Produced by David Widger THE HISTORY OF THE LAST TRIAL BY JURY FOR ATHEISM IN ENGLAND: A Fragment of Autobiography Submitted For The Perusal Of Her Majesty's Attorney-General And The British Clergy. By George Jacob Holyoake I was present in the court, to witness the trial of George Jacob Holyoake. I heard Wooler and Hone defend themselves successfully in 1817; but I would prefer to be declared guilty with Holyoake to being acquitted on the ground of Wooler and Hone.--Richard Carlile. LONDON: JAMES WATSON, 3, QUEEN'S HEAD PASSAGE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1850. TO WILLIAM JOHN BIRCH, M.A., OF NEW INN HALL, OXON. IN WHOM FREE DISCUSSION HAS FOUND AN ACCOMPLISHED DEFENDER AND MUNIFICENT FRIEND; WHO WAS FIRST TO HELP US WHEN A FRIEND IS TWICE A FRIEND, WHEN WE WERE UNKNOWN AND STRUGGLING; THIS HISTORY OF SIX MONTHS IMPRISONMENT PREFACE. The events, more than half of which are newly narrated in this 'History,' are recited from recollection. It is not pretended that all the conversations took place with the brevity with which they are given here. In the lapse of eight years there is much which I must have forgotten; but what I have told I distinctly remember, and the actors living will not, I think, contradict it. As, by a creditable improvement in English law, the recommencement of prosecutions for (ir)religious opinion can originate with the Attorney-General alone, I have ventured to hope that, if this narrative should fall into the hands of that officer for the time being, it may present some reasons to him why this 'Last Trial by Jury for Atheism' should be the _last_. There are some passages in these Fragments over which some will be sad with me. Others will assume them to be written for effect; for such, let me say, they were not written at all. These pages will leave me for the press with much more pleasure if I can believe that no one will connect them with me, but read them as a posthumous record of bygone events. At times I thought I would omit all incidents of feeling; but I felt, that if I did so the narrative would not represent the whole (personal) truth of these proceedings--and, as they stand, they may serve to suggest to some a doubt of the correctness of the oft-repeated dictum of the Rev. Robert Hall, that 'Atheism is a bloody and a ferocious system, which finds nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness.'