"When you sat as judge in these blasphemy trials your lordship was practically omnipotent. There is yet no court of criminal appeal.... The very knowledge of your uncontrollable authority in the conduct of the trial ... should have prompted your lordship to hold the judicial balance with a steady hand, its inclining, if at all, being to the side of mercy. But your lordship, in the spirit of the old inquisitor, threw into the scale your own prejudices against the heresy for which the defendants were reputed, your own dislike of the manner in which they had made their heresies known.... I ask your lordship what would be the outcry through the civilised world if, either in Switzerland or in Hindostan, those Salvation Army propagandists who thrust their blasphemies furiously in all men's faces were so hardly dealt with as you have dealt with George William Foote, William James Ramsey, and Henry Kemp?"
Presumably the scandal caused by Justice North tended to procure a fairer hearing for the original action, still unheard, in which Bradlaugh was indicted. It came on before the Lord Chief Justice and a jury on 10th April—Bradlaugh, as usual, defending himself, while Messrs Foote and Ramsey were represented by counsel. Bradlaugh was permitted by Lord Coleridge, in spite of the opposition of the prosecuting counsel (Giffard), to have the charge against him tried separately from that of his co-defendants, whose testimony might be important to him; and he was thus enabled to put his defence solely on the question of his responsibility, saying nothing as to the papers prosecuted being blasphemous or otherwise. His case was a clear and detailed proof, made good at every point, that he had ceased to be in any way concerned even in the selling of the Freethinker before the issue of any of the incriminated numbers, he and Mrs Besant having decided to drop the publication on account of a change early made in the character of the paper;[171] and that this abandonment of the publication—which was the only sort of connection he had ever had with the paper at all—was made independently of any outside pressure or threat. For the rest, the malevolent tactics of Sir Henry Tyler were once more made the subject of a stinging invective; and the procedure of the prosecution in regard to the bank account came in for very severe handling. This was one of the most striking details in the trial. It came out, to the amazement of the legal part of the audience, that not only had Bradlaugh's banking account been ransacked and his cheques gone over to see if any had been dishonoured, but the junior counsel for Tyler, Mr Moloney, had actually attended the inquisition in person. Bradlaugh naturally did not spare him, declaring that he had "done work generally left to some private detective or inquiry agent, and never done by any one having the dignity of the bar to guard." And all the while, the search had been made in a bank branch in St John's Wood, N.W., in the county of Middlesex, on a warrant from the Lord Mayor, whose jurisdiction was limited to the City. On this head the Lord Chief Justice indicated a very strong feeling that the Lord Mayor's warrant for such a purpose ought not to be valid anywhere. "Vile in its inception and dishonourable in its conduct," was Bradlaugh's account of the prosecution generally, and he even had a suspicion, based on an awkward statement by one of the legal witnesses, that the examination of the bank account had been made some days before the summons against him was issued.
Sir Hardinge Giffard, now prosecuting for the Crown, fought the case as he might have done it for Tyler, declaring in his opening speech that he would call witnesses to prove certain things, and afterwards carefully omitting to call them, seeing that that course would help Bradlaugh to clear himself. In replying, he did not attempt to rebut the criticisms passed on his client and on his conduct of the case, professing to take the attitude of dignified disregard. His main line of argument was that one or two isolated woodcuts had been published in the Freethinker during the few months in which the Freethought Company published it, that Bradlaugh was an original promoter, and that the change made in the registration was only a stratagem, Bradlaugh remaining the real publisher. As regarded the blasphemy charged, Sir Hardinge did not take the customary line of distinguishing between vulgar and refined blasphemy, describing the contents of the Freethinker as deadly "poison to men's soul"—an expression which could not be supposed to apply to the mere element of vulgarity. He spoke with horror of a cartoon which exhibited Ignorance, Money, and Fear as "the true Trinity," and would doubtless have spoken similarly of the account of the Trinity as "three Lord Shaftesburys," given by Lord Coleridge's esteemed personal friend, Mr Matthew Arnold. The blasphemous matter on which the learned counsel expressed himself most strongly in detail, however, was a vulgar travesty of the extremely silly and artistically worthless religious picture known as "The Calling of Samuel." "You have that picture," he told the jury, "represented as a startled child, roused from his slumber by two cats on the tiles. And this is the sort of thing which is to be scattered broadcast over the land—!"
Lord Coleridge, on his part, summed up with great literary skill and dignity, carefully guarding against theological prejudice on the part of the jury by the avowal that he himself, despite his years and comparative detachment from the world, found it difficult to clear his mind of it. Incidentally he remarked that it was to Bradlaugh's credit that he did not disavow a general sympathy with the opinions of his co-defendants, while clearing himself of all complicity in the publications indicted. But on the point of the blasphemy charge he also incidentally expressed an opinion, which is worth citing as showing how little even an exceptionally considerate judge with strong religious feelings can get rid of the vulgar notion that irreverence to his—the popular—religious opinions is immeasurably more reprehensible than irreverence towards other less popular opinions, or vilification of unpopular men's characters. His objection to blasphemy prosecutions was mainly that they injured the cause of religion:—
"I say not how far the institution of a prosecution of this kind wounds the most sacred feelings and does injury to the holiest convictions. Some persons may think that this is not so; some may think that by such prosecutions the most sacred truths are pierced through the sides of those who are their enemies. With all that we have nothing to do. We may dislike, we may—I do not hesitate to say, we may loathe—the expressions made use of in these libels. We may think the persons who can speak in this way of things which they themselves may disapprove of and disbelieve, which they themselves may possibly think superstitious and mischievous, but which they must know have been the life and the soul of the virtue, the morality, the self-denial, the civilisation of hundreds, and thousands, and millions of people in all ages, are persons who forget—I will not say what is due to God, for they do not believe in Him, but to man, for they are men—what is due to themselves, and to the community of which they form a part, and for whom they ought to have some consideration. All that may be perfectly true, but it has nothing to do with the question."
Here the judge assumes that there is no dispute whatever as to the claim that the Christian religion is the essence of morality and modern civilisation, and proceeds to express disgust for a line of polemic which was zealously followed by the early Christians for centuries, which is invariably followed in the Old Testament when there is any question of alien religions, which is endorsed by Paul, which is commonly followed by Christian missionaries and by Protestant assailants of Catholicism, and which was even then being followed by the Christian multitude in the very case of Bradlaugh. The Christian position is that it is right to ridicule and asperse Freethinkers, materialists, and polytheists; and the Protestant position is that it is right to deride the Catholic worship of saints, images, and relics; but Christians in the mass hold it abominable for unbelievers and "heathen" in turn to deride their opinions, these being "holy" and "dear." And all the while, in the case under notice, the people who thus felt the most intense animal resentment towards a handful of men for speaking irreverently of a supposed Infinite, which by no possibility could human folly or contumely disturb or hurt, were as often as not zealous accomplices in casting the vilest personal insults against a representative Atheist who confessedly could not be shown to have attacked their opinions in such a way as to lay him open to a successful prosecution for blasphemy. The Christian plea is that unbelievers should not be free to cause Christians pain. Yet the whole of Bradlaugh's life was and is in evidence to show that the first instinct of the average Christian is to cause not merely endless mental pain but material ruin to every man who ventures, however decorously, to pronounce the Christian creed untrue. Perhaps the profoundest impeachment of the religious instinct in general is this very fact that the express conviction of the absolute supremacy of a personal power over all things human never by any chance enables the believer to regard with serenity and compassion the human denials which that power in the terms of the case is alleged to permit.
Some approach to the recognition of all this must have taken place in connection with the trial of Bradlaugh on the score of the Freethinker, although of course it was on the point of non-complicity that the jury gave their verdict of acquittal. They deliberated for an hour and ten minutes, calling for several of the documents in the case. The foreman's pronouncement of "Not Guilty" was received with loud cheers, which the judge indignantly rebuked, with the customary remark that "this is not a place of entertainment;" but a Conservative journal, endowed with the regulation horror of Atheism, commented that the cheer expressed a sentiment not at all confined to Atheists. In general, the press rejoiced with the acquitted man, who had now won in rapid succession three decisive successes in his long battle. It was noted, too, that he had won them against one leading counsel, Sir Hardinge Giffard. Asked later how it was that he had so often and so signally defeated this counsel, Bradlaugh remarked that he believed it was because Giffard despised him as an antagonist, and neglected precautions against him, while he, Bradlaugh, was careful at all times to do his utmost, and never to undervalue the enemy's strength. The moral is an old one.
In addition to the discredit put upon the prosecution in Court, it happened that Sir Henry Tyler about this time figured rather dubiously before the public in his capacity of company-promoter. His treatment of the financial affairs of the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation, in which he was deeply concerned, gave such dissatisfaction to most of the shareholders that they took the unusual course of presenting a memorial insisting on his resignation, after he had been hissed and hooted at a shareholders meeting.[172] It may have been a sense of the unfitness of such a personage to represent the cause of religion that led to the foundation of a "Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature," the secretary of which wrote to the newspapers[173] as follows:—
"We propose to get up cases, as our funds will allow, against Professor Huxley, Dr Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Swinburne, the author of 'Supernatural Religion,' the publishers of Mill's works, the publishers of Strauss's works, Leslie Stephen, John Morley, the editor of the Jewish World, Dr Martineau, and others, who by their writings have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank Atheism, in cultivated families."
That goodly project, however, came to nothing, though in the view of Justice Stephen most if not all of the writers and publishers named were certainly open to conviction for blasphemy under the existing law. It would appear that the spiritual interests of "cultivated families" arouse less solicitude than do those of the poor, in matters religious as well as Malthusian. Above all, none of the writers threatened, save Mr John Morley, was likely to give the Tory party any chance of turning his heresy to political advantage, and Mr Morley was already safe in his seat, having taken the oath without demur and without opposition, after editorially criticising Mr Bradlaugh for his willingness to take it. Mr Morley had perhaps put himself right with the religious party by applauding the prosecution of Foote and Ramsey—he who had expressly justified the polemic of Voltaire.[174] A clergyman of the Church of England, the Rev. Stewart Headlam, whose championship of the principle of religious equality has all along been above all praise, wrote to Mr Morley in his editorial capacity, protesting "as a Christian priest" against a policy which made it "almost impossible for Christians to meet Atheists on equal terms." "It seems," Mr Headlam began, "as though you were one of those who say, 'There is no God, but it's a family secret.'" The letter was suppressed. It is bare justice to cite it here[175] as being perhaps the most telling protest made against the blasphemy prosecutions, albeit written by a sincerely orthodox clergyman.