[TO THE EDITOR OF ran " SPECS' ATOR."] SIR,—It may
be quite true, as you say, that under the present law against blasphemy, writers like Mr. Matthew Arnold ought
not logically to escape the punishment which has been inflicted on Mr. Foote. That is a good reason for altering the law, but I do not think that it is a good reason for granting immunity to such outrages on the Christian religion as some of the articles in the Freethinker. Are you correct in stating that "nobody can say that the Freethinker is obtruded cruelly on people who do not want to read it ?" I cannot speak for others, but copies of it have been sent to me through the post from the office of the paper ; and one of those copies was so full of filthy obscenity, that I believe it might have come under the terms of Lord Campbell's Act.
For myself, I have always wondered that a writer of Mr. Matthew Arnold's eminence and refinement should have per- mitted himself to wound Christian feeling by his simile of "the three Lord Shaftesburys." But surely there is a very great difference between Mr. Arnold's refined satire, and the coarse ribaldry of the Freethinker ? The one evidently intended to insult and wound ; the other, I am sure, did not. Such articles in the Freethinker as I have seen were not simply "coarse and vulgar,"—they were brutal and indecent. Mr. Holyoake is an outspoken Atheist, and he belongs to the social status of Mr. Foote rather than to that of Mr. Matthew Arnold. Yet I have never read any attack on Christianity from the pen of Mr. Holyoake which outraged my feelings or diminished my respect for Mr. Holyoake. So long as a man merely addresses himself to my reason, and does not wantonly insult my sacred convic- tions, I think there ought to be no law to silence him. It was- hy descending into the arena of open discussion that Christi- anity won its original triumphs, and a Christian surely ought to ask for nothing better than a fair field and no favour. It is not in the interest of Christianity that I would put down even indecent attacks upon it, but in the interest of good order and right feeling. I would protect the honest convictions of a sincere Atheist like Mr. Holyoake or of an Agnostic like Mr. Herbert Spencer as scrupulously as 1 would those of a Christian. The
only serviceable weapon against attacks on Christianity from such quarters is fair and courteous argument. I should regard the imprisonment, even for a day, of men like Mr. Holyoake, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Huxley, for their opinions on reli- gion, as a greater outrage on Christianity than anything that any of those gentlemen has ever written. More harm has been done to Christianity in all ages by its injudicious defenders than by its open foes.—I am, Sir, &c., lifeLcomi 1 New Burlington Street, TV., March. 12th.
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