"My Lord Denman, in the very abstraction of our individual nature, and of the nature of society, a court of justice cannot take cognizance of opinions. Its functions are confined exclusively to facts. Can any two classes of things be more distinct and opposite? The one is fixed, the other perpetually varying. Law, cultivated reason and common sense have rescued subjects of opinion from judicial interference, except with respect to politics and religion, the two which of all others most need the exemption. The interference of courts of justice with religious opinions had immensely decreased, and it is now reviving; but it is in your Lordship’s power to annihilate it by passings nominal sentence on the defendant. The effects or results of a fact are ascertainable; those of an opinion are but speculative and uncertain. There is not in existence, there never has existed, and probably never can exist, a religious opinion that has not been deemed blasphemous, and of a destructive tendency to morals and social peace, by its opponents, who, if they had been strong enough, have relied upon the arguments of torture and death, or punishments as severe as society would permit. "My Lord, legism, or jurisprudence, are sufficiently understood to render it indisputable that punishments cannot be vindicatory or retrospective, and less than either, vindictive. All religious prosecutions seek only for revenge. The object of a legal punishment relates solely to the prevention of the offence. If a sentence against Mr. Hetherington cannot effect this object, it cannot be justified. Will a sentence alter his opinions? will it alter conscientiously that of any class or single member of society? and, above all, will it stop or check the dissemination of his doctrines? The two first points are nugatory; the last is defeated in its pretended object. All history and experience prove that persecution, let its form or degree be what it may, increases that which it is meant to destroy. Whether the tyrant be called Pope or Inquisition, Attorney-General or Court of Queen’s Bench, the principle and the result are the same.