court to sit in judgment? What but the oath which his lordship as well as yourselves, have sworn upon the Gospel to fulfil. Yet in the king's court, where his majesty is himself also sworn to administer the justice of England, in the king's court, who receives his high authority under a solemn oath to maintain the christian religion, as it is promulgated by God in the Holy Scriptures, I am nevertheless called upon, as counsel for the prosecution, to produce a certain book described in the indictment to be the Holy Bible. No man deserves to be upon the rolls of the court, who dares, as an attorney, to put his name to such a notice. It is an insult to the authority and dignity of the court of which he is an officer; since it seems to call in question the very foundations of its jurisdiction. If this is to be the spirit and temper of the defence; if, as I collect from that array of books which are spread upon the benches behind me, this publication is to be vindicated by an attack of all the truths which the christian religion promulgates to mankind, let it be remembered, that such an argument was neither suggested nor justified by any thing said by me on the part of the prosecution. In this stage of the proceedings, I shall call for reverence to the sacred scriptures, not from their merits, unbounded as they are, but from their authority in a christian country; not from the obligations of conscience, but from the rules of law. For my own part, gentlemen, I have been ever deeply devoted to the truths of christianity, and my firm belief in the Holy Gospel is by no means owing to the prejudices of education, though I was religiously educated by the best of parents, but arises from the fullest and most continued reflections of my riper years and understanding. It forms at this moment, the great consolation of a life, which, as a shadow, must pass away; and, without it, indeed, I should consider my long course of health and prosperity, perhaps too long and uninterrupted to be good for any man, only as the dust which the wind scatters, and rather as a snare than as a blessing. Much, however, as I wish to support the authority of the scriptures, from a reasoned consideration of them, I shall repress that subject for the present. But, if the defence shall be as I have suspected, to bring them at all into argument or question, I shall then fulfil a duty which I owe not only to the court, as counsel for the prosecution, but to the publick, to state what I feel and know concerning the evidences of that religion which is reviled without being examined, and denied without being understood.

I am well aware that by the communications of a free press, all the errours of mankind, from age to age, have been dissipated and dispelled, and I recollect that the world, under the banners of reformed christianity, has struggled through persecution to the noble eminence on which it stands at this moment, shedding the blessings of humanity and science upon the nations of the earth. It may be asked, by what means the reformation would have been effected, if the books of the reformers had been suppressed, and the errours of condemned and exploded superstitions had been supported as unquestionable by the state, founded upon those very superstitions formerly, as it is at present upon the doctrines of the established church? or how, upon such principles, any reformation, civil or religious, can in future be effected? The solution is easy. Let us examine what are the genuine principles of the liberty of the press, as they regard writings upon general subjects, unconnected with the personal reputations of private men, which are wholly foreign to the present inquiry. They are full of simplicity, and are brought as near perfection, by the law of England, as perhaps is consistent with any of the frail institutions of mankind.

Although every community must establish supreme authorities, founded upon fixed principles, and must give high powers to magistrates to administer laws for the preservation of the government itself, and for the security of those who are to be protected by it; yet, as infallibility and perfection belong neither to human establishments, nor to human individuals, it ought to be the policy of all free establishments, as it is most peculiarly the principle of our own constitution, to permit the most unbounded freedom of discussion, even by detecting errours in the constitution or administration of the very government itself, so as that decorum is observed, which every state must exact from its subjects, and which imposes no restrainst upon any intellectual composition, fairly, honestly, and decently, addressed to the consciences and understandings of men. Upon this principle, I have an unquestionable right, a right which the best subjects have exercised, to examine the principles and structure of the constitution, and by fair, manly reasoning, to question the practice of its administrators. I have a right to consider and to point out errours in the one or in the other; and not merely to reason upon their existence, but to consider the means of their reformation. By such free, well intentioned, modest, and dignified communication of sentiments and opinions, all nations have been gradually improved, and milder laws and purer religions have been established. The same principles, which vindicate civil contentions honestly directed, extend their protection to the sharpest controversies on religious faiths. This rational and legal course of improvement was recognised and ratified by lord Kenyon as the law of England, in a late trial at Guildhall, when he looked back with gratitude to the labours of the reformers, as the fountains of our religious emancipation, and of the civil blessings that followed in their train. The English constitution, indeed, does not stop short in the toleration of religious opinions, but liberally extends it to practice. It permits every man, even publickly, to worship God according to his own conscience, though in marked dissent from the national establishment, so as he professes the general faith, which is the sanction of all our moral duties, and the only pledge of our submission to the system which constitutes a state. Is not this system of freedom of controversy, and freedom of worship, sufficient for all the purposes of human happiness and

improvement? and will it be necessary for either, that the law should hold out indemnity to those who wholly abjure and revile the government of their country, or the religion on which it rests for its foundation?

I expect to hear, in answer to what I am now saying, much that will offend me. My learned friend, from the difficulties of his situation, which I know, from experience, how to feel for very sincerely, may be driven to advance propositions which it may be my duty, with much freedom to reply to; and the law will sanction that freedom. But will not the ends of justice be completely answered by that right, to point out the errours of his discourse in terms that are decent and calculated to expose its defects; or will any argument suffer, or will publick justice be impeded, because neither private honour and justice, nor publick decorum, would endure my telling my very learned friend, that he was a fool, a liar, and a scoundrel, in the face of the court, because I differed from him in argument or opinion. This is just the distinction between a book of free legal controversy, and the book which I am arraigning before you. Every man has a legal right to investigate, with modesty and decency, controversial points of the christian religion; but, no man, consistently with a law, which only exists under its sanctions, has a right not only broadly to deny its very existence, but to pour forth a shocking and insulting invective, which the lowest establishments, in the gradations of civil authority, ought not to be permitted to suffer, and which soon would be born down by insolence and disobedience, if they did.

The same principle pervades the whole system of the law, not merely in its abstract theory, but in its daily and most applauded practice. The intercourse between the sexes, and which, properly regulated, not only continues, but humanizes and adorns our natures, is the foundation of all the thousand romances, plays and novels, which are in the hands of every body. Some of them lead to the confirmation of every virtuous principle; others, though with the same profession, address the imagination in a manner to lead the passions into dangerous excesses. But, though the law does not nicely discriminate the various shades which distinguish these works from one another, so as that it suffers many to pass, through its liberal spirit, that upon principle might be suppressed, would it or does it tolerate, or does any decent man contend that it ought to pass by unpunished, libels of the most shameless obscenity, manifestly pointed to debauch innocence, and to blast and poison the morals of the rising generation? This is only another illustration to demonstrate the obvious distinction between the works of an author, who fairly exercises the powers of his mind, in investigating doctrinal points in the religion of any country, and him who attacks the rational existence of every religion, and brands with absurdity and folly the state which sanc. tions, and the obedient tools who cherish, the delu. sion. But this publication appears to me to be as mischievous and cruel in its probable effects, as it is manifestly illegal in its principles; because it strikes at the best, sometimes, alas! the only refuge, and consolation amidst the distresses and afflictions of the world. The poor and humble, whom it affects to pity, may be stabbed to the heart by it. They have more occasion for firm hopes beyond the grave, than those who have greater comforts to render life delightful. I can conceive a distressed, but virtuous, man, surrounded by children, looking up to him for bread when be has none to give them, sinking under the last day's labour, and unequal to the next, yet still looking up with confidence to the hour when all tears shall be wiped from the eyes of affliction, bearing the burden laid upon him by a mysterious Providence which he adores, and looking forward with exultation to the revealed promises of his Creator, when he shall be greater than the greatest, and happier than the happiest of mankind. What a change in such a mind might be wrought by such a merciless publication? Gentlemen, whether these remarks are the