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pi his motive $ . Jf sufficient evidence should * be ^ ajueed to s atisfy them of ^ a in alicjioUa intention in a defendant , his convictions must follow of course 5 hut I w # ulcf wish to think more
respectfully of your correspondent , although unknown , than to suppose him capable of adopting or of desiring that juries should adopt the vulgar prejudice against unbelievers which would sink them in the scale of morals and
motives below the average of the community , than which prejudice nothing can be more illiberal and unfounded . All that my humble endeavours aimed to inculcate was , that juries should feel fully convinced that the malice , which an indictment or information
uniformly sets forth , and which the law consequently has prescribed as necessary to constitute crime , be fully made out against a defendant before they condemn him . It is not the fact of publication only which a jury has to try .
If , then , it be admitted by " A Christian Liberal" that a man of opposite opinions to his own can , by possibility , be zealously engaged in propagating his sentiments from pure motives , he will also admit that it is
the indispensable duty of a Chri s tian jury to be satisfied upon sufficient evidence of the malicious intentions of the individual whose conduct they have to try before they decide against him . It is not because the charge is designated by the epithet of blasphemy
that a Christian jury can dispense with Christian charity , and take for granted , without evidence to prove it , that the accused has been actuated by all the malignity which his prosecutors have been pleased to crowd into the information ; but it is in this
particular , unfortunately , that their own principles of Christian charity , and the common principles of justice and liberality have been too often misconceived and misapplied . It is of this sort of subserviency in juries , to the
intolerant projects of bigotry , that I took occasion to complain , and which can only be attributed to the insidious appeals of wily lawyers to their prejudices : that convenient , mysterious , uadefinabie term blasphemy , appears to have served as the watch-word to
persecution , and to have operated as a diabplical excitement to cruelty in all ages and in defence of all religions ,
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although of late the names ^> f Was * phemer . and infidel are becoming very inoffensive through frequent use $ but to rfettirn to t ; he argument . If tQ walk along Cheapside were an indicts able offence , and the fact be proved against an individual , the jury are
bound to pronounce that the charge is founded in truth ; but if the fact of walking must necessarily be accompanied by the charge of some bad purpose to constitute the legal offence , the proof of the malicious object would be at least as necessary to his
conviction by a jury as the fact of walking itself , because it js an essential part of the criminal charge , and without proof of tb $ wicked purpose it is impossible that the legal offence can be substantiated . Again , if a Unitarian were indicted at common
law for denying the doctrine of the Trinity , and that simple denial constituted the legal offence , a jury woulcl have no alternative upon proof of the fact ; but if , according to the invariable form and substance of indictments
for blasphemy , he is charged with wickedly and maliciously impugning that doctrine , the jury ( at least if they should consist or Unitarians ) would not be unlikely to look sharply after the proofs of malice before they consented to his condemnation and punishment .
Now this is the principle I have advocated , and which the Christian Liberal calls special pleading . The Judge would , in all probability , in such a case , direct that the malice is to be inferred from the blasphemous natur ^ of t he denial , and assert that
he is bound to tell them that the publication is a blasphemous and libellous attack upon the established religion , which is the law of the land , &c . &c . ; and perhaps a majority of juries could scarcely be expected to withstand a solemn injunction from the bench , to
reflect upon the shocking tendency of blasphemous opinions , the mysterious obligation of an oath , and the necessity of arresting * the progress of infidelitv . >
Under the impression * thus produced upon the superstitious , all deficienees of proof , as to motives and object , and consequently to the real guilt of the party accused , are trifles passed by as unworthy a thought in £ onapari # on . It cannot have escaped
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The Moral Duty -of Jurymen * - fity
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vol . xvn . 4 s
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1822, page 681, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2518/page/25/
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