THE HISTORY OF THE LAST TRIAL BY JURY FOR ATHEISM IN ENGLAND:

A Fragment of Autobiography

Submitted For The Perusal Of Her Majesty's Attorney-General And The British Clergy.

By George Jacob Holyoake

I was present in the court, to witness the trial of George Jacob Holyoake. I heard Wooler and Hone defend themselves successfully in 1817; but I would prefer to be declared guilty with Holyoake to being acquitted on the ground of Wooler and Hone.—Richard Carlile.

LONDON: JAMES WATSON, 3, QUEEN'S HEAD PASSAGE,

PATERNOSTER ROW. 1850.

TO

WILLIAM JOHN BIRCH, M.A.,

OF NEW INN HALL, OXON.

IN WHOM FREE DISCUSSION HAS FOUND

AN ACCOMPLISHED DEFENDER AND MUNIFICENT FRIEND;

WHO WAS FIRST TO HELP US

WHEN A FRIEND IS TWICE A FRIEND,

WHEN WE WERE UNKNOWN AND STRUGGLING;

THIS HISTORY OF SIX MONTHS IMPRISONMENT

Contents

PREFACE.

THE HISTORY OF THE LAST TRIAL BY JURY FOR ATHEISM.

PREFACE.

The events, more than half of which are newly narrated in this 'History,' are recited from recollection. It is not pretended that all the conversations took place with the brevity with which they are given here. In the lapse of eight years there is much which I must have forgotten; but what I have told I distinctly remember, and the actors living will not, I think, contradict it.

As, by a creditable improvement in English law, the recommencement of prosecutions for (ir)religious opinion can originate with the Attorney-General alone, I have ventured to hope that, if this narrative should fall into the hands of that officer for the time being, it may present some reasons to him why this 'Last Trial by Jury for Atheism' should be the last.

There are some passages in these Fragments over which some will be sad with me. Others will assume them to be written for effect; for such, let me say, they were not written at all. These pages will leave me for the press with much more pleasure if I can believe that no one will connect them with me, but read them as a posthumous record of bygone events. At times I thought I would omit all incidents of feeling; but I felt, that if I did so the narrative would not represent the whole (personal) truth of these proceedings—and, as they stand, they may serve to suggest to some a doubt of the correctness of the oft-repeated dictum of the Rev. Robert Hall, that 'Atheism is a bloody and a ferocious system, which finds nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness.'

Whether these are sufficient reasons for the purpose, I know not; but this I know—they are the true ones. As I very much dislike being an object of pity, those will much mistake me who suppose that this narrative has been written to excite it. In my estimation, imprisonment was a matter of conscience. I neither provoked prosecution nor shrank from it; and I am now as far from desiring it as I trust I ever shall be from fearing it. I do not pretend to despise public approval, but I think it should be regarded as a contingent reward, not as the sole motive of action; for he who only works while the public (always fickle in memory) care to remember him, is animated by a very precarious patriotism. As I have once, before said, it is an encouragement to me that others may profit by any public principle I may assist in maintaining: but my interest in it is personal also. Though no one else desired freedom, it is enough for me that I desire it; and I would maintain the conflict for it, as best I could, though no one else cared about it; and, as I choose to make the purchase, I do not higgle about the price. Tyranny has its soldiers, and why not Freedom? While thousands daily perish at the shrine of passion, what is the pain of a sacrifice now and then for public principle or personal freedom?

G. J. H.

THE HISTORY OF THE LAST TRIAL BY JURY FOR ATHEISM.

CHAPTER I. BEFORE THE IMPRISONMENT

That day is chilled in my memory when I first set out for Cheltenham. It was in December 1840. The snow had been frozen on the ground a fortnight. There were three of us, Mrs. Holyoake, Madeline (our first child), and myself. I had been residing in Worcester, which was the first station to which I had been appointed as a Social Missionary. My salary (16s. per week) was barely sufficient to keep us alive in summer. In winter it was inherent obstinacy alone which made us believe that we existed. I feel now the fierce blast which came in at the train windows from 'the fields of Tewkesbury,' on the day on which we travelled from Worcester to Cheltenham. The intense cold wrapped us round like a cloak of ice.

The shop lights threw their red glare over the snow-bedded ground as we entered the town of Cheltenham, and nothing but the drift and ourselves moved through the deserted streets. When at last we found a fire we had to wait to thaw before we could begin to speak. When tea was over we were-escorted to the house where we were to stay for the night. I was told it was 'a friend's house.' Cheltenham is a fashionable town, a watering, visiting place, where everything is genteel and thin. As the parlours of some prudent house-wives are kept for show, and not to sit in, so in Cheltenham numerous houses are kept 'to be let,' and not to live in. The people who belong to the apartments are like the supernumeraries on a stage, they are employed in walking over them. Their clothes are decent—but they cannot properly be said to wear them: they carry them about with them (on their backs of course, because that mode is most convenient) but simply to show that they have such things. In the same manner eating and drinking is partly pantomime, and not a received reality. Such a house as I have suggested was the 'friend's house' to which we were conducted till lodgings could be found. We were asked to sit by the kitchen fire on 'the bench in the corner,' and there we sat from eight till one o'clock, without being asked to take anything to eat. Madeline, deprived of her usual rest, continued sucking at the breast till her mother was literally too exhausted to speak. A neighbouring festivity kept my 'friends' up that night till two o'clock—up