One of the most unfortunate results of the recent foolish
prosecutions for blasphemy, of which we have had the third -this week, is that it gives audacious and able men who desire nothing more earnestly than a chance of showing their ability, the opportunity of winning a certain amount of intellectual admiration for the defence they make for themselves, and that that admiration is very apt to be placed to the credit of their opinions. In the extremely injudicious, as well as somewhat vin- dictive, second prosecution of Mr. Foote and Mr. Ramsay for rblasphemies published earlier than those for which they have already been sentenced, tried before Lord Coleridge this week, Mr. Foote pleaded his own cause, and made an extremely able de- fence. He did not in any way deny his responsibility for what had been published, but took the ground that it was nothing but the popular equivalent of what men as distinguished as Arnold, and Grote, and Mill, and Shelley, and Lord Amberley, and John Morley, and Swinburne had published with impunity, and some of it not at all more coarse. He denied that it was tpossible to take an effectual distinction on the ground of the style of such attacks on Christianity, when it was admitted that the substance might legally be expressed in graver language, .and he endeavoured to treat the whole law of blasphemy as -simply obsolete.
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