Before leaving they said of course I should employ counsel to defend me. I answered, 'No, I should defend myself as well as I was able. Barristers were not good at stating a case of conscience.' They urged, they even coaxed me to abandon the idea of defending myself; but finding me not to be deterred, they threatened me that it would aggravate my case—reminded me of Hone and others, and said that the judge would put me down and not hear me. This menace, as will be seen hereafter, did me great harm. They reported my determination at the Trinity Sessions as though it was a matter desirable to be averted.
Mr. Bransby Cooper was a brother of Sir Astley Cooper. He was formerly member for Gloucester, and when he suspected that I did not regard his dignity sufficiently, he would slide in some remark about 'his friend' Sir James Graham, who was then Secretary of State for the Home Department. Bransby Cooper was the senior magistrate at this time—a man of venerable and commanding aspect, generous to a fault in matters of humanity, harsh to a fault in matters of religion. On his way through the city, old women would way-lay him to beg. First raising his stick against them—then threatening to commit them as vagrants—they fled from him in mock terror, but knowing the generous feelings of the man they returned again, and before he reached home he would empty his pockets among them. One minute he would growl at me like an unchained tiger—the next he would utter some word of real sympathy, such as came from no one else, and at the end of my imprisonment I parted from him with something of regret. He had the voice of Stentor, and though at first his savage roar shook me, at last I acquired an artistic liking for it, and his voice was so grand that I came to the conclusion that he had a natural right to be a brute. The old man, after his fashion, laboured very hard for my conversion. His son Robert was chaplain of the gaol, and had I happily been brought over, the old man would have given the credit to his boy. My conversion was thus a sort of family speculation.
Those who sent me to prison in default of bail, took care to make bail impossible to me by intimidating those who would have become my sureties, and after two weeks' anxiety I was obliged to accept the generous offer of two friends in Worcester—James Barnes and John Dymond Stevenson—to come from that city and enter into recognizances for me, and I was indebted to them for my liberation, after sixteen days' imprisonment.
So near was my trial upon my release that I had to return to Gloucester within a fortnight. A great desire of my youth had been to see London. When I found myself suddenly shut up in gaol, in prospect of an indefinite term of imprisonment, which in my then state of health might prove fatal, my sole remorse was that I had never seen that city of my dreams. Once again at liberty I made a short visit to my family in Birmingham, and the next week found me in London.
Chafed and sad, with tremulous heart and irresolute step, it seems but yesterday that I walked through Woburn Place into the city in which I now write. Its streets, its pride, its magnificence enthralled me, and its very poverty fascinated me because nearer to my destiny. Savage and Johnson had walked those squares houseless, and why not I. Chatterton had perished in a garret, and garrets had something sacred in them. Solitary in that two million multitude, I was hardly known to any one in it, yet when I remembered that I was in London I felt an enchanted gladness, and in all vicissitudes of fortune and chequered struggles with fate, I have walked its magical streets with undimmed joy, and it is to me still a fairy land, whose atmosphere of enchantment feels as if it would never leave me.
How sweetly, how gratefully to me (as words never read before) came the notice the Weekly Dispatch gave of my first lecture in London. All the night before I had sat up with Ryall, answering correspondence and concerting my defence. When I reached the Rotunda it was more fitting that I should have found a bed there than a rostrum, for when I rose to speak I was weak as well as timid. To succeed in any way in London was more than I ventured to expect, and the nature of the report in the Weekly Dispatch inspired me with the hope of at least being tolerated.
I hastened back to Gloucester. Either a Secretary of State's order, or a Bill had come into operation, I was never correctly informed which, removing my trial from the Sessions to the Assizes, which gave me an impartial Judge to determine my case. At a Sessions' trial the parties who had caused my imprisonment, and the magistrates who had shown themselves my personal opponents, would have sat on the Bench to try me. Though unable to proceed with my trial after having committed me, they put me to the expense of bringing my bail from Worcester, and charged me £1 9s. for renewing my sureties.
My arrest caused a demand for atheistical publications in Cheltenham, which Mr. George Adams, partly as a friend to the free publication of opinion and partly from personal friendship to me, undertook to supply. In this he was joined by his wife, Harriet Adams, a very interesting and courageous woman. On Monday evening, June 13th, at a public meeting called to consider the grounds of my own apprehension, Mr. George Adams was arrested for selling No. 25 of the Oracle, and forthwith conveyed to the station-house. As soon as a knowledge of the arrest came to the ears of Mrs. Adams, she went to the station-house to see her husband, when she, likewise, was served with a warrant for selling No. 4. Mrs. Adams says, (the account cannot be better rendered than in her own words) 'I went to see my husband at the station-house, when I was detained; a policeman was sent home with me to fetch my infant, and I had to leave four at home in bed. The man that went with me to the station was a rude fellow; he was quite abusive to me, telling me I should be locked up from my husband; saying, it was quite time such things were put a stop to. When we arrived at the station-house he would have locked me in a cell with drunken women, had I not sat down in the yard and insisted on seeing the superintendent, who then allowed me to sit up in a kitchen, where policemen were coming in and out all night. My husband was much troubled on my account.' The four children were left locked up in the house alone.
Mr. Bubb's speech, when Adams was brought up, is so curious a relic of provincial barbarism that I preserve it, or those who are told of it in time to come will regard the story as some malicious fiction. Mr. Bubb opened the charge by justifying himself and clients—'It has been said that we are prosecuting here for the entertaining of opinions merely. That proposition I deny. The entertaining of opinions is not opposed to law if people keep them to, themselves. If they step out of the way, and seek to propagate them by undermining the institutions of the country, by denying the existence of a God, by robbing others of "the hopes set before them," without offering the flimsiest pretext, it is the duty of all to prevent this. Such is the opinion of those gentlemen who set on foot these proceedings, and no clamour of persecution will prevent them from doing what they believe to be their duty. And if there are any here present disposed to take up this unfortunate trade, I would assure them that as long as the law punishes, and the magistrates uphold the law, so long will they bring offenders to justice. So long as men say there is no God, or that the religion of the state is a farce and a fallacy, these gentlemen will not be deterred by any clamour.' If this threat were carried out the magistrates on every Bench would have constant employment—especially if they would undertake, as Mr. Bubb appeared to promise, to ascertain whether or not we had the 'flimsiest pretext' to offer in defence of the course we took.
Adams and his wife were committed to take their trials at the Sessions—in the wife's case it was purely vexatious, as there was no one bound over to prosecute her. Yet Adams, nearly blind from an inflammation of the eyes, and his wife with her child in her arms, were kept several days in attendance at Gloucester—though the same law which prevented the court proceeding in my case, prevented the court from trying the Adamses. In further aggravation of loss, £1 17s. 6d. were demanded for discharge of bail and entering new sureties—nor was time allowed to fetch the bail (after they were demanded) from Cheltenham, the clerk announcing that they would be estreated at once. Upon this I directed Mr. and Mrs. Adams to go into court and say they were prepared to take their trial then, and there was no occasion to estreat the property of their friends. Time was then allowed.