there are here three parties to be considered SPEECH OF MR. ERSKINE AGAINST THOMAS WILLIAMS FOR THE PUBLICATION OF PAINE'S AGE OF REASON, BEFORE LORD KENYON AND A SPECIAL JURY, ON THE 24th OF JULY, 1797 INTRODUCTION. WILLIAMS was a bookseller of infamous character in London, and was prosecuted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice and Immorality, for publishing Paine's abusive attack on Christianity entitled the Age of Reason. Mr. Erskine was counsel for the prosecution, and opened the case. The plea set up by the defendant was, that such an attack was no crime against the government; and Mr. Erskine's remarks were, therefore, directed chiefly to one point, viz., that "the Christian religion is the very founda tion of the laws of the land." He draws the line with great clearness and precision between a legit imate inquiry into the evidences of our religion, and a scurrilous and insulting attack on its institutions calculated to destroy the influence of all religious belief upon the minds of men, and to set them free from the restraints of conscience, the obligations of an oath, and all the other bonds which unite society togeth er. This speech contains a fuller exhibition than any other, of Mr. Erskine's powers of declamation ir the best sense of the term of lofty and glowing amplification on subjects calculated to awaken sublime sentiments, and thus to enforce the argument out of which it springs. laying the trial ed could take up the case. SPEECH, &c. GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,-The charge of Elasphemy, which is put upon the record against the printer of this publication, is not an accusation of the servants of the Crown, but comes before you sanctioned by the oaths of a grand jury of the country. It stood for trial upon a former Reasons for de day; but it happening, as it frequenttill the jury orig ly does, without any imputation on inally summon the gentlemen named in the panel, that a sufficient number did not appear to constitute a full special jury, I thought it my duty to withdraw the cause from trial till I could have the opportunity, which is now open to me, of addressing myself to you, who were originally appointed to try it. I pursued this course, however, from no jealousy of the common juries appointed by the laws for the ordinary service of the court, since my whole life has been one continued experience of their virtues, but because I thought it of great importance that those who were to decide upon a carse so very momentous to the public should have the highest possible nalifications for the decision. That they should not only be men capable, from their education, of forming an enlightened judgment, but that their situations should be such as to bring them within the full view of their enlightened country, to which, in character and in estimation, they were in their own turns to be responsible. tended on the Not having the honor, gentlemen, to be sworn for the King, as one of his counsel, it No invasion inhas fallen much oftener to my lot to liberty of the defend indictments for libels, than to press. assist in the prosecution of them. But I feel no embarrassment from that recollection, since I shall not be found to-day to express a sentiment or to utter an expression, inconsistent with those invaluable principles for which I have uniformly contended in the defense of others. Nothing that I have ever said, either professionally or personally, for the liberty of the press, do I mean to deny, to contradict, or counteract. On the con. trary, I desire to preface the discourse I have to make to you, with reminding you that it is your most solemn duty to take care it suffers no injury in your hands. A free and unlicensed press, in the just and legal sense of the expression, has led | flections of my riper years and understanding. to all the blessings, both of religion and government, which Great Britain, or any part of the world, at this moment enjoys, and is calculated still further to advance mankind to higher degrees of civilization and happiness. But this freedom, like every other, must be limited to be enjoyed, and, like every human advantage, may be defeated by its abuse. Nature of the lense. whole judicial system of the It forms at this moment the great consolation of a life which, as a shadow, must pass away; and without it, indeed, I should consider my long course of health and prosperity, perhaps too long and uninterrupted to be good for any man, only as the dust which the wind scatters, and rather as a snare than as a blessing. Much, however, as I wish to support the authority of the Scrip tures, from a reasoned consideration of them, I shall repress that subject for the present. But if the defense shall be as I have suspected, to bring them at all into argument or question, I shall then fulfill a duty which I owe not only to the court, as counsel for the prosecution, but to the public, to state what I feel and know concerning the evidences of that religion which is reviled without being examined, and denied without being understood. press. I am well aware that by the communications of a free press, all the errors of man- Use and importkind, from age to age, have been dis- auce of a free sipated and dispelled; and I recollect that the world, under the banners of reformed Christianity, has struggled through persecution to the noble eminence on which it stands at this moment, shedding the blessings of humanity and science upon the nations of the earth. It may be asked by what means the Reformation would have been effected if the books of the reformers had been suppressed, and the errors of condemned and exploded superstitions had been supported as unquestionable by the state, founded upon those very superstitions formerly, as it is at present, upon the doctrines of the Established Church? oi how, upon such principles, any reformation, civil or religious, can in future be effected? The solution is easy. Let us examine what are the genuine principles of the liberty of the press, as they regard writings upon general subjects, unconnected with the personal reputations of pri vate men, which are wholly foreign to the pres ent inquiry. They are full of simplicity, and are brought as near perfection by the law of England as, perhaps, is consistent with any of the frail institutions of mankind. Gentlemen, the defendant stands indicted for having published this book, which I have proposed de only read from the obligations of professional duty, and which I rose from the reading of with astonishment and disgust. Standing here with all the privileges belonging to the highest counsel for the Crown, I shall be entitied to reply to any defense that shall be made for the publication. I shall wait with patience till I hear it. Indeed, if I were to anticipate the defense which I hear and read of, it would be defaming, by anticipation, the learned counsel who is to make it. For if I am to collect it, even from a formal notice given to the prosecutors in the course of the proceedings, I have to expect that, instead of a defense conducted according to the rules and principles of English law and justice, the foundation of all our laws, and the sanctions of all our justice, are to be struck at and insulted. What is the force of that jurisdiction which enables the court to sit in judgment? What but the oath which his Lordship as well as yourselves have sworn upon the Gospel to fulfill. Yet in A denial of that the King's Court, where his Majesty on which the is himself also sworn to administer the justice of England in the King's kingdom rests. Court, who receives his high authority under a solemn oath to maintain the Christian religion, as it is promulgated by God in the Holy Scriptures, I am nevertheless called upon, as counsel for the prosecution, to produce a certain book described in the indictment to be the Holy Bible. No man deserves to be upon the rolls of the court who dares, as an attorney, to put his name to such a notice. It is an insult to the authority and dignity of the court of which he is an officer; since it seems to call in question the very foundations of its jurisdiction. If this is to be the spirit and temper of the defense; if, as I collect from that array of books which are spread upon the benches behind me, this publication is to be vindicated by an attack on all the truths which the Christian religion promulgates to mankind, let it be remembered that such an argument was neither suggested nor justified by any thing said by me on the part of the prosecution. In this stage of the proceedings, I shall call for reverence to the sacred Scriptures, not from their merits, unbounded as they are, but from their authority in a Christian country; not from the obligations of conscience, but from the rules of law. For my own part, gentlemen, I have been ever deep-decorum is observed which every state must exly devoted to the truths of Christianity, and my firm belief in the Holy Gospel is by no means owing to the prejudices of education, though I was religiously educated by the best of parents, but arises from the fullest and roost continued re which regulate matters civil Although every community must establish supreme authorities, founded upon fixed Principles principles, and must give high powers the freedom of to magistrates to administer laws for the press in the preservation of the government it- and religious self, and for the security of those who are to be protected by it; yet, as infallibility and perfection belong neither to human establishments nor to human individuals, it ought to be the policy of all free establishments, as it is most peculiarly the principle of our own Constitution, to permit the most unbounded freedom of discussion, even by detecting errors in the Constitution or administration of the very government itself, so as that act from its subjects, and which imposes no restraint upon any intellectual composition, fairly. honestly, and decently addressed to the consciences and understandings of men. Upon this principle I have an unquestionable right a right cases. of every body. Some of them lead to the confirmation of every virtuous principle; others, though with the same profession, address the imagination in a manner to lead the passions into dangerous excesses. But though the law does not nicely discriminate the various shades which distinguish these works from one another, so as that it suffers many to pass, through its liberal which the best subjects have exercised-to ex- to suffer, and which soon would be borne down amine the principles and structure of the Consti- by insolence and disobedience, if they did. tution, and by fair, manly reasoning, to question The same principle pervades the whole system the practice of its administrators. I have a right of the law, not merely in its abstract Illustration to consider and to point out errors in the one or theory, but in its daily and most ap- from paralle. in the other; and not merely to reason upon their plauded practice. The intercourse beexistence, but to consider the means of their ref- tween the sexes, and which, properly regulated, ormation. By such free, well-intentioned, mod- not only continues, but humanizes and adorns our est, and dignified communication of sentiments natures, is the foundation of all the thousand roand opinions all nations have been gradually im-mances, plays, and novels which are in the hands proved, and milder laws and purer religions have been established. The same principles which vindicate civil contentions, honestly directed, extend their protection to the sharpest controversies on religious faiths. This rational and legal course of improvement was recognized and ratified by Lord Kenyon as the law of England, in a late trial at Guildhall, when he looked back with gratitude to the labors of the reformers, as the fount-spirit, that upon principle might be suppressed, ains of our religious emancipation, and of the would it or does it tolerate, or does any decent civil blessings that followed in their train. The man contend that it ought to pass by unpunished, English Constitution, indeed, does not stop short libels of the most shameless obscenity, manifestin the toleration of religious opinions, but liber-ly pointed to debauch innocence, and to blast and ally extends it to practice. It permits every man, poison the morals of the rising generation? This even publicly, to worship God according to his is only another illustration to demonstrate the obown conscience, though in marked dissent from vious distinction between the works of an author the national establishment, so as he professes the who fairly exercises the powers of his mind in general faith, which is the sanction of all our investigating doctrinal points in the religion of any moral duties, and the only pledge of our submis-country, and him who attacks the rational existsion to the system which constitutes a state. Isence of every religion, and brands with absurdinot this system of freedom of controversy and freedom of worship, sufficient for all the purposes of human happiness and improvement? and will it be necessary for either that the law should hold out indemnity to those who wholly abjure and revile the government of their country, or the religion on which it rests for its foundation? tween legiti mate inquiry Importance of religious conso lations to per sons in poverty and fiction. ty and folly the state which sanctions, and the obedient tools who cherish, the delusion. But this publication appears to me to be as mischievous and cruel in its probable effects, as it is man. ifestly illegal in its principles; because it strikes at the best, sometimes, alas! the only refuge and consolation amid the distresses and afflictions of the world. The poor I expect to hear, in answer to what I am now and humble, whom it affects to pity, Distinction be saying, much that will offend me. My may be stabbed to the heart by it. learned friend, from the difficulties of They have more occasion for firm hopes beyond and scurrilous his situation, which I know, from ex- the grave than those who have greater comforts invective. perience, how to feel for very sincere-to render life delightful. I can conceive a disly, may be driven to advance propositions which it may be my duty, with much freedom to reply to; and the law will sanction that freedom. But will not the ends of justice be completely answered by the right to point out the errors of his discourse in terms that are decent and calculated to expose its defects? or will any argument suffer, or will public justice be impeded, because neither private honor and justice, nor public decorum, would endure my telling my very learned friend that he was a fool, a liar, and a scoundrel, in the face of the court, because I differed from him in argument or opinion? This is just the distinction between a book of free legal controversy and the book which I am arraigning before you. Every man has a legal right to investigate, with modesty and decency, controversial points of the Christian religion; but no man, consistently with a law which only exists under its sanctions, has a right not only broadly to deny its very existence, but to pour forth a shocking and insulting invective, which the lowest establishments in the gradations of civil authority ought not to be permitted tressed, but virtuous man, surrounded by children, looking up to him for bread when he has none to give them, sinking under the last day's labor, and unequal to the next, yet still looking up with confidence to the hour when all tears shall be wiped from the eyes of affliction, bearing the burden laid upon him by a mysterious Providence which he adores, and looking forward with exultation to the revealed promises of his Creator, when he shall be greater than the greatest, and happier than the happiest of mankind. What a change in such a mind might be wrought by such a merciless publication? Gentlemen, whether these remarks are the overcharged declamations of an accusing counsel, or the just reflections of a man anxious for the public freedom, which is best secured by the morals of a nation, will be best settled by an appeal to the passages in the work, that are selected in the indictment for your consideration and judgment. You are at liberty to connect them with every context and sequel, and to bestow upon them the mildest interpretation. [Here Mr. Erskine read and X commented upon several of the selected passa- | it was philosophy. Not those visionary and arroges.} toundation gant assumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy resting upon the basis of mathe. matics, which, like figures, can not lie. Newton, who carried the line and rule to the utmost bar. riers of creation, and explored the principles ty which, no doubt, all created matter is held to gether and exists. But this extraordinary man, in the mighty reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps, the errors which a minuter investigation of the created things on this earth might have taught him of the essence of his Creator. What shall then be said of the great Mr. Boyle, Boyle. who looked into the organic structure of all matter, even to the brute inanimate substances which the foot treads on. Such a man may be supposed to have been equally qualified with Mr. Paine, to “look through nature, up to nature's God." Yet the result of all his contemplation was the most confirmed and devout belief in all which the other holds in contempt as despicable and driveling superstition. But this error might, perhaps, arise from a want of due attention to the foundations of human judgment, and the structure of that understanding which God has given us for the investigation of truth. Let that question be answered by Mr. Locke, who was to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration a Christian. Mr. Locke, whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going up to the fountains of thought, and to direct into the proper track of reasoning the devious mind of man, by showing him its whole process, from the first perceptions of sense to the last conclusions of ratio. cination; putting a rein, besides, upon false opin Gentlemen, it would be useless and disgustThe book sub- ing to enumerate the other passages roof within the scope of the indictment. government. How any man can rationally vindicate the publication of such a book, in a country where the Christian religion is the very foundation of the law of the land, I am totally at a loss to conceive, and have no wish to discuss. How is a tribunal, whose whole jurisdiction is founded upon the solemn belief and practice of what is denied as falsehood, and reprobated as impiety, to deal with such an anomalous defense? Upon what principle is it even offered to the court, whose authority is contemned and mocked at? If the religion proposed to be called in question is not previously adopted in belief, and solemnly acted upon, what authority has the court to pass any judgment at all of acquittal or condemnation? Why am I now, or upon any other occasion, to submit to your Lordship's authority? Why am I now, or at any time, to address twelve of my equals, as I am now addressing you, with reverence and submission? Under what sanction are the witnesses to give their evidence, without which there can be no trial? Under what obligations can I call upon you, the jury, representing your country, to administer justice? Surely upon no other than that you are sworn to administer it under the oaths you have taken. The whole judicial fabric, from the King's sovereign authority to the lowest office of magistracy, has no other foundation. The whole is built, both in form and substance, upon the same oath of every one of its ministers, to do justice, "asion, by practical rules for the conduct of human God shall help them hereafter." What God? and judgment. what hereafter? That God, undoubtedly, who has commanded Kings to rule, and judges to decree with justice; who has said to witnesses, not by the voice of nature, but in revealed commandments, "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," and who has enforced obedience to them by the revelation of the unutterable blessings which shall attend their observances, and the awful punishments which shall await upon their transgressions. Locke. But these men were only deep thinkers, and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and to the laws which practically regulate mankind. Gentlemen, in the place where you now sit to administer the justice of this great country, above a century ago the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Matthew Hale pre- Hale sided, whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits in But it seems this course of reason, and the man; administering human justice with a wisMr. Paine com time and the person are at last ar- dom and purity drawn from the pure fountain of pared with the rived, that are to dissipate the errors the Christian dispensation, which has been, and Christianity. which have overspread the past gen- will be, in all ages, a subject of the highest reverations of ignorance! The believers in Chris-erence and admiration. tianity are many, but it belongs to the few that are wise to correct their credulity! Belief is an act of reason; and superior reason may, therefore, dictate to the weak. In running the mind along the numerous list of sincere and devout Christians, I can not help lamenting that Newton had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with this new flood of light. But the subject is too awful for irony. I will speak believers in plainly and directly. Newton was a Newton. Christian! Newton, whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by nature upon our finite conceptions; Newton, whose science was truth and the foundation of whose knowledge of only a myth of But it is said by Mr. Paine that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more an- Pretense that cient superstitions of the world, and Christianity is may be easily detected by a proper earlier times. understanding of the mythologies of the heathens. Did Milton understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the superstitions of the world? No: they were the subject of his immortal song; and though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth from the stores of a memory rich with all that man ever knew, and laid them in their order as the illus tration e that real and exalted faith, the unques tionable source of that fervid genius, which cast a sort of shade upon all the other works of man: 66 He pass'd the bounds of flaming space, But it was the light of the body only that was A Virgin is his mother, but his sire ens. stroy all socia results. Gentlemen, there is bat one consideration more, which I can not possibly omit, beTendency of cause, I confess, it affects me very the book to de deeply. Mr. Paine has written large- order, so that ly on public liberty and government; self would be a despotism itand this last performance has, on that refuge from its account, been more widely circulated, and principally among those who attached themselves from principle to his former works. This circumstance renders a public attack upon all revealed religion, from such a writer, infinitely more dangerous. The religious and moral sense of the people of Great Britain is the great anchor which alone can hold the vessel of the state amid the storms which agitate the world. If I could believe, for a moment, that the mass of the people were to be debauched from the principles of religion, which form the true basis of that hu manity, charity, and benevolence that has been so long the national characteristic, instead of mix. ing myself, as I sometimes have done, in politic. al reformations, I would rather retire to the ut The power of the Most High: he shall ascend The throne hereditary, and bound his reign With earth's wide bounds, his glory with the heav- termost corners of the earth to avoid their agita. tion; and would bear, not only the imperfections The immortal poet having thus put into the and abuses complained of in our own wise estab. mouth of the angel the prophecy of man's re-lishment, but even the worst government that ever demption, follows it with that solemn and beautiful admonition, addressed in the poem to our great First Parent, but intended as an address to his posterity through all generations: This having learned, thou hast attained the sum Thou knew'st by name, and all th' ethereal powers, All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works, existed in the world, rather than go to the work of reformation with a multitude set free from all the charities of Christianity, who had no sense of God's existence but from Mr. Paine's observation of nature, which the mass of mankind have no leisure to contemplate; nor any belief of future in the glorious pursuit of human happiness, no: rewards and punishments to animate the good to deter the wicked from destroying it even in its birth. But I know the people of England better. They are a religious people; and, with the blessing of God, as far as it is in my power, I will lend my aid to keep them so. I have no objec tions to the freest and most extended discussions upon doctrinal points of the Christian religion; and, though the law of England does not permit it. I do not dread the reasoned arguments of Deists against the existence of Christianity itself, because, as was said by its divine author, if it is of God, it will stand. An intellectual book, how. Thus you find all that is great, or wise, or splendid, or illustrious among created beings all the minds gifted beyond ordinary nature, if not inspired by their universal Author for the ad-ever erroneous, addressed to the intellectual world vancement and dignity of the world, though divided by distant ages, and by the clashing opinions distinguishing them from one another, yet joining, as it were, in one sublime chorus to celebrate the truths of Christianity, and laying upon its holy altars the never-fading offerings of their immortal wisdom. Against all this concurring testimony, we find suddenly, from Mr. Paine, that the Bible Morality of The New teaches nothing but "lies, obscenity, Testament. cruelty, and injustice." Did the author or publisher ever read the sermon of Christ upon the Mount, in which the great principles of our faith and duty are summed up? Let us all but read and practice it, and lies, obscenity, cruelty, and injustice, and all human wickedness, would be banished from the world. 1 Grev's Ode on the Progress of Poetry. upon so profound and complicated a subject, can never work the mischief which this indictment is calculated to repress. Such works will only employ the minds of men enlightened by study in a deeper investigation of a subject well worthy of their profound and continued contemplation. The powers of the mind are given for human im provement in the progress of human existence. The changes produced by such reciprocations of lights and intelligences are certain in their progressions, and make their way imperceptibly, as conviction comes upon the world, by the final and irresistible power of truth. If Christianity be founded in falsehood, let us become Deists in this manner, and I am contented. But this book hath no such object and no such capacity; i presents no arguments to the wise and enlightened. On the contrary, it treats the faith and opinions of the wisest with the most shocking |