Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
opinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart.
He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise between
principles which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way in
intolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason for
stopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerly
dragged the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazing
furzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but they
were more consistent than he.
It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge try a man
for blasphemy. In my opinion it is monstrous to see any judge try a man
for blasphemy under the present law. But, if the law on that subject
were in a sound state, I do not see why a conscientious Jew might not
try a blasphemer. Every man, I think, ought to be at liberty to discuss
the evidences of religion; but no man ought to be at liberty to force on
the unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds and sights which must cause
annoyance and irritation. The distinction is clear. I think it wrong to
punish a man for selling Paine's Age of Reason in a back-shop to those
who choose to buy, or for delivering a Deistical lecture in a private
room to those who choose to listen. But if a man exhibits at a window
in the Strand a hideous caricature of that which is an object of awe
and adoration to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of
people who pass up and down that great thoroughfare; if a man in a place
of public resort applies opprobrious epithets to names held in reverence
by all Christians; such a man ought, in my opinion, to be severely
punished, not for differing from us in opinion, but for committing a
nuisance which gives us pain and disgust. He is no more entitled to
outrage our feelings by obtruding his impiety on us, and to say that
he is exercising his right of discussion, than to establish a yard for
butchering horses close to our houses, and to say that he is exercising
his right of property, or to run naked up and down the public streets,
and to say that he is exercising his right of locomotion. He has a right
of discussion, no doubt, as he has a right of property and a right of
locomotion. But he must use all his rights so as not to infringe the
rights of others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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