"I allow that there are some good precepts in it, but I contend that these precepts are useless. I contend that all precepts are useless. Of what use have all the precepts in the world been to the human race? Have they made man wiser, or better, or happier? Have they lessened the amount of his vice and his misery? 1 contend that they have not. Vice and misery have been increasing, although these precepts have been more and more preached to the people. Precepts, reverend ministers of the gospel, are mere wind; they are as empty as the vapour issuing from the kettle's spout; they have no effect whatever in making man wise, or good, or happy; the present wretchedness of the world is a proof of it. The way, reverend sirs, to make man wise, and good, and happy, is, not to preach precepts to the people, but to abolish the present irrational system of individual property; to arrange society in such a manner that the interest of one man will be the interest of the whole. Until this be done, all the precepts in the world, preached, too, with all the eloquence in the world, will never remove man from his present deplorable condition."
Gentlemen, you will perceive by this extract that the author is a socialist. It is not necessary for me to maintain that he is right in these opinions. All that I have to do is to show that these opinions were sincerely believed by Mr. Haslam. I have clearly shown that belief is involuntary. No man can tell one day what his belief will be the next. In my own person I furnish an instance of this. I married young, and having formed in my mind a standard of ideal perfection, I determined that my children should equal that standard, as far as human means could make them. I tried to effect my object by severity. Acting upon wrong principles, of course, I failed; but at that time I was young and ignorant, and believed myself to be right. However, a friend who knew better than myself, and who had had much experience, lent me Miss Williams's Letters on the Philosophy of Education, and the reading of that book put new ideas into my mind. It produced, in fact, a mental revolution;--I changed my opinion and my system, and did so with the happiest success. From that time I banished coercion as a principle of education. I repeat, then, that belief is not voluntary, and that compulsion is not a good means of producing good belief or good conduct.
Gentlemen, I will now quote the opinion of Bishop Marsh, as to the importance of free inquiry. I quote from the Bishops as persons of the greatest authority on this subject, far greater than the Attorney-General, or any of his legal brethren.
"Investigation, it is said, frequently leads to doubts where there were none before. So much the better. If a thing is false, it ought not to be received; if a thing is true, it can never lose in the end by inquiry."--Bishop Marsh's First Lecture.
Gentlemen, you have heard the opinion of Bishop Marsh. You cannot suppose that the Bishops are adverse to the Church--they are great supporters of it, and so, perhaps, might I be if I got so much by it--(a laugh)--as like circumstances produce like effects. Well, Gentlemen, Bishop Marsh maintains that "if a thing is false, it ought not to be received; if it is true, it can never lose in the end by inquiry." Why, then, should the Attorney-General prosecute a person who rejects a thing that does not appear to him to be true?
Gentlemen, let me now submit to your attention the opinion of Sir William Temple.
Sir William Temple says, "They may make me do things which are in my power, and depend on my will; but to believe this or that to be true depends not on my will, but upon the light, and evidence, and information which I have. And will civil discouragements and incapacities, fines and confiscations, stripes and imprisonment, enlighten the understanding, convince men's minds of error, and inform them of the truth? Can they have any such efficacy as to make men change the inward judgment they have framed of things? Nothing can do this but reason and argument: this is what our minds and understandings will naturally yield to, but they cannot be compelled to believe any thing by outward force. So that the promoting of true religion is plainly out of the magistrate's reach, as well as beside his office."
Here, Gentlemen, you have the opinion of Sir William Temple, that men cannot be forced to believe anything by outward force and persecution, so that the promoting of true religion is out of the magistrate's power, as well as beside his office. This is a most true and proper declaration; and if the Attorney-General had reflected upon this passage, I am sure he must have fully appreciated its truth, and then this prosecution would not have been instituted. I appeal to the learned Attorney-General, whether my being ruined and sent to a dungeon will alter the state of things? Will it alter the opinion of Mr. Haslam? Will it make me believe that I ought to be prosecuted for selling this book; or that a man has not a right to promulgate his opinions? I am placed in an awkward position in having to defend a man's right to publish, while I dissent from some of Mr. Haslam's opinions, and the manner in which he has thought proper to express them. I have been told that the Attorney-General is a good kind of a man, who has no wish to press severely upon persons in my situation; and some friends--not my true friends--have urged me to forward a memorial to him on the subject of this prosecution. Now what could I do? There was no way of inducing the Attorney-General to stay this prosecution, but by pleading guilty; and although I am well aware that your verdict, if adverse to me, will be my ruin, yet I would rather terminate my existence on the floor of this court than plead guilty to this lying indictment, or admit that I am a wicked, malicious, and evil-disposed person, when I know that to the best of my judgment and ability I am an upright, honest, well-intentioned man. If I believed myself to be the man described, in the indictment--which I must do before I could consent to plead guilty--I would fly to the uttermost parts of the earth; for a man is totally destroyed when he has lost all feeling of self-respect, and the esteem and regard of his friends and associates.
Gentleman of the Jury, I have yet a host of authorities before me, but I will not waste time by quoting them; as I am convinced you must now be quite satisfied, from what I have already adduced, that every Englishman has an undoubted right to investigate all subjects--whether religious or political--and to publish the result of the investigation for the benefit of society at large; but, Gentlemen, in closing what I have to say on this part of the subject, I beg to lay before you two striking and convincing passages from Lord Brougham and Dr. Southwood Smith--two of the most intellectual and eminent individuals of the present day.
Gentlemen, the first passage I will quote is from Dr. Southwood Smith, who strikingly and beautifully describes the proper boundary of human investigation; and I beg the particular attention of the learned Attorney-General to this passage.