beyond what is necessary for the maintenance of natural rights, has never been among the rights belonging to man as a species, and therefore can never properly be delegated to the law. Nor are the treason statutes needful; for he who commits violence personally or by deputy is liable to the penalties of the law, and can only avoid them, either by an act of indemnity afterwards granted by those who consider the benefit attained by such vio lence to be great enough to justify the dispensing with the strictness of law on that one occasion;-or by becom ing great enough to be above the law, and in that case it should be remembered that he who cannot be made to submit to the penalty for murder or robbery, would not be more amenable to the penalties of treason. Those slain in a warfare not legally authorized are murdered; and the murderers may be prosecuted for what they have done; those who levy forced contributions are robbers, and must abide the consequence: those who assemble in numbers likely to occasion a breach of the peace, are punishable for a riot if they do not disperse when warned to do so. There is no part of treason, therefore, which is not provided for by the common criminal law, except that of the culpable imagining; but that, if it proceed not to culpable acts, will hardly now be held a crime.

When the statutes of the twenty-fifth of Edward III. were passed, society was very differently constituted: the penalties attached to robbery and murder were neither well defined nor rigorously enforced, and a powerful noble could rob his poor neighbors with impunity: the savage treason laws therefore were but the natural produce of a semi-barbarous age, where the law itself being weak, the hand of the monarch was made strong in order to execute it. That period is past, and the last successful traitors in 1688 ought not to have left a law in existence from which they themselves had so narrowly escaped, to clutch heads as noble as their own in after times.

There is yet another reason for the repeal of the treason laws: they are worse than useless. It has already been noticed that it never was held a dishonoring crime, and we have of late years seen vagabonds, who had no other way of attaining celebrity, attempt the sovereign's life by

way of obtaining the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of a trial for high treason. This was made manifest by the effect at once produced by the wise enactment on occasion of those attempts on her present majesty. The moment the celebrity of a traitor was taken away and the offender was subjected to the dishonor of a whipping, the crime was attempted no more.

It appears, then, that in some cases the treason statutes are superfluous, in others absolutely mischievous, in others that they have proved nugatory, as in that part of them relating to the king's compassion which, it is well remembered, could not be executed in the only case since Henry VIII. in which any proceeding of this kind was attempted, and that thus a fair case is made out for their repeal. I need hardly remind the commissioners that the Roman law which they allude to was the support of a tyranny so intolerable that every good Englishman must pray that the crimen læsæ majestatis may never be heard of in England. It should sleep with the Cesars, of whom alone it was worthy.

To the second division, namely, "offences against religion and the established church," I must in like manner object; for social law, as we have already seen, can take cognizance only of injuries done to the members of the society under its protection in their persons or property. We must therefore inquire what injury is done by the offender against religion or the established church to the other members of the society of which he forms one. "He who impugns the Christian religion," says Blackstone, "is punishable at common law ... for Christianity is part of the laws of England,"* and he justifies the punishment of such offenders by saying that the sanctity of an oath, on which the evidence in courts of law is dependent, will be weakened and indeed rendered wholly nugatory where the person taking it has no belief in the existence of a God, or a future state; and thus the offence must strike at the very root of all social law. But with all due deference to so great an authority, it may be questioned

* Comm., book iv. c. 4.

whether the mere outward profession of a belief gives any security to society, and what more can human laws enforce? Many a voluptuary, an ambitious man,—or a hard, griping miser, thinks as little of, and cares as little for a future state, as the man who openly professes his disbelief; is the oath of the one at all more binding on him than that of the other? But it will be said that the open profession and promulgation of this disbelief injure by its example. Yet, though it be of infinite importance to navigation that the Newtonian system of astronomy should be believed and acted on, who thinks of punishing the clown who may obstinately assert that the sun moves round the earth? No one who is able to judge for himself believes this, or is in the least danger of being seduced into believing it: and are we so little convinced of the truth of revelation as to dread that those who really believe it will give up their conviction the first time that they are asked to do so? Certainly among those who call themselves Christians there are numbers who are so only in name: these doubtless may easily be led into any extravagance; but it may well be questioned if the cause of religion gains anything by the example of a man who attends regularly on holy ordinances yet scruples not to corrupt his neighbor's wife or defraud him of his property in the meantime. The man who professes unbelief is far less dangerous to society than this kind of religious hypocrite, for the infidel at least carries his colors at the mast head and deceives no one. The injury done to the believer is none; for the good Providence of God cannot be quenched by the breath of man; and nothing more is requisite to make the teaching of irreligious doctrine wholly ineffectual, than the due instruction of the people, so that they may be capable of believing on conviction, without which religion becomes superstition, and is as useless towards guiding the life and conduct as atheism itself. But it is easier to imprison one man for teaching false doctrine, than to instruct thousands in the truth, and thus legislators become intolerant through mere indolence: a poor excuse for so glaring a departure from the great principles of all human law.

If indeed unbelief should arrive at that point of fana

ticism which leads to interrupting and annoying others in their worship, this is an offence in law; for it is an act of outward violence, and may justly be restrained; since otherwise the party attacked would be forced into defending his great right of adoring the Creator, and a breach of the peace would ensue, which it is the especial business of social law to prevent; but until it arrives at this point, no one is injured, nor has the law any just cause for interference. For as none can compel the mind to receive an opinion, and as we have already seen that seduction to evil is not a crime punishable by social law, if the seduced party be a willing agent,-so the atheist, let him preach his doctrine as he will, commits no legal offence: for he may observe the moral law written in his heart, and submit to the government of the country as well as another; and his converts, if he make any, will not necessarily do otherwise. If indeed any one should preach that murder and robbery were to be practised, and were to make converts to such a doctrine, society would have a right to interfere to prevent such preaching, because it has a direct tendency to encourage the kind of violence which the law is intended to repress: but we are not to assume this constructively, and say that if the doctrine of future rewards and punishments be taken away such consequences must of necessity follow: for though among such as are not influenced by higher motives, a vague dread of the future may restrain from crime sometimes, yet the higher tone of mind is that where a man honors his own nature too much to degrade it, and loves good for the sake of the good itself rather than for the reward attached to it. Such a man may act nobly though he look for no reward; and therefore we cannot in justice attribute a consequence to an opinion which the holder of it disclaims, and which his life may possibly disclaim yet more effectually. But if the opinion should beget the conduct we expect, then the law will take cognizance of the crime without asking what the opinion was which engendered it: for, as has been already observed, it is held, and justly held by high legal authorities that the intent to commit the crime, not the motive or opinion which caused that intent to be formed, is the part of the offence which falls within the pro

vince of criminal jurisprudence. God judges the motive, -man the act, and this is as it should be; for the small knowledge possessed by human beings hardly enables them to read their own motives aright; still less can they judge those of others.

I have argued the point here upon its general bearings, without referring to the particular offences relating to religion marked out by the law, and as if they were all included under one general head; though the chief of the prosecutions which have occurred of late years, wherein religion was held in a manner the plaintiff, have been included under the head of blasphemous libel. But it matters not under what form these prosecutions are insti tuted religion cannot be taught by law. God is able to vindicate his own rights without the assistance of the judge; and it should not be forgotten by those who advocate the system of maintaining the right faith of the people by pains and penalties, that when the Lord of life was contented to offer up the mortal clothing which he wore, for the ransom of his enslaved creatures, it was under a charge of blasphemy that he suffered. Nor was the charge without foundation if it were allowed to shortsighted man to regulate the intercourse between the Creator and his creatures, by his own, as he thinks, or thodox creed. The priests and rulers of the Jews had a divine revelation on which their polity was founded; a fresh teacher arose, a poor man, who drew a large party after him, and who professed his intention of making a complete change in the government and religion of the state. Instead of inquiring if his doctrine might not per chance be true notwithstanding its novelty, or if indeed they might not be found at last to fight against God, they shut their ears to all reasoning, assumed that they knew better than the ignorant people who followed him, and he was executed as a traitor to the Roman Emperor, and a blasphemer against the Jewish religion. Let it be remembered too that the Reformation of the Church was opposed as an unorthodox, and almost a blasphemous movement, till it had proved successful, and that almost all the benefits of civil and religious liberty which we now enjoy sprung from determined heresy on the one