The Daily Telegraph. MONDAY, APRIL 2, 1883.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3655, 2 April 1883, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. MONDAY, APRIL 2, 1883.

A SHORT time ago our Home cablegrams conveyed the announcement that Air Charles Bradlaugh, ALP. for Northampton, England, aud AL* G. AY. Foote, of London, were to be proceeded against on the charge of blasphemy in connection with certain alleged indictable paragraphs published in the Freethinker, a journal edited by Mr

Foote. We believe we are correct in saying that at the time very little public notice was taken of the matter, outside of England at any rate, and the whole thing was regarded by very many as a flash in the pan, or at best as a political move calculated to damage Air Bradlaugh's character and lessen his chances of success hi the struggle to assume the seat in the Imperial House of Parliament to which he was twice returned. It was not thought at all likely that a person of any standing or influence could be found willing in these day of civi and religious liberty to undertake the prosecution of two of his fellow* men because they happened to hold opinions upon matters theological not agreeable to the majority. Later intelligence, however, goes to prove that those who took tins view of the matter either mistook the spirit of the age in "good old England," or greatly overestimated the breadth of mind of the average Englishman, for no less a personage than Sir Henry Tyler has carried the proseoution so far as concerns one of the objects of his hatred to what, we suppose, he and a few others liko him will consider a successful issue, and Mr G. AY. Foote now lies confined as a common criminal in an English prison ! Whether the charge against Mr Bradlaugh was withdrawn by the prosecution, or whether he was acquitted, we have no information ; but this we do know, that in the case of Foote, who, for giving publicity to certain expressions — injudicious expressions it may be, but nevertheless harmless in themselves —received the absurdly severe sentence of twelve months imprisonment, a blot has fallen on the pages of English law, and people are led to reflect that the old spirit of religious intolerance which as late as a century ag« filled many a British home with mourning is not yet dead, but still lives to show how little influence all the civilizing- agencies of the nineteenth century have upon the minds of such men as Sir Henry Tyler. The gravamen of the charge against Air Foote, so far as can be gathered from the particulars of the case to hand, rested in his having attempted to throw discredit on the doctrine of the manhood of the Deity, which, under the provisions of a rather antiquated English statute, passed we believe in the reign of Edward IA 7 ., is a crime still punishable by imprisonment. This law, although never repealed, has notwithstanding been a dead letter for many years past," and for the sake of the reputation of both Church and State it is a thousand pities that in the march of progress it should ever have been dragged forth from the tomb of obscurity to which some quarter of a century ago it was very properly consigned. Prosecutions such as that Aye have referred to serve no good purpose, but, on tho contrary, while defeating their own object, they seriously interfere with the liberty of the subject, and bring into 'prominence persons Avho together with their works would otherwise have lived and died comparatively unknown. AYe do not wish by any means to have it understood that by the foregoing remarks Aye are speaking in favor of cither Atheism or its folloAvers; we simply desire to chronicle our opinion that every man should have the right to give free expression to his convictions in the matter of religion without fear of coming under the odium thcologiciim of any petty tyrant Avho may imagine himself or his party aggrieA-ed thereat. AVhat is to be gained by imprisoning a man for blasphemy is a problemn that avc haA'c no hesitation in affirming even Sir Henry Tyler himself coidd not solve. The exact position of Air Foote's case is this: — He does not belic-A-e in the God of the Bible and says so, and the method that is adopted to convince him that he is in error is to send him to prison for twelve months to herd with thieves and pick-pockets, from whom . Aye may suppose ho is to receive such a theological education as -will tit him to live thereafter in the outside world, and to breathe the same air as his spotless fellow man who so humanely saved him from a false belief. But, seriously sjieaking, it must seem clear as noonday to any tlnnking man that to enact that no person shall publish opinions which may happen to bo opposed to the doxy of the time is to stamp out for ever all progress, all reform, and to leave the race to rot in the stagnant pool of a blind conservatism.