Prisoner for BlasphemyFoote, G. W. (George William)
Religion
Prisoner for Blasphemy
Foote, G. W. (George William)
Blasphemy; Trials (Blasphemy) -- Great Britain
Less than ten years after the "glorious revolution" of 1688 there was
passed a statute, known as the 9 and 10 William III., c. 32, and
called "An Act for the more effectual suppressing of Blasphemy and
Profaneness." This enacts that "any person or persons having been
educated in, or at any time having made profession of, the Christian
religion within this realm who shall, by writing, printing, teaching, or
advised speaking, deny any one of the persons in the Holy Trinity to be
God, or shall assert or maintain there are more gods than one, or shall
deny the Christian doctrine to be true, or the Holy Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament to be of divine authority," shall upon conviction
be disabled from holding any ecclesiastical, civil, or military
employment, and on a second conviction be imprisoned for three years and
deprived for ever of all civil rights.
Lord Coleridge and Sir James Stephen call this statute "ferocious," but
as it is still unrepealed there is no legal reason why it should not
be enforced. Curiously, however, the reservation which was inserted to
protect the Jews has frustrated the whole purpose of the Act; at any
rate, there never has been a single prosecution under it. So much of
the statute as affected the Unitarians was ostensibly repealed by the 53
George III., c. 160. But Lord Eldon in 1817 doubted whether it was
ever repealed at all; and so late as 1867 Chief Baron Kelly and Lord
Bramwell, in the Court of Exchequer, held that a lecture on "The
Character and Teachings of Christ: the former defective, the latter
misleading" was an offence against the statute. It is not so clear,
therefore, that Unitarians are out of danger; especially as the judges
have held that this Act was special, without in any way affecting
the common law of Blasphemy, under which all prosecutions have been
conducted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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