Mr. Holyoake. Then turn to the question What is blasphemy? In the case of Mr. Southwell, one of the witnesses for the prosecution stated his opinion that the crime was 'bringing a scandal on the religion of the magistrates.' Perhaps this is as correct a definition as can be given. It has been said to be 'an injury to God,' Men who could not string six sentences together grammatically, have told me they would defend God—men whom I should be ashamed to have defending me. But blasphemy is impossible in the sense of annoyance to God. Jonathan Edwards says—'The following things may be laid down as maxims of plain truth and indisputable evidence:—
'1. That God is a perfectly happy being, in the most absolute and highest sense possible.
'2. It will follow from hence, that God is free from everything that is contrary to happiness: and so that in strict propriety of speech there is no such thing as any pain, grief or trouble in God.
'3. Where any intelligent being is really crossed and disappointed, and things are contrary to what he truly desires, he is less pleased, or has the less pleasure, his pleasure and happiness are diminished, and he suffers what is disagreeable to him, or is the subject of something that is of a nature contrary to joy and happiness, even pain and grief.
'From this last maxim it follows, that if no distinction is to be admitted between God's hatred of sin, and his will with respect to the event and existence of sin, as the all-wise determiner of all events, under the view of all consequences through the whole com pass and series of things; I say, then, it certainly follows, that the coming to pass of every individual act of sin is truly, all things considered, contrary to his will, and that his will is really crossed in it, and that in proportion as he hates it. And as God's hatred of sin is infinite, by reason of the infinite contrariety of his holy nature to sin; so his will is infinitely crossed in every act of sin that happens. Which is as much as to say:—he endures that which is infinitely disagreeable to him, by means of every act of sin he sees committed—and so he must be infinitely crossed and suffer infinite pain every day, in millions of millions of instances, which would be to make him infinitely the most miserable of all beings.'*
But blasphemy is an antiquated accusation. In a work** by Col. Feyronnet Thompson, it is remarked—'what a turmoil, what a splutter, was in this land, when men first announced that they would not eat fish, they would not bow down, they would not confess but when they liked, and this because the secret had got wind that these things were either not in the priests' own rule, or were against it! What threats of hell flames, what splashing about of fire and brimstone, what registration of judgments on men choked with a beef-steak on Friday! Look at one of those simple men in the present day, who shock themselves with the barouches, the cigars, the newspapers, and the elephants of a London Sunday, and occasionally digress to Paris, for the keener excitation of seeing Punch upon the Boulevards, and wondering where heaven reserves its thunder. And put the parallel case; that a good Austrian or Navarrese Catholic came here, and grieved his heart with our weekly doings on a Friday, to say nothing of our more wholesale offences for forty days together in Lent. "Such frying; such barbecuing; in no place did I see anybody having the smallest notion of a red herring! All are involved in one flood of sin and gravy! How fathomless the patience of heaven, that such an island is not swallowed up of the deep!" We have looked into the rule he professes to go by; and we declare it is not there, but the contrary. We know we must appear in the next world with all our mutton on our heads. But we have done our best to look at the rule with the light that God has given us; and in spite of Austria or Navarre, we will take the risk of His not being angry with us, for seeing no prohibition of mutton there.' Thus we see that mutton-eating was at one period blasphemous.
* Quoted from 'A Commentary on the Public Discussion on the
subjects of Necessity and Responsibility,' &c By Jonathan
Jonathan, late of the United States.
** 'The Question of Sabbath Observance, tried by the
Church's own rule,' &c. By Col. Peyronnet Thompson, F.R.S,
of Queen's College, Cambridge.
Mr. Sergeant Talfourd told the jury, in the case of Hetherington v. Moxon, that if the government were consistent in carrying out prosecutions for blasphemy—Shakspere, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Southey—might be prohibited. This perhaps would be an agreeable result to a reverend gentleman well known in this court and county, who says all science should be destroyed; but I trust you entertain no such feelings, and that if I can show that my sentiments cannot be productive of harm, you will feel called upon to acquit me. I claim no inherent right of expressing my opinions, I only contend for liberty of expression because required for the public good. A doctrine was laid down by Lord John Russell upon the occasion of the presentation of the National Petition, which I will quote as a view of the subject of human rights well expressed.
'I am aware,' he said, 'that it is a doctrine frequently urged, and I perceive dwelt upon in this petition, that every male of a certain age has a right, absolute and inalienable, to elect a representative to take his place among the members in the Commons' House of Parliament. Now, sir, I never could understand that indefeasible right. It appears to me that that question, like every other in the practical application of politics, is to be settled by the institutions and the laws of the country of which the person is a native. I see no more right that a person twenty-one years of age has to elect a member of parliament than he has to be a juryman. I conceive that you may just as well say that every adult male has a right to sit upon a jury to decide the most complicated and difficult questions of property, or that every man has a right to exercise the judicial functions, as the people did in some of the republics of antiquity. These things, as it appears to me, are not matters of right; but if it be for the good of the people at large, if it be conducive to the right government of the state, if it tend to the maintenance of the freedom and welfare of the people, that a certain number, defined and limited by a reference to a fixed standard of property, should have the right of electing members of parliament, and if it be disadvantageous to the community at large that the right of suffrage should be universal, then I say that on such a subject the consideration of the public good should prevail, that legislation must act upon it as on every other, and that no inalienable right can be quoted against that which the good of the whole demands.'
If Lord Russell did not, I do see a difference between the claim of an elector and the right of a juryman. The elector is chiefly concerned with his own interests, the juryman with other people's—one is simple, the other complex. But with the measure of right laid down by his lordship in the sentiments I have quoted, I perfectly accord, and if it could be shown that freedom of expression produced public harm, then I would give it up. But I believe such a right would produce good, and therefore I claim it at your hands upon the ground of public good.