The History Of The Last Trial By Jury For Atheism In England Part 2

Thomas Moore, Clerk to the county gaol of Gloucester.

Some of the magistrates characterised the speech for which I was committed as 'Felony,' 'a breach of the peace,' etc., and I was told that my committal was made out for 'felony.' Serious comments were made thereupon by the public. Able strictures on the subject were made by 'Philo Publicola,' in the _Weekly Dispatch_. But the magistrates grew wiser as they grew cooler, and on the copy of the committal subsequently furnished to me, the charge of felony did not appear.

A very curious circ.u.mstance deserves mentioning here. The magistrates being censured in the House of Commons for their 'irregularities' in my case (as will be explained in my defence further on) an attempt was made to fix the blame on Mr. Russell, superintendent of the police.

This induced me to address the following letter to the editor of the _Cheltenham Free Press_:--

Sir,--Observing an attempt has been made in Parliament by the Hon.

Craven Berkley to fix the blame of my 'harsh treatment' on the constables of your town, and to implicate Superintendent Russell, I beg to say that after my committal I never saw Mr. Russell, and never once said, or suspected, that the harshness exercised towards me, while ostensibly in his custody, originated with him. His courtesy to me on the night of my apprehension, of which I retain a lively sense, forbids such a conclusion.

I shall be glad if you will insert this in your next number. I can never consent to purchase public sympathy by a silence which may unjustly sacrifice any person's interest. I was justified in making the complaints I have, but would rather they were for ever unredressed than that an innocent man should suffer.

Birmingham, July 30, 1842. G. Jacob Holyoake.

Soon after Mr. Russell left the corps, and appears to have been offered up by the magistrates as a sacrifice for the irregularities _they_ had committed.

On my arrival my pockets were searched, and even my pocket-book and letters taken from me. This I felt not only as an indignity, but also as a breach of faith. Before leaving Cheltenham, and when in communication with my friends, I inquired if my papers would be taken from me at Gloucester, and the officers answered 'No,' (but they must have known differently). Trusting their answer, however, I brought with me papers I should not otherwise have brought. Perhaps I was fevered after my walk, but the cell I was put into gave me a new sense. There had been times when I had wished for a sixth sense, but this was not the sense I coveted, for it was a sense of suffocation. The bed was so filthy that I could not lie down, and sat on the side all night. When taken into the general room next morning the prisoners surrounded me, exclaiming,' What are ye come for?' As I made no reply, another observed, 'We always tells one another,' 'Oh! blasphemy,' I replied. 'What's that,' said one.

'Aren't you 'ligious?' said another.

But as these rustics were happily unacquainted with doctrinal piety, they said nothing rude; and seeing my loaf unbroken, and that I could not eat, 'Here,' said four or five at once, 'will you have some of this tea, zir?'--which was mint-tea, the reward of some extra work, and the nicest thing they had to offer.

When the chaplain of the gaol, the Rev. Robert Cooper, came to see me, I told him that before I took anything from him for my soul, I wanted something from him for my defence; and I demanded my note book and papers. Mr. Samuel Jones, a visiting magistrate, brought me a few pencil notes which I had made during my examination in Cheltenham and some private papers, but he withheld many others relating to matters of opinion, saying that _he_ 'did not think them necessary to my defence.'

The clergyman has a veto on all books admitted, and of a list which I gave him, which I wanted to read for my trial, he only allowed me thirteen. He said the others 'were of an unchristian character,' and he could not let me have them. 'I told him I was not going to make an orthodox defence. He would not relax, so I would not have any spiritual consolation, and we lived on very indifferent terms.

One day Mr. Bransby Cooper, and Mr. Samuel Jones (just mentioned), both old magistrates, came to visit me. Mr. Jones, I was told, had at one time been a preacher among the Methodists. He told me he would be kind to me, but all his kindness was religious kindness--the worst kindness I have ever experienced. I was then the sole occupant of the Queen's evidence side of the prison, a place I had chosen as I preferred to be alone. I had a large yard and all the cells to myself. In this solitary place these magistrates visited me. After teazing me with Leslie for a long time, Mr. Bransby Cooper concluded thus--'Now! Holyoake, you are a Deist--are you not?' I shook my head. 'You cannot be an atheist,' he continued, 'you don't look like one.' He said this, I suppose, seeing no horns on my head, and no eyes on my elbows, as he expected. I answered that I felt very unpleasantly how much I was in their power, and had therefore some reason to desire to oblige them. Though sorry to say what might outrage them or look like obstinacy, yet out of respect to my own conscience I must say that I _was_ an atheist. Upon these they both flew into indignant revulsions, and shouted 'a fool! a fool!' till the roof rang. Capt. Mason (the governor), who accompanied them, turned away a few paces, with the air of one not caring to be witness of so much rudeness.

* See Report of Gloucester Trinity Sessions in the county papers of that period.

Before leaving they said of course I should employ counsel to defend me. I answered, 'No, I should defend myself as well as I was able.

Barristers were not good at stating a case of conscience.' They urged, they even coaxed me to abandon the idea of defending myself; but finding me not to be deterred, they threatened me that it would aggravate my case--reminded me of Hone and others, and said that the judge would put me down and not hear me. This menace, as will be seen hereafter, did me great harm. They reported my determination at the Trinity Sessions as though it was a matter desirable to be averted.

Mr. Bransby Cooper was a brother of Sir Astley Cooper. He was formerly member for Gloucester, and when he suspected that I did not regard his dignity sufficiently, he would slide in some remark about 'his friend' Sir James Graham, who was then Secretary of State for the Home Department. Bransby Cooper was the senior magistrate at this time--a man of venerable and commanding aspect, generous to a fault in matters of humanity, harsh to a fault in matters of religion. On his way through the city, old women would way-lay him to beg. First raising his stick against them--then threatening to commit them as vagrants--they fled from him in mock terror, but knowing the generous feelings of the man they returned again, and before he reached home he would empty his pockets among them. One minute he would growl at me like an unchained tiger--the next he would utter some word of real sympathy, such as came from no one else, and at the end of my imprisonment I parted from him with something of regret. He had the voice of Stentor, and though at first his savage roar shook me, at last I acquired an artistic liking for it, and his voice was so grand that I came to the conclusion that he had a natural right to be a brute. The old man, after his fas.h.i.+on, laboured very hard for my conversion. His son Robert was chaplain of the gaol, and had I happily been brought over, the old man would have given the credit to his boy. My conversion was thus a sort of family speculation.

Those who sent me to prison in default of bail, took care to make bail impossible to me by intimidating those who would have become my sureties, and after two weeks' anxiety I was obliged to accept the generous offer of two friends in Worcester--James Barnes and John Dymond Stevenson--to come from that city and enter into recognizances for me, and I was indebted to them for my liberation, after sixteen days'

imprisonment.

So near was my trial upon my release that I had to return to Gloucester within a fortnight. A great desire of my youth had been to see London.

When I found myself suddenly shut up in gaol, in prospect of an indefinite term of imprisonment, which in my then state of health might prove fatal, my sole remorse was that I had never seen that city of my dreams. Once again at liberty I made a short visit to my family in Birmingham, and the next week found me in London.

Chafed and sad, with tremulous heart and irresolute step, it seems but yesterday that I walked through Woburn Place into the city in which I now write. Its streets, its pride, its magnificence enthralled me, and its very poverty fascinated me because nearer to my destiny. Savage and Johnson had walked those squares houseless, and why not I. Chatterton had perished in a garret, and garrets had something sacred in them.

Solitary in that two million mult.i.tude, I was hardly known to any one in it, yet when I remembered that I was in London I felt an enchanted gladness, and in all vicissitudes of fortune and chequered struggles with fate, I have walked its magical streets with undimmed joy, and it is to me still a fairy land, whose atmosphere of enchantment feels as if it would never leave me.

How sweetly, how gratefully to me (as words never read before) came the notice the _Weekly Dispatch_ gave of my first lecture in London. All the night before I had sat up with Ryall, answering correspondence and concerting my defence. When I reached the Rotunda it was more fitting that I should have found a bed there than a rostrum, for when I rose to speak I was weak as well as timid. To succeed in any way in London was more than I ventured to expect, and the nature of the report in the _Weekly Dispatch_ inspired me with the hope of at least being tolerated.

I hastened back to Gloucester. Either a Secretary of State's order, or a Bill had come into operation, I was never correctly informed which, removing my trial from the Sessions to the a.s.sizes, which gave me an impartial Judge to determine my case. At a Sessions' trial the parties who had caused my imprisonment, and the magistrates who had shown themselves my personal opponents, would have sat on the Bench to try me.

Though unable to proceed with my trial after having committed me, they put me to the expense of bringing my bail from Worcester, and charged me 1 9s. for renewing my sureties.

My arrest caused a demand for atheistical publications in Cheltenham, which Mr. George Adams, partly as a friend to the free publication of opinion and partly from personal friends.h.i.+p to me, undertook to supply.

In this he was joined by his wife, Harriet Adams, a very interesting and courageous woman. On Monday evening, June 13th, at a public meeting called to consider the grounds of my own apprehension, Mr. George Adams was arrested for selling No. 25 of the _Oracle_, and forthwith conveyed to the station-house. As soon as a knowledge of the arrest came to the ears of Mrs. Adams, she went to the station-house to see her husband, when she, likewise, was served with a warrant for selling No. 4. Mrs.

Adams says, (the account cannot be better rendered than in her own words) 'I went to see my husband at the station-house, when I was detained; a policeman was sent home with me to fetch my infant, and I had to leave four at home in bed. The man that went with me to the station was a rude fellow; he was quite abusive to me, telling me I should be locked up from my husband; saying, it was quite time such things were put a stop to. When we arrived at the station-house he would have locked me in a cell with drunken women, had I not sat down in the yard and insisted on seeing the superintendent, who then allowed me to sit up in a kitchen, where policemen were coming in and out all night.

My husband was much troubled on my account.' The four children were left locked up in the house alone.

Mr. Bubb's speech, when Adams was brought up, is so curious a relic of provincial barbarism that I preserve it, or those who are told of it in time to come will regard the story as some malicious fiction. Mr. Bubb opened the charge by justifying himself and clients--'It has been said that we are prosecuting here for the entertaining of opinions merely.

That proposition I deny. The entertaining of opinions is not opposed to law if people keep them to, themselves. If they step out of the way, and seek to propagate them by undermining the inst.i.tutions of the country, by denying the existence of a G.o.d, by robbing others of "the hopes set before them," without offering the flimsiest pretext, it is the duty of all to prevent this. Such is the opinion of those gentlemen who set on foot these proceedings, and no clamour of persecution will prevent them from doing what they believe to be their duty. And if there are any here present disposed to take up this unfortunate trade, I would a.s.sure them that as long as the law punishes, and the magistrates uphold the law, so long will they bring offenders to justice. So long as men say there is no G.o.d, or that the religion of the state is a farce and a fallacy, these gentlemen will not be deterred by any clamour.' If this threat were carried out the magistrates on every Bench would have constant employment--especially if they would undertake, as Mr. Bubb appeared to promise, to ascertain whether or not we had the 'flimsiest pretext' to offer in defence of the course we took.

Adams and his wife were committed to take their trials at the Sessions--in the wife's case it was purely vexatious, as there was no one bound over to prosecute her. Yet Adams, nearly blind from an inflammation of the eyes, and his wife with her child in her arms, were kept several days in attendance at Gloucester--though the same law which prevented the court proceeding in my case, prevented the court from trying the Adamses. In further aggravation of loss, 1 17s. 6d. were demanded for discharge of bail and entering new sureties--nor was time allowed to fetch the bail (after they were demanded) from Cheltenham, the clerk announcing that they would be estreated at once. Upon this I directed Mr. and Mrs. Adams to go into court and say they were prepared to take their trial _then_, and there was no occasion to estreat the property of their friends. Time was then allowed.

Mrs. Adams was never tried. Mr. Adams's trial took place at Gloucester a.s.sizes, immediately before my own.

The pa.s.sage from No. 25 of the _Oracle_, for which Adams was indicted, was written by my friend Mr. Chilton, who was outraged at my imprisonment, and ran as follows:--

What else could be expected of men who deify a real or imaginary individual, a compound of ambition and folly, of mock humility and rampant tyranny; who, though called the 'Prince of Peace,' declared he came to bring a sword in the world? This h.e.l.lish mission he performed to perfection, for never since his time has blood and misery ceased to flow from his dogmas and mysteries.

As I was very anxious to save Adams from consequences which he incurred through friends.h.i.+p to me, I advised him to let Mr. Thompson defend him.

This gentleman began by sympathising with all the disgust invented by the counsel who opened the prosecution, and he ended by expressing Adams's sorrow and contrition for what he had done--a contrition which he did not feel, and would rather have undergone much imprisonment than have had it said that he did. During the whole of the trials arising out of the _Oracle_, Mr. Ralph Thomas, barrister, was the only counsel who defended us in court without sacrificing us. Taking warning by Mr.

Thompson's example, I made it a rule to advise all our friends to defend themselves, and where unaccustomed to public speaking, to write a brief defence in their own language, and after some legal friend had revised it, to read it to the court. We do not want lawyers to defend our opinions, those opinions not being their own, but we want them simply to maintain our right to publish what are to us important convictions.

Instead of this they commonly agree with the crown that we are criminal for having a conscience, and then, in our name, recant with 'contrition'

the opinions which we go into court to maintain.

Adams's sentence was delivered in the following words by Mr. Justice Erskine:--'George Adams, you have been convicted of the offence of publis.h.i.+ng a blasphemous libel, and the libel which was proved to have been published by you was one of a most horrid and shocking character.

Whatever a man's opinions may be, he can have no right to give vent to them in that language. If there was evidence to prove that you were the author, or that you were engaged as an active disseminator, I should have thought it my duty to have inflicted on you a very serious imprisonment. Although by the law of this country every man has a right to express his sentiments in decent language, he has no business to make use of such shocking language as this. But you have expressed, through your counsel, contrition; and trusting that this is the general feeling of your mind, I shall not think it necessary to pa.s.s on you a severe sentence this time. But if you ever offend again, it will then be known that you are determined to persevere, and it will be seen whether the law is not strong enough to prevent it. The sentence of the court is, that you be _imprisoned in the Common Gaol of this county for one calendar month._

I was with Adams during the term of his imprisonment, and although his losses and the privations of his family were great, he never uttered a murmuring word. From first to last he behaved well, and Mrs. Adams, as women usually do, behaved better.

It is worthy of remark that when a gentleman deposed that the character of Mr. Adams 'was a pattern of morality,' Mr. Justice Erskine told the jury that 'had Adams committed a robbery such a character might have weight, but in extenuation of religious offence it was of no service.'

CHAPTER II. THE TRIAL

The a.s.sizes opened on the 6th of August, 1842, but my case did not come on till the 15th, Mr. Knight Hunt (the author of the 'Fourth Estate') was the gentleman engaged to report my trial. As the judge was informed that I intended to defend myself he resolved to take my case last. This caused the a.s.sizes to extend into a second week. Sat.u.r.day came before the calendar was exhausted, and as there was no knowing whether my trial could be gone through in a day, the fear of trespa.s.sing on Sunday led to the court's being ordered to open on Monday, to the annoyance of javelin men kept there unexpectedly, to jury men who had left tills, ploughs, and orange baskets unprotected--and not least to my prosecutors, who saw with some consternation some 200 added to the county expenses, for in Cheltenham bigotry is greatly preferred when it is _cheap_.

If ignorance would look upon its own degradation, let it spend a few hours in an a.s.size court. One trial I witnessed was of two men for an offence which indeed arose out of depravity, but the depravity arose out of bad training and vicious circ.u.mstances. The oldest man, between forty and fifty, was sentenced to transportation for life to Norfolk Island, the most ferocious sentence an English judge can p.r.o.nounce. When the man heard it, he bowed in genuine and awkward humbleness, and said, as he made a rustic bow to the bench, '_Thank'ee, my Lord!_' Such abject humiliation of spirit I had never conceived before. Ignorance never appeared to me so frightful, so slavish, so blind, as on this occasion.

Unable to distinguish a sentence pa.s.sed upon him from a service done him, he had been taught to bow to his pastors and masters, and he bowed alike when cursed as when blessed. The measured contempt with which the words were spoken by the judge which blasted the man's character for ever--the scorn with which he was thrust out of the pale of society, never again to know freedom or reputation, made no impression on his dark and servile soul. That appalling weight of infamy falling on his head and on the heads of his children--for which he might justly have cursed society--only elicited from him a 'Thank'ee, my Lord!' If ignorance would see its own degradation, would feel the incalculable depth of its abjectness, let it sometimes sit for instruction in an a.s.size court.

The preliminary proceedings at the trial I shall render as Mr. Hunt gave them, in the third person--adding what, from various causes, was omitted at the time.

On the morning of the trial the Court-house at Gloucester was very crowded. Many ladies were present from all parts of the county: the wives of clergymen, and some of the n.o.bility, were among them, attracted by curiosity, and by the opportunity which might never occur to them again of hearing, without loss of caste, a little heresy defended in person. The audience continued undiminished till ten o'clock at night.

As the name of George Jacob Holyoake was called, he advanced and entered the dock. Mr. Ogden, the turnkey in charge of prisoners, directed him with the usual air of official impatience to take his place at the bar.

Mr. Holyoake. Do not be in a hurry. First hand me my books.

Mr. Ogden. (Looking indignantly at a large corded box lying outside the dock.) You can't have that box here. You must go to the bar and plead.

Mr. Holyoake. Nonsense. Hand me the box.

It being reluctantly handed up, Mr. Holyoake applied to the judge, Mr.