The battle of the press

by Theophila Carlile Campbell

The Chief Justice: In this Court we assume that the Christian religion is true. I am anxious to give every possible latitude of defence, but I cannot permit the introduction of blasphemy; I cannot allow this day's proceedings to form a precedent that might be dangerous in future times.

Mr. Carlile: I wish to show that there are some reasons to doubt.

The Chief Justice: The publication you are now to answer for does not express doubts; but it calumniates and reviles the Christian religion. You cannot justify by denying the truth of the Christian religion.

Mr. Carlile: Your decision, my lord, sets aside the statute.

The Chief Justice: I have given my opinion on the statute. It is useless, and it certainly is not decorous, to contend against that opinion now. If it be a wrong one, you will have an opportunity of rectifying it.

Mr. Carlile: My lord, I feel that I do not stand in a Court of Justice; but that I stand in an Inquisition, where I am prevented from going into my defence.

The Chief Justice: You stand in a Court where the Christian religion must be observed as the law of the land, and where no man is allowed to revile it; you stand in a Court willing and most anxious to give you the full benefit of every fair, legal and decorous defence.

Mr. Carlile: My lord, I am persecuted because these publications are directed against the revenues of the Church. If it were not for this the publication would be safe. How many odious and absurd doctrines have been tolerated, nay, supported in this country? Johanna Southcote had twenty thousand followers in this country—she was encouraged in her impious and indecent conduct—whilst the publisher of "The Age of Reason" is prosecuted, but not allowed to be defended. My lord, I shall now take leave to show you the persecutions which Luther endured. That persecution originated in the same spirit that now assails me. Luther was the son of a Saxon minister; he was sent to a school in Magdeburg, but was afterwards obliged to beg for his bread; he wrote against the authority of the Pope and the practices of the Church of Rome, and he was denounced as a heretic. He was grievously persecuted for maintaining what he considered truth, and if the Court is not prepared to defend that persecution, his lordship cannot defend his own conduct nor the conduct of the Attorney-General as against me. If Luther was exposed to a trial of this kind—if, like me he was prevented from entering into a defence—he would never have been able to carry the Reformation into effect; but happily for him, before the Pope could lay his hands on him, he found a friend in the Elector of Saxony; if it were not for that fortunate circumstance, the pious Christians of those days would have committed him to the flames. The Attorney-General, like the Friar Hiegostratus, who advised the Pope to commit Luther to the flames, now calls for my conviction to send me to a dungeon, to have my family ruined, and to prevent me from ever rising in the world by any effort of care and of industry. Luther was summoned before the Council. He attempted to defend himself on grounds of argument, but he would not be heard, and finding that his person was in danger, he was obliged to fly. He was excommunicated, he was interdicted, he was hunted down like a wild beast, but this he bore for conscience sake. He had the idea of truth, and when the mind of man is impressed with that heavenly sentiment, he will suffer a hero and a martyr to his principles. Though humble my efforts, yet, like the great reformer, I am impressed with the justice and propriety of the course I have taken. It will not be denied, my lord, that sometimes it is necessary to resist power; nay, sometimes to resist law. It is too often the case that the propagators of new doctrines fall victims to their principles. Luther, Calvin and Knox might be said to be the only exceptions. My lord, falsehood will not bear the light of enquiry, but truth is powerful, it is impossible to stop it; it is not perverseness in me to propagate what I conceive to be for the good of man; like Luther, the mind of a sincere believer, whatever his doctrines may be, would rather perish than retract, while unconscious of error. My lord, I cannot but consider that the same persecuting spirit that harassed him is now directed against me; it is true that the Roman Catholic religion in his day had no Attorney-General, but it had its Inquisition, its accusing officers, the ministers of its vengeance, and the creatures of its power.

He then attempted to show that there was no evidence of the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ, insisted on the alleged discrepancy between the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and was entering on an argument to prove that the latter Gospel was not written by St. Luke, when he was interrupted by the Attorney-General. He observed on the consequences of the toleration granted to Unitarians by statute 53 Geo. III, whom, he said, he considered as Deists. He had been denied every opportunity of showing, even from Eusebius, that the books of the New Testament were not written by the persons whose names they bore in our version. He had intended to be prepared the next morning with a list of the names of the persons to whom they had been attributed before the Councils of Laodicea and Nice, but in consequence of having been interrupted in his intended line of defence, everything was in confusion and derangement with him. He had an extract to produce from St. Chrysostom, which stated that there was no evidence that the books of the New Testament were the writings of those who are commonly supposed to be their authors. Was it not then severe that he should be punished for his industry in searching out truth, and endeavoring to diffuse it among the public, for he had most studiously examined all the works written as evidences of Christianity, from Eusebius and Origen down to Addison? They had not convinced him. He had been charged with publishing the work for the purpose of brutalising and demoralising his country; but it was not true. He loved his country with ardor, and his object had been to instruct, enlighten and improve it. The system of morals which now obtained in it was founded on error—true morality could not rest on error—and his intentions in printing the works of Mr. Paine had been to dissipate that error, by calling reasonable men to the investigation and trial of it—and it was for this he was to be persecuted, condemned and punished. He was not to be confuted by argument, but crushed and overwhelmed by penalties. It behoved the jury to look well to it whether he deserved to be given up by them for what had originated from nothing but pure motives. If he was in the right, would it not be most unjust? If he was not, would not such means taken to suppress his opinions cause them to spread the wider? Had not persecution always had that effect; and was it for the present enlightened age to be taxed with attempting to put down opinions by torture and imprisonment? He had intended, had he not been interrupted in his defence, to read to-morrow morning extracts from Bolingbroke, Gibbon and Hume, who had evidently held the same principles with Mr. Paine, and who had published their principles in their writings, though these had passed unnoticed and unobserved by any former Attorney-General. The works of Bolingbroke went quite as far as Mr. Paine. Gibbon had adopted a different mode of attack; he meant the same thing as Mr. Paine, but he did not go about it in so honest a way. Paine proceeded fairly and openly—Gibbon insidiously. Hume went farther than either of these, for he even composed a defence of Atheism. Why had all these escaped with impunity, and Paine and he (Mr. Carlile) to be singled out as victims? The tendency of Mr. Paine's system was to enlarge and elevate the mind, by removing the erroneous and false, and inspiring true notions of the Deity; not to sink and degrade it as alleged by the Attorney-General. But whatever might follow his attempt to render them known in this country (for it should be recollected that the two last tracts had not been before published here), something would be suspected from the Attorney-General's preventing him from pursuing the line of defence he had marked out. Why was the information against him founded not on the statutes the 9th and 10th of William III., but on the common law? What was the common law? It was supposed to reside in the breast of the judge. But what one judge in one term, or in one Court, laid down to be common law, another judge in another term pronounced not to be common law; nay, the same judge frequently varied from his own opinion, and over-ruled what he had on former occasions decided to be law. Let a law be given which people could understand.... He had framed a most extensive system of defence; he had been prepared to lay before them passages from the works of the most eminent divines in different ages, enforcing and insisting on the duty of allowing a full freedom of opinion in religious matters; but he found himself precluded from what he had contemplated, which was the only defence in his power. For he maintained, that if a man did any act, and was then precluded from justifying that act, he was precluded from, and deprived of his natural defence. The first reformers of religion were generally and deservedly applauded for their spirit and boldness, yet they might as well have been prosecuted in their day as himself. Luther ventured much farther than he had, for he had no statute law on which to rest a justification of his conduct, as he (Mr. Carlile) had. It seemed to him that the Legislature, in passing the statute to which he had so frequently referred, had at length seen and acknowledged the propriety of indulging all persons in a free profession and discussion of their tenets in religion. He had heard most intelligent men say it was a toleration of Deism, and in that light, after the most deliberate reflection, he had looked on it. Deism had been much abused; but what was Deism? It was a belief in one God; and it might as well be opposed to polytheism or idolatry, or any of the ancient systems of superstition, as to the doctrine of the Trinity. But the creed of the Trinity was not in any wise essential to morality of life and rectitude of conduct. Greece and Rome boasted of citizens equal, if not superior, in all the virtues which can adorn men, to any ever trained under the Christian code. It was in vain for him to take up any other volume at present. His whole defence rested on one point. From that he had been debarred, and, in consequence, was disabled from proceeding further into his defence that evening. He had an immense number of witnesses to produce, who would say that his moral character, in every particular, had been at all times unimpeachable; also a vast number ta describe the variety of religions, systems and tenets, held even among Christians. Many of them had been subpoenaed, and more would be subpoenaed to-morrow. But he thought it due to him, when the interruptions he had suffered was taken into consideration, that the Court should adjourn till to-morrow morning. His whole line of defence had been thrown into confusion, and he was totally unable to continue it till to-morrow.

The Chief Justice: What then am I to understand?