An outlaw is seldom considered a pleasant person, and naturally occupies
a dubious place in public estimation. His position is worse than that of
an exile, who, if once allowed to return, is reinstated in society, but
the outlaw of opinion is never pardoned. Where justice turns upon the
hinge of the oath, there is no redress for him who has scruples as to
taking it. He who has scruples exposes himself to unpleasant comments.
He is counted a sort of fastidious crank. All the while it is known that
a man without scruples is a knave, who respects nothing save his own
interests, and will do anything likely to promote them--even to the
commission of robbery or murder--as police-courts disclose. To be
scrupulous is to be solicitous as to the rightfulness of a thing
proposed to be done. It is plainly the interest of society to encourage
those who act upon honest scruples. Scruples may be trivial or
unfounded--they may be open to objection on that account. Nevertheless,
the habit of being scrupulous is to be tolerated as conducive to
integrity, without which society would be insufferable. It is therefore
not desirable that perils should accompany scrupulousness, as I have
often seen them do.
The obligatory oath has always been detrimental to public morality.
When one oath was imposed on all persons, it was repugnant to their
individual sense of truth in many cases, and men, to protect their
interests, began to tamper with veracity, and invent new meanings of the
terms of the oath. Thus the fortunate fastidiousness of truth is broken
down.
The Christian oath is an ecclesiastical device, framed in the
interest of the Church, to enforce, under penalty, the recognition and
perpetuation of its tenets. He who takes the oath professes to believe
that if he breaks it "God will blast his soul in hell for ever." This is
the old brutal, terrifying form in which the consequence was expressed.
It is softened now, to suit the secular humanity of the age, to
a statement that God will hold the oath-taker responsible for its
fulfilment. But God's method of holding any one responsible, is by
sentencing him to "outer darkness," where there will be "wailing and
gnashing of teeth." A very unpleasant region to dwell in. There is no
good ground to suppose that such a sentence for such an offence would
be passed, but the intimidation is retained. Mr. Cluer, a London
magistrate, said lately that "if the fate of Ananias befel all who swore
falsely in his court, the floor would be strewn with dead bodies."
But the courts fall back upon the pristine meaning of the oath. The
magistrate asks a little child, tendered as a witness, "whether she
knows, if she does not tell the truth, where she will go to?" and
whether she "has never heard of a place called hell or of its keeper,
the devil?" If not, he publicly deplores the neglect of the child's
education, and declares her to be incapable of telling the truth. Every
one who took the oath, whether rich or poor, a philosopher or a
fool, each professed to believe that the Great God of all the worlds,
notwithstanding the infinite business He has on hand, was personally
present in any dingy court when the oath-taker calls upon Him "to
witness" that he speaks the truth, and if not, God, who never forgets,
burdens His celestial memory with that fact, with a view to eternal
retaliation, in case the oath is false. He who takes the oath and does
not believe this, lies to begin with, whatever may be the character of
his testimony.
To take the oath in any other sense than that in which it is
administered to you, is to deceive the court.
"He who imposes the oath, makes it.
Not he, who for convenience takes it."
The reliance on the part of those who impose the oath, is that he who
takes it believes the terms of it. If the taker takes it in a private
sense of his own, the virtue has gone out of the oath, and the court is
deceived. If the Unitarian takes the oath, not believing in an avenging
God, he creates a new oath for himself, in which the compelling power
of an eternal terror is absent. He, therefore, does not take the oath of
the court, but another of his own invention; and if he made known to
the court what he was doing, the court would not receive his testimony.
Philosophers, who have less belief than Unitarians, take the oath. But
in the eye of morality it is not less discreditable--perhaps more so,
for the philosopher stands for absolute truth, while the Unitarian
stands only for theological truth.
The trouble was that he who refuses to take the oath of the court, in
the sense of the court, became an outlaw, and that was a serious thing.
I was myself an outlaw, until I was fifty-two years of age, without the
power of obtaining redress where I was wronged, or of punishing fraud or
theft from which I suffered, or of protecting the life and property
of others, where my evidence was required. My ambition was to be a
barrister, but legal friends assured me that the law turned upon the
hinge of oath-taking, and that the path of the Bar would to me be a path
of lying. It happens that I have never taken an oath. When I found
that my belief did not coincide with that implied by the oath, I felt
precluded from taking it.
This reluctance brought me peril. When the question of a Parliamentary
oath in Lord Randolph Churchill's days raged, a new doctrine was set
up among some partisans of Freethought--that an Atheist might take the
oath. That meant there was no longer any distinction in terms, or any
meaning in principle. If an Atheist may, for the sake of some advantage
before him, make a Christian profession, there is no reason why a
Christian should not make an Atheistical profession if it answered his
purpose. The apostles made quite a mistake by incurring martyrdom for
conscience sake. Bruno, Servitus, and Tyndale need not have gone to the
stake, had they only understood that the way to advance the truth was to
abandon it, instead of standing to it. If a man is not to stand by the
truth when the consequences are against him, there is an end of truth as
a principle. It is no longer a duty to suffer for it and maintain it.
It seemed to me that the friends of reason, who rejected theological
tenets, should be as scrupulous as to the truth as partisans of
superstition have often proved themselves to be, and that the Atheist
should have as clear a sense of intellectual honour as the Quaker, the
Catholic, or the Jew, who all suffered rather than take an oath contrary
to their sense of truth. This was regarded as a reflection upon some
excellent colleagues of mine, who thought it fatuity to allow an oath to
stand in their way, and frustrate their career.
It was brought against me that there were circumstances under which
I should be as little scrupulous as other people. Major Bell, who had
incurred great peril in India for the sake of honour, put a question
to me in the Daily News purporting that, "Had I married before 1837 I
should not have hesitated at twice invoking the Trinity as the Church
service required? And if I had done so, should I not have perpetrated a
piece of hypocrisy?" There is an immoral maxim that "All things are fair
in love and war," and it is probable that I should not have hesitated to
perpetrate that "piece of hypocrisy," as it would have been the lesser
of two evils, but it would not, therefore, cease to be an evil. If under
any compulsion of love or war I was induced to perpetrate "apiece of
hypocrisy," it would never occur to me to go about saying it was not
hypocrisy. I dislike law, custom, or persons who force me to do what I
know to be wrong, but no person could do his worst against me, until he
prevailed upon me to go about saying it was right.
Dr. Moncure Conway asked whether, if his life was in danger in China,
and I could save it by the Chinese oath of breaking a saucer, I would
not do it? Certainly I would, to save Dr. Conway, if the Confucians
would permit me, but I should not the less deceive them by pretending
to have sworn before them in the Chinese sense. But I should regret
the necessity, since in no country would I willingly treat truth as a
superstition. By taking the "saucer" oath, I should obtain in Chinese
eyes a validity for my word not really belonging to it. However I might
excuse the act, it would still be deceit, nor ought it to be called by
any other name. There is no virtuous vagueness in unveracity, and he who
in peril uses it would not be justified in carrying it into common life,
where Lord Bacon has warned us, "Truth is so useful, that we should make
public note of any departure from that excellent habit." Major Evans
Bell further argued that because the Prince of Wales may sign himself my
"obedient, humble servant," while not feeling himself bound to act
so, the terms of the oath may be likewise regarded as a form of words
merely. Yet all "forms" which are unreal are unwise and hurtful. But
the superscription of the Prince is known to be but a false form, and
accepted as such, while the oath is a profession of faith. If the Prince
went into a public court and swore in the name of God that he really was
my "obedient, humble servant," I should think him a very shabby Prince
if the solemnity went for nothing. As I have known Major Bell expose
himself to what his friends believed to be fatal peril, from a noble
sense of self-imposed duty, to which neither oath, nor contract, nor any
conventional superscription called him, I no more imagine him than I did
Dr. Conway, to really mean what their arguments seemed to imply.
Some are for the spirit more than the form. I was for both, and I regard
all legislation as immoral which divorces them. Referring to these
letters, the _Daily News_ (December 23, 1881) regarded them as "marked
by rectitude of moral judgment, which is recognised by those who most
deplore what they think is theological aberration. Some such testimony
as he gives was almost needed to efface the impression which recent
events in and out of the House of Commons have made, that moral
indifferentism is of necessity associated with religious negation."
I was glad of those words at a time when I was fiercely assailed for
saying what I did, in the midst of the Parliamentary contest which then
occupied the attention of the country. My object was to assist the right
in the contest, and to defend the Free Thought cause. Had I not spoken
then, it would have been in vain to speak afterward. To be silent about
principle in the hour of its application would have been fatal to its
influence and repute, so far as it might be represented by me.
As far as in my power lay, I left no uncertainty in the mind of
Parliament as to what was wanted, in lieu of the oath. It was simply a
"promise of honour," to declare the truth in matters of testimony, and
observe good faith in contracts. One of my petitions to the House of
Commons ran thus:--
"Your petitioner is a person who never took an oath, as it implied
theological convictions he did not hold. He, however, has seen persons
of far greater knowledge than he possesses, of high social position and
authority, and whose example men look up to, take the oath, though it
was known to all that they held no belief corresponding thereunto--the
opprobrium and outlawry attending the refusal of the oath being
more than they would incur. This has led to a practice of public
prevarication, that of persons saying a thing and not meaning it, or
meaning something else. Nowhere is this example more disastrous than in
your High Assembly, where anything said is conspicuous and its example
influential on the conduct of others."
Another petition so interested Professor J. E. Thorold Rogers, M.P. (who
had held holy orders), that he had copies made of it, and sent one with
a letter to each morning paper, saying he regarded it as expressing the
"quintessence of political morality." The petition set forth:--
"That it is at all times important that public declarations should be so
expressed that any one making them shall be able to say what he means,
and mean what he says. In these days, when popular instruction is being
advanced by national schools, it is yet more desirable that no public
declaration should be exacted, the terms of which are unmeaning or
untrue to those who make it, inasmuch as such declaration deteriorates
the wholesome habit of national veracity, and is of the nature of a
fraud upon the public understanding, which becomes more repugnant as
general intelligence increases.
"Your petitioner respectfully submits that the present Parliamentary
oath is open to these objections so long as it is obligatory upon all
members, irrespective of whatever personal and private beliefs they may
hold.
"Your petitioner, therefore, prays, in the interests of public good
faith, that a form of affirmation may be adopted, optional to all
members of Parliament, instead of the present ecclesiastical oath."
Francis Place once explained to me that in the Benthamite view, it was
not warrantable to incur martyrdom unless it was clear that the public
would be gainers by the martyr's loss. In a letter, Mr. J. S. Mill, in
answer to questions I put to him with regard to taking an oath, wrote:--
"I conceive that when a bad law has made the oath a condition to the
performance of a public duty, it may be taken without dishonesty by a
person who acknowledges no binding force in the religious part of the
formality. Unless (as in your own case) he has made it the special and
particular work of his life to testify against such formalities, and
against the belief with which they are connected."
I could not concur with this view. Personal candour is far-reaching in
its effects, and should be cherished where we can, and as far as we can.
Truth is to the life of the mind what air is to the life of the body.
When the mind ceases to breathe truth, the mind is impaired or dies.
It is necessary to add the grounds which actuated me in endeavours to
put an end to the outlawry of opinion. Many beside myself helped to
obtain a law of affirmation, but I was the only person among them all
who had never taken an oath. Sir George Cornewall Lewis demanded in
Parliament how the oath could be a vital grievance to Atheists, whose
throats were furrowed with swallowing it. When summoned on the grand
jury at Clerkenwell I refused to take the oath in the sense the court
attached to it, and I was fined twelve guineas for not taking it. I drew
up a paper showing the privileges given by the law to those who were
honestly unable to swear. They were exempted from the militia, from the
duty of acting as special constable, they could procure the acquittal
of any thief, fraudulent person, or murderer, where their evidence was
necessary to conviction. In some cases the thief has escaped, and the
person robbed has been imprisoned instead, for his contumacy in not
lying. It became known among thieves that where they could find out a
witness against them, who disbelieved in an avenging God, the counsel
defending the thief had only to call the attention of the court to the
fact for the witness to be ordered "to stand down," and the thief would
"leave the court without a stain on his character." Mr. Francis, in
his "History of the Bank of England," relates how Turner, whose fraud
amounted to L10,000, escaped, because the only witness who could swear
decidedly to his handwriting, was a disbeliever in the New Testament.
The jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty."
Sir John Trelawny told me that the fly-leaves I published on the
"Privileges of Sceptics and the Immunity of Thieves" made more
impression upon members of Parliament than any petition sent to the
House. These and similar services, with my lifelong refusal to take the
oath, caused John Stuart Mill to write to me, saying: "It is a great
triumph of freedom of opinion that the Evidence Bill should have passed
both Houses without being seriously impaired. You may justly take to
yourself a good share of the credit of having brought things up to that
pass."*
These instances will no doubt satisfy the reader as to the peril of
entertaining scruples in the face of power. The earliest instance which
concerned me was a case in Birmingham in which several thousand pounds
were left for the establishment of a secular school which I was to
conduct. Not being willing to take the oath, I could not prosecute my
claim. When a son of mine was killed by the recklessness of a driver, I
could not give evidence on the inquest because I could not be sworn.
My private house was thrice robbed by servants who became aware of my
inability to prosecute. When in business in Fleet Street, my property
could be carted away, for which I had no remedy save lying in wait and
knocking down the depredators, which would at the Mansion House have led
to a public scandal and injured the business. Money was left to me which
I could not claim, being an outlaw.
* Blackheath Park, Kent, August 8, 1869.
It would tire the reader to tell him all the instances of the perils
attending scruples. Mr. Roebuck put the case in the House of Commons
against Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Pointing his finger at Sir George,
he asked, "What is the right honourable gentleman going to do? Two men
go into court. One disbelieves in the oath, but he takes it. The other
takes the peril of outlawry rather than profess a faith which he does
not hold. You believe the liar, whom you know to be a liar, and you
reject the evidence of the man who speaks the truth at his peril." I had
asked Mr. Roebuck to speak when the question of affirmation was before
the House. There were then only he, Sir John Trelawny, or Mr. Conyngham
to whom such a question could be put It was upon Mr. Roebuck that I
mostly relied. After his speech I thanked him for doing what no one else
could do so well. He disclaimed any desert of thanks, saying, "I have
only done what Jeremy Bentham taught me."