c forms of religion are extremely offensive to
those who do not believe them." If the law does not in any sense
recognize the truth of Christian doctrine, it would have to apply the
same rule to the Salvation Army. In fact the law "can be explained and
justified only on what I regard as its true principle--the principle of
persecution." The opponents of Christianity may justly say: If
Christianity is false, why is it to be attacked only in polite language?
Its goodness depends on its truth. If you

[246] grant its falsehood, you cannot maintain that it deserves special
protection. But the law imposes no restraint on the Christian, however
offensive his teaching may be to those who do not agree with him;
therefore it is not based on an impartial desire to prevent the use of
language which causes offence; therefore it is based on the hypothesis
that Christianity is true; and therefore its principle is persecution.

Of course, the present administration of the common law in regard to
blasphemy does not endanger the liberty of those unbelievers who have
the capacity for contributing to progress. But it violates the supreme
principle of liberty of opinion and discussion. It hinders uneducated
people from saying in the only ways in which they know how to say it,
what those who have been brought up differently say, with impunity, far
more effectively and far more insidiously. Some of the men who have been
imprisoned during the last two years, only uttered in language of
deplorable taste views that are expressed more or less politely in books
which are in the library of a bishop unless he is a very ignorant
person, and against which the law, if it has any validity, ought to have
been enforced. Thus the law, as now administered, simply penalizes bad
taste and places disabilities

[247] upon uneducated freethinkers. If their words offend their audience
so far as to cause a disturbance, they should be prosecuted for a breach
of public order, [1] not because their words are blasphemous. A man who
robs or injures a church, or even an episcopal palace, is not prosecuted
for sacrilege, but for larceny or malicious damage or something of the
kind.

The abolition of penalties for blasphemy was proposed in the House of
Commons (by Bradlaugh) in 1889 and rejected. The reform is urgently
needed. It would "prevent the recurrence at irregular intervals of
scandalous prosecutions which have never in any one instance benefited
any one, lea