It will be said, that we do not now put to death the introducers of new
opinions: we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we even
build sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put heretics to death;
and the amount of penal infliction which modern feeling would probably
tolerate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not sufficient to
extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves that we are yet free
from the stain even of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at
least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is
not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible
that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at
the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man,[7]
said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was
sentenced to twenty-one months' imprisonment, for uttering, and writing
on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. Within a month
of the same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate
occasions,[8] were rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted
by the judge and by one of the counsel, because they honestly declared
that they had no theological belief; and a third, a foreigner,[9] for
the same reason, was denied justice against a thief. This refusal of
redress took place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can
be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not profess
belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state; which is
equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws, excluded from the
protection of the tribunals; who may not only be robbed or assaulted
with impunity, if no one but themselves, or persons of similar opinions,
be present, but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity,
if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The assumption on
which this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, of a person who
does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much
ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically
true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons
of distinguished integrity and honour); and would be maintained by no
one who had the smallest conception how many of the persons in greatest
repute with the world, both for virtues and for attainments, are well
known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule,
besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence
that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who
are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of
publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A
rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed
purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of
persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity, that the