MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIPS,

THE purport of my present address is, to shew why no kind of penal judgment should be passed upon me, and as I mean to reason the matter fairly with your Lordships, and as I really wish to avoid, as far as truth will permit, the utterance of any thing that can be offensive to the most fastidious person, so I trust you will hear me out, and not interrupt me in the midst of a sentence, or even of a paragraph, where the sense of what precedes is expressed by what follows. I wish to make this provision, this treaty with your Lordships, in consequence of the practice lately followed, exhibiting some very bad precedents. In cases of this kind, interruptions and suppressions of speech seem, I regret to say, to have become almost matters of course. On the 20th of January, I appeared before the Lord Chief Justice, at the Guildhall, in the City of London, to defend myself against the charges in an ex-officio Information, filed by the Attorney General. When, different police officers, of the Bow Street Establishment, swore, that a book, called "Palmer's Principles of Nature," was purchased at a shop, or in a house, in Water Lane, Fleet Street, and that I was in the house at the time. Not one of them would swear that I delivered the book, or that I saw it delivered. Now, though I candidly acknowledge to your Lordships, that I had been in the employ of Mr. Carlile for the last three quarters of the last year, I was not privy to the sale of this identical book. I candidly acknowledge that I did sell many copies of the work, and that I continued to sell them as long as there was a copy of the edition left, yet this confession is no evidence for your Lordships, or for a Jury, and no one has shewn, no one can shew, that I did sell the copy which has been made the subject of this prosecution; where I ever so willing to avow it, I could not safely do it, as nothing has been shewn to bring any recollection of the matter to my mind. Your Lordships have no evidence before you that I did publish the book which is set forth in the Information, and the verdict of the Jury was not a deliberate verdict, but a hasty expresssion caught up in a squabble, and given before the proper time.

This I offer to your Lordships as one reason, and legally sufficient reason too, why no kind of punishment should be inflicted upon me but I have other reasons of far greater weight and impor

tance.

To the want of evidence, I would add, that one of the officers stated in Court, that he thought me the proprietor of the business : yet so far from that statement being true, I here publicly declare that I was not even engaged directly by Mr. Carlile, but by the person to whom the business is entrusted. I had not the slightest influence over the management of the concern, and I never sent a line to, or received a line from, Mr. Carlile, after I was engaged in the business, nor until I had pleaded to the Information in this Court, and then only upon the subject of the prosecution. As far as there was any subordinate part in the business, I filled it, and though many have entered the same concern, desirous of, or willing to, brave prosecution, my desire was, from the first to the last, to

evade it, and to do nothing that would subject me to it.

desire to encounter, such Judges, such Juries, and such practiees, (laws, I know they are not) as put the philosoyher on the footing of a felon, and punish both alike; which, whenever mercy does operate, operates, in favour of the felon who becomes exclusively the favourite.

The Lord Chief Justice.-You cannot, Sir, proceed in this manner. The Defendant.-My Lord, I was sentenced to a dungeon with common felons, nay, with men convicted of detestable offences, and that too by you, a Christian Judge in the 19th century.

The Lord Chief Justice.-If you persist in this line of defence, the Court has but one course to pursue. We are willing to hear you as long as you have any thing to urge in mitigation of punish

ment.

The Defendant.-I have stated that I had no desire to encounter prosecution; but I am not disposed to mask, or to deny my principles: they correspond with those developed in the highly philosophical work now in question, and I feel the fullest assurance, that no persecution can destroy them, no, nor even bring them into disrepute for a single moment, with those who comprehend them. The bigot may rail, and the despot may punish, but principles remain the same, they are eternal and immutable. You cannot check their eventual triumph your very prosecutions and punishments will prove in the end inimical to your wishes and intentions.

The next reason, in the scale of importance, why no penal judgment should be passed upon me, is that I have had no trial : I have been denied the right of making a defence. I entered the Court prepared to make a defence, a defence, which must have left a favourable impression on every honest and enlightened mind. My intention was, first, to shew the Jury that there was no kind af evidence laid before them to support the charges of the Information, or to shew that I had committed any breach of the law: second, to read the whole of the volume prosecuted, and thus to prove to the Jury, that its morality and its philosophical character were of the best and highest order, that its publication could not constitute a breach of the law: and, third, to lay a number of cases and a mass of reasonings before them, for the purpose of exposing the real character, the absolute wickedness of such prosecutions: and thus to dissuade the Jury from giving their support to such mischievous perversions: but I was stopped by the Judge before I had read a quarter part of what I had to offer: I had no trial: there was no defence allowed; I was condemned unbeard.

I was prepared with an analysis of every extract from the volume set forth in the Information; I could and would have shewn, that they where warranted in truth, sound in morals, and conformable to law. These things I shall, in some measure, attempt to do this day. In short, I was prepared with as complete and as relevant a defence, as ever was offered to a Jury; and when the whole shall appear in print, it will reflect no credit on those who were unwilling, any more than on those who refused to hear it.

The statement I have just made, forms, of itself, astrong argument, I may say a conclusive argument, in law, why no punishment should be inflicted upon me, but the stronger and the higher argument which I shall now lay before you is, the impolicy and wickedness of this prosecution. Impolitic, because it defeats the alledged purpose of its being instituted, wicked, because it is an attempt to chain down intellect, to curb the inquiring mind, and to counteract the good effects which would follow a free and open discussion on all subjects; and particularly on a subject so expensively supported, as to form the principal feature in the taxation of this country. I mean the religious institutions of this and the neighbouring Island.

The high ground of justification which I have now to proceed upon, is this; that your Lordships, as Judges of the law, have nothing to do with protecting the religion of this country; and that you cannot, upon any principle of reason or justice, connect the religion with the law of the land. The Church has its peculiar government, its legislature, its court, and its judges, and is the only existing legal power to take cognizance of matters connected with religion. No formal transfer of this power to the Court of King's Bench has ever taken place, and it was the ancient law and practice of this country, that the Church, as a government within itself, should mapage all its own affairs. When heretics were burnt, they were not, I believe sentenced to death by the Court of King's Bench, or any other of our Common Law Courts, but by Officers of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Judges of the Court of King's Bench, or the Judges of the Assize Court, had the merit, the honour, and the credit of destroying a few harmless old women, under the denomina tion of witches, but the power to destroy heretics was reserved to the Ecclesiastical Courts. I am a heretic of the present day, and I deny the power of your Lordships, as Judges of the political law, to become, or to take upon yourselves, the character of Religious Inquisitors.

The assertions which have been of late so often made, that libels which blaspheme the religion of the country are offences at Common Law, are totally without any just and proper foundation. Before the days of Sir Matthew Hale, such an assertion was never heard, and nothing has grown up since those day to add to the Common Law of the land. In fact, the improvements, to which we have arrived in legislation, ought to have rendered the whole of the Common Law obsolete for a century past.

J

Religion, in point of meaning or definition, is a word of no more weight, and can have no more connection with law, than the word, Witchcraft. Witchcraft was once part and parcel of the Common Law of the land, and, as a word, had even more influence, and carried more terror with it, than the word Religion. Both words express a fear of supernatural powers, which the philosopher smiles at and dispenses with; and as surely as the idea of the word Witchcraft has been scouted among intelligent men, so surely will the word Religion be subjected to the same fate. It relates to nothing, and demon

strates nothing; it can have nothing to do with law, which to be valid, must be a compact that relates to property. Life is a property; liberty is a property; but religion cannot come under the denomination of a property of which one man can be deprived by the intervention of another, against the will of the other. If it be a property, in any sense of the word, it may as such be held or yielded at pleasure, without affecting the interest, or property of another. Religion is a thing of fancy, a thing of the imagination, about which there can be no compact between man and man; and, consequently, there can be no religion of the law, or according to law, or in any way connected with the law. It is not sufficient that it has been so held by Sir Matthew Hale, or by different judges and lawyers since his time, I stand here to shew, that the thing is both a moral and physical impossibility; this I have shewn, and this I will continue to shew by other arguments: here is a point upon which no lawyer in this Court can oppose me, nor can your Lordships punish me, without violating the most just and most impor tant conclusions.

Blasphemy towards religion, or to blaspheme religion, is no offence against law. If I blaspheme, that is, if I speak evil of another man's religion, I do nothing more than dispute the propriety of certain opinions. If I blaspheme, I cannot deprive him of his opinions, so long as he is convinced of their certainty; but if I convince him that they are wrong, I do a moral act, and he had better be deprived of them than hold them. All this hath nothing to do with law; yet this is the sum and substance of the charge against me, set forth in the Attorney General's Information; yet it was against this absurd charge that I was not allowed to defend myself! The Chief Justice certainly did tell me, that I might go on as long as I kept to a legi timate defence, but legitimacy, according to its modern definition, is become a most odious word, and expresses nothing short of abso➜ lute dictation, or the will and pleasure of despotism.

Mr. Justice Bayley.-Sir, you were interrupted by the act and pleasure of a Judge, bound by the solemn sanction of an oath, and he would be guilty of a violation of that oath, if he permit ted a defendant to persevere in a defence, which was not legitimate. The Defendant.-Oh, legitimacy is a curse. It is the miserable pretence upon which Spain and Portugal are ahout to be attacked. Mr. Justice Best.-As long as you confine yourself to topics in mitigation, we are willing to hear you; but we owe it to the other sui tors of the Court, not to allow the time to be consumed with a parcel of unintelligible trash, which has no connection whatever with the subject.

The Defendant.Spain and Portugal are told by the despots of Europe in power, that their existing governments must be put down because they do not proceed upon the legitimate plan of these despots; and because the people of these two well constituted governments are obstinately honest, and convinced of the rectitude of their opinions and proceedings, they too are to be punished with all the miseries that war and invading armies can inflict. If such be legitimacy

either in cases of government abroad, or in cases of trial in our Courts of Law at home, I will war with it to the utmost of my power:

It is curious to observe, and worthy of your Lordship's notice, how the advocates of these persecutions have been obliged to shift their positions, and excuses for their conduct, with the growing knowledge of mankind. When heretics were burnt, a plausible reason was assigned, that it was to the advantage of the victim to destroy his body for the purpose of saving his soul. Had the idea been founded in truth, it would have been not only plausible, bnt praiseworthy, and taking a comparative view of the knowledge of the times, then and now, there is a greater excuse for those who destroyed heretics, than for those who now imprison the bodies and confiscate the property of individuals, for publishing philosophical books, the truth and morality of which are unimpeachable, and the arguments they contain unanswerable. Yes, my Lords, I look upon the Bonnors and the Gardiners of former times, as much less criminal and mischievous to society, and as possesing more of humanity and patriotism, than the present Judges and Law Officers, who of late have been so much employed in ruining and destroying the healths of moral and honest individuals, whose only crime was, and is, a desire to improve the condition of mankind.

When the cry of heresy ceased, that was, when the majority of the people became heretics, as they will soon become Deists, and when it was no longer fashionable to burn bodies for the purpose of keeping up that brutal notion of preserving an ideal phantom called the soul, from eternal burning, power was gratified with the increase of human misery upon the pretence that those men who diffèred from men in power were blasphemers. When there were no Deists, different sects of Christians were the blasphemers, and the established Church punished all as blasphemers who dissented from her tenets, until the dissenters became very numerous, and exhibited the madness of persecution in its proper colours and its inefficacy to produce the desired effects.

Now the Deists are become the only blasphemers; and Churchmen, Dissenters, and all, are united to persecute them: until it has become a question, which has the majority of the people, Deists or Christians. The first cry against the Deists was about the horrors which follow an absence of all religion, and the destruction of public morals arising therefrom; but it has been both theoretically and practically proved, that morals have no connection with, or dependence upon, religion, that the Deists and Atheists of this and other countries are most distinguished moralists, and that social order and social improvement are matters wholly connected with morality, totally unconnected with religion, and in a great measure dependant upon free discussion, and the absence of all persecution and mental fear.

Under all these views of my case, considering, first, that there is no evidence of my having sold the book: second, that I have had no trial, that I was not allowed to read my prepared defence to the Jury: third, that there is in fact no breach of law in this case; and