that the word comes from the Romans, and draws a distinction between an oath taken in person and by proxy. But for my part I think Lord Coke knew as much about it as any of his scholarly critics, and is not far wrong when he says a corporal oath is an oath in which a man touches the Book.
This form of oath was practised by the Greeks and Romans, and is of great antiquity. Hannibal, when only nine years old, was called upon by his father to swear eternal enmity to Rome by laying his hand on the sacred things. Livy, in describing it, uses the words tactis sacris, the very expression that passed into the University and other oaths of modern England. Izaak Walton, in his “Life of Hooker,” sets down a bold but affectionate sermon preached to Queen Elizabeth by Archbishop Whitgift, in which he reminds the Queen that at her coronation she had promised to maintain the Church lands, and then he adds: “You yourself have testified openly to God at the holy altar by laying your hands on the Bible, then lying upon it.”
That this is the real form of an English Christian oath, and that kissing the Book is purely a voluntary ceremony is, I think, made clear in a curious little volume, entitled, “The Clerk of Assize, Judges Marshall and Cryer, being the true Manner and Form of the Proceedings at the Assizes and General Goale Delivery, both in the Crown Court and Nisi Prius Court. By T.W.” This was printed for Timothy Twyford in 1660, and sold at his shop within the Inner Temple Gate. It is probably the book Pepys refers to when he notes in his diary: “So away back again home, reading all the way the book of the collection of oaths in the several offices of this nation which is worth a man’s reading.”
I am quite of Pepys’ opinion, and a man may read it after two hundred and fifty years with as much profit as Pepys did. It is a quaint little book, and in the preface T. W. writes that “the Government of this nation being now happily brought into its ancient and right course, and that the proceedings in Courts of Justice to be in the King’s name, and in Latine and Court-hand (the good old way), I have set forth and published the small Manuel,” for the benefit of the new officers who may here “find all such Oaths and Words as are by them to be administered.” In the rubric attached to the jurors’ oath is the following:—“Note that every juror must lay his hand on the Book and look towards the prisoners.” In the same way in the oath to the foreman of the grand jury, T. W. writes: “The foreman must lay his hand on the Book.”
Although it seems probable that kissing the Book was customary at this date, T. W. would, I think, certainly have pointed out that it was necessary if he had so considered it, and the absence of any reference to kissing the Book in a “manuel” published for the very purpose of explaining to the ignorant the correct manner in which to administer the oath, shows that the author did not consider that part of the ceremony a necessary one. The references to the form of oath in old law books are very few. There is a case reported, in “the good old way” of law French, in Siderfin, an ancient law reporter, in Michaelmas Term, 1657. Dr. Owen, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, refused to take the oath en le usual manner per laying son main dexter sur le Lieur et per baseront ceo apres. The doctor merely lifted up his right hand, and the jury, being in doubt, asked Chief Justice Glin whether it was really an oath. The Chief Justice said, “that in his judgment he had taken as strong an oath as any other witness, but said if he was to be sworn himself he would lay his right hand upon the Book.” There is another curious decision upon the necessity of kissing the Book mentioned in Walker’s “History of Independency,” in the account of the trial of Colonel Morrice, who held Pontefract Castle for the King. The colonel wished to challenge one Brooke, foreman of the jury, and his professed enemy, but the Court held, probably rightly, that the challenge came too late, as Brooke was sworn already. “Brooke being asked the question whether he were sworn or no, replied ‘he had not yet kissed the Book.’ The Court answered that was but a ceremony.”
The whole matter was very much discussed in 1744, when, in a well-known case, lawyers argued at interminable length as to whether it were possible for a person professing the Gentoo religion to take an oath in an English court. Sir Dudley Rider, the Attorney-General, says in his argument “kissing the Book is no more than a sign, and not essential to the oath.” He seems to think that touching the Book is not essential; but the true view seems to be laid down by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who says that the outward act is not essential to the oath, but there must be some external act to make it a corporal act. That is to say, that the kind of external act done may be left to the taste and fancy of the person taking the oath. The laying the hand on the Book is convenient, and is the recognised form, but a salute or act of reverence towards the Book would be sufficient, as Dr. Owen’s case seems to show.
Apart altogether from the forms and ceremonies of oaths, it is surely well worth considering whether the practice of oath-taking in courts of justice should not be discontinued. Although many good and learned men have argued with great ability that a man taking an oath does not imprecate the Divine vengeance upon himself if his evidence is false, yet the whole history and practice of oath-taking is adverse to their amiable and well-meaning philosophy. The gist of an oath is, and always has been, that the swearer calls upon the Almighty to inflict punishment upon him here or hereafter if he is false to his oath. In early days oaths were only taken upon solemn occasions, and in a solemn manner. In modern life they have been multiplied, and become so common that little attention is paid to them. Even in this country prior to Elizabeth there was no statute punishing perjury, and the oath was the only safeguard there was against the offence. The statute then passed shows of what little use the oath was even in those days as a preventive of perjury. But then few people could give testimony in courts, and there may have been some semblance of a religious ceremony in the affair. To-day that is gone, and necessarily gone.
All writers who have seriously considered the matter condemn the multiplicity of oaths on trivial occasions as taking away from the ceremony any practical value it may have. Selden, in Cromwell’s day, says: “Now oaths are so frequent they should be taken like pills, swallowed whole; if you chew them you will find them bitter; if you think what you swear, ’twill hardly go down.” What would he think of our progress to-day in this matter? Defoe, at a later date, lays down the principle that “the making of oaths familiar is certainly a great piece of indiscretion in a Government, and multiplying of oaths in many cases is multiplying perjuries.” England has been called “a land of oaths,” and familiarity with oath-taking has always bred contempt of the oath. In the old days of the Custom House oaths it is said that “there were houses of resort where persons were always to be found ready at a moment’s warning to take any oath required; the signal of the business for which they were needed was this inquiry: ‘Any damned soul here?’”
Without suggesting that there is a great amount of perjury in English courts, for Englishmen respect the law and have a wholesome dread of indictments, we cannot pride ourselves on a system that uses what ought to be a very solemn ceremony on every trumpery occasion. In the County Courts alone a million oaths at least must be taken every year in England. And upon what trifling, foolish matters are men and women invited by the State to make a presumptuous prayer to the Almighty to withdraw from them His help and protection if they shall speak falsely.
Two women, for instance, have a dispute over the fit of a bodice; each is full of passion and prejudice, and quite unlikely to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Is it fair to ask them to take an oath that they will do so, and, in the language of Chaucer, to swear “in truth, in doom and in righteousness,” about so trivial a matter? Or, again, in an arbitration under the Lands Clauses Act, is it fitting that six land surveyors should condemn themselves to eternal penalties when everyone knows that, like the barristers engaged in the arbitrations, they are paid for services of an argumentative character rather than as witnesses of mere fact? As Viscount Sherbrooke said in an excellent essay on the oath, written at the time of the Bradlaugh case, “If you believe in God it is a blasphemy; if not, it is a hollow and shameless cheat.”
Any practical, worldly scheme to prevent perjury is of more use than a religious oath, and one might quote many historical instances in proof of this. Two widely apart in circumstance and period will show my meaning. The Ministers of Honorius on a certain occasion swore by the head of the Emperor, a very ancient form of oath. (Joseph, it may be remembered, swore “by the life of Pharaoh,” and Helen swore by the head of Menelaus.) The same Ministers, says Gibbon, “were heard to declare that if they had only invoked the name of the Deity they would consult the public safety (by going back on their word), and trust their souls to the mercy of Heaven; but they had touched in solemn ceremony that august seal of majesty and wisdom, and the violation of that oath would expose them to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion.” In like manner I remember a Jew, annoyed by apparent disbelief of his oath, saying before me in a moment of irritation, “I have sworn by Jehovah that every word I say is true, but I will go further than that: I will put down ten pounds in cash, and it may be taken away from me if what I say is not true.” What sane man will say that the oath, as an oath, is of practical use when for centuries we find instances such as these of the way it is regarded by the person by whom it is taken. But it will be said that if a man pleases he can to-day affirm. Undoubtedly that is so, but the average Englishman has a horror of making a fuss in a public place, especially about a matter of everyday usage. The other day I suggested to a man who was suffering from cancer in the tongue that he might take the Scotch oath instead of kissing the Book. He did it reluctantly, as I thought. Once, too I made the same suggestion to a witness at Quarter Sessions who was in a horrible state of disease, but he preferred to kiss the Book—which was afterwards destroyed.
The average man is like the average schoolboy, and would any day rather do “the right thing” than to do what is right. All of us have not the courage of Mrs. Maden, who was refused justice in a Lancashire county court as late as 1863 because she honestly stated her views on matters of religion. As Baron Bramwell pointed out in deciding the case, the judgment he was giving involved the absurdity of ascertaining the fact of Mrs. Maden’s disbelief by accepting her own statement of it, and then ruling that she was a person incompetent to speak the truth. Truly no precedent in English law can be over-ruled by its own inherent folly.
Later on, too, in our own time, we can remember the fate of Mr. Bradlaugh in his struggles with Courts and Parliament, and we can read in history the stories of George Fox and Margaret Fell. The cynic may say that these people made a great deal of fuss about a very unimportant matter; but, after all, the attitude of George Fox on the question of the oath was a very noble one.
“Will you take the oath of allegiance, George Fox?” asks the Judge in the Court of Lancaster Castle.
George Fox: “I never took an oath in my life.”
Judge: “Will you swear or no?”
George Fox: “Christ commands we must not swear at all; and the apostle: and whether I must obey God, or man, judge thee, I put it to thee.”
And having read many volumes of man’s answer to George Fox, I am content for my part to think he still has the best of it, and that “Swear not at all” is as much a commandment as “Thou shalt not steal,” or “Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.” Whether in a work-a-day world of timid people, who cling to the bad habits of their prehistoric ancestry, it is possible to live up to the ideals of these commandments is quite another matter, and I should be the last in the world to throw stones at others in this matter.
I must confess that on the few occasions I have given evidence I have dutifully “kissed the Book” like any other witness. Whether I should do so again I am not so sure. Probably literary pride would overcome the natural shyness of my disposition, and I should propose to read what I have written here to a long-suffering judge, and claim as of right to take the oath “tactis sanctis,” with no ceremony of kissing.
For the more I see of the ceremony the more it jars upon me as a mere matter of reverence to holy things, and the more I read of the matter the more convinced I am of its superstitious origin. When, too, I feel sure that it is of no practical purpose and is as useless as it is insanitary, I begin to think that the hour is approaching when we may, without impiety to the shades of our ancestors, adopt some more reasonable ceremony of commencing our evidence in the law courts than that of kissing the Book.