ot my duty here. On this I make no comment. I have no duty here of
even discussing the policy of the blasphemy laws, although I cannot
help thinking that, if I were here making my defence against them, I
might say that they were bad laws unfairly revived, doing more
mischief to those who revive them than to those whom they are revived
against. But it is not for anything I have said myself; it is not for
anything I have written myself; it is not for anything I have
published myself. It is an endeavour to make me technically liable for
a publication with which I have nothing whatever to do, and I will ask
you to defeat that here. Every time I have succeeded I have been met
with some new thing. When I first fought it was hoped to defeat my
election. When I was re-elected it was sought to make me bankrupt by
enormous penalties, and when I escaped the suit for enormous penalties
they hope now to destroy me by this. I have no question here about
defending my heresy, not because I am not ready to defend it when it
is challenged in the right way, and it there be anything in it that
the law can challenge. I have never gone back from anything I have
ever said; I have never gone back from anything I have ever written; I
have never gone back from anything I have ever done; and I ask you not
to allow this Sir Henry Whatley Tyler, who dares not come here to-day,
to use you as the assassin uses the dagger, to stab a man from behind
whom he never dares to face."

The summing up by Lord Coleridge was perfect in eloquence, in thought,
in feeling. Nothing more touching could be imagined than the conflict
between the real religious feeling, abhorrent of heresy, and the
determination to be just, despite all prejudice. The earnest effort
lest the prejudice he felt as a Christian should weigh also in the
minds of the jury, and should cause them to pervert justice. The
absolute pleading to them to do what was right and not to admit
against the unbeliever what they would not admit in ordinary cases.
Then the protest against prosecution of opinions; the admission of the
difficulties in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the pathetic fear lest by
persecution "the sacred truths might be struck through the sides of
those who are their enemies." For intellectual clearness and moral
elevation this exquisite piece of eloquence, delivered in a voice of
silvery beauty, would be hard to excel, and Lord Coleridge did this
piece of service to the religion so dear