[[1]]
These words had scarcely been written when, as if to give them an
emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of
1858. That ill-judged interference with the liberty of public
discussion has not, however, induced me to alter a single word in the
text, nor has it at all weakened my conviction that, moments of panic
excepted, the era of pains and penalties for political discussion has,
in our own country, passed away. For, in the first place, the
prosecutions were not persisted in; and, in the second, they were never,
properly speaking, political prosecutions. The offence charged was not
that of criticizing institutions, or the acts or persons of rulers, but
of circulating what was deemed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness of
Tyrannicide.
If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there
ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a
matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be
considered. It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to
examine here, whether the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that title. I
shall content myself with saying, that the subject has been at all times
one of the open questions of morals; that the act of a private citizen
in striking down a criminal, who, by raising himself above the law, has
placed himself beyond the reach of legal punishment or control, has been
accounted by whole nations, and by some of the best and wisest of men,
not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue; and that, right or wrong, it
is not the nature of assassination, but of civil war. As such, I hold
that the instigation to it, in a specific case, may be a proper subject
of punishment, but only if an overt act has followed, and at least a
probable connection can be established between the act and the
instigation. Even then, it is not a foreign government, but the very
government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can
legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existence.
[[2]]
Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following,
he received a free pardon from the Crown.
[[3]]
George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857.
[[4]]
Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.
[[5]]
Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions
of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst
parts of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy insurrection. The
ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may be unworthy of
notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have announced as their
principle, for the government of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools
be supported by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and by
necessary consequence that no public employment be given to any but real
or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in a speech
delivered to his constituents on the 12th of November, 1857, is reported
to have
said: "Toleration of their faith" (the faith of a hundred millions of
British subjects), "the superstition which they called religion, by the
British Government, had had the effect of retarding the ascendency of
the British name, and preventing the salutary growth of Christianity....
Toleration was the great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this
country; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he
understood it, it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship,
among Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation. It meant
toleration of all sects and denominations of Christians who believed in
the one mediation." I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man who
has been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this country,
under a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe
in the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who, after this
imbecile display, can indulge the illusion that religious persecution
has passed away, never to return?
