or his private spite.

"Blasphemy is entirely a matter of opinion. What is blasphemy
in one country is piety in another. Progress tends to reduce
it from a crime to an affair of taste. To deal with it in the
bad spirit of the old laws, which are only unrepealed because
they have been treated as obsolete, is to outrage the conscience
of civilisation, and to violate that liberty of the press which
Bentham justly called 'the foundation of all other liberties.'
If opinions are not forced on people's attention, if they are
expressed in publications which are sold, which can be patronised
or neglected, and which must be deliberately sought before they
can be read; then, unless they contain incitements to crime,
they are entitled to immunity from molestation, and to interfere
with them is the height of gratuitous impertinence."

In the ordinary course our Indictment would have been tried at the
Old Bailey. The grand jury found a true bill against us, after being
charged by the Recorder, Sir Thomas Chambers, who addressed them as
fellow Christians, quite forgetful of the fact that Jews and Deists
are eligible as jurymen no less than orthodox believers. According
to the newspapers this bigot described our blasphemous libels as
"shocking," and said that "it was impossible for any Christian man
to read them without feeling that they came within that description,
and they ought to return a true bill." This same Sir Thomas Chambers
is a patron of piety, especially when it takes the form of aggressive
polemics. Some time afterwards he joined a committee, with the late
Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Mayor Fowler, and other religious worthies,
whose object was to raise a testimonial to Samuel Kinns, an obscure
author who has written a stupid volume on "Moses and Geology" for