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must bring in this person guilty;" you must find a true bill against this person." Judge for yourselves. Judge, whether a family is to be ruined for opinions which it believes to be right, whether an obscure family is to be ruined, for doing that which persons at the head of his Majesty's government have been allowed to do with impunity. Judge, whether Christ ever gave the least sanction to a violent support of his religion, whether these persecutions do not really assimilate the conduct of Christians to that of the ferocious Mahomet; and whether the present use of power in this case does not lead to the conclusion that the first Christians would have been as ferocious as Mahomet, had they the power to have been SO. Judge, whether it is not a maxim of determined truth in all other subjects of investigation that both sides are to be heard, whether Juries do not act day after day upon this maxim; and whether therefore it is right that believers should have all the speaking and the writing to themselves, all the power to calumniate in the most contemptuous manner the unbelievers, while, if a strong and energetic sentence is published by a sceptic on religion, he is imprisoned and ruined. Judge, whether truth can possibly be arrived at in this way. Judge, whether it is not forcing on the public mind the idea that Christianity cannot stand alone without force. Lastly, judge, I seriously call on you to reflect and judge, whether you can suppose yourselves wiser than the great Bacon, who tells you that even Atheism is not prejudicial to states, whether you can claim to be more correct in your conclusion, and better capable of coming to a conclusion in this matter than Bentley, Paley, Lardner, and Chandler, the avowed and acknowledged champions of the Christian Faith.

Did the honourable Judge do away this argument, which was insisted on by Mr. Cooper; he never even attempted it. But I must assert that it needed a distinct refutation. Let me ask you; do you think these persons, all of them believers in the Christian Religion, four of them ministers of that religion, and of the highest eminence for respectability and innocence of character, would agree in objecting to prosecutions for acknowledged vice, as they did object to prosecutions for sceptical works? Do you not see that they had the discernment to discriminate between what is universally allowed to be vice, and what is thought to be so by this or by that individual? They knew that they had been driven to and fro too much themselves by doubts and distractions not to feel for the situation of others. They felt that the most pious Christians had their hours and days of distrust, and they could not bring themselves to believe that during these intervals they had changed their nature, and from angels had become demons, because they sometimes doubted. They knew that no angel had been commisioned to them from the bright abodes to tell them they were right, and therefore they had the candour and integrity to assert that the determination of this question should be taken from the petty tribunals of fallible and sometimes interested men, and left to the future judicature of that bar, where is

no error, even from innocent mistake, to the judicature of that eternal God, in whom is no darkness nor error, nor shadow of turning, nor possibility of being misled by feelings of selfishness and inte

rest.

Are you afraid that you will be acting against your oath, if you acquit the accused on this occasion ? Remember that very numerous are the cases, where a delinquent is fully acknowledged by juries to be guilty; but where mercy has conquered the laws, and gained a victory over power; where a verdict has been given not indeed agreeably to the strict truth of the cases, but, which is of far more importance in laws framed in times of comparative ignorance and barbarity, where a verdict has been given, not according to the bare fact of innocence or guilt in regard to the imputed act, but aecording to the right and the equity of the matter. Remember that it can never be expected that any Legislator shall so far take on himself the odium of public opinion as to propose in Parliament the abrogation of the laws against unbelievers; or that the government will ever give up what has been held by all governments, Christian, Jewish, Brahminical, Pagan, and Mahometan, to be the Palladium of their power. And therefore it is YOUR office, the office of ALL juries, to take this into your own hands.

Mrs. Wright requested permission to retire and suckle her infant child that was crying. This was granted, and she was absent from Court twenty minutes, in passing to and from which, to the Castle Coffee House she was applauded and loudly cheered, by assembled thousands, all encouraging her to be of good cheer and to persevere.

I am come, lastly, Gentlemen, to speak of the law of the case, and the first question is, by what statute am I to be tried? You will find there is none that can answer the vindictive purposes of my persecutors; they appeal to no statute whatever, but have most corruptly founded this indictment upon what is called common law, which I will explain and prove to you to be nothing inore than common abuse. It is no law at all, as far as the word law denotes sight and justice. It is the law of whim, caprice, and tyranny. It is the law of discretion, and discretion in a Judge, or one who administers law, is a horrible abuse and tyranny.

If there had been any such thing as the common law religion, or if the religion of the country had been considered part and parcel of the law in the time of Popish power in this country, there would have been no need of getting a statute to authorize the burning of heretics, as they were called, but who in fact were persons of the same dispositions as those who are now suffering for their opinions; they wished not to play the hypocrite, but to act conscientiously, and to dissent from those matters and opinions which their

consciences warned them were not right and founded in truth.

There is no just foundation whatever for saying, that the religion of this country is part and parcel of the law. If it be of any thing more than human origin, human laws are unequal to protect or restrain it in any shape, and consequently such laws would be null and void to all intents and purposes, to say nothing of their blasphemy and profaneness, but if the religion of the country be of human origin, then it is an imposition and a cheat upon the people, and cannot be justly protected by law. Either way it is a corrupt and an abominable practice to connect it with the law of the land. So, Gentlemen, look at it which way you please, you have no authority whatever on just ground but to give me a verdict of Not Guilty. If you pronounce me Guilty, you either blaspheme and insult the God of nature by assuming that he needs your aid for punishment, or on the other hand, you make yourselves parties in supporting a cheat upon your fellow countrymen. So reflect seriously, Gentlemen, upon the particulars of the case before you, and beware both of clamour and sophistry. Do not lend yourselves to the wicked measures of a corrupt faction, whose first and last object is to preserve their ill-gotten gains, of which they know a free discussion would soon deprive

them.

If, in any way, I had offended public morals, I would not have made a word of defence, but would have pleaded Guilty, asked forgiveness and mercy, and promised better behaviour: but, I feel the conscious pride that I have not offered an offence to public morals, but rather I have endeavoured to improve them by warring with the corruptions and delusions of the day.

Gentlemen of the Jury, I do not stand before you for having committed a crime by taking that which was not my own, or by seducing others from the paths of virtue to the commission of crime, but the whole substance of the charge against me is, that, I have assisted in attacking the prejudices of power and the power of prejudices. No person could have obtained the pamphlets before you, or copies of them, without first purchasing them with a given value, and it is certain that, with the exception of the copies purchased for the purpose of this prosecution, no person would purchase them who did not feel the desire to examine and to reflect upon their contents. The idle and the dissolute would not purchase such pamphlets. There is nothing in them calculated

to captivate the youthful or unreflecting portion of the community. It is not they who resort to Mr. Carlile's Shop, but the curious, the thinking, and the serious part of the public. His publications are alone adapted to the dispositions of the sober and the grave, and I really think, and I know that Mr. Carlile thinks the same, that these frequent prosecutions constitute the greatest possible compliment that can be paid to him; as they seem to say on the part of the prosecutors, "this man will overturn all our money tables and all our ill-gotten gains if we do not find some means to destroy or to silence him."

I call upon you, Gentlemen, to discountenance this systematic persecution, and stay the disgrace which it leaves on our Courts of Law and on the country at large. These persecutions are approved by none but the bigoted, the tyran- nical, and the dishonest. I have no fear about me for any thing that concerns myself. I should enjoy even a dungeon in advocating such a cause as that in which I am now engaged. But I am bold to tell these persecutors, they never can, they never will, put down these publications; prosecutions give life to them, and those which have occurred within these last four or five years, have indeed been the seed of free discussion. Our enemies act as madmen, they hasten their own downfall; for if there were any thing really objeetionable in those publications, public opinion would have put them down long since, but so powerful do we feel public opinion on our side, that, we feel assured we can combat every obstacle our enemies can throw in our way.

If Juries were fairly and indiscriminately brought together in these cases, as they are in common cases, we should never lose a verdict; but now it is notorious that every possible scheme is tried by certain corrupt powers to bring together twelve men the most obstinate and the most opposite in opinions to those on which they are called upon to decide, and such men as are under the influence of the Prosecutors! There is nothing like fair play in these cases: it is all scheme, system, and stratagem. But in spite of influence, in spite of prejudice, in spite of all Corruption's host, we will persevere and triumph.

In my last words, I say to you, without the least improper imputation, or the least improper reflection, to any one of you twelve Gentlemen, for you are each and all perfect strangers to me, that if there be one truly honest and conscientious man amongst you, who values his character, his oath, and his office, of which there were eight found on the

last trial of my predecessor Mary-Ann Carlile, and I hope now to find twelve, your verdict will be Not Guilty, or a nolle prosequi will be entered on the case as its issue. Be firm, and do your duty; and believe me, when I conclude by saying, that I scorn mercy and demand justice.

The Lord Chief Justice, after stating the substance of the Indictment, observed that the Defendant was not called on to answer any reasonable or fair discussion on the truth of Christianity in general, or any of its particular tenets. The law permitted that every subject, however sacred, should be freely, yet moderately and temperately discussed; but it would not yield its protection to gross and scandalous calumnies on the established faith. It would be a most extraordinary state of society in which the privilege of defaming that religion on which all its institutions were built, should be conceded. The publication had been clearly proved; indeed, it had been avowed and gloried in by the Defendant; and therefore, the only question would be, whether the passages bore the character imputed to them by the record. The learned Judge then read the paragraphs set out in the indictment, and left the Jury to say if they could doubt of their meaning. Much had been urged, to which, if applied to a different case, he should readily accede; he meant those arguments which had been largely quoted to show the impolicy of attempting to support religion by the secular power; and these certainly would have great weight if a grave and serious disquisition were indicted: but it would be hard to show that every society had not a right to support it against calumny and slander, and to protect the young and uninformed from the influence of mere contumelious abuse. If the Jury thought these passages were only parts of a fair and temperate discussion of the sacred topics to which they had reference, they might acquit the Defendant; but if they considered them as gross and indecent attacks on religion, they must find her guilty.

The Jury turned round in their box for about two minutes, and then returned a verdict of GUILTY.

THE END.

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 55, Fleet Street, London.

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