of tracts to its issue, which was four millions in the preceding year; the average revenue of this Society is about £9000; that of the Christian Knowledge Society, above £50,000; and that of the Bible Society about £100,000. Now if religion with all this extensive aid, all these immense advantages in addition to its proper evidence, cannot stand its ground without prosecutions for its support, we hesitate not to say, that it ought to fall. Were it the grossest imposture that ever existed, here is force enough to enable it to fight a long and hard battle with truth and common sense. If with these fearful odds, there be the slightest occasion for penalty and imprisonment to secure its ascendancy, falsehood may be at once branded on its front. Those who contend for their infliction are the real missionaries of Infidelity, and by far its most successful propagators.

It is often said, that fair and decorous argument against Christianity ought to be allowed, but not ribaldry, contumely, reviling, blasphemy, &c. Such language, having been held in Parliament, and on the Bench, may seem entitled to some attention. If it were uniformly held, much of the foregoing argument might have been spared; but that is far from being the case. On the trial of Mrs. Wright, the Lord Chief Justice is reported to have said, "the defendant was not called on to answer any reasonable or fair discussion on the truth of Christianity in general, or any of its particular tenets. The law permitted that every subject, however sacred, should be freely, yet moderately and temperately discussed; but it would not yield its protection to gross and scandalous calumnies on the established faith." And again, "If the Jury thought these passages were only parts of a fair and temperate discussion of the sacred topics to which they had reference, they might acquit the defendant; but if they considered them as gross and indecent attacks on religion, they must find her guilty." Declarations to the same effect have been repeatedly made, during the more recent trials: yet if they rightly expound the Common Law, it is at variance with the Statute; for that of 9th and 10th William and Mary enacts "that if any person, having been educated in, or at any time made profession of, the Christian religion within this realm, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he shall &c.": nay this language is at variance with the precedent continually referred to, of Rex v. Woolston, when the offence was not a direct denial, but an allegorical interpretation of the New Testament, which, in the opinion of Lord Raymond, "struck at the very root of Christianity"; the Court declared

they would not suffer it to be debated whether to write against Christianity in general, was not an offence at common law." As this, however, was law made by the Judges, we should not object to its being repealed, or mitigated by them; only let them know their own minds upon the subject. Notwithstanding the legal allowance of a temperate discussion of the truth of Christianity declared on Mrs. Wright's trial, the same Judge had declared, on that of Carlile, that "the Court was bound not to hear the truth of the Christian religion questioned"; and that "if the defendant wished to produce authors to shew that the Christian religion might be denied, that could not be allowed." The charge on that trial completely exemplifies the vacillation we are exposing. The following passages are quoted from it in the order in which they appear in the Times Newspaper of Oct. 15, 1819. The Lord Chief Justice said "that he had then (during the defence) determined, and he did not regret that determination, that it was not competent in a Christian Court, in a court of law, to rise up and say, that the Christian religion was not a religion of truth." Soon after this he expressed himself as follows: "another topic of defence, strenuously, and in some degree properly, urged, was the danger of restraining free discussion and free inquiry. God forbid that any such restraint should take place! But they had to distinguish whether the present publication was an instance of that free inquiry and discussion, or a work of mere calumny and ridicule." Again: "The Christian religion forming part of the law of the land, it was not fit that he (the defendant) or any other person, should openly deny its. truth." And, to complete the second vacillation, the summing-up concluded thus: "The whole question turned on the character of the work, and that must now be collected from it as a whole. Was it a fair and candid inquiry? Look at those epithets applied to the Scriptures, "a book full of lies," "a dangerous heresy," "an impious falsehood." These were a few specimens, and he had found none other to soften their effect, or that indicated any other object, than to defame the Bible and bring it into universal disbelief and contempt. So thinking, it was his duty, sitting where he did, to express his opinion to the Jury; and that opinion was, that this publication was a work of calumny and scoffing, and therefore an unlawful publication." We say nothing of the legal trap in which a Defendant might complain of being caught, if he acted upon the one set of dicta, and were condemned by the other. We say nothing of the disingenuousness of claiming merit for tolerating argument, while there is a prospect of obtaining a conviction on the score of

calumny, and still retaining, as a dernier resort, the illegality of every thing which tends to the disproof of Christianity. Our object is merely, to point out the inconsistency and mistiness of the language held by the highest authorities on this subject; and our inference is, that the line between argument and reviling is too difficult even for legal acuteness to draw; that he who disbelieves and attempts to disprove Christianity can put his arguments into no form which may not be pronounced calumnious and illegal; and that therefore the only mode of securing free inquiry from that restraint, at the bare idea of which his Lordship was so laudably and piously horror-struck, is to tolerate the one as well as the other. A conclusion which, as it may not be generally agreeable, we proceed to strengthen by other considerations.

To declare that an act is legal, but with the proviso that it be performed in a gentle and decorous manner, is opening a wide door for arbitrary discretion on the one part, and dissatisfaction on the other. The difficulty is greatly increased when the act itself is offensive to those who sit in judgment upon the manner of its performance. Suppose that it were made expulsion from the House of Commons to address the chair ungracefully. What a clamour would there be for the unconditional allowance or prohibition of speech! Could the distinction be accurately ascertained, it would be hard to debar the man of ungainly habits from doing that which he might think required of him by duty to his constituents and his country. But it is infinitely more unjust to debar a man who may have a comprehensive and vigorous, though a coarse and vulgar mind, from publishing his speculations on theological topics, because his style partakes of his own rudeness, and lacks the polish of that of Hume or Gibbon. If the proposition that Christianity is untrue may be legally conveyed to the mind, what can be more absurd than to say that to express that proposition by certain undefined and undefinable selections of terms, shall constitute a crime?

So far as we can understand the distinction set up in this case between discussion and reviling, it seems to be this: the one is a mere statement of a fact or argument; the other an expression of the indignation or contempt excited in the writer's mind by the doctrine to which he is opposed. Now the reason why men dislike doctrines is, that they discern, or fancy they discern, an evil tendency in those doctrines. If such a tendency be demonstrated to the conviction of the reader, he will participate in the writer's dislike, whether the latter have expressed it or not. And if the reader be not so convinced, all that the VOL. II.-W. R.

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writer says of his own dislike will go for nothing, or more probably make both himself and his argument disagreeable. It is surely inexpedient that such an appendage should constitute all the difference between crime and no crime, the enjoyment of the common rights of citizenship and a ruinous sentence of fine and imprisonment: and the more so, on account of the extreme difficulty of avoiding some expression of feeling in the discussion of moral subjects. There is no mathematical indifference in Theological controversy. The believer has it not; nor ought he to exact it of the unbeliever. The expression of indignation at what is deemed false and pernicious should be a crime in all, or in none,

The Bishop of St. David's describes the Unitarians as "Goddenying apostates and heretics," "blasphemers," "not entitled to the name of Christians," who "wilfully falsify the truth." The Book of Homilies, the yet authoritative manifesto of the Church of England, describes the Catholic worship as far exceeding gentile idolatry "in all wickedness, foolishness, and madness; characterizes its practice as "the blasphemous bold blazing of manifest idolatry ;" and wonders that its votaries should not "at the least have chosen them a time of more darkness, as meeter to utter their horrible basphemies in." (Against Peril of Idolatry part 3). Christian blasphemers then are tolerated; as is Christian reviling. Let Justice be evenhanded.

Where the feelings are so deeply interested as they always must be on theological subjects, it will necessarily happen that the party attacked will call that reviling which the party attacking deems fair discussion. In the debate on the presentation of a petition against the prosecution of unbelievers, July 1, 1823, Mr. Wilberforce observed that, "he entirely denied the truth of the argument which the honourable member (Mr. Hume) had drawn from the employment of missionaries abroad. Those individuals never proceeded to insult the prejudices of the natives of other countries, by any gross and indecent reflections. They adduced nothing but fair and sober argument to effect their purpose." Now what think the Hindoos of these temperate and unimpeachable reasoners? In the first number of the Braminical Magazine, published at Calcutta in 1821, in both Bengalee and English, is the following account of them: "During the last twenty years, a body of English gentlemen, who are called missionaries, have been publicly endeavouring in several ways to convert the Hindoos and Musselmans to Christianity. The first way is that of publishing and distributing among the natives various books,

large and small, reviling both religions, and abusing and ridiculing the gods and saints of the former." Mr. Wilberforce's character of the missionary publications is probably correct. It is looking at the same object from different positions that makes all the difference. Suppose one were to describe the orthodox party in the church of England as a generation of vipers;" and another to characterize the established priesthood as "hypocrites," "fools and blind,” men who "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel," what would Mr. Wilberforce call it? It would not be true; but that is not the question. The objects of such accusations never admit their truth; nor were similar expressions indicted, would an English court allow evidence of their truth to be adduced. Or Or suppose that in any publication of the present day it were affirmed that, "we know that" the God of the established religion "is nothing in the world." Would not this be reviling? Let such men as Mr. Wilberforce reflect on the lengths to which their principles would extend in a different age and country, and under a different establishment.

The effect of even just censure is commonly to rouse indignant feelings, much more so of that which is known to be altogether groundless. The more abusive an unbeliever is, the less likely is he to make an impression even on the most uninformed. If unable to judge of the controversy in any other way, they will decide on the same principle as the honest countryman, who was present at a disputation in Latin, and knew which of the disputants had the worst of it by his falling into a passion. Indeed, in proportion to the want of information is generally the disposition to resent any attack upon opinions which are held in reverence. That disposition is sufficiently strong in all, to make every appearance of insult operate as a deduction from the force of the argument with which it is blended. To allow the publication of infidel works, cleansed of passages which are liable to that imputation, especially while Christian works undergo no such expurgatory process, would obviously place unbelief in a far more advantageous position than it now occupies. So to contrive, that in any controversy, all the writers on one side should publish only the effusions of pure intellect, thoroughly weeded from all indications of human frailty, of prejudice and passion, of misrepresentation, acrimony, and reviling, would be, to give them a most undue and undesirable advantage. Their arguments might be few and feeble, but the tone of candour and moderation in which they were urged, would give them adventitious force. They would glide along like the American serpent divested of its rattle;