PARLIAMENT AND UNBELIEVERS.
THE scene on Wednesday, when Mr. Bradlaugh's Affirma- tion Bill was carried by a majority of 100, after a short debate in which the Government did not officially intervene at all, afforded a very curious and striking contrast to the scenes which used to take place month after month, and Session after Session, during the Parliament which was dissolved in 1885. Mr. Gladstone was then in the majority on all official questions, and is now in the minority. But Mr. Gladstone, when the leader of a great majority, was always defeated, and defeated sometimes by considerable numbers, on the oaths question ; while now that he is in a minority on all official questions, the policy which he advocated unsuccessfully some few years ago is adopted by the House without so much as a serious struggle —for Mr. Gladstone himself did not utter a word, and the victory was gained in person by the very man whom the Liberal Parliament of 1880-85 so resolutely refused to admit to a place in the House of Commons. The Conservative House in 1888 reverses the decision of the Liberal House in 1883, but reverses it in the Liberal sense, and that without even a discussion that can fairly be called a contest. Nothing is plainer than that the whole House is in effect agreed at the present moment, though a division was taken on the second read- ing; for the amendment was not one which even pretended to condemn on principle Mr. Bradlaugh's proposal. It was argued in a spirit even more moderate than could have been gathered from the drift of the amendment itself. No real objection was taken to the substitution of an affirmation for an oath in the case of unbelievers, and the whole drift of the argument against Mr. Bradlaugh's, Affirmation Bill was directed to showing that the oath should still be imposed in cases where it is really likely to bind the conscience of the person taking it, more than a " solemn " affirmation possibly could do ; and to that view no substantial resistance was made. Indeed, in the very remarkable speech of Mr. De Lisle, it was pointed out that it is impossible "to make a thing solemn by calling it solemn." You can, of course, make it a serious matter so far as this goes, that persons who think nothing serious except their own suffering, may be told that they will suffer the penalties of perjury if they be convicted of false affirmations. But that is only making the matter appeal seriously to their selfishness, and not making it in any sense solemn. Doubtless it is perfectly right that the Courts of Justice shall be enabled to make the sanction for the testimony of witnesses as binding upon their consciences as it is possible to make it, even though it be admitted that in the case of the growing class of un- believers, there is no machinery in existence for binding their consciences as effectually as the consciences of believers in God can usually be bound by requiring them to take an oath of the truth of their assertion. Mr. De Lisle himself gave the most startling proof of this when he declared that a serious Roman Catholic might think it a positive duty to make a false affirma- tion in cases where he would think it a mortal sin to swear a false oath. To us, such a state of mind seems totally perverted. We could perfectly understand a man's saying that he would commit any sin, however grave, rather than compromise the honour of one to whom he felt that he owed fidelity ; that is only saying that he would rather sin than give pain to one to whom he owed love or protection ; and there are many men who would say that. But to doubt that deliberate false testimony, whether given under oath or not, is a grave sin, seems to us a moral impossibility. Still, if a man speaking with as much grave and earnest purpose as Mr. De Lisle, can really hold that false testimony given without a direct appeal to God to punish its falsehood may be under the circumstances right, while false testimony given with such an appeal is positively sinful, we must all see, as Parliament evidently sees, that a great diminution is taking place in the security for truthful evidence in any nation in which the number of people who do not believe in God is rapidly increasing, and that it would be both foolish and wrong to give ordinary witnesses in Courts of Justice their choice between swearing and affirming, even though it may be right, whenever the Judge is satisfied that the oath would really be a, mockery and wholly fail to bind the con- science, to permit the substitution of an affirmation in its place. On these two points Parliament seems to be agreed.
We may call an " affirmation " solemn if we please, and to religious people who object conscientiously to oaths, it will be as solemn as an oath. But to people who have no faith, the affirmation, though it may be a matter of serious personal moment, cannot be what the word " solemn " properly implies ; it cannot have any sanction beyond the affirmer's private sense of right and wrong, and the personal apprehensions which a false affirmation may inspire.
It is, we think, very remarkable that while the Conservative House of Commons, now in possession of political power, grasps this point quite clearly, and is determined to do all in its power to make public testimony "solemn," where the means of making it solemn still remain, it has given up so completely the hope to which a Liberal Parliament clung so tenaciously a very short time ago, that it can prevent some of the evil consequences of the decay of religion by excluding those who have no religious belief from many of the privileges of citizens. The present Conservative Parliament, on the other hand, resigns itself without a struggle to the very course against which many Liberals fought furiously then, and fought not without the hope of exciting the constituencies into something like enthusiasm in favour of exclusion. What is now known, and known so clearly that it is not thought worth while to challenge a discussion on the point, is that you strengthen the cause of unbelief by subjecting it to anything like artificial disadvantages. Mr. Gladstone saw this plainly in 1883, and the whole of his great speech in favour of the rejected Affirma- tion Bill was founded on the principle that we have already gone too far in admitting the individual responsibility of men for their own faith, to subject to civil or political disabilities even those who regard an oath as an appeal to a Being who does not exist, whether this is to be effected by imposing on them a form of words which would in their mouths be a mockery and a hypocrisy, or by refusing to regard them as trustworthy members of the body politic. The former course is not only useless, but mischievous, since it lowers the tone of public honour; the latter course is quite as mischievous through securing for the unbeliever the sympathy of all who see him suffering for an unbelief for which they think him not morally responsible. This extraordinary and sudden collapse of the hope that by making unbelievers suffer for an incapacity which is nevertheless recognised as a serious inca- pacity for inspiring the same confidence as religious believers are capable of inspiring, you diminish the danger of unbelief to society at large, is, indeed, a very remarkable phenomenon. Even Conservatives have wholly abandoned now a hope which less than five years ago a considerable number of Liberals enter- tained. It is felt as strongly as ever that unbelief loosens the mortar of society ; that in the most degraded classes, even superstition may make men trustworthy where scepticism would make them utterly unworthy of the smallest credit ; but none the less we are all resolved to give up stamping unbelief with the stamp of public distrust, and to let unbelievers see that they are to be moral lepers no longer. We believe that the decision is profoundly wise, and yet we are amazed at the completeness and rapidity of its triumph in a Parliament which is undoubtedly permeated far more deeply than the last with prepossessions against every disorganising change. The explanation probably is that con- servative-minded men feel that any attempt to inflict disabili- ties on unbelievers would now disorganise society far more seriously than even the very serious dangers which unbelief, if treated respectfully, must necessarily bring. It is a choice of evils. We must to some extent lose confidence in those who do not hold themselves responsible to any being higher than man ; but we should do more harm by inflicting a sense of injury on unbelievers, and by increasing the just sympathy felt with them by those who are not unbelievers, than we can do by admitting to perfect social equality persons who are not under those obligations to speak the truth which religious convictions undoubtedly impose.
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