My Lord--Gentlemen of the Jury,
"In rising to vindicate myself from the charge preferred against me in this indictment, I shall not attempt to justify the language alluded to by the Attorney-General; but I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise that the Government, after having encouraged the circulation of cheap knowledge upon all subjects,--in Penny Magazines and Penny Cyclopaedias,--should have placed me on my trial upon such a flimsy charge as this--for flimsy it undoubtedly is, when, out of a work comprising nearly 500 pages, the Attorney-General can only find one passage,--that in the eighth Letter, which is, I admit, expressed in very improper language,--whereon to found an indictment. I contend that it is impossible to say where a person is to stop in his inquiries. If a person is permitted to reject one tenet, another may reject another; and there is no reason why another should not go on, and reject the whole. In the whole work there is not one disrespectful word about Christianity; it is a rejection of the miracles ascribed to Moses in the Old Testament, which have been indignantly rejected by many learned men. The work was not intended as a scurrilous attack, but as an inquiry into the effects of the usages of society, founded upon the Old Testament. The object of Mr. Haslam was benevolent; and however much he might err, he was not criminal. He undertook to prove to the clergy that they were all in error that the doctrines they are teaching to the people are false, absurd, and irrational; that they are directly contrary to reason; and that, so long as they are preached to the people, so long will the people be vicious, wretched, and unhappy.
"The Attorney-General has only read the objectionable passages: I will read a few passages from Mr. Haslam's first Letter, which will enable the Jury to understand the nature of his work, and appreciate his motives. Having frankly stated his object, he proceeds:--
"You, no doubt, will feel concerned at this; you will very likely be angry with me for this daring attempt; you will call me Deist, Atheist, Infidel, and many other charitable epithets; you will feel unutterable things towards me; and I shall, no doubt, be subject to the extreme charity of your pious congregations, who profess to 'love their neighbours as themselves,' and into whose minds you have crammed absurdity after absurdity, until they have scarcely room for another. I shall, no doubt, expose myself to all manner of ill-feeling and uncharitableness, and to calumnies and lies of every description; but shall these deter me from making known the convictions of iny mind? Shall these hinder me from exposing the errors and absurdities which I see interested men instilling into the minds of the people? Shall these prevent me from telling the people that they are deceived and imposed upon, and that their beggary, and want, and wretchedness, are the consequences of it? Shall these, in short, stop me from exposing the irrationalities which I see everywhere around me, and which occasion so much misery and unhappiness to my fellow-men? No, I tell you they shall not. That power which sent you into the world, sent me into the world also; and if you have a right to think and speak, I have a right to think and speak also. I have received an organization for the purpose as well as any of you; and as long as that organization remains unimpaired, so long will I tell the world what I think and feel.
"Why should any of you be angry with me? If I can prove your doctrines to be false and erroneous, what occasion is there for anger? What can you want with doctrines that are false? As honest men you ought immediately to abandon them. Instead, therefore, of being angry with me, you ought to have the very opposite feeling; for of what service can error and nonsense be to any man, or any set of men?
"But if I prove that your doctrines are not only false and erroneous, but that they occasion a vast amount of mischief to the people; that they occasion want and vice, and all manner of wickedness, and that, by removing them from the minds of the people, and substituting truths, all this want, and vice, and wickedness might be put an end to; if, I say, I prove this, why should you be angry with me for doing it? Surely you cannot wish the people to remain in a state of want, and vice, and wickedness; and yet, if you do not, why should you be angry at me for showing you the causes of them, and pointing out the means for their removal?
"You talk a great deal about morality and religion; you manifest in your pulpits a great anxiety to spread them amongst the people; but who can believe you to be sincere, when you resist every attempt to remove the causes of immorality and irreligion? You must know that effects cannot be removed without removing the causes of them, and by resisting the removal of these causes, you evidently show a disposition to keep the people in wickedness. This wickedness proceeds from certain causes. We have pointed these causes out to you, and if you will not remove them, does not that evidently show that you would rather that the people were wicked? Can there be conclusions more logical? What ridiculous cant it must be then to talk about morality and religion?
"My assumption then is, that the belief of every man is given to him independently of his will, and that, therefore, no just power can punish him for it.
"Your assumption is the opposite of this; you assert that the belief of every man depends upon his own will; that he can either believe in the Bible, or not believe in the Bible; that he can either be Christian or Jew, Mahomedan or Infidel, and that, therefore, God will punish him if he do not believe in a particular manner.
"These then, are our respective assumptions--and now let reason, 'the grand prerogative of man,' determine between us.