Show People Campaign Circolir > o L DUMAS RIGHTS I Jefferson John Stuart Mill and lae aulay In Support of Peoples 1arlj Principles RELIGIOUS LIBERTY To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession pro-fession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty It is time enough for the rightful purposes pur-poses of dill government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order Jefferson In these two sentences is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the Church and what to the State United Slates Supreme Court inlfe Kejnolds case The rights of conscience we never submitted we could not submit Ue are answerable for them to our god The legitimate powers of government govern-ment extend to such actions only as are injurious to others ° ° Constraint may make him worse b > making him n hypocrite but will never make him a truer man It may fix him obstnately in Ins errors but will not cure them Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents aeamst error Jeffersons Aisles on I 1rginia p i6y riiOM that are seditious murderers murder-ers thieves robbers adulterers slanderersc of whatsoever church ought to be punished and suppressed But those whose doctrine is peaceable peace-able and whose manners are pure and blameless ought to be upon equal terms with their fellow subjects sub-jects J0n Lockes Works PROSECUTION AND PERSECUTION If such arguments are to pass current cur-rent it will he I easy to prove that there was never such a tiling as religious re-ligious persecution since the creation There never was a religious persecution persecu-tion in which some odious crime was not justly or unjustly said to be obviously deducible from the doctrines of the persecuted part Ue might say that the Caesars did not persecute the Christians that they only punished men who were charged rightly or wrongly with I burning Rome and with committing the foulest abominations in secret I assemblies and that the reu < al to throw frankincense on the altar of Jupiter was not the crime but only evidence of the crime We might say that the massacre of St Bartholomew Barthol-omew was intended to extirpate not a religious sect but a political part For beyond all doubt the proceedings proceed-ings of the Huguenots from the conspiracy con-spiracy of Amboise to the battle of Ioncontour had given much more trouble to the French monarchy than the Catholics have ever given to the English monarch since the Reformation Refor-mation and that too with much less excuse excuseThe true distinctien is perfectly obvious To punish a man because he has committed a crime or because he is belired though unjustly to have committed a crime is not terse culion To punish a man because je infer from the nature of some doc tnne hich he holds or from the conduct con-duct of other persons who hold the same doctrines urth rim that he will commit crime itpersecution and is in ntty cas foolish and Dieted a S But to argue that because a man is a Catholic he must think it right to murder a heretical > reign r-eign and that because he thinks it right he will attempt to do it and then to found on this conclusion a law for punishing him as if he had done itss plain persecution Man in short is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason rea-son from his belief to his conduct or from one part of hb belief to another ° Let it pass however that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth mihht be lawfully murdered Still the old maxim that what i > the business busi-ness of everybody is the business of I nobody is particulail likely to hold go xl in a case in which a cruel death IS the almost inevitable consequence I of making any attempt Of the ten thousand clergjmen of the Church of England there is scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his countr and friends to preach the Gospel among 5IaJes and who should alter hope laboring of reward indefatigably terminate without his any life bv martyrdom would deserve the warmest admiration Yet we doubt whether ten of the ten thousand ever thought of going on such an expedition expedi-tion Why should we suppose that conscientious motives feeble as they are constantly found to be in a good cause should be omnipotent for evil Jfjejufaj Essay on Jalljm The constitution it is said is essentially es-sentially Christian and therefore to admit Jews to office is to ileMro the co istituti n Nor is the Jew irjured by bung excluded from political poser For no man hiss my right too > to-o er A man has a right to Ins iropeity a man his a tight to be protected from persoml injury i These rights i the law allows to the Jew and wiLls these rights it would be atrocious to interfere But it is mere matter of favor to admit any man to political power and no man can justly complain com-plain that he is shut out from it 5We cannot butadmirutho ingenuity ingenu-ity of this contrivance for shifting the burden of the proof from those to whom it properly belongs and who would we suspect find it rather cumbersome cum-bersome Surely no Christian can I deny that every human being has a ngbt to be allowed ev ery gratification I which produces no harm to others and to be spared every mortification I hirh nrrtHnrpz nn fnnH to ohx i s it not a source of mortification to a class of men that they are excluded from political power I fit be the have on Christian principles a right to be freed from the mortification unless can be shown that their ex lusion is necessary fOii the averting of some greater ir The presump don is eVidently in favor of toleration It is for the prosecutor to make out his case The strange argument which were we-re considering would prove too much een for those who advance it Ifno man has a right to political power then neither Je nor Gentile has such a right The whole foundation of government is taken away But if government be taken awathe property prop-erty and the persons of men are insecure secure and it is acknowledged that men have a right to their propert and to personal security If it be right that the property of men should r > e protected and if tins can nc only be done by means of government then it must be right that government should exist Now there cannot be government unless some person or persons possess fsce power Th ef Therefore it is right that some person or persons should possess political power That is to say some person persons must have a right to po tical l power It is because men are not in the habit of considering what the end of government is that Catholic disabilities disabili-ties and Jewish disabilities have been suffered to exist so long ehearoi essentially Protestant governments and essentially Christian governments I govern-ments words which mean just as much as essentially Protestant cookery cook-ery or essentially Christian horse manship Government exists for the I purpose of keeping the peaceforthe purpose of compelling us to settle our disputes by arbitration instead of tiling them by blows for the purpose pur-pose 01 compelbnrus to supply our wants by industry instead of supplying ing them by rapine This is the only operation for which the machinery of government is peculiarly adapted the only operation which wise govern meats ever propose to themselves as their chief object If there is any class of people who are not interested inter-ested or who do not think themselves them-selves interested m the security of property and the maintenance of order that class ought to have no share of the powers which exist for the purpose of securing property and maintaining order Nothing is so offensive to a man who knows anything of history or of human nature as to hear those who exercise the powers of government I accuse any sect of foreign attachments attach-ments If there be any proposition universal true in politics it is this that foreign attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule It has always been the trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home and then to complain that they look for relief abroad to divide society and to wonder that it is not united to gov ern as if a section of the state were the whole and to censure the other sections sec-tions of the state for their want of patriotic spirit iIn the Jews have not felt towards England like children it is because she has treated them like a stepmother There is no feeling which more certainly develops itself in the minds of men living under tolerabl good government than the feeling I of patriotism Since the beginning be-ginning of the world there never was any nation or any large portion of any nation not cruelly oppressed which was wholl destitute of that feeling To make it therefore ground of accusation against a class of men that they are not patriotic U the most vulgar I legerdemain of sophis tr It is the logic which the wolf employs against the lamb It is to accuse the mouth of the stream of poisoning the source Rulers must not be suffered thus to absolve themselves of their solemn responsibility It does not lie in their mouths to say that a sect is not patriotic It is their business to make I it patriotic History and reason clearly indicate the means The English Jews are as far as we can see precisely what our government has made them They are precisely what any sect what any class of men treated as they have been treated treat-ed would hive been If all the red haired people in Europe had during centuries bern outraged and oppressed op-pressed banished from this place imprisoned in that deprived of their money deprived i of their teeth convicted kti i J tl ictcd of the most improbable crimes on the feeblest evidence dragged at horses tails hanged tortured burned alive if when manners became milder mild-er they had still been subject to debasing de-basing restrictions and exposed to vulgar insultslocked up in particular streets in some countries pelted and ducked by the rabble in others excluded ex-cluded ev eryts here comma gistncits ind honors w hat would be the pa Inotism of entlemen with red hair And if under such circumstances proposition were made for admitting red haired men to office how striking a speech might an eloquent admirer nr nr n11 I r n so rev olutioniry i a nieisure These men he might say scarcely consider con-sider themselves as Englishmen They think a red haired Frenchman or a red limed German more closely connected with them than a man with brown hair born in their own parish If a foreign sovereign pat rouizrs red hair they love him better than their own native king They are not Englishmen they cannot be Englishmen nature has forbidden it experience proves it to be impossible impossi-ble Right to political power they have none for no man has a right to political power Iet I them enjo personal security let their propert be under the protection of the law But if they ak for leave to exercise power over a community of whidi they are orfl half members a cum munit the constitution of which is essentially dark haired let us answer them in the words of our wise ancestors an-cestors Aolumus leges Anghtf iitu tan ° The doctrine of predestination in the opinion of man people tends to make those who hold it utterly immoral And certainly it would seem that a mil who believes his eternal destin to be already irrevocably fixed is likely to indulge his passions without restraint and to neglect his religious duties If he is an heir of w nth Ins exertions must be unavailing If he is preordained preor-dained to life they must be superfluous super-fluous But would it be wise to punish pun-ish ever man who holds the higher I doctrines of Galvanism is if he had actually committed all those crime which we know some Antmomuns to have commuted Assuredly not The fact notoriously is that there are many Calvinists as moral in their conduct is any Armmian and mm Armmians is loose as any Calvinist It is altogether impossible to reason from the opinions which a nun professes to his feelings and his actions and in fact no person is ever such a fool is to reason thus except when lie wants a pretext for persecuting perse-cuting his neighbors A Christian is commanded under the strongest sanctions to be just in all hi > dealings deal-ings Yet to how many of the twentyfour millions of proe > sins Christians in these islands would amman am-man m his senses lend a thousand pounds without security A man who should act for one day on the supposition that ill the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined before mjit and roman ro-man ever dues act on that supi > osi lion m any of the ordinary concerns of life in borrowing i in lending in buying or in selling But when any of our fellowcreatures are to be oppressed op-pressed the case is different Then we represent those motives winch we kiuw to be so feeble for good as omnipotent for evil Then we lay to the chire of our victims all the I vices and follies to which their doctrines doc-trines however remtitel seem to tend Ue forget that the same weakness weak-ness the same LUlly the same disposition dis-position to prefer the present to the future which make men worse than a good religion make them better thin a bad one It was in this way that our ancestors ances-tors reasoned and that some people in ourown time still reasonabout the Catholics A Papist believes himself bound to obey the pope The pope has issued a bull deposing Queen Ttths n 00 DI will treat her grace as an usurper Therefore every Papist is a traitor Therefore ever Papist ought to be hanged drawn and quartered To this logic we owe some of the most hateful laws that ever disgraced our history Surely the answer lies on the surface The Church of Rome may have commanded these men to treat the queen as an usurper But she has commanded them to do man other things which they have never done She enjoins her priests to observe ob-serve strict purity You are always taunting them with their licentiousness licentious-ness She commands all followers to fast often to be charitable to the poor to take no interest for money to fight no duels to see no plays Do they obey these injunctions If it be the fact that very few of them strictly observe her precepts when her precepts are opposed to their I passions and interests may not toy ally may nut humanity may not the love of ease may not the fear of death be sufficient to prevent them from executing those wicked orders which she has issued against the sovereign of England When we know that man of these people do not c5re enough for their religion togo to-go without beef on a Friday for itt why should we it-t that they will run the risk of being racked and hanged for it People are now reasoning about the Jews as our fathers reasoned about the Papists The law which is inscribed on the walls of the synagogues syna-gogues prohibits coveteousness But if we were to say that a Jew mort gagee would not foreclose because God had commanded him not to covet his neighbors house ever body would think us out of our wits Yet it passes for an argument to say ifto that a Jew will take no interest inC the prosperity of the country in which Erospent t i i et he lives that he will not care how bad its laws and policy may be how I heavily it may be taxed how often it max be conquered and given up to spoil because God has promised that by some unknown means and at some undetermined time perhaps ten thousand years hence the Jews shall migrate to Palestine Is not this the most profound ignorance of human nature Doe not know that what is remote and indefinite affects men far less than what is near and certain The argument too applies to Christians as strongly as to Jews The Christian believes as well as the Jew that at some future period the present order of things will come to an end Nay many Christians be here that the Messiah will establish a kingdom on earth and reign visibly over all its inhabitants Whether this doctrine be orthodox or not we shall not here inquire The number o people who hold l It is very much greater than the number of Jews residing re-siding in England It is preached from the pulpits both of the Scottish and ol the English church Noblemenand members of I 4 Parliament have written in defnce of it Now wherein does this doctrine doc-trine differ as far as its political ten dene is concerned from the doctrine doc-trine of the Jews If a Jew is unto un-to legislate for us because he believes that he or his remote descendants ill be removed to Palestine can we safely open the House of Commons IKf to a fifihmonarchy man who expects that before this generation shall pass away all the kingdoms of the earth will be swallowed up in one divine empire Macaalays Essay on the Gnl Disabilities of the Jexs THE SPHERE OF GOVERNMENT The object of this essay is to assert as-sert one very simple principle as entitled i r titled to govern absolutely the I deal uses of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of public opinion That principle is that the sole end for which mankind are warranted war-ranted in i interfering with the liberty of action of any f their number Is selfprotection That the only purpose pur-pose for which power can be right fully exercised over any member o f a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others His own good either physical or moral is not a sufficient warrant He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it wilt be be ter for him to do so because it will make him happier because in the opinion ol others to do so would be wise or even right The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that w Inch concerns others Human liberty demands liberty ot conscience in the most comprehen she sense liberty of thought and fechnj absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects practi cal or speculative scientific moral or theological The liberty of publishing pub-lishing and expressing opinions may seem to fall under a different primes pie since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual vvhic conceins other people but being of almost as much importance as he liberty of thought itself and resting in great part on the same reasons is incticall msepanbl from it No society is complete free in which these liberties do not exist ab solute and unqualified The opinion which it is attempted t o suppress by authority I amy pos f bly be true Those who desire i to I suppress it L course deny its truth out IlICY are not miainuie they hive no authority to decide the question ques-tion for all mankind To refuse a hearing to an opinion because they are sure that it is false is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainly If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were to be found of a contrary opinIon opin-ion mankind would be no more ius titled in silencing that one than he if he had the power would be justified justi-fied in shearing mankind Strange it is that men should admit the validity of arguments for l itLuoiifctmg r oiifctmg i free discussion but obiect to their being pushed to an extreme not seeing that unless reasons are good for an extreme case they are not good for allY case Strange that they should imagine that they arc not assuming alhbility when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful but thin that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain that is because they are certain that it is Certain But I must be permitted to observe tint it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine be it what it may which I E rlbii mil 1 an assumption of infallibility i It is the undertaking to decide till que lion brothers without allowing Silent 10 hear what can be said on this contrar side AIII I I denounce and reprobate tins pretension not the less if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions I No one can be a peat thinker who docs not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it snay lead But the strongest of all the anii ments ngams the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that when it doe interfere the odds ire that it interferes wronhy land l-and ill the wrong place The opinion of a majority tm insed as a law on the mi i rity on < iisti > ns of self regarding conduct is quite as likely to be wrong as right for ill these cases public spin ion means at the best some peoples peo-ples i imon of what is good or bad lor olhrr peoilf I while very often it does not mean that the publicwit she most perfect indifference pass inc over the pleasure or convenience of Im e Ioe I conduct they ensure and coisiderug only their own preference There are musty who consider as an injur to themselves ssiy conduct which they hive a alit aste for and resent it a < n > outnge on their feelings as a religious bigot when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others has ben known to retort that they disregard his feelings by persisting i in their infrethn thn ibonunible worship or creed Bu there is no parity between the feel leg of i person for Ins own opinion and the feeling mother who is of fendid at Ins hodtng it no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse and the desire of the right owner to keep it And i persons per-sons taste is as much his own peculiar pecu-liar concern as his opinion or his purscJohn Stjart JfHfs Essay fn Ijbcrty |