an outlaw is seldom considered a pleasant person, and naturally occupies a dubious place in public estimation. his position is worse than that of an exile, who, if once allowed to return, is reinstated in society, but the outlaw of opinion is never pardoned. where justice turns upon the hinge of the oath, there is no redress for him who has scruples as to taking it. he who has scruples exposes himself to unpleasant comments. he is counted a sort of fastidious crank. all the while it is known that a man without scruples is a knave, who respects nothing save his own interests, and will do anything likely to promote them—even to the commission of robbery or murder—as police-courts disclose. to be scrupulous is to be solicitous as to the rightfulness of a thing proposed to be done. it is plainly the interest of society to encourage those who act upon honest scruples. scruples may be trivial or unfounded—they may be open to objection on that account. nevertheless, the habit of being scrupulous is to be tolerated as conducive to integrity, without which society would be insufferable. it is therefore not desirable that perils should accompany scrupulousness, as i have often seen them do.
the obligatory oath has always been detrimental to public morality. when one oath was imposed on all persons, it was repugnant to their individual sense of truth in many cases, and men, to protect their interests, began to tamper with veracity, and invent new meanings of the terms of the oath. thus the fortunate fastidiousness of truth is broken down.
the christian oath is an ecclesiastical device, framed in the interest of the church, to enforce, under penalty, the recognition and perpetuation of its tenets. he who takes the oath professes to believe that if he breaks it "god will blast his soul in hell for ever." this is the old brutal, terrifying form in which the consequence was expressed. it is softened now, to suit the secular humanity of the age, to a statement that god will hold the oath-taker responsible for its fulfilment. but god's method of holding any one responsible, is by sentencing him to "outer darkness," where there will be "wailing and gnashing of teeth." a very unpleasant region to dwell in. there is no good ground to suppose that such a sentence for such an offence would be passed, but the intimidation is retained. mr. cluer, a london magistrate, said lately that "if the fate of ananias befel all who swore falsely in his court, the floor would be strewn with dead bodies." but the courts fall back upon the pristine meaning of the oath. the magistrate asks a little child, tendered as a witness, "whether she knows, if she does not tell the truth, where she will go to?" and whether she "has never heard of a place called hell or of its keeper, the devil?" if not, he publicly deplores the neglect of the child's education, and declares her to be incapable of telling the truth. every one who took the oath, whether rich or poor, a philosopher or a fool, each professed to believe that the great god of all the worlds, notwithstanding the infinite business he has on hand, was personally present in any dingy court when the oath-taker calls upon him "to witness" that he speaks the truth, and if not, god, who never forgets, burdens his celestial memory with that fact, with a view to eternal retaliation, in case the oath is false. he who takes the oath and does not believe this, lies to begin with, whatever may be the character of his testimony.
to take the oath in any other sense than that in which it is administered to you, is to deceive the court.
"he who imposes the oath, makes it.
not he, who for convenience takes it."
the reliance on the part of those who impose the oath, is that he who takes it believes the terms of it. if the taker takes it in a private sense of his own, the virtue has gone out of the oath, and the court is deceived. if the unitarian takes the oath, not believing in an avenging god, he creates a new oath for himself, in which the compelling power of an eternal terror is absent. he, therefore, does not take the oath of the court, but another of his own invention; and if he made known to the court what he was doing, the court would not receive his testimony. philosophers, who have less belief than unitarians, take the oath. but in the eye of morality it is not less discreditable—perhaps more so, for the philosopher stands for absolute truth, while the unitarian stands only for theological truth.
the trouble was that he who refuses to take the oath of the court, in the sense of the court, became an outlaw, and that was a serious thing. i was myself an outlaw, until i was fifty-two years of age, without the power of obtaining redress where i was wronged, or of punishing fraud or theft from which i suffered, or of protecting the life and property of others, where my evidence was required. my ambition was to be a barrister, but legal friends assured me that the law turned upon the hinge of oath-taking, and that the path of the bar would to me be a path of lying. it happens that i have never taken an oath. when i found that my belief did not coincide with that implied by the oath, i felt precluded from taking it.
this reluctance brought me peril. when the question of a parliamentary oath in lord randolph churchill's days raged, a new doctrine was set up among some partisans of freethought—that an atheist might take the oath. that meant there was no longer any distinction in terms, or any meaning in principle. if an atheist may, for the sake of some advantage before him, make a christian profession, there is no reason why a christian should not make an atheistical profession if it answered his purpose. the apostles made quite a mistake by incurring martyrdom for conscience sake. bruno, servitus, and tyndale need not have gone to the stake, had they only understood that the way to advance the truth was to abandon it, instead of standing to it. if a man is not to stand by the truth when the consequences are against him, there is an end of truth as a principle. it is no longer a duty to suffer for it and maintain it.
it seemed to me that the friends of reason, who rejected theological tenets, should be as scrupulous as to the truth as partisans of superstition have often proved themselves to be, and that the atheist should have as clear a sense of intellectual honour as the quaker, the catholic, or the jew, who all suffered rather than take an oath contrary to their sense of truth. this was regarded as a reflection upon some excellent colleagues of mine, who thought it fatuity to allow an oath to stand in their way, and frustrate their career.
it was brought against me that there were circumstances under which i should be as little scrupulous as other people. major bell, who had incurred great peril in india for the sake of honour, put a question to me in the daily news purporting that, "had i married before 1837 i should not have hesitated at twice invoking the trinity as the church service required? and if i had done so, should i not have perpetrated a piece of hypocrisy?" there is an immoral maxim that "all things are fair in love and war," and it is probable that i should not have hesitated to perpetrate that "piece of hypocrisy," as it would have been the lesser of two evils, but it would not, therefore, cease to be an evil. if under any compulsion of love or war i was induced to perpetrate "apiece of hypocrisy," it would never occur to me to go about saying it was not hypocrisy. i dislike law, custom, or persons who force me to do what i know to be wrong, but no person could do his worst against me, until he prevailed upon me to go about saying it was right.
dr. moncure conway asked whether, if his life was in danger in china, and i could save it by the chinese oath of breaking a saucer, i would not do it? certainly i would, to save dr. conway, if the confucians would permit me, but i should not the less deceive them by pretending to have sworn before them in the chinese sense. but i should regret the necessity, since in no country would i willingly treat truth as a superstition. by taking the "saucer" oath, i should obtain in chinese eyes a validity for my word not really belonging to it. however i might excuse the act, it would still be deceit, nor ought it to be called by any other name. there is no virtuous vagueness in unveracity, and he who in peril uses it would not be justified in carrying it into common life, where lord bacon has warned us, "truth is so useful, that we should make public note of any departure from that excellent habit." major evans bell further argued that because the prince of wales may sign himself my "obedient, humble servant," while not feeling himself bound to act so, the terms of the oath may be likewise regarded as a form of words merely. yet all "forms" which are unreal are unwise and hurtful. but the superscription of the prince is known to be but a false form, and accepted as such, while the oath is a profession of faith. if the prince went into a public court and swore in the name of god that he really was my "obedient, humble servant," i should think him a very shabby prince if the solemnity went for nothing. as i have known major bell expose himself to what his friends believed to be fatal peril, from a noble sense of self-imposed duty, to which neither oath, nor contract, nor any conventional superscription called him, i no more imagine him than i did dr. conway, to really mean what their arguments seemed to imply.
some are for the spirit more than the form. i was for both, and i regard all legislation as immoral which divorces them. referring to these letters, the daily news (december 23, 1881) regarded them as "marked by rectitude of moral judgment, which is recognised by those who most deplore what they think is theological aberration. some such testimony as he gives was almost needed to efface the impression which recent events in and out of the house of commons have made, that moral indifferentism is of necessity associated with religious negation." i was glad of those words at a time when i was fiercely assailed for saying what i did, in the midst of the parliamentary contest which then occupied the attention of the country. my object was to assist the right in the contest, and to defend the free thought cause. had i not spoken then, it would have been in vain to speak afterward. to be silent about principle in the hour of its application would have been fatal to its influence and repute, so far as it might be represented by me.
as far as in my power lay, i left no uncertainty in the mind of parliament as to what was wanted, in lieu of the oath. it was simply a "promise of honour," to declare the truth in matters of testimony, and observe good faith in contracts. one of my petitions to the house of commons ran thus:—
"your petitioner is a person who never took an oath, as it implied theological convictions he did not hold. he, however, has seen persons of far greater knowledge than he possesses, of high social position and authority, and whose example men look up to, take the oath, though it was known to all that they held no belief corresponding thereunto—the opprobrium and outlawry attending the refusal of the oath being more than they would incur. this has led to a practice of public prevarication, that of persons saying a thing and not meaning it, or meaning something else. nowhere is this example more disastrous than in your high assembly, where anything said is conspicuous and its example influential on the conduct of others."
another petition so interested professor j. e. thorold rogers, m.p. (who had held holy orders), that he had copies made of it, and sent one with a letter to each morning paper, saying he regarded it as expressing the "quintessence of political morality." the petition set forth:—
"that it is at all times important that public declarations should be so expressed that any one making them shall be able to say what he means, and mean what he says. in these days, when popular instruction is being advanced by national schools, it is yet more desirable that no public declaration should be exacted, the terms of which are unmeaning or untrue to those who make it, inasmuch as such declaration deteriorates the wholesome habit of national veracity, and is of the nature of a fraud upon the public understanding, which becomes more repugnant as general intelligence increases.
"your petitioner respectfully submits that the present parliamentary oath is open to these objections so long as it is obligatory upon all members, irrespective of whatever personal and private beliefs they may hold.
"your petitioner, therefore, prays, in the interests of public good faith, that a form of affirmation may be adopted, optional to all members of parliament, instead of the present ecclesiastical oath."
francis place once explained to me that in the benthamite view, it was not warrantable to incur martyrdom unless it was clear that the public would be gainers by the martyr's loss. in a letter, mr. j. s. mill, in answer to questions i put to him with regard to taking an oath, wrote:—
"i conceive that when a bad law has made the oath a condition to the performance of a public duty, it may be taken without dishonesty by a person who acknowledges no binding force in the religious part of the formality. unless (as in your own case) he has made it the special and particular work of his life to testify against such formalities, and against the belief with which they are connected."
i could not concur with this view. personal candour is far-reaching in its effects, and should be cherished where we can, and as far as we can. truth is to the life of the mind what air is to the life of the body. when the mind ceases to breathe truth, the mind is impaired or dies.
it is necessary to add the grounds which actuated me in endeavours to put an end to the outlawry of opinion. many beside myself helped to obtain a law of affirmation, but i was the only person among them all who had never taken an oath. sir george cornewall lewis demanded in parliament how the oath could be a vital grievance to atheists, whose throats were furrowed with swallowing it. when summoned on the grand jury at clerkenwell i refused to take the oath in the sense the court attached to it, and i was fined twelve guineas for not taking it. i drew up a paper showing the privileges given by the law to those who were honestly unable to swear. they were exempted from the militia, from the duty of acting as special constable, they could procure the acquittal of any thief, fraudulent person, or murderer, where their evidence was necessary to conviction. in some cases the thief has escaped, and the person robbed has been imprisoned instead, for his contumacy in not lying. it became known among thieves that where they could find out a witness against them, who disbelieved in an avenging god, the counsel defending the thief had only to call the attention of the court to the fact for the witness to be ordered "to stand down," and the thief would "leave the court without a stain on his character." mr. francis, in his "history of the bank of england," relates how turner, whose fraud amounted to ￡10,000, escaped, because the only witness who could swear decidedly to his handwriting, was a disbeliever in the new testament. the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty."
sir john trelawny told me that the fly-leaves i published on the "privileges of sceptics and the immunity of thieves" made more impression upon members of parliament than any petition sent to the house. these and similar services, with my lifelong refusal to take the oath, caused john stuart mill to write to me, saying: "it is a great triumph of freedom of opinion that the evidence bill should have passed both houses without being seriously impaired. you may justly take to yourself a good share of the credit of having brought things up to that pass."*
these instances will no doubt satisfy the reader as to the peril of entertaining scruples in the face of power. the earliest instance which concerned me was a case in birmingham in which several thousand pounds were left for the establishment of a secular school which i was to conduct. not being willing to take the oath, i could not prosecute my claim. when a son of mine was killed by the recklessness of a driver, i could not give evidence on the inquest because i could not be sworn. my private house was thrice robbed by servants who became aware of my inability to prosecute. when in business in fleet street, my property could be carted away, for which i had no remedy save lying in wait and knocking down the depredators, which would at the mansion house have led to a public scandal and injured the business. money was left to me which i could not claim, being an outlaw.
* blackheath park, kent, august 8, 1869.
it would tire the reader to tell him all the instances of the perils attending scruples. mr. roebuck put the case in the house of commons against sir george cornewall lewis. pointing his finger at sir george, he asked, "what is the right honourable gentleman going to do? two men go into court. one disbelieves in the oath, but he takes it. the other takes the peril of outlawry rather than profess a faith which he does not hold. you believe the liar, whom you know to be a liar, and you reject the evidence of the man who speaks the truth at his peril." i had asked mr. roebuck to speak when the question of affirmation was before the house. there were then only he, sir john trelawny, or mr. conyngham to whom such a question could be put it was upon mr. roebuck that i mostly relied. after his speech i thanked him for doing what no one else could do so well. he disclaimed any desert of thanks, saying, "i have only done what jeremy bentham taught me."