acle in the way of
the defence. The publisher was sentenced to a year's imprisonment.

This was not the end of Paine prosecutions. In 1811 a Third Part of the
Age of Reason appeared, and Eaton the publisher was condemned to
eighteen months' imprisonment and to stand in the pillory once a month.
The judge, Lord Ellenborough, said in his charge, that "to deny the
truths of the book which is the foundation of our faith has never been
permitted." The poet Shelley addressed to Lord Ellenborough a scathing
letter. "Do you think to convert Mr. Eaton to your religion by
embittering his existence? You might force him by torture to profess
your tenets, but he could not believe them except you should make them
credible, which perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please the
God you worship by this exhibition of your zeal? If so, the demon to
whom some nations offer human hecatombs is less barbarous than the deity
of civilized society!" In 1819 Richard Carlisle was prosecuted for
publishing the Age of Reason and sentenced to a large fine and three
years' imprisonment. Unable to pay the fine he was kept in prison for
three years. His wife and sister, who carried on the business

[174] and continued to sell the book, were fined and imprisoned soon
afterwards and a whole host of shop assistants.

If his publishers suffered in England, the author himself suffered in
America where bigotry did all it could to make the last years of his
life bitter.

The age of enlightenment began in Germany in the middle of the
eighteenth century. In most of the German States, thought was
considerably less free than in England. Under Frederick the Great's
father, the philosopher Wolff was banished from Prussia for according to
the moral teachings of the Chinese sage Confucius a praise which, it was
thought, ought to be reserved for Christianity. He returned after the
accession of Frederick, under whose tolerant rule Prussia was an asylum
for those writers who suffered for their opinions in neighbouring
States. Frederick, indeed, held the view which was held by so many
English rationalists of the time, and is still held widely enough, that
freethought is not desirable for the multitude, because they are
incapable of understanding philosophy. Germany felt the influence of the
English Deists, of the French freethinkers, and of Spinoza; but in the
German rationalistic propaganda of this period there is nothing very
original or interesting.

[175]