\documentclass[DIV=12,%
BCOR=10mm,%
headinclude=false,%
footinclude=false,open=any,%
fontsize=11pt,%
twoside,%
paper=210mm:11in]%
{scrbook}
\usepackage[noautomatic]{imakeidx}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{alltt}
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usepackage[shortlabels]{enumitem}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
\def\hsout{\bgroup \ULdepth=-.55ex \ULset}
% https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/22410/strikethrough-in-section-title
% Unclear if \protect \hsout is needed. Doesn't looks so
\DeclareRobustCommand{\sout}[1]{\texorpdfstring{\hsout{#1}}{#1}}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
% avoid breakage on multiple
and avoid the next [] to be eaten
\newcommand*{\forcelinebreak}{\strut\\*{}}
\newcommand*{\hairline}{%
\bigskip%
\noindent \hrulefill%
\bigskip%
}
% reverse indentation for biblio and play
\newenvironment*{amusebiblio}{
\leftskip=\parindent
\parindent=-\parindent
\smallskip
\indent
}{\smallskip}
\newenvironment*{amuseplay}{
\leftskip=\parindent
\parindent=-\parindent
\smallskip
\indent
}{\smallskip}
\newcommand*{\Slash}{\slash\hspace{0pt}}
% http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3033/forcing-linebreaks-in-url
\PassOptionsToPackage{hyphens}{url}\usepackage[hyperfootnotes=false,hidelinks,breaklinks=true]{hyperref}
\usepackage{bookmark}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage{english}
\setmainfont{LinLibertine_R.otf}[Script=Latin,%
Ligatures=TeX,%
Path=/usr/share/fonts/opentype/linux-libertine/,%
BoldFont=LinLibertine_RB.otf,%
BoldItalicFont=LinLibertine_RBI.otf,%
ItalicFont=LinLibertine_RI.otf]
\setmonofont{cmuntt.ttf}[Script=Latin,%
Ligatures=TeX,%
Scale=MatchLowercase,%
Path=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/cmu/,%
BoldFont=cmuntb.ttf,%
BoldItalicFont=cmuntx.ttf,%
ItalicFont=cmunit.ttf]
\setsansfont{cmunss.ttf}[Script=Latin,%
Ligatures=TeX,%
Scale=MatchLowercase,%
Path=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/cmu/,%
BoldFont=cmunsx.ttf,%
BoldItalicFont=cmunso.ttf,%
ItalicFont=cmunsi.ttf]
\newfontfamily\englishfont{LinLibertine_R.otf}[Script=Latin,%
Ligatures=TeX,%
Path=/usr/share/fonts/opentype/linux-libertine/,%
BoldFont=LinLibertine_RB.otf,%
BoldItalicFont=LinLibertine_RBI.otf,%
ItalicFont=LinLibertine_RI.otf]
\renewcommand*{\partpagestyle}{empty}
% global style
\pagestyle{plain}
\usepackage{indentfirst}
% remove the numbering
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-2}
% remove labels from the captions
\renewcommand*{\captionformat}{}
\renewcommand*{\figureformat}{}
\renewcommand*{\tableformat}{}
\KOMAoption{captions}{belowfigure,nooneline}
\addtokomafont{caption}{\centering}
\deffootnote[3em]{0em}{4em}{\textsuperscript{\thefootnotemark}~}
\addtokomafont{disposition}{\rmfamily}
\addtokomafont{descriptionlabel}{\rmfamily}
\frenchspacing
% avoid vertical glue
\raggedbottom
% this will generate overfull boxes, so we need to set a tolerance
% \pretolerance=1000
% pretolerance is what is accepted for a paragraph without
% hyphenation, so it makes sense to be strict here and let the user
% accept tweak the tolerance instead.
\tolerance=200
% Additional tolerance for bad paragraphs only
\setlength{\emergencystretch}{30pt}
% (try to) forbid widows/orphans
\clubpenalty=10000
\widowpenalty=10000
% given that we said footinclude=false, this should be safe
\setlength{\footskip}{2\baselineskip}
\title{A Letter to Lord Ellenborough}
\date{1812}
\author{Percy Bysshe Shelley}
\subtitle{}
% https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.text.tex/6fYmcVMbSbQ/discussion
\hypersetup{%
pdfencoding=auto,
pdftitle={A Letter to Lord Ellenborough},%
pdfauthor={Percy Bysshe Shelley},%
pdfsubject={},%
pdfkeywords={letter; atheism; justice; free speech}%
}
\begin{document}
\begin{titlepage}
\strut\vskip 2em
\begin{center}
{\usekomafont{title}{\huge A Letter to Lord Ellenborough\par}}%
\vskip 1em
\vskip 2em
{\usekomafont{author}{Percy Bysshe Shelley\par}}%
\vskip 1.5em
\vfill
{\usekomafont{date}{1812\par}}%
\end{center}
\end{titlepage}
\cleardoublepage
\tableofcontents
% start a new right-handed page
\cleardoublepage
\section{INTRODUCTION.}
While the Blasphemy Laws remain on the English Statute
Book it is well that Shelley's letter to Lord Ellenborough
should be kept in circulation. As the work of a lad of
eighteen it is surprisingly eloquent, logical, and powerful.
Of course it does not rank with Milton's \emph{Areopagitica}, which
was written in that great poet's full maturity, but it carries
the tradition of freedom beyond the standpoint of the
Republican poet of the seventeenth century.
Daniel Isaac Eaton, whose imprisonment for blasphemy
called forth Shelley's letter, was a Deist in religion, and an
advanced reformer in politics. He was tried at the Old
Bailey in 1793 for publishing Thomas Paine's \emph{Rights of Man},
and found "guilty of publishing but without criminal intention."
Nineteen years later, on March 6, 1812, lie was tried
in the Court of King's Bench on a charge of Blasphemous
Libel for publishing the Third Part of Paine's \emph{Age of Reason}.
Lord Ellenborough presided at his trial, and brutally interrupted
his defence. Eaton was sentenced to eighteen months'
imprisonment in Newgate, and to stand for two hours in the
pillory.
Shelley, who was then a disciple of Godwin, bitterly
resented this outrage on the liberty of the press. His letter
to Lord Ellenborough was written in July. It appears to
have been printed by a Mr. Syle, of Barnstaple, who was
frightened into destroying the greater part of the edition;
but fifty copies were sent to London, in care of Mr. Hookham
the publisher, and privately distributed. It was first
really published, though not without omissions, in 1859 in
the Shelley Memoriah. The full text was given by Mr.
Forman in his complete edition of Shelley (1880).
Shelley's own preface runs as follows : — "Advertisement.
-I have waited impatiently for these last four months, in
the hope that some pen fitter for the important task would
have spared me the perilous pleasure of becoming the champion
of an innocent man. This may serve as an excuse for
delay to those who think I have let pass the aptest opportunity;
but it is not to be supposed that in four short months
the public indignation raised by Mr. Eaton's unmerited
suffering can have subsided."
"Perilous pleasure" is not an unmeaning or a fanciful
phrase. Men were imprisoned at that time for less "offensive"
things than several passages in Shelley's letter. It is
a pleasant reflection that the great poet of intellectual and
moral freedom never lacked the courage of his convictions.
\section{A LETTER TO LORD ELLENBOROUGH.}
My Lord,
As the station to which you have been called by your
country is important, so much the more awful is your
responsibility, so much the more does it become you to
watch lest you inadvertently punish the virtuous and reward
the vicious.
You preside over a court which is instituted for the
suppression of crime, and to whose authority the people
submit on no other conditions than that its decrees should
be conformable to justice.
If it should be demonstrated that a judge had condemned
an innocent man, the bare existence of laws in conformity
to which the accused is punished would but little extenuate
his offence. The inquisitor, when he burns an obstinate
heretic, may set up a similar plea, yet few are sufficiently
blinded by intolerance to acknowledge its validity. It will
less avail such a judge to assert the policy of punishing one
who has committed no crime. Policy and morality ought to
be deemed synonymous in a court of justice, and he whose
conduct has been regulated by the latter principle is not
justly amenable to any penal law for a supposed violation
of the former. It is true, my Lord, laws exist which suffice
to screen you from the animadversions of any constituted
power, in consequence of the unmerited sentence which you
have passed upon Mr. Eaton; but there are no laws which
screen you from the reproof of a nation's disgust, none which
ward off the just judgment of posterity, if that posterity will
deign to recollect you.
By what right do you punish Mr. Eaton? What but
antiquated precedents, gathered from times of priestly and
tyrannical domination, can be adduced in palliation of an
outrage so insulting to humanity and justice? Whom has
he injured? What crime has he committed? Wherefore
may he not walk abroad like other men and follow his
accustomed pursuits? What end is proposed in confining
this man, charged with the commission of no dishonorable
action? Wherefore did his aggressor avail himself of popular
prejudice, and return no answer but one of commonplace
contempt to a defence of plain and simple sincerity?
Lastly, when the prejudices of the jury as Christians, were
strongly and unfairly inflamed\footnote{See the Attorney-Generals speech.} against this injured man as
a Deist, wherefore did not you, my Lord, check such unconstitutional
pleading, and desire the jury to pronounce the
accused innocent or criminal\footnote{By Mr. Fox's Bill (L791) juries are, in cases of libel, judges both of the law and the fact.} without reference to the
particular faith which he professed?
In the name of justice, what answer is there to these
questions'? The answer which Heathen Athens made to
Socrates is the same with which Christian England must
attempt to silence the advocates of this injured man — "He
has questioned established opinions." Alas ! the crime of
enquiry is one which religion never has forgiven. Implicit
faith and fearless enquiry have in all ages been irreconcileable
enemies. Unrestrained philosophy has in every age
opposed itself to the reveries of credulity and fanaticism.
The truths of astronomy, demonstrated by Newton, have
superseded astrology ; since the modern discoveries in
chemistry the philosopher's stone has no longer been deemed
attainable. Miracles of every kind have become rare, in
proportion to the hidden principles which those who study
nature have developed. That which is false will ultimately
be controverted by its own falsehood. That which is true
needs but publicity to be acknowledged. It is ever a proof
that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who use
power and coercion, not reasoning and persuasion, to procure
its admission. Falsehood skulks in holes and corners; "it
ets I dare not wait upon I would, like the poor cat in the
adage,"\footnote{Shakespeare.} except when it has power, and then, as it was a
coward, it is a tyrant ; but the eagle-eye of truth darts
through the undazzling sunbeam of the immutable and just,
gathering thence wherewith to vivify and illuminate a
universe!
Wherefore, I repeat, is Mr. Eaton punished? Because he
is a Deist? And what are you, my Lord? A Christian.
Ha, then! the mask is fallen off; you persecute him because
his faith differs from yours. You copy the persecutors of
Christianity in your actions, and are an additional proof that
your religion is as bloody, barbarous, and intolerant as
theirs. If some deistical bigot in power (supposing such a
character for the sake of illustration) should, in dark and
barbarous ages, have enacted a statute making the profession
of Christianity criminal; if you, my Lord, were a Christian
bookseller and Mr. Eaton a judge, those arguments, which
you consider adequate to justify yourself for the sentence
which you have passed, must likewise suffice, in this suppositionary
case, to justify Mr. Eaton in sentencing you to
Newgate and the pillory for being a Christian. Whence is
any right derived but that which power confers for persecution?
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 civilised society.
You consider man as an accountable being; but he can
only be accountable for those actions which are influenced
by his will.
Belief and disbelief are utterly distinct from, and unconnected
with, volition. They are the apprehension of the
agreement or disagreement of the ideas which compose any
proposition. Belief is an involuntary operation of the mind,
and, like other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate
to the degrees of excitement. Volition is essential to
merit or demerit. How, then, can merit or demerit be
attached to what is distinct from that faculty of the mind
whose presence is essential to their being? I am aware that
religion is founded on the voluntariness of belief, as it
makes it a subject of reward and punishment; but, before
we extinguish the steady ray of reason and common sense,
it is fit that we should discover, which we cannot do without
their assistance, whether or no there be any other which
may suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life.
If the law "de heretico cuniburendo" was not been formally
repealed, I conceive that, from the promise held out by your
Lordship's zeal, we need not despair of beholding the flames
of persecution rekindled in Smithfield. Even now, the lash
that drove Descartes and Voltaire from their native country,
the chains which bound Galileo, the flames which burnt
Vanini, again resound. And where? In a nation that
presumptuously calls itself the sanctuary of freedom. Under
a government which, whilst it infringes the very right of
thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of the
press; in a civilised and enlightened country a man is
pilloried and imprisoned because he is a Deist, and no one
raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity.
Does the Christian God, whom his followers eulogize as the
Deity of humility and peace, — he, the regenerator of the
world, the meek reformer, authorise one man to rise against
another, and, because lictors are at his beck, to chain and
torture him as an Infidel?
When the Apostles went abroad to convert the nations,
were they enjoined to stab and poison all who disbelieved
the divinity of Christ's mission, assuredly they would have
been no more justifiable in this case than he is at present
who puts into execution the law which inflicts pillory and
imprisonment on the Deist.
Has not Mr. Eaton an equal right to call your Lordship an
Infidel as you have to imprison him for promulgating a
different doctrine from that which you profess? What do I
say! Has he not even a stronger plea? The word Infidel
can only mean any thing when applied to a person who
professes that which he disbelieves. The test of truth is an
undivided reliance on its inclusive powers; the test of conscious
falsehood is the variety of the forms under which it
presents itself, and its tendency towards employing whatever
coercive means may be within its command, in order to procure
the admission of what is unsusceptible of support from
reason or persuasion. A dispassionate observer would feel
himself more powerfully interested in favor of a man who,
depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated his
reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor,
who, daringly avowing his unwillingness to answer them by
argument, proceeded to repress the activity and break the
spirit of their promulgator, by that torture and imprisonment
whose infliction he could command.
I hesitate not to affirm that the opinions which Mr. Eaton
sustained when undergoing that mockery of a trial at which
your Lordship presided, appear to me more true and good
than those of his accuser ; hut were they false as the visions
of a Calvinist, it still would be the duty of those who love
liberty and virtue to raise their voice indignantly against
a reviving system of persecution, against the coercively
repressing any opinion, which, if false, needs but the opposition
of truth ; which, if true, in spite of force, must ultimately
prevail.
Mr. Eaton asserted that the scriptures were, from beginning
to end, a fable and imposture,\footnote{See the Attorney-General's speech.} that the apostles were
liars and deceivers. He denied the miracles, resurrection,
and ascension of Jesus Christ. He did so, and the Attorney-
General denied the propositions which he asserted, and
asserted those which he denied. What singular conclusion
is deducible from this fact? None, but that the Attorney-
General and Mr. Eaton sustained two opposite opinions.
The Attorney-General puts some obsolete and tyrannical
laws in force against Mr. Eaton, because he publishes a book
tending to prove that certain supernatural events, which
are supposed to have taken place eighteen centuries ago, in
a remote corner of the world, did not actually take place.
But how are the truth or falsehood of the facts in dispute
relevant to the merit or demerit attachable to the advocates
of the two opinions? No man is accountable for his belief,
because no man is capable of directing it. Mr. Eaton is
therefore totally blameless. What are we to think of the
justice of a sentence which punishes an individual against
whom it is not even attempted to attach the slightest stain
of criminality?
It is asserted that Mr. Eaton's opinions are calculated to
subvert morality. How? What moral truth is spoken of
with irreverence or ridicule in the book which he published
Morality, or the duty of a man and a citizen, is founded on
the relations which arise from the association of human
beings, and which vary with the circumstances produced by
the different states of this association. This duty in similar
situations must be precisely the same in all ages and nations.
The opinion contrary to this has arisen from a supposition
that the will of God is the source or criterion of morality;
it is plain that the utmost exertion of Omnipotence could
not cause that to be virtuous which actually is vicious. An
all-powerful Demon might, indubitably, annex punishments
to virtue and rewards to vice, but could not by these means
effect the slightest change in their abstract and immutable
natures. Omnipotence could vary, by a providential interposition,
the relations of human society; in this latter case,
what before was virtuous would become vicious, according
to the necessary and natural result of the alteration; but
the abstract natures of the opposite principles would have
sustained not the slightest change ; for instance, the punishment
with which society restrains the robber, the assassin,
and the ravisher is just, laudable, and requisite. We admire
and respect the institutions which curb those who would
defeat the ends for which society was established; but,
should a precisely similar coercion be exercised against one
who merely expressed his disbelief of a system admitted by
those entrusted with the executive power, using at the same
time no methods of promulgation but those afforded by
reason, certainly this coercion would be eminently inhuman
and immoral ; and the supposition that any revelation from
an unknown power avails to palliate a persecution so senseless,
unprovoked, and indefensible is at once to destroy the
barrier which reason places between vice and virtue, and
leave to unprincipled fanaticism a plea whereby it may
excuse every act of frenzy, which its own wild passions, not
the inspirations of the Deity, have engendered.
Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess.
To attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose
that it is callable of altering them, is to degrade God into
man, and to annex to this incomprehensible being qualities
incompatible with any possible definition of his nature. It
may here be objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the
perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the
moral qualities of man is to suppose him susceptible of
passions which, arising out of corporeal organisation, it is
plain that a pure spirit cannot possess. A bear is not perfect
except he is rough; a tiger is not perfect if he be not
voracious; an elephant is not perfect if otherwise than
docile. How \emph{deep} an argument must that not be which
proves that the Deity is as rough as a bear, as voracious as a
tiger, and as docile as an elephant! But even suppose with
the vulgar that God is a venerable old man, seated on a
throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various passions,
analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and
uncertain as that of an earthly king : still goodness and
justice are qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it
will be admitted that he disapproves of any action incompatible
with these qualities. Persecution for opinion is
unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers
of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence
of their fellow being, because his ideas of that Deity
are different from those which they entertain? Alas! there
is no consistency in those persecutors who worship a benevolent
Deity; those who worship a Demon would alone act
consonantly to these principles, by imprisoning and torturing
in his name.
Persecution is the only name applicable to punishment
inflicted on an individual in consequence of his opinions.
What end is persecution designed to answer? Can it convince
him whom it injures? Can it prove to the people the
falsehood of his opinions? It may make him a hypocrite, and
them cowards; but bad means can promote no good end. The
unprejudiced mind looks with suspicion on a doctrine that
needs the sustaining hand of power.
Socrates was poisoned because he dared to combat the
degrading superstitions in which his countrymen were
educated. Not long after his death, Athens recognised the
injustice of his .sentence ; his accuser, Melitus, was condemned,
and Socrates became a demigod.
Jesus Christ was crucified because he attempted to supersede
the ritual of Moses with regulations more moral and
humane ; his very judge made public acknowledgment of his
innocence, but a bigoted and ignorant mob demanded the
deed of horror. Barabbas, the murderer and traitor, was
released. The meek reformer, Jesus, was immolated to the
sanguinary Deity of the Jews. Time rolled on, time changed
the situations, and with them the opinions of men.
The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that the
crucifixion of Jesus was a supernatural event, and testimonies
of miracles, so frequent in unenlightened ages, were
not wanting to prove that he was something divine. This
belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, acquired force and
extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to
dispute was death, which to doubt was infamy.
Christianity is now the established religion; he who
attempts to disprove it must behold murderers and traitors
take precedence of him in public opinion, though, if his
genius be equal to his courage, and assisted by a peculiar
coalition of circumstances, future ages may exalt him to a
divinity, and persecute others in his name, as he was persecuted
in the name of his predecessor, in the homage of the
world.
The same means that have supported every other popular
belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment,
murder, and falsehood ; deeds of unexampled and incomparable
atrocity, have made it what it is. We derive from our
ancestors a belief thus fostered and supported. We quarrel,
persecute, and hate for its maintenance. Does not analogy
favor the opinion that, as like other systems it has arisen
and augmented, so like them it will decay and perish; that,
as violence and falsehood, not reasoning and persuasion,
have procured its admission among mankind; so, when
enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible controverter
of false opinions, has involved its pretended
evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will become
obsolete, and that men will then laugh as heartily at grace,
faith, redemption, and original sin as they now do at the
metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints,
the efficacy of witchcraft, and the appearance of departed
spirits.
Had the Christian religion commenced and continued by
the mere force of reasoning and persuasion, by its self-
evident excellence and fitness, the preceding analogy would
be inadmissible. We should never speculate upon the
future obsoleteness of a system perfectly conformable to
nature and reason. It would endure so long as they
endured; it would be a truth as indisputable as the light of
he sun, the criminality of murder, and other facts, physical
and moral, which, depending on our organisation and
relative situations, must remain acknowledged so long as
man is man. It is an incontrovertible fact, the consideration
of which ought to repress the hasty conclusions of
credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining them,
that, had the Jews not been a barbarous and fanatical race
of men, had even the resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal
to his candor, the Christian religion never could have prevailed;
it could not even have existed. Man! the very
existence of whose most cherished opinions depends from a
thread so feeble, arises out of a source so equivocal, learn at
least humility; own, at least, that it is possible for thyself
also to have been seduced by education and circumstance
into the admission of tenets destitute of rational proof, and
the truth of which has not yet been satisfactorily demonstrated.
Acknowledge, at least, that the falsehood of thy
brother's opinions is no sufficient reason for his meriting thy
hatred. What! because a fellow being disputes the reasonableness
of thy faith, wilt thou punish him with torture and
imprisonment? If persecution for religious opinions were
admitted by the moralist, how wide a door would not be
opened by which convulsionists of every kind might make
inroads on the peace of society! How many deeds of
barbarism and blood would not receive a sanction! But I
will demand, if that man is not rather entitled to the respect
than the discountenance of society, who, by disputing a
received doctrine, either proves its falsehood and inutility,
thereby aiming at the abolition of what is false and useless,
or giving to its adherents an opportunity of establishing its
excellence and truth. Surely this can be no crime. Surely
the individual who devotes his time to fearless and unrestricted
inquiry into the grand questions arising out of
our moral nature ought rather to receive the patronage,
than encounter the vengeance, of an enlightened legislature.
I would have you to know, my Lord, that fetters of iron
cannot bind or subdue the soul of virtue. From the damps
and solitude of its dungeon it ascends, free and undaunted,
whither thine, from the pompous seat of judgment, dare not
soar. I do not warn you to beware lest your profession as a
Christian should make you forget that you are a man; but
I warn you against festinating that period, which, under the
present coercive system, is too rapidly maturing, when the
seats of justice shall be the seats of venality and slavishness,
and the cells of Newgate become the abode of all that is
honorable and true.
I mean not to compare Mr. Eaton with Socrates or Jesus;
he is a man of blameless and respectable character ; he is a
citizen unimpeached with crime; if, therefore, his rights as
a citizen and a man have been infringed, they have been
infringed by illegal and immoral violence. But I will assert
that, should a second Jesus arise among men, should such a
one as Socrates again enlighten the earth, lengthened imprisonment
and infamous punishment (according to the
regimen of persecution revived by your Lordship) would
effect what hemlock and the cross have heretofore effected,
and the stain on the national character, like that on Athens
and Judea, would remain indelible, but by the destruction of
the history in which it is recorded. When the Christian
religion shall have faded from the earth, when its memory,
like that of Polytheism now shall remain, but remain only
as the subject of ridicule and wonder, indignant posterity
would attach immortal infamy to such an outrage; like
the murder of Socrates, it would secure the execration of
every age.
The horrible and wide-wasting enormities which gleam
like comets through the darkness of gothic and superstitious
ages are regarded by the moralist as no more than the
necessary effects of known causes; but, when an enlightened
age and nation signalises itself by a deed, becoming none
but barbarians and fanatics, philosophy itself is even
induced to doubt whether human nature will ever emerge
from the pettishness and imbecility of its childhood. The
system of persecution, at whose new birth you, my Lord,
are one of the presiding midwives, is not more impotent and
wicked than inconsistent. The press is loaded with what are
called (ironically, I should conceive) \emph{proofs} of the Christian
religion : these books are replete with invective and calumny
against Infidels; they presuppose that he who rejects
Christianity must be utterly divested of reason and feeling.
They advance the most unsupported assertions, and take as
first principles the most revolting dogmas. The inferences
draw from these assumed premises are imposingly logical
and correct; but, if a foundation is weak, no architect is
needed to foretell the instability of the superstructure. If
the truth of Christianity is not disputable, for what purpose
are these books written? If they are sufficient to prove it,
what further need of controversy? If God has spoken, why is
not the universe convinced? If the Christian religion needs
deeper learning, more painful investigation, to establish its
genuineness, wherefore attempt to accomplish that by force
which the human mind can alone effect with satisfaction to
itself? If, lastly, its truth cannot be demonstrated, wherefore
impotently attempt to snatch from God the government
of his creation, and impiously assert that the Spirit of
Benevolence has left that knowledge most essential to the
well-being of man, the only one which, since its promulgation,
has been the subject of unceasing cavil, the cause of
irreconcilable hatred? Either the Christian religion is
true, or it is not. If true, it comes from God, and its
authenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further
than its Omnipotent Author is willing to allow; if true, it
admits of rational proof, and is capable of being placed
equally beyond controversy as the principles which have
been established concerning matter and mind, by Locke and
Newton; and in proportion to the usefulness of the fact in
dispute, so must it be supposed that a benevolent being is
anxious to procure the diffusion of its knowledge on the
earth. If false, surely no enlightened legislature would
punish the reasoner, who opposes a system so much the
more fatal and pernicious, as it is extensively admitted;
so much the more productive of absurd and ruinous consequences,
as it is entwined by education, with the prejudices
and affections of the human heart, in the shape of a popular
belief.
Let us suppose that some half-witted philosopher should
assert that the earth was the centre of the universe, or that
ideas could enter the human mind independently of sensation
or reflection. This man would assert what is demonstrably
incorrect; he would promulgate a false opinion. Yet would
he therefore deserve pillory and imprisonment? By no
means; probably few would discharge more correctly the
duties of a citizen and a man. I admit that the case above
stated is not precisely in point. The thinking part of the
community has not received as indisputable the truth of
Christianity, as they have that of the Newtonian system.
A very large portion of society, and that powerfully and
extensively connected, derives its sole emolument from the
belief of Christianity, as a popular faith.
To torture and imprison the asserter of a dogma, however
ridiculous and false, is highly barbarous and impolitic.
How, then, does not the cruelty of persecution become
aggravated when it is directed against the opposer of an
opinion \emph{yet under dispute}, and which men of unrivalled
acquirements, penetrating genius, and stainless virtue have
spent, and at last sacrificed, their lives in combating.
The time is rapidly approaching — I hope that you, my
Lord, may live to behold its arrival— when the Mahometan,
the Jew, the Christian, the Deist, and the Atheist will live
together in one community, equally sharing the benefits
which arise from its association, and united in the bonds of
charity and brotherly love. My Lord, you have condemned
an innocent man; no crime Mas imputed to him, and you
sentenced him to torture and imprisonment. I have not
addressed this letter to you with the hopes of convincing you
that you have acted wrong. The most unprincipled and
barbarous of men are not unprepared with sophisms to
prove that they would have acted in no other manner, and
to show that vice is virtue. But I raise my solitary voice to
express my disapprobation, so far as it goes, of the cruel and
unjust sentence you passed upon Mr. Eaton; to assert, so
far as I am capable of influencing, those rights of humanity
which you have wantonly and unlawfully infringed.
My Lord,
Yours, \&e.
% begin final page
\clearpage
% if we are on an odd page, add another one, otherwise when imposing
% the page would be odd on an even one.
\ifthispageodd{\strut\thispagestyle{empty}\clearpage}{}
% new page for the colophon
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{center}
The Anarchist Library
\smallskip
Anti-Copyright
\bigskip
\includegraphics[width=0.25\textwidth]{logo-en}
\bigskip
\end{center}
\strut
\vfill
\begin{center}
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Letter to Lord Ellenborough
1812
\bigskip
https:\Slash{}\Slash{}archive.org\Slash{}details\Slash{}lettertolordelle00shel
\bigskip
\textbf{theanarchistlibrary.org}
\end{center}
% end final page with colophon
\end{document}
% No format ID passed.