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Text
To
the
Young Men’s Literary
and
Social Union of the
City of Indianapolis, this Lecture
is most
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR.
Gentlemen :
Accept the best I know and the best I can give you.
Endeavor
to hasten the time when there shall be a dominion of reason engender
ing a just and powerful new public life in the minds and actions of our
nation.
*
��On the source of all civilization and the
means of
PRESERVING OUR CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
A survey of the history of nations shows to every clear
sighted searcher after truth, that mankind is generally pro
gressing to a better state as to physical, moral and intellect
ual improvement.
Although generations are constantly coming and disappear
ing, we observe, nevertheless, that all the seeds of culture
and enlightenment which have been cast by individuals before
hundreds and thousands of years into the wide furrows of
time, have, through all change, not been lost, but ripen to
charming blossoms and yield finally delicious fruits.
As the stars rise and set in the firmament, and even the
remotest and smallest one does not appear there in vain,
but is shedding its mild and twinkling light, just so is the
smallest intellectual power never lost, but has been, and is, ir
radiating the whole human race by its salutary beams, until
the sun of knowledge will rise and shine in full glory to the
later generations.
Men make not only gigantic progress in arts and sciences,
but also in morals, and therefore become generally better,
more civilized and judicious.
Prejudice, superstition, fanaticism, intolerance and mania
of persecution vanish daily more and more, and nearly every
where speak the laws loudly and energetically of equality, of the
civil rights of all men, of people’s sovereignty, and antiquated
political principles are changed, altered or abolished by de
grees according to the spirit of the times.
Slavery and vassalage have not only been abolished ne
everywhere in civilized Europe, but also in our beloved Union,
the model of all republics, they are torn up by the roots by a
majority of the people with unprecedented vigor and sacri
fices.
�4
We ask now who and what was it that produced such a
high state of human culture in the United States ? Who
and what is it, that is yet unremittingly promoting the same?
Was and is it the Republican Party, by laborious exertions
and continued efforts of its great statesmen and distinguished
orators ? Yes. What then is the source of civilization gen
erally?
And we receive upon these questions a double answer.
Some maintain, that the practical philosophy, namely: 1.
The common ethics as the doctrines of the value, end and aim
of human actions generally. 2. As moral philosophy (pre
-cepts of virtue and manners) by application of the common
ethics to the internal spiritual life of man; and 3. Politics as
application of the common ethics to the external social rela
tions as well as the theoretical philosophy, namely: 1. The
common metaphysics of manners or the common doctrine of
the duties of man; 2. The metaphysical doctrine of virtue; and
3. The metaphysical politics or jurisprudence being the sinew
of life of all improvements, and ennobling of the nations,
and others assert that Christianity is the main-spring of all
civilization of mankind.
In regard to the public and secret human evils and crimes,
•civil and personal miseries, infirmities and failings, and es
pecially all the hinderances of beneficial progress and im
provement of culture, there is a conflicting opinion between
the panegyrists of Christianity and the admirers and retainers
of philosophy. One party is laying them to the charge of the
other, and treat its subject disdainfully and contemptuously,
■nay, very often also with violent passion, and both refer us to
historical facts.
The Christian theologians, the reverend
preachers, decry philosophy, or human wisdom, as they please
to term it, in their works as well as from their pulpits, and
'proclaim to,all the world, that it is the source where all the
errors and faults came from and are still coming, by which
the community is and has been always deluged everywhere.
It can not be imagined, they say, any frivolity or indiscre
tion which has not been represented once by a philosopher.
The philosophy is, as the French thinker Bayle confessed
in the 17th century, an escharotic powder, consuming the
putrid flesh as long as there is any of it, but afterwards it cor
rodes sound flesh, marrow and bones.
The philosophers maintain, on the contrary, that as long as
there are positive religions, we hear of fanatics, wonders, wars,
impostors and deceived people.
It is true, that there are also penitents, visionaries and
�5
hypocrites in China and Turkey as well as in Europe and
America ; but there is no religion in existence upon the whole
face of the earth, where such a spirit of intolerance is prevail
ing as in that religion confessed and taught by Christian
priests.
Early in the first centuries when the Christians had risen to
dominion and power, they refused the Jews and Heathen all
kinds of human feelings with an unparalleled hard-heartedness
and a shocking ferocity and did not grant them justice or tol
eration.
The severity of the rage of persecution of the Christian
Emperors, Lords and Bishops grew fiercer from year to year
and from century to century.
In all the cities of the great Roman Empire, the heathen
temples were closed by force, and all the public property of
the heathen was confiscated in order to enrich the Christian
churches.
They stoned, murdered and plundered a great many nonchristians, and thought to serve God by this crying sin.
They did not teach, dispute and fight with words and ex
pressions, but with Auto Da Fee, poniards, tortures and dun
geons.
A religion that produced such effects, a religion which excited
so much hatred and intolerance, and stimulated bloody perse
cutions against all persons entertaining different opinions or
which authorized to rob and plunder property belonging to
others has surely not contributed to promote civilization and
culture, but to a very great demoralization.
And indeed since Christianity has been an established re
ligion in the Roman Empire, all the beautiful and bright
virtues of antiquity, by which it has been victorious in three
continents, became weaker and weaker and expired finally al
together, ;ind degeneracy and immorality were coming on
originated by very obliging priests of the alone-saving faith
who had always had in store heavenly remissions of Chris
tian sins and vices and a purification from Christian guilt.
If we study history, says the philosopher, with an unbi
assed mind, and lay aside the Christian spectacles to see
the ancient facts, we must confess, that Rome, once crowned
with glory and the ruler of the earth, fell dangerously sick
during the time of several Christian emperors and died finally
of the effects of Christianity. They endeavored to establish
christendom by force and by the edge of the sword.
Yes, the spirit of Christian intolerance has been growing
in such a degree, that it engendered even among the differ
�6
ent Christian sects the most formidable religious wars with all
heinous crimes.
From 772-803 the emperor Charles, the Great, persecuted
the Saxons furiously.
He drove them by thousands' into the rivers in order to be
baptized.
4500 prisoners refusing to become Christians, he ordered to
be slaughtered at once, and forced their commander, Wittekind, to be baptized and to embrace Christianity.
In the 11th century all the Christians who were considered
as heretics, were burnt alive as Manichees, and a great many
Jews were either converted by force or cruelly murdered.
In the 12th century Count Emich, of Lciningen, and Arch
Bishop Ruthard, of Mainz committed horrible massacres
among the Jews on the Rhine ; because some Monks pre
tended to have found upon the grave of Jesus a letter from
heaven in which the conversion of Jews was demanded in de
finite terms.
In the 13th century Pope Inocence the III., and Gregor
IX. founded the formidable inquisition, the court of condem
nation of intellectual freedom, and the Franciscans, Domini
cans, the hounds of the Lord, or Jacobins and the Carme
lites became the terror of the free thinking Christians and
of the Jews. The great German poet, Haller, remarks with
a just indignation :
“Cruel tyrant, cursed rage of fanatics,
Glowing always wild against heretics,
Thou didst not rise out of Cerberus foam
"Which vents in hell’s solitary gloom,
No ! Thou art born of the sainted breast,
And thy parent is priest’s boiling chest.
Speaking but of love with pious care,
And yet showing fury everywhere.
Ere a Pope a sovereign became
And a man assumed God’s holy name,
All who did not go the priesthood's path,
"Were made victims of their fiendish wrath.
Who had drowned with blood the ground of Toulouse? "
The poet alludes here to the atrocious actions of the inqui
sition established at Toulouse 1229, which ordered all heretics
to be buried alive.
1484 an Inquisition was introduced in Spain which, up to
the year 1808, offered up to God 343,000 innocent human
creatures as sacrifices, by which this pretended pious institu
tion tortured and murdered the bravest men.
And besides these cruelties generally committed, how
�7
shocking was the fatal'destiny of millions of poor Jews in the
Christian empires!
A lamb among seventy wolves, as Jewish Bards bitterly
lament in their elegies.
The Jews, who have been commanded in the Pentateuch,
(Lev. xix: 34,) to love the stranger like themselves, without
any distinction of nation or creed, and have never flinched
from their duty; the Jews who watched with scrupulous
care and anxiety ovei’ the most holy human records, and their
only crime was the belief in a primitive cause, namely in one
God, were hated, despised, plundered and murdered cruelly
everywhere.
Instead of pitying such a noble people, which were spread
over the whole world, and having compassion on them, sup
porting the weak and protecting them against violence, rob
bery and spoliation, they preferred to treat them with inhu
man and unjust severity, and to oppress them with heavy, ex
orbitant taxes.
The only relief they offered them was either to take the
cross or to die shamefully.
And, indeed, there has been no public or natural calamity
which has not been attributed to the unfortunate Jews.
Thus, for instance, maintained the Pope 1569, that on ac
count of the Jews an earthquake happened in Ferarra in Ita
ly, although the Duke well remarked, that he can hardly be
lieve it; because 12 Christian Churches fell into ruins at that
time, and not one Jewish Synagogue.
I could speak volumes on this subject, how the Jews have
been wilfully misrepresented, nicknamed and disgraced by the
clergy, to disseminate and to nourish a hatred against them
among their Christian brethren, and to raise persecution
against this unhappy but meritorious and innocent people.
I will, however, says the philosopher, restrict myself to the
only fact how Christians have treated their own brethren in
faith.
1572 thirty thousand Protestants, or Hugenots, so called as
a nickname, because they were only allowed to hold Divine
services at night, like a certain specter Hugo, were cruelly
massacred in all the provinces of France, and this action was
considered as a work of Christian piety.
This terrible slaughter lasted 30 days.
It is generally known under the name Bartholomew-massa
cre, for which the Pope, the Holy Father of the Catholics
proclaimed a year of jubilee.
1618-48 raged, in the name of Christianity, the 30 years’
�war, and a fiendish carnage was committed in a great many
empires. And if we look into the history of England we
find, that even there have been offered up a great many hu
man sacrifices on the Christian altar.
There were either the Catholics or the Roundheads, or the
Presbyterians or Puritans, etc., etc., who, as soon as they had
the power, persecuted cruelly all who differed with them in
religious opinions, treated them with severity and suppressed
them.
Should or can all this be called Christian civilization?
Yes, when the pious Spanish Christians came as strangers
hither to America, they murdered forty millions of men, wo
men and children, who had not given them any offence or harm,
drove away the others, and took in possession their land,
houses, and all their property.
Indeed! not humanity, enlightenment, culture and admin
istration of justice, but blind fanaticism followed everywhere
the footsteps of Christianity.
It is impossible, says the philosopher, that Christianity can
or could ever favor the progress of mankind ; because it teach
es explicitly, as the Reverend Theologians maintain, that rea
son is a weak, blind, corrupted and seducing leader, and that
we shall take our understanding into custody of the faith, as
it reads in the 1st Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians x: 5,
“ Casting down imagination, etc., and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
Hence Christianity teaches, that we shall not inquire about
the most important human affairs reasonably, but shall believe
without any investigation.
It enjoins a passive credulity and puts reason to sleep.
Nay! it banishes the spirit out of the province of reality
and puts shackles upon good sense, the only leaders of men
to reach a higher perfection.
It is like a circle which can never progress.
It extinguishes the sun in the empire of ideas, and there
fore it has been and is only the author of spiritual sight.
Now it is a decided fact, that our religious, political and
iiterary horizon is enlarging more and more, and that our
views, experience and knowledge have greatly increased, and
grow still to an extent which the illustrious age of the Greeks
and Romans could not imagine.
The question is obtruding therefore upon the mind of every
close observer of humanity—Who and what has effected this
gigantic progress ?
A great many would certainly exclaim, it is Christianity
�§
that produced this progressive state of human affairs, what
ever the philosophers may gainsay it; because only in such
empires, where the majority of the citizens are Christians, civ
ilization and culture are going onward and upward.
But here I have to remark, that it is an erroneous conclu
sion : hoc propter hoc, namely, if we infer from the acciden
tal coinciding of two events, that one is the cause of the othei*.
I will illustrate and prove this now by the following exam
ple : Suppose it is raining and my table is standing near the
window, and I would draw a conclusion ; as my table is stand
ing near the window, therefore it is raining out of doors to
day.
Every reasonable man would admit, that this is a false in
ference, because the two appearances depend on different
causes and are not connected at all.
It is just the same case with Christianity and civilization.
Both met accidentally together; but the origin, growth and?
blossom of civilization we do not owe to Christianity, but to*
other causes.
To convince ourselves from this fact, we shall endeavor to
observe closely the course which civilization has taken since
the remotest time until now.
If we gaze upon the colossal ruins which we find in Theban
in Egypt, that has been destroyed 4,000 years ago, we must
make the conclusion, that civilization was highly advanced in
Egypt at that time.
For we perceive, that the use of sculpture, of the art of
printing, of the fine enamel works, of glass and precious met
als which have been made there by the Egyptians, was in such
a degree of perfection, that it is proved beyond doubt art and
science had then attained a remarkable development.
And so it is reported in the ancient literature, that thou
sands of years ago, before Christianity was thought of, as
tronomy, physics, hydraulics, chemistry and mathematics flour
ished in Egypt, and the philosophers studied everything that
was useful, considering the study of man and nature as the
highest prosperity.
We find, furthermore, in the records of the past, that peo
ple flocked hither from all quarters in order to be instructed
in Egyptian schools.
Thus Herodotus, the father of history, tells us, that the
Greeks borrowed a great portion of their arts and sciences from
the Egyptians. Under the expression Egpptians, however,
is not only meant the heathen, but is also included the Egypt- ian Jews.
�10
Although a great many are inclined to consider now a days
the Jewish monuments of knowledge as obsolete, others as
containing dangerous errors, shaking the prevailing estab
lishments in the empire of reason in their very foundations,
and finally others as self-complacent pride, they are neverthe
less such productions which the great philosophers, Pytha
goras, Plato and Aristotle considered as the most pre
cious treasures of wisdom and fountain-head of knowledge,
and did not hesitate to draw much from their sources.
The historical report about the intimate intercourse of the
■Greek sages with the Jewish philosophers is not a fiction of
proud Rabbis as some, perhaps, may suppose, but is very old
and is stated by heathen and Christian authors.
Thus relates Eusebius (praep. Evang, ix : c. 3.) Kleanthus,
a disciple of Aristotle informs us, that Aristotle had an ac
quaintance with a Jew in Palestine -who was educated in
the Egyptian school, with whom he conversed about philo
sophical subjects, and confessed, that he learned more from
the Jew than the Jew could have learned from him.
Even so remarks the very reliable ancient historian, Philo,
that the learned Jews in Alexandria have shown to the hea
then, without restraint and in a clear manner, the foolishness,
groundlessness, perversity and immorality of their heathen
rites and doctrines.
All those heathen who aspired for truth and morality paid
homage to the Jewish religious principles.
Aye, even Princes of Greek Macedonian origin, became
true adherents of Judaism. Hence, it must be admitted by
every lover of truth, that the Egyptian Jews had a great
share in promoting the civilization of nations.
Thus acknowledges also Numenius of Apamen, that the
great philosopher, Plato has been nothing else but an Athe
nian speaking Moses.
It is therefore obviously proved by all this, that the schools
of the Alexanderian Jews gained a very great reputation, and
that there must have been among them many original think
ers, so that Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were considered as
their disciples.
Egypt has consequently been the seat of learning and cul
ture, where all the ancient literati have learned arts and sei
fences that reached us through the middle ages.
Thales who was born at Milet, 640 b. c. e., established
first in his fatherland the knowledge which he acquired in the
schools of Egyptian priests. Pythagoras who was born 534
b. the c. e., initiated himself like Thales into the mysteries of
�II
Egypt in order to transplant scientific researches of this coun
try to his native land, and has given by that means another
direction to the studies, having employed their method of ex
perience.
He and his disciples .had already very correct ideas of the
parallax, the general arrangements concerning the different
parts of our solar system and of the place occupied by the
earth.
They maintain that the earth revolves around the sun, that
the comets have their periodical revolutions, and that the stars
are even as many suns around which other stars are moving.
A truism which has been attacked until the time of Galileis.
A hundred years later, namely, 434 b. the c. e. appeared
Plato.
He was already a philosopher when twenty years of age
and acknowledged after having heard Socrates, a primitive
general cause as a supreme being, describing it in Timaeus
as the father of the universe, and maintained like his great
teacher, Socrates, that the human soul is immortal, and that
mankind will merely gain its destiny upon earth by a true
philosophy.
These heathen philosophers laid down fundamental maxims,
as Christianity did, and could not teach them better in later
times.
I pass now over in silence all other philosophical systems
■of the Greeks and Romans, and will only mention some facts
that the heathen made constantly progress in the civilizing
arts and sciences.
In a memorable poem entitled, “De natura rerum,” com
posed by Lucretius, a cotemporary of Cicero, (106 b. c. e.)
we find the very correct idea that the fall of heavy bodies is
not alike respecting all bodies, a minute description of the
flash of lightning, etc., etc.
In Seneca are observations given about the magnifying
which glass globes produce by refraction and concave mir
rors by reflection and even some other ones about the colors
of the rainbow, forming themselves by prisms and about the
decrease of heat in the highest regions of atmosphere.
Pie speaks of different colors of the stars and maintains,
that the comets have a regular course, and that the earth
quakes are engendered through .the fire in the centre of the
terrestial globe.
Plinius (23 after the c. e.) gives us some views in his natural
�history about the formation of electricity by friction and about
different electric appearances.
The ancient literati seem, according to Plinius, to have oc
cupied themselves with conducting the lightning.
He says in reference to Tullus Hostilius : (Plin. lib. ii: c. 53.)
“ Quod scilicet fulminis evocationem imitatum parum rite
Tullum Hostilium ietum fulmine.”
That is, in the same moment, when he tried to carry down
the lightning in the same manner as Numa, (716 b. the c. e.)
but unskillfully was Tullus killed by the lightning.
We find also in Lucan, a Roman poet, (38 b. the c. e.) in
reference to the same subject a very remarkable passage:
“* «- -» ® Aruns dispersos fulminis ignes,
Colligit, et terra moesto cum murmure condit.”
(Lucan Phans. i, 606.)
That is, “It is said of Aruns, who was very experienced in
the motions of the flash of lightning, that he collected the
fire scattered in the air, and buried it in the earth.”
Probably these ideas occasioned Benjamin Franklin to dis
cover the conduction of lightning.
Even so have passed over to the Greeks and Romans the
chemical arts which the Egyptians exercised with the most
happy results.
For the Egyptians were very skillful in the art of dying
stuffs, in the manipulation of metals, in the cleaning of soda
or natron, and extracting the kali of the ashes.
Next to them the Phoenicians have had a very extensive
knowledge in the arts which depend on chemistry.
They were expert in the use of copper, gold, silver, lead,
tin and iron.
They understoood how to win these metals of their ore, to
alloy them and to produce different metallic mixtures, for in
stance, litharge, vitriol, etc., etc.
Thus was mankind flourishing more and more, and became
always richer in spirit, inventions, discoveries and all kinds
of human culture.
But as soon as Christianity began spreading over the Roman
Empire, all knowledge, arts and sciences died away, and the
development of civilization was retarded and checked.
For all colleges and acadamies, where the sciences were
taught by non-christians were closed by force, and instead of
studying the subjects, they commenced wrangling and quarrel
ing about mere expressions and words, and all sunk into bar
barity and extreme darkness. Such was the state of affairs
�13
•until the 8th century, when Leo, the Isaurian, this furious
iconoclast threatened with banishment the last remnants of
sciences and arts.
His cruelty was so great that he let burn at night twelve
clergymen, who were his ecclesiastical counsellors, but did not
participate in his abhorrence against images.
Everything seemed consequently to contribute to the des
truction of sciences, and all the exertions of human spirit
from the whole antiquity in. Egypt, Asia, Greece and Italy
would have been lost altogether from civilization if a great
many books had not escaped the banishment on account of
having been partly preserved in monastries and partly by the
Arabians, who by their intercourse with the Jews and Greeks,
became acquainted with scientific knowledge, and interested
themselves indefatigably for culture, philosophy, medicin and
natural history, and preserved thus the original works of the
Greeks and Romans.
They established universities in Asia, Africa and Europe,
especially in Cordova in Spain, where the most eminent Greek
works have been translated and studied, and promoted the
sciences generally, so that their seats of learning have also
been frequented by Christians.
During that time when they restricted themselves in the
Christian states to the cloisters, where the most renowned
Bishops condemned the study of the ancients and did no
thing else, but compose biographies of saints, collected le
gends, draw up a register of heretics, wrote excommuni
cations and anathemas. Yes, during that time it was judged
in Christian courts, not according to wise and just laws,
but by ordeals or so-called God’s judgments? and, for in
stance, if the suspected person could plunge the bare arm
to the elbow in boiling water without being hurt, or could
walk barefoot and blindfolded over nine red hot plowshares
laid lengthwise of unequal distances and escaped unhurt, or
could conquer in duel, or could swallow the sanctified morsel
without bursting, or could stay with stretched arms in the
form of a cross the longest time, was argued innocent, be
cause this was an evidence that God let such persons conquer.
During the time, I say, when all the^e went on in the Chris
tian Empire, the study of sciences, arts and literature, and
the endeavors for the civilization of nations were to be found
among the Mohammedans.
Though Charles, the Great, from 768-814, had established
schools which were superintended by men whom he called
from England and Ireland, and where the study of rhetoric,
�14
dialectis and astronomy were pursuod with great ardor, ail
those schools were nearly closed during the reign of his suc
cessors immediately after him, namely, under Ludwig, the pi
ous, and Charles, the bald, and Europe was plunged in dark
ness until the 13th century.
In the 13th century appeared Roger Baco, a Franciscan
Professor at Oxford, with the surname “ Magnus, ” and who
was also called “ Doctor admirabilis, ” the wonderful teacher.
It came into his mind, probably occasioned by the study of
Pythagoras, to consult nature through experiments, and to
shake off the yoke of scholastic authority.
This was, However, an unprecedented innovation, and caused
him severe persecutions.
Iln was sentenced by a Franciscan General to an imprison
ment for life and to live on bread and water ; because of hav
ing tried to destroy prejudices with which his age was filled up.
He was afterwards released with a proviso, that he should not
meddle any more with physics.
Hence, it was Christianity which threw all sorts of ob
stacles in the way of civilization, checked, suppressed and
choked it altogether in the 14th century. Only from the
time jn the 15th century when a revival of the original class
ical works took place and the old system of the Greek, Ori
entals and the so-called Philosophy of Moses were looked for.
Especially as the example given by Copernicus, Kepler,
Galilei Toricelly and others in natural philosophy was crown
ed with the most happy results, the minds were stirred up for
imitating in philosophy generally, civilization commenced its
course with renewed vigor.
The positive religion was then from day to day much less
considered as a source or standard of philosophical knowledge,
and the exclusive right of giving the last decision on all sub
jects in question was geneially adjudged to reason.
Although the inquisition condemned, in the year 1515, the
system of Copernicus, who revived the idea of Pythagoras,
that the earth revolves on its axis, and declared such an idea as
false, philosophic, absurd and heretical, Galilei defended nev
ertheless the Capernican system in the year 1616.
He was forced, indeed, in his 69th year of age, to abjure
this system before the Court in Rome in the following man
ner : I abjure, condemn and curse the error of the motion
of the earth, but in spite of that, he taught, that the earth
moves on its axis.
He was afterwards arrested, as it was expected, and sen
tenced to an imprisonment for life.
�15
A violent struggle of reason with the mechanism of usages
took place everywhere, and the opposition to the superior
criticism of the positive religion which it arrogated over rea
son, became stronger more and more.
The spirit itself wrestled with old established customs in
order to give continually new life and stir in the march of in
tellect, and to render great services to truth, beauty and jus
tice.
Hail to those unterrified philosophers who were not afraid
of suffering persecution, and risked even their lives and liberty
in order to build the truth on unshakable pillars, and to trace
qut the way to the coming generations which shall be taken to
find out new truisms, and to promote civilization.
Jf now the Asiatics and a great many other nations are
benumbed in the midst of their cultivation, it is not on ac
count of not having embraced Christianity, but of being un
der the tyrannical dominion of ancient customs.
Thus, for instance, a philosophy was and is prevailing
among the Arabs now exactly as it was in vogue among the
Christian nations in the middle ages, when positive religion
was the center and rule of all reasonings, demanding an un
conditional blind faith, and checking all progress and devel
opment.
Hence it follows, that only since the revival of the Platonic
philosophy in Italy, from whence it spread extensively abroad,
out of which came the pure systems of better wisdom, ancient
civilization and culture have also been revived, and are con
stantly promoted and developed.
The bold searcher after truth ventured to run the risk of
being burned alive or tortured by the so-called holy inquisi
tion, and threw light with the torch of truth upon the works
of darkness in all its relations and bearings.
The great salutary principle of religious liberty and free
dom of conscience which they laid down and pleaded with a
convincing force, conquered finally, and a mild, social bond
entwines itself by degrees around nations, trying to come
always nearer together in order to unite for common purposes.
It is true, that the maturity of reason in the present time,
is thriving very slowly; but the surer, it seems to me, will
the high aim be gained.
For it is merely founded on intellectual power, freedom of
conscience, natural rights, high talents for the arts, and a true
morality.
If now this high spiritual position of humanity shall be
preserved for the later generations, it is obviously necessary
�1«
that they do not waste thousands and millions of dollars for
Christian Mission and Tract Societies, but rather to establish
Universities in this country also, as they are flourishing in
Europe, where they proved always as the best center of all
scientific knowledge and progressive enlightenment.
For Universities, emancipated from hierarchical power and
from the influence of every religious party or sect, are, as
they were, the locomotives of hiiman spirits, leading them with
the rapidity of lightning onward and upward.
It is high time to make the public aware of the indispensihle necessity of such institutions; because every close obser
ver of our public affairs will surely, with great sorrow, ascer
tain that the priests of different denominations endeavor, like
the polypes with their tenticles, to catch every opportunity to
meddle with politics, and nestle, wherever it is possible, their
illiberal, absurd and antiquated ideas.
The Universities would be the most powerful armies to pro
ject us .against the clerical drawbacks and corruption, and
would also be the formidable monitors on the stormy ocean of
life to secure us our free institutions.
Yes, a free University in every State of the Union, would
De like a shining sun enlightening all the classes of people,
and promoting the welfare and prosperity of all nations as
well as of every individual in particular, without any distinc
tion.
...
Such institutions only will be the means by which a reli
gion, founded on incontestible reasonable arguments, will be
established for all mankind, diffusing brotherly love towards
all nations, virtue and justice more -and more, so that every
’barbarity and war and war-hoop will disappear for ever.
They will bring on the time which the prophets have fore
seen, and the poets have dreamed, that nation against nation
*will never wage war any more, and nowhere shall force reign
-supreme, but only strict justice shall decide all and every
thing.
Ilappy they who can promote such a great work crowned
with blessings. But thrice happy will be those who shall live
then to see, when the history of all nations will not be filled
with bloody military exploits, nor with the victories of diplo
matic contrivances, but with the general happy achievements
of the gigantic progress of civilization and culture of [all
mankind.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Lecture on the source of all civilization and the means of preserving our civil and religious liberty
Creator
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Kalisch, Isidor
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [Indianapolis]
Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Delivered to the Young Men's Literary and Social Union of the City of Indianapolis. Inscription on front page: Presented to Rev. Moncure D. Conway by the author. Author's name and date of publication from KVK.
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[Indianapolis Journal Co. printers]
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[1864]
Identifier
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G5374
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Freedom of religion
Human rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Lecture on the source of all civilization and the means of preserving our civil and religious liberty), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Civil Liberties
Civilisation
Conway Tracts
Freedom of Religion
-
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Text
CIVIL & RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
WITH SOME HINTS TAKEN FROM
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
BY ANNIE BESANT,
(Second Edition).
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C,
PBICE THREEPENCE.
�LONDON
FEINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BP.ADLAUGHZ
28, STONECUTTER STREET, E. C.
�g
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
« O Liberty ! how many crimes are committed in thy
name1” So exclaimed Madame Roland, one of the most
heroic and most beautiful spirits of the great French Revo
lution, when above her glittered the keen knife of the
guillotine, and below her glared the fierce faces of the
maddened crowd, who were howling for her death. But
Madame Roland, even as she spoke, bowed her fair head
to the statue of Liberty which—pure, serene, majestic—
rose beside the scaffold, and stood white and undefiled in
the sunlight, while the mob seethed and tossed round its
base. Madame Roland bent her brow before Liberty, even
as the sad complaint passed her lips; for well that noblehearted woman knew that the guillotine, by which she was
to die, had not been raised in a night with the broken
chains of Liberty, but had been slowly building up, during
long centuries of tyranny, out of the mouldering skeletons
<of the thousands of victims of despotism and misrule. The
taunt has been re-echoed ever since, and lovers of repression
have changed its words and its meaning, and they have said
what noble Madame Roland would never have said: “ O
Liberty, how many crimes are committed by thee, and
because of thee 1” They have never said, they have never
cared to ask, how many crimes have been committed against
Liberty in the past; how many crimes are daily committed
against her in the England which we boast as free. They
have never said, they have never cared to ask, whether th©
excesses which have, alas ! disgraced revolutions, whether
the bloodshed which has ofttimes stained crimson-red the
fair, white, banner of Liberty, are not the natural and the
necessary fruits, not of the freedom which is won, bu'c of
the tyranny which is crushed. Society keeps a number of
its members uneducated and degraded; it houses them
worse than brutes; it pays them so little that, if a man
would not starve, he must toil all day, without time for
�4
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
relaxation or for self-culture; it withdraws from them all
softening influences ; it shuts them out from all intellectual
amusements; it leaves them no pleasures except the purely
animal ones ; it bars against them the gates of the museums
and the art galleries, and opens to them only the doors of
the beer-shop and the gin-palace; it sneers at their folly,
but never seeks to teach them wisdom; it disdains their
“ lowness,” but never tries to help them to be higher; and then,
when suddenly the masses of the people rise, maddened by
long oppression, intoxicated with a freedom for which they
are not prepared, arrogant with the newly-won consciousness
of their resistless strength, then Society, which has kept them
brutal, is appalled at their brutality; Society, which has
kept them degraded, shrieks out at the inevitable results of
that degradation. I have often heard wealthy men and
women talk about the discontent and the restlessness of the
poor; I have heard them prattle about the necessity of
“keeping the people down;” I have heard polite and
refined sneers at the folly and the tiresome enthusiasm of
the political agitator, and half-jesting wishes that “the whole
tribe of agitators ” would become extinct. And as I have
listened, and have seen the luxury around the speakers; as
I have noted the smooth current of their lives, and marked
the irritation displayed at some petty mischance which for a
moment ruffled its even flow; as I have seen all this, and then
remembered the miserable homes that I have known, the
squalor and the hideous poverty, the hunger and the pain,
I have thought to myself that if I could take the speakers,
and could plunge them down into the life which the despised
“ masses ” live, that the braver-hearted of them would turn
into turbulent demagogues, while the weaker-spirited would
sink down into hopeless drunkenness and pauperism. These
rich ones do not mean to be cruel when they sneer at the
complaints of the poor, and they are unconscious of the
misery which underlies and gives force to the agitation
which disturbs their serenity; they do not understand how
the subjects which seem to them so dry are thrilling with
living interest to the poor who listen to the “ demagogue,”
or how 'his keenest thrusts are pointed in the smithy of
human pain. They are only thoughtless, only careless,
only indifferent; and meanwhile the smothered murmuring
going on around them, and grim Want and Pain and
Despair are the phantom forms which are undermining their
palaces; and “ they eat, they drink, they marry, and are
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
5
given in marriage,” heedless of the gathering river which is
beginning to overflow its banks, and which, if it be not
drained off in time, will “ sweep them all away.” If they
knew their best friends, they would bless the popular
leaders, who are striving to win social and political reforms,
and so to avert a revolution.
The French Revolution is so often flung, by ignorant
people, in the teeth of those who are endeavouring to extend
and to consolidate the reign of Freedom, that it can
scarcely be deemed out of place to linger for a moment
on the threshold of the subject, in order to draw from past
experience the lesson, that bloodshed and civil war do not
spring from wise and large measures of reform, but from the
hopelessness of winning relief except by force, from over
taxation, from unjust social inequality, from the’grinding of
poverty, from the despair and from the misery of the people.
It shows extremest folly to decline to study the causes of
great catastrophes, to reject the experience won by the
misfortunes and by the mistakes of others, and to refuse to
profit by the lessons of the past.
Of course I do not mean to say, and I should be very
sorry to persuade any one to think, that our state to-day in
England is as bad as that from which France was only
delivered through the frightful agony of the Revolution.
But we have in England, as we shall see as we go on, many
of the abuses left of that feudal system which the Revolution
destroyed for ever in France. The feudal system was spread
all over Europe in the Middle Ages, those Dark Ages when
all sense of equal justice and of liberty was dead. It con
centrated all power in the hands of the few; it took no
account of the masses of the people; it handed over the
poor, bound hand and foot, to the power of the feudal
superior, and it cultivated that haughty spirit of disdainful
contempt for labour, which is still, unfortunately, only too
widely spread throughout our middle and upper classes in
England. This system gradually lost its harsher features
among ourselves ; but in France it endured up to the time
of the Revolution; and in this system, added to the fearful
weight of taxation under which the people were absolutely
crushed and starved to death, lies the secret of the blood
shed of the Revolution.
Therefore, before passing on to the parallel between our
state and that of ante-revolutionary France, I would fain put
into the mouths of our friends an answer to those who say
�6
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
that the excesses of the French Revolution are the necessary
outcome of free thought in religion and of free action in
politics. It is perfectly true that the determination to
shake off a cruel and unjust yoke was implanted in the
bosoms of the French people by the writings of those who
are commonly called the Encyclopaedists. These men were
Freethinkers; some of them—as Holbach and Diderot—
might fairly be called Atheists ; some were nothing of the
kind. These men taught the French people to think; they
nurtured in their breasts a spirit of self-reliance; they roused
a spirit of defiance. These /men rang the tocsin which
awoke France, and so far it is true that Freethought pro
duced the Revolution, and so far Freethought may well be
proud of her work. But not to Freethought, not to Liberty,
must be ascribed the excesses which stained a revolution
that was in its beginning, that might have been throughout,
so purely glorious. For do you know what French Feudal
ism was ? Do you know what those terrible rights were,
which have branded so deeply into the French peasant’s
heart the hatred of the old nobility, that even to the present
day he will hiss out between clenched teeth the word
“ aristocrat,” with a passionate hatred which one hundred
years of freedom have not ’quenched ?
In the reign of Louis XIV. there was a Count, the Comte
de Charolois, who used to shoot down, for his amusement,
the peasants who had climbed into trees,-and the tilers who
were mending roofs. The chasse aux paysans, as it was
pleasantly termed, the “ hunt of peasants,” was remembered
by an old man who was in Paris during the Revolution as
one of the amusements of the nobility in his youth. True,
these acts were but the acts of a few; but they were done,
and the people dared not strike back Then there was
another right, a right which outraged ’ all humanity, and
which gave to the lord the first claim to the serf’s bride.
The terrible story in Charles Dickens’s “Tale of Two
Cities ” is no fiction, except in details, if we may judge from
some of the chronicles of the time. (Dufaure gives many
interesting details on French feudalism.) Then they might
harness the serfs, like cattle, to their carts; they might keep
them awake all night beating the trenches round their
castles, lest noble slumbers should be disturbed by the
croaking of the frogs. When any one throws in*lhe Radical’s
teeth the excesses of the French Revolution, let the Radical
answer him back with these rights, and ask if it is to be
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
7
'wondered at that men struck hard, when the outrages and
the oppressions of centuries were revenged in a few wild
months ? Marvel not at the short madness that broke out
at. last; marvel rather at the cowardice which bore in
■silence for so long.
I pass from these hideous rights of feudalism to its milder
■features, as they existed in France before the Revolution,
and as they exist among us to-day in England. The laws
by which land is held and transmitted, the rights of the
first-born son, the laying-on of taxation by those who do
not represent the tax-payer, a standing army in which birth
helps promotion, the Game Laws—all these are relics of
■feudalism, relics which need to be swept away. It is on
the existence of these that I ground my plea for wider
freedom ; it is on these that I rely to prove that Civil and
Religious Liberty are still very imperfect among ourselves.
In France, before the revolution, people in general, king,
queen, lords, clergy, thought that things were going on very
■nicely, and very comfortably. True, keener-sighted men
saw in the misery of the masses the threatened ruin of the
throne. True, even Royalty itself, in the haggard faces
and gaunt forms that pressed cheering round its carriages,
■read traces of grinding poverty, of insufficient food. True,
some faint rumour even reached the court, amid its luxury,
that the houses of the people were not all they should be,
nay, that many of them were wretched huts, not fit for cattle.
But what of that ? There was no open rebellion; there
was no open disloyalty. What disloyalty there was, was
confined to the lower orders, and showed itself by a fancy
of the people to gather into Republican clubs, and other
such societies, where loyalty to the Crown was not the lesson
which they learned from the speakers’ lips. But such dis
loyalty could of course be crushed out at any moment, and
the court went gaily on its way, careless of the low, dull
growling in the distance which told of the coming storm.
We, in England, to-day, are quite at ease. True, some of
our labourers are paid starvation-wages of ios., iis., 12s.,
a week, but again I ask, what of that? Has not Mr. Fraser
Grove, late M.P., told the South Wiltshire farmers that they
had a right to reduce the labourer’s wage to ns. a week, if
he could livp upon it; and, if he did not like it, he could
take his labour to other markets ? Why should the labourer
complain, so long as he is allowed to live? Then the houses
of our people are scarcely all that they should be. I have
�8
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
been into some so-called homes, composed of two smalF
rooms, in one of which father and mother, boys and girls
growing up into manhood and womanhood, were obliged
to sleep in the one room, even in the one bed. I have seen
a room in which slept four generations, the great-grandfather
and his wife, the grandmother (unmarried), the mother (un
married), and the little child of the latter, and in addition to
these relatives, the room also afforded sleeping accommoda
tion to three men lodgers. Yet people talk about the “im
morality of the agricultural poor,” as though people could
be anything except immoral, when the lads and lasses have.
to grow up without any possibility of being even decent,
much less with any possibility of retaining the smallest
shred of natural modesty. The only marvel is how, among
our poor, there do grow up now and then fair and pure
blossoms, worthy of the most carefully-guarded homes. But
avery short time since there were worse hovels even than those
I have mentioned. Down at Woolwich there were “homes”
composed of one small room, 12 feet by 12, and 8J feet
high in the middle of the sloping roof, and the huts were
built of bad brick, the damp of which sweated slowly
through the whitewash, and the floor was made of beaten
earth, lower in level than the ground outside, and in front
of the fire they kept a plank all day baking warm and dry,
in order that at night they might put it into the bed, tokeep the sleeper next the wall from being wet through by
the drippings as he slept. And in other such huts as* these
four families lived together, with no partition put up between
them, save such poor rags as some lingering feeling of de
cency might lead them to hang up for themselves—and
these huts, these miserable huts, were the property of
Government, and in them were housed her Majesty’s married
soldiers, housed in such abodes as her Majesty would not
allow her cattle to occupy near Windsor or near
Balmoral. Yet among us there is no open rebellion; there
is no open disloyalty. Among us, too, what disloyalty there
is, is chiefly confined to the lower orders, and that, as every
one knows, can be snuffed out at a moment’s notice.
Among us, it also shows itself in that fancy of the people to
gather into Republican clubs and other such societies,
where loyalty to the Crown is not the lesson most enforced
by the speakers. The quiet, slow alienation of the people
from the Throne is going on unobserved ; a people who
are loyal to a monarchy will not form themselves into Repub
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
•
9
lican Clubs; yet our rulers never dream that the people'are
•discontented, and. that these clubs are signs of the times.
They fancy that the agitation is only the work of the few,
and that there is no widely-spread disaffection behind the
Republican teachers; only the leaders of popular move
ments know the vast force which they can wield in case
of need, but the Government will never listen to these men,
any more than in France they would listen to Mirabeau,
until it was too late. Yet do sensible people think that a
• soUjpd and a healthy society can rest upon the misery of the
masses? and do our rulers think that palaces stand firm
when they are built up upon such hovels-as those which I
have described? It appears they do ; for our Queen
and our Princes seem to believe in the lip-loyalty of
the crowds which cheer them when they make us happy
by driving through our streets, loyalty that springs
from the thougl^essness of custom, and not from true
and manly reverence for real worth. For I would not
be thought to ' disparage the sentiment of loyalty; I
hold it to be one of the fairest blossoms' which flower
•on the emotional side of the nature of man. Loyalty
to principle, loyalty to a great cause, loyalty to some true
leader, crowned king of men by reason of his virtue, of his
» genius, of his strength—such loyalty as this it is no shame
■for a freeman to yield, such loyalty as this has, in all ages
of the world, inspired men to the noblest self-devotion,
nerved men to the most heroic self-sacrifice. But just as
•only those things which are valuable in themselves are
-thought worthy of imitation in baser metal, so is this
irue,golden loyalty imitated by the pinchbeck loyalty, which
shouts in our streets. For what true loyalty is possible from
us towards the House of Brunswick ? Loyalty to virtue ?
as enshrined in a Prince of Wales ? loyalty to liberality,
and to delicacy of sentiment ? as exemplified by a Duke of
Edinburgh ? loyalty to any great cause, whose success in
this generation is bound up with the life oi any member of
our Royal House ? «The very questions send a ripple of
, laughter through any assemblage of Englishmen, and they
•Sare beginning to feel, at last, that true loyalty can only be
paid to some man who stands head and shoulders above
his fellows, and not to some poor dwarf, whom we can only
see over the heads of the crowd, because he stands on the
artificial elevation of a throne.
The court in France was very extravagant: it spent
�10
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
^34,000,000 in eight years, while the people were starving;our princes do not spend so much ; they dare not; but that,
the spirit is the same is clearly seen when a wealthy queen
sends to Parliament to dower her sons and her daughters r.
when the scions of a family so rich as are the Brunswicks,
become beggars to the nation, and pensioners on the pockets
of the poor. However, courts are expensive things, and if.
we want them we must be content to pay for them. Now,
in France, the nobles, the clergy, the great landed proprie
tors, paid next to nothing: the heavy burden of taxation
fell upon the poor. But the poor had not much money1
which they could pay out to the State, and it is not easy toempty already empty pockets with any satisfactory results
so, in France, they hit upon the ingenious system called
indirect taxation; they imposed taxes upon the necessaries
of life; they squeezed money out of the food which the
people were obliged to buy. Also, those^who imposed the
taxes were not those who paid them : tney laid on heavy
burdens, which they themselves did not touch with one of
their fingers. We, in England, also think that it conducesto the cheerful paying of taxes that they should be laid
chiefly upon those who have no voice wherewith to com
plain of their incidence in Parliament. If you want to
knock a man down, it is very wise to choose a dumb man,
who cannot raise a cry for help. A large portion of the
working, classes, and all women, have no votes in the election
of members of Parliament, and have therefore no voice in
the imposition of the taxes which they are, nevertheless,
obliged to pay. It is a long time since Pitt told us
that “ taxation without representation is robberyit is a
yet longer time since John Hampden taught us how toresist the payment of an unjust tax, and yet we are still
such cravens, or else so indifferent, that we pay millions a
year in taxation, without determining that we will have a.
voice in the control of our own income. We are crushed
under a heavy and a yearly increasing national expenditure,
partly because of our extravagant administration, partly
because the burden falls unequally, weighing on the poor
more than upon the rich, and wholly because we have not
brotherhood enough to combine together, nor manhood
enough to say that these things shall not be. Our system
of taxation is radically vicious in principle, because it must
of necessity fall unequally. Those who impose the burdens
know perfectly well that it is impossible for the poor to
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
11
refuse to pay indirect taxes, however onerous those taxes
may be : they must buy the necessary articles of food,
whether those articles be taxed or no; a refusal to pay is
impracticable, and no combination to abstain from buying is
possible, because the things taxed are the necessaries of life.
Yet as long as indirect taxation is permitted—and the major
part of our annual revenue is drawn from Customs and from
Excise—so long must taxation crush the poor, while it falls
lightly on the rich.
On this point I direct your attention to the following ex
tract* taken from the Liverpool Financial Reformer, and
quoted by Mr. Charles Watts in his “ Government and the
People —
“ A recent writer in the Liverpool Financial Reformer,
divided the community into three divisions—first, the aristo
cratic, represented by those who have an annual income of
^1,000 and upwards ; the middle classes were represented by
those who had incofties from ^ioo to /’i,ooo; and the artisan
or working classes were those who were supposed to have in
comes under ,£ioo per year. He then assessed their incomes
respectively at ^£208,385,000 ; ^£174,579,000; and ^149,745,000.
Towards the taxation, each division paid as follows. The
aristocratic portion contributed ff ,500,000, the middle classes
^19,513,453, and the working classes ^£32,861,474. The writer
remarks : ‘ The burden of the revenue, as it is here shown to
fall on the different classes, may not be fractionally accurate,
either on the one side or the other, for that is an impossibility
in the case, but it is sufficiently so to afford a fair representation
in reference to those classes on whom the burden chiefly falls.
Passing over the middle classes, who thus probably contribute
about their share, the result in regard to the upper and lower
classes stands thus :—Amount which should be paid to the
reveime by the higher classes (that is, the classes above
^1,000 a year), ^£23,437,688 ; amount which they do pay,
,£8,500,000; leaving a difference of ^£14.937,688, so that
the higher classes are paying nearly ^£15,000,000 less than their
fair share of taxation. Amount which should be paid by the
working classes (or those having incomes below ^£100),
^16,846,312 ; amount which they do pay, ,£32,861.474 ;
making a difference of ^16,015,162; so that the working
classes are paying about ,£16,000.000 more than their fair
share. In other words, the respective average rates paid upon
the assessable income of the two classes are—by the higher
classes, iod. per pound ; the working classes, 4s. 4d. That
is to say, the working classes are paying at a rate five times
more heavily than the wealthy classes.5 55
The whole system of laying taxes on the necessaries of life
�12
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTV.
is radically vicious in principle; to tax the necessaries of
life is to sap the strength and to shorten the life of those
men and those women on whose strength and whose life
the prosperity of the country depends; it is to enfeeble the
growing generation; it is to make the children pale and
stunted; it is, in fact, to undermine the constitution of the
wealth-producers. To tax food is to tax life itself, instead
of taxing incomes; it is a financial system which is, at once,
cruel and suicidal. As a matter of fact, taxes taken off
food have not decreased the revenue, and when this policy
of taxing food shall have become a thing of the past, then
a healthier and more strongly-framed nation will bear with
ease all the necessary burdens of the State. Indirect taxa
tion is also bad, because it implies a number of small taxes
(some of which are scarcely worth the cost of collecting),
and thus necessitates the employment of a numerous staff
of officials, whereas one large direct tax would be more
easily gathered in.
It is also bad, because, with indirect taxation, it is
almost impossible for a man to know what he really
does pay towards the support of the State. It is right and
just that every citizen in a free country should consciously
contribute to the maintenance of the Government which he
has himself placed over him; but when he knows exactly
what he is paying, he will probably think it worth while to
examine into the national expenditure, and to insist on a
wise economy in the public service. I do not mean the
kind of economy which is so relished by Governments, the
economy which dismisses skilled workmen, whose work is
needed, while it retains sinecures for personages in high
places; but I mean that just and wise economy which gives
good pay for honest work, but which refuses to pay dukes,
earls, even princes, for doing nothing, This great problem
of fair and equal taxation ought to be thoroughly studied
and thought over by every citizen ; few infringements on
equal liberty are so fraught with harm and misery as arc
those which pass almost unnoticed under the head of
■* collection of the revenue few reforms are so urgently
needed as a reform of our financial system, and a fair adjust
ment of the burdens of taxation.
In France they had Game Laws. If the season were
cold the farmers might not mow their hay at the proper
time, lest the birds should lack cover; they might not hoe
the com, lest they should break the partridge eggs; the
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
13
birds fed off the crops, and they might not shoot or trap
them; if they transgressed the Game Laws they were sent
to the galleys; herds of wild boarand red deer roamed over the
■country, and the farmers and the peasants were forbidden to
interfere with them. Englishmen! who call yourselves free,
do you imagine that these relics of barbarism, swept away
by the French Revolution in one memorable night, are
nothing but archaeological curiosities, archaic remains, fossil
ised memorials of a long-past tyranny ? On the contrary,
pur Game Laws in England are as harsh as those I have
cited to you, and the worst facts I am going to relate you
have no parallel in the history of France. These cases are
so shameful that they ought to have raised a shout of exe
cration through the land ; they have been covered up, and
hushed up, as far as possible, and I have taken them from a
Parliamentary Blue-book; and I have taken them thence
• myself, because I would not quote at second-hand deeds so
■disgraceful, that had.I not read them in the dry pages of a
Parliamentary Commission I should have fancied that they
had been either carelessly or purposely exaggerated in order
to point a tirade against the rich. I allude to the deerforests of Scotland.
But before dealing with these it is interesting to note
the curious points of similarity between our Game Laws
and those of the French. In France, they were some
times forbidden to mow the hay because of the cover
it yielded to the birds : in England, you will sometimes find
a clause inserted in the lease of a farm, binding the farmer
to reap with the sickle instead of with the sbythe, that is, to
reap with an instrument that does not cut the corn-stalks off
close to the ground, so that cover may be left for'the birds ;
thus the farmers’ profits are decreased by the amount of
straw which is left to rot in the ground for the landlord’s
amusement. In France, the game might not be touched
even if the crops were damaged;’ in England, the hares may
ruin a young plantation, and the farmer may not snare or
shoot them. In France, those who transgressed the Game
Laws were sent to the galleys; in England, we send them
to prison with hard labour, and we actually pay for the
manufacture of 10,000 criminals every year, in order that
our Princes of Wales and our landed proprietors may make
it the business of their lives “ to shoot poultry.” In France,
.. the herds of wild boar and red deer might not be molested;
in England we manage these things better; we have, un
�14
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
fortunately, no wild boar, but we-clear our farmers and our
peasants out of the way in order that we may be sure that
our deer are not interfered with. As the son of a Highland
proprietor said, when planning a new deer-forest: “ the first
thing to do, you know, is to clear out the people.” The first
thing to do is to clear out the people I Yes ! clear out the
people : the people, who have lived on the land for years,,
and who have learned to love it as though they had been
born landowners ; the people who have tilled and cultivated
it, making it laugh out into cornfields which have fed hun
dreds of the poor ; the people, who have wrought on it, and
toiled with plough and spade; turn out the people and
make way for the animals; level the homes of the people
and make a hunting ground for the rich. “ It is no deerforest if the farmers are all there,” said a witness before the
Commission; and so you see the farmers must go, for of
course it is necessary that we should have deer-forests. No
less than forty families, owning seven thousand sheep,
seven thousand goats, and two hundred head of cattle,
were turned out from their homes in the time of the
present Marquis of Huntly’s grandfather, their houses were
pulled down, and their land was planted with fir-trees ;
some of the leases were bought up; in cases where they
had expired the people were bidden go. And thus it comes
to pass, according to the evidence of one witness—a witness
whom members of the Commission tried hard to browbeat,
but whose evidence they utterly failed to shake—thus it
comes to pass that “ you see in, the deer-forests the ruins,
of numerous hamlets, with the grass growing over them.”
A pathetic picture of homes laid desolate, of the fair course
of peaceful lives roughly broken into; of helpless and
oppressed people, of selfish and greedy wealth. “ From
Glentanar, thirty miles from Aberdeen, you can walk in
forests until you come to the Atlantic.” And this evil is
growing rapidly; in 1812 there were only five deer-forests
in Scotland: in 1873 there were seventy. In 1870,
1,320,000 acres of land were forest; in 1S73, there were
2,000,000 acres thus rendered useless. Under these cir
cumstances, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the popu
lation is decreasing; the population of Argyleshire in 1831
was 103,330 ; in 1871, forty years later, when it ought to
have largely increased, it had, on the contrary, decreased to
755635 > in Inverness it was 94,983 ; during the same time?
it has gone down to 87,480.
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
15-
But this is not all. While some farmers and peasants are
“ cleared out ” altogether, those who are allowed to remain
suffer much from the depredations of the deer and other
game. In Aberdeenshire alone no less than 291 farmers
complained of the enormous damage that was done to their
crops by the deer. The deer-forest is not generally fenced
in ; and as deer are very partial to turnips, it naturally follows
that the herds come out of the forest and feed off the
farmers’ crops. One proprietor graciously states that he
does his best to keep the deer away from the farms, but—
judging by the complaints of the farmers—these laudable
efforts scarcely appear to be crowned with the success
that they deserve. Not only, however, do the deer stray
out of the forests, but the farmers’ sheep stray in, and as
sheep are not game he is not permitted to follow them to
fetch them out. When such evidence as this comes out,
and we know the pressure that is put upon tenants by their
landlords, and the danger they run by giving offence to their
powerful masters, we can judge how much more remains
behind of which we know nothing. And, in the name of'
common justice; what is all this for? Why should a farmer
be compelled to keep his landlord’s game for him ? Why
should the farmer’s crops suffer to amuse a man who does
nothing except inherit land ? This wide-spread loss, these
desolated homes, these ruined lives, what mighty national
benefit have these miseries bought for England ? They all,
occur in order that a few rich men may occasionally—whenother pleasures pall on the jaded taste, and ennui becomes
insupportable—have the novel excitement of shooting at
a stag. Verily we have a right to boast of our freedom
when thousands of citizens suffer for the sake of the amuse
ment of the few.
• But these deer-forests do not only injure the unfortunatepeople who are turned out to make room for the deer, and
the farmers who lose the full profit of their labour; to turn
cultivable land into deer-forests is to decrease the food-suffly of
the country.. Some people say that only worthless land isused for this purpose; but this is not true, for pasture-ground
has been turned into forests. In one place, 800 head of'
cattle and 500 sheep were fed upon one quarter of the land
which now supports 750 red deer. That is to say, that 1,300.
animals good for food were nourished by the land which is.
now devoted to the maintenance of 187^ useless deer.
Judge then of the decrease of the food supply of the country
�1.6
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
which is implied in the fact that one-tenth part of Scotland
is now moor and forest. A baillie of Aberdeen calculates
the loss to the country at no less than 20 millions of pounds
of meat annually. In England things are not so bad; but
in England, also, the cultivation of the land wasted in game
preserving would increase to an almost incalculable extent
the food supply of the country. There is the vast estate of
Chillingworth, kept for a few wild cattle, in order that a
Prince of Wales may now and then drive about it, and from
the safe eminence of a cart may have the pleasure of shoot
ing at a bull. But at this point the question of the Game Laws
melts insensibly into that of the Land Laws, for under a
just system of Land Tenure such deeds as these would be
impossible; then, men could not, for their own selfish
amusement, turn sheep-walks into forests, and farms into
moors.
With our great and increasing population it is abso
lutely necessary that all cultivable land should be under
cultivation. To hold uncultivated, land which is capable of
producing bread and meat is a crime against the State. It
is well known to be one of the points of the “ extreme ”
Radical programme that it should be rendered penal to hold
large quantities of cultivable land uncultivated. Then,
instead of sending the cream of our peasantry abroad, to seek
in foreign countries the land which is fenced in from them
at home; instead of driving them to seek from the stranger
the work which is denied to them in the country of their
birth; we should keep Englishmen in England to make
England strong and rich, and give land to the labour which
is starving for work, and labour to the land which is barren
for the lack of it. “ Land to labour, and labour to land ”
ought to be our battle-cry, and should be the motto engraven
on our shield.
But it is impossible to throw land open to labour so long
as the laws render its transmission from seller to buyer so
expensive and so cumbersome a proceeding. It is impossible
also to effect any radical improvement so long as the land
is tied up in the hands of the few fortunate individuals who
are now permitted to monopolise it. Half the land of
England, and four-fifths of the land of Scotland, is owned by
360 families. These few own the land which ought to be
'■devoted to the good of the nation. Land, like air, and like
-all other natural gifts, cannot rightly be held as private
.property. The only property which can justly be claimed
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. '
17
in land is the improvement wrought in the soil. When a
man has put labour or money into the land he farms, then
he has a right to the advantages which accrue from his toil
and from his invested capital. But this principle is the very
contrary of that which is embodied in our Land Laws. The
great landowners do nothing for the land they own; they
spend nothing on the soil which maintains them in such
luxury. It is the farmers and the labourers who have a
right to life-tenancy in the soil, or, more exactly, to a
tenancy, lasting as long as they continue to improve
it. The farmer, whose money is put. into the land—
the labourer, whose strength enriches the soil—these are
the men who ought to be the landowners of England. As
it is, the farmer takes a farm; he invests capital in it; he
rises early to superintend his labourers ; the land rewards
him with her riches, she gives him fuller crops and fatter
cattle, and then the landlord steps in, and raises the rent,
and thus absolutely punishes the farmer for his energy and
his thrift. The idle man stands by with his hands in his
pockets, and then claims a share of the profits which accrue
from the busy man’s labour. Meanwhile the labourer—he
whose strong arms have guided the plough, and wielded the
spade, he who has made the harvest and tended the cattle
—what do our just Land Laws give to him ? They give
him a wretched home, a pittance sufficient—generally at
least—to “ keep body and soul together,” parish pay when
he is ill, the workhouse in his old age, and he sleeps at last
in a pauper’s grave. O ! just and beneficent English Law I
To the idle man, the lion’s share of the profits; to the
man who does much, a small share; to the man who
does most of all, just enough to enable him to work for
his masters. But if this gross injustice be pointed out, if
we protest against this crying evil, and declare that these
crimes shall cease in England, then these landowners arise
and complain that we are tampering with the “sacred rights
of property.” Sacred rights of property ! But what of the
more sacred rights of human life ? The life of the poor is
more holy than the property of the rich, and famished men
and women, more worthy of care than the acres of the
nobleman. If these vast estates are fenced in from us by
parchment fences, so that we cannot throw them open to
labour, so that we cannot make the desert places golden
with corn, and rich with sheep and oxen; if these vast
estates are fenced in from us by parchment fences, then I
�is
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
say that the plough must go through the parchment, in order
that the people may have bread.
The maintenance of a standing army, in which birth helps
promotion, is another blot upon our shield. A Duke of
■Cambridge, General Commanding-in-Chief, and Colonel of
four regiments, who holds these offices by virtue of his “ hi^h”
-birth, and in spite of the most palpable incapacity, is°an
absurdity which ought not to be tolerated in a country
which pretends to be free. A Prince of Wales, who has
never seen war, made a Field-Marshal; a Duke of Edinburgh,
•created a Post-Captain; such appointments as these are a
disgrace to the country, and a bitter satire on our army and
■our navy. Carpet-soldiers are useless in time of war, and
they are a burden in time of peace; and to squander
England’s money on such officers as these, simply because
they chance to be born Princes, is a distinct breach of equal
Civil Liberty.
The need of Electoral Reform is well-known to all students
•of politics. No country is free in which all adult citizens
have not a voice in the government. A representation
which is based upon a property qualification is radically
vicious in principle. But not only is our civil liberty
cramped by the fact that the majority of citizens are not
represented at all, but even the poor representation we have
is unequally and unjustly distributed. In one place 136
men return a member to Parliament; in another, 18,000
fail t(jreturn their candidate. In Parliament no members
represent 83,000 voters. The next no represent 1,080,000.
A group of 70,000 voters return 4 members ; another group
■of 70,000 return 80. In one instance, 30,000 voters out
weigh 546,000 in Parliament by a majority of 9. Hence
it follows that a minority of electors rule England, and,
however desirable it may be that minorities should be re
presented, it is surely not desirable that they should rule.
Our present system throws overwhelming power into the
hands of the titled and landowning classes, who, by means
of small and manageable boroughs, are able to outvote the
masses of the people congregated in the large towns. As long
as this is the case, as long as every citizen does not possess
a vote, as long as the few can, by means of unequal dis
tribution of electoral power, control the actions of the
many, so long England is not free, and civil liberty is not
won.
To strike at the House of Lords is to strike at a dying
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
19
institution; but dying men sometimes live long, and dying
institutions may last for centuries if only they are nursed
and tended with sufficient care. A. House in the election
-of whose members the people have no voice ; a House
whose members are born into it, instead of winning their
way into it by service to the State ; a House which is built
upon cradles and not upon merit; a House whose delibe
rations may be shared in by fools or by knaves, provided
only that the brow be coronetted—such a House is a dis
grace to a free country, and an outrage on popular liberty.
As might be expected from its constitution, this House
of Lords has ever stood in the path of every needed reform,
until it has been struck out of the way by hidden menace
or by stern command. Is there any abuse whose days are
numbered? be sure it will be defended in the House of
Lords. Is there a monopoly which needs to be abolished?
be sure it will be championed in the House of Lords. Is
there any popular liberty asked for ? be sure it will
be refused in the House of Lords.
Is there any
fetter struck from off the limbs of progress ? be sure that
some cunning smith will be found to weld the fragments
together again, under the name of an amendment, in the
House of Lords. The only use of the thing is, that
it may act as a political barometer by which to prognosticate
the coming weather; that which the House of Lords blesses
is most certainly doomed, while whatever it frowns upon is
-crowned for a speedy triumph. It has not even the merit
of courage, this craven assemblage of toy-players at legisla
tion ; however boldly it roars out its “ No,” a frown from
the House of Commons makes it tremble and yield; like a
reed, it stands upright enough in the calm weather; like a
reed, it bows before the storm-wind of a popular cry. As a
-question of practical politics, the House of'Lords should be
struck at almost rather than the Crown, because the whole
principle of aristocracy is embodied in that House, the
whole fatal notion that the accident of birth gives the right
to rule. Our puppet kings and queens are less directly
injurious to the commonwealth than is this titled House.
The gilded figure-head injures the State-vessel less than the
presence of hands on her tiller-ropes which know naught of
navigation. And with the fall of the House of Lords must
crash down the throne, which is but the ornament upon its
roof, the completion of its elevation; so that when the toy
house has fallen at the breath of the people’s lips, and we
�20
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
can see over the near prospect which it now hides from our
gaze, we shall surely see, with the light of the morning on
her face, with her golden head shining in the sun-rays, with
the day-star on her brow, and the white garments of peace
upon her limbs, with her sceptre wreathed in olive-branches,
and her feet shod with plenty, that fair and glorious
Republic for which we have yearned and toiled sb long.
Having seen the chief blots upon our Civil Liberty, let us
turn our attention to the defects in our religious freedom.
And here I plead, neither as Freethinker nor as Secularist,
but simply as a citizen of a mighty State, and member of a
community which pretends to be free. For every shade of
Nonconformity I plead, from the Roman Catholic to the
Atheist, for all whose consciences do not fit into the mould
provided by the Establishment, and whose thought refuses to
be fettered by the bands of a State religion. I crave for every
man, whatever be his creed, that his freedom of conscience be
held sacred. I ask for every man, whatever be his belief, that he
shall not suffer, in civil matters,for his faith orfor his want offaith.
I demand for every man, whatever be his opinions, that he
shall be able to speak out with honest frankness the results
of honest thought, without forfeiting his rights as citizen,
without destroying his social position, and without troubling
his domestic peace. We have not to-day, in England, the
scourge and the rack, the gibbet and the stake, by which
men’s bodies are tortured to ' improve their souls, but
we have the scourge of calumny and the rack of severed
friendship, we have the gibbet of public scorn, and the stake
of a ruined home, by which we compel conformity to
dogma, and teach men to be hypocrites that they may eat a
piece of bread. The spirit is the same, though the form of
the torture be changed; and many a saddened life,and many
a wrecked hope, bear testimony to the fact that religious
liberty is still but a name, and freedom of thought is still a '
crime. Public opinion, and social feeling, we can but strive
to influence and to improve; what I would lay stress upon
here, is the existence of a certain institution, and of certain
laws,’ which foster this one-sided feeling, and which are a
direct infringement of the rights of the individual conscience.
First and foremost, overshadowing the land by her gigantic
monopoly, is the Church as by law established. This body
—one sect among many sects—is given by law many privi
leges -which are not accorded to any other religious deno
mination. Her ministers are the State-officers of religion;
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
21
her highest dignitaries legislate for the whole Empire ;
national graveyards are the property of her clergy; and the
best parts of national buildings are owned by her rectors.
■So long as the State was Christian and orthodox, so long
might the Establishment of the State-religion be defensible,
but the moment that the Church ceased to be co-extensive
with the nation, that same moment did her Establishment
become an injustice to that portion of the nation which did
not conform to her creed. Every liberty won by the Non
conformist has been a blow struck at the reasonableness of
the Establishment. ' She is nothing now but a palpable
anachronism. Jews, Roman Catholics, even “Infidels”
(provided only that they veil their Infidelity), may sit in
the House of Parliament. They may alter the Church’s
articles, they may define her doctrines, they may change
her creed; she is only the mere creature of the State,
bought by lands and privileges to serve in a gilded slavery.
The truth or the untruth of her doctrines is nothing
to the point. I protest in principle against the establish
ment by the State of any form of religious, or of anti-religious,
belief. The State is no judge in such matters; let every
man follow his own conscience, and worship at what shrine
his reason bids him, and let no man be injured because he
differs from his neighbour’s creed. The Church Establish
ment is an insult to every Roman Catholic, to every Protes
tant dissenter, to every Freethinker, in the Empire. The
national property usurped by the Establishment might
lighten the national burdens, were it otherwise applied, so
that, indirectly, everynon-Churchman is taxed for the support
of a creed in which he does not believe, and for the main
tenance of ministrations by which he does not profit. The
Church must be destroyed, as an Establishment, before
religious equality can be anything more than an empty name.
There are laws upon the Statute Book which grievously
outrage the rights of conscience, and which subject an
“ apostate ”—that is, a person who has been educated in, or
who has professed Christianity, and has subsequently
renounced it—to loss of all civil rights, provided that the
law be put in force against him. The right of excommunica
tion, lodged in the Church, is, I think, a perfectly fair right,
provided that it carry with it no civil penalties whatsoever.
The Church, like any other club, ought to be able to exclude
an objectionable member, but she ought not to be able to call
in the arm of the law to impose non-spiritual penalties. But
�“2
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
*
the apostate loses all civil rights. The law, as laid down
is as follows : “ Enacted by statute 9 and 10, William III ’
cap 32, that if any person educated in, or having made profes’sion of, the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing,
teaching, or advised speaking, assert or maintain there are
more Gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to
be true [this Act adds to these offences, that of “denying any
one of the. persons in the Trinity to be God,” but it was
repealed quoad hoc, by 53 George III., c. 60] or the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine
authority, he shall upon the first offence be rendered in
capable to hold any ecclesiastical, civil, or military office, or
employment, and for the second, be rendered incapable of
bringing any action, or to be guardian, executor, legatee, or
grantee, and shall suffer three years’ imprisonment without
bail. To give room, however, for repentance, if within
four months after the first conviction, the delinquent will, in
open court, publicly renounce his error, he is discharged
for that once from all disabilities.” Some will say that this
law is never put in force j true, public opinion would not
allow of its general enforcement, but it is turned against
those who are poor and weak, while it lets the strong go
free. Besides, it hangs over every sceptic’s head like the
sword of Damocles, and it serves as a threat and menace in
the hand of every cruel and bigoted Churchman, who wants to
■extract any concession from an unbeliever. No law that can
be enforced is obsolete; it may lie dormant fora time, but it
is a sabre, which can at any moment be drawn from the
sheath j the “ obsolete ” law about the Sabbath closed the
Brighton Aquarium, and Rosherville Gardens, and is found
to be quite easy of enforcementj though people would have
laughed, a short time since, at the idea of anyone grumbling at
its presence on the Statute Book. Poor, harmless, half-witted,
Thomas Pooley, in 1857, found the Blasphemy Laws by no
means “a dead letter” in the mouth of Lord Justice Cole
ridge. And there are plenty of other cases of injustice
which have taken, and do take place under these laws, which
might be quoted were it worth while to fill up space with
them, and but little is needed to fan the smouldering fire of
bigotry into a flame, and to put the laws generally in force
once more. . Already threats are heard, murmurs of the old
wicked spirit of persecution, and it behoves us to see to it
that these swords be broken, so that bigots may be unable to
wield them again among us.
,
�CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
23
I do not, as I have said, protest now against these laws as
a Secularist; I challenge them only as unjust disabilities im
posed on men’s consciences, and I appeal to all lovers of liberty
to agitate against them, because they impose civil disabilities
on some forms of religious opinion. And to you, O Chris
tians 1 I would say : fight Freethought, if you will; oppose
Atheism, if you deem it false and injurious to humanity:
strike at us with all your strength on the religious platform ;
it is your right, nay, it is even your duty; but do not seek to
answer our questions by blows from the statute book, nor to
check our search after truth by the arm of the law. I im
peach these laws against “ infidels,” at the bar of public,
opinion, as an infraction of the just liberty of the individual,
as an insult to the dignity of the citizen, as an outrage on
the sacred rights of conscience.
I do not pretend, in the short pages of such a paper
as this, to have done more than to sketch, very briefly
and very imperfectly, the chief defects of our civil and
religious liberty. I have only laid before you a rough draft
of a programme of Reform. Each blot on English liberty
which I have pointed to might well form the sole subject of
an essay ; but I have hoped that, by thus gathering up into
one some few of the many injustices under which we suffer,
I might, perchance, lend definiteness to the aspirations after
Liberty which swell in the breasts of many, and might point,
out to the attacking army some of the most assailable points
of the fortress of bigotry and caste-prejudice, which the
soldiers of Freedom are vowed to assail. I have taken, as
it were, a bird’s-eye view of the battle-ground of the near
future, of that battle-ground on which soon will clash
together the army which fights under the banner of privileges,
and the army which marches under the standard of Liberty.
The issue of that conflict is not doubtful, for Liberty is
immortal and eternal, and her triumph is sure, however it
may be delayed. The beautiful goddess before whom we
bow is ever young with a youth which cannot fade, and
radiant with a glory which nought can dim. Hers is the
promise of the future; hers the fair days that shall dawn
hereafter on a liberated earth; and hers is also the triumph
of to-morrow, if only we, who adore her, if only we can be
true to ourselves and to each other. But they who love her
must work for her, as well as worship her, for labour is the
only prayer to Liberty, and devotion the only praise. To
her we must consecrate our brain-power and our influence
�24
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
among our fellows ; to her we must sacrifice our time, and,,
if need be, our comfort and our happiness; to her we must,
devote our efforts, and to her the fruits of our toil. And
at last, in the fair, bright future—at last, in the glad to
morrow—amid the shouts of a liberated nation, and the joy
of men and women who see their children free, we shall see
the shining goddess descending from afar, where we have
worshipped her so long, to be the sunshine and the glory of
every British home. And then, O men and women of
England, then, when you have once clasped the knees of
Liberty, and rested your tired brows on her gentle breast,
then cherish and guard her evermore, as you cherish the
bride you have won to your arms, as you guard the wife
whose love is the glory of your manhood, and whose smile
is the sunshine of your home.
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 28, Stone
cutter Street, London, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Civil & religious liberty : with some hints taken from the French Revolution; a lecture
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933]
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Freethought Publishing Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N062
Subject
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Freedom of religion
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Civil & religious liberty : with some hints taken from the French Revolution; a lecture), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Civil Rights
Freedom of Religion
French Revolution
Liberty
NSS