n this before in
speaking of Paine, and it is borne out by the prosecutions of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The unconfessed motive has been fear
of the people. Theology has been regarded as a good instrument for
keeping the poor in order, and unbelief as a cause or accompaniment of
dangerous political opinions. The idea has not altogether disappeared
that free thought is peculiarly indecent in the poor, that it is highly
desirable to keep them superstitious in order to keep them contented,
that they should be duly thankful for all the theological as well as
social arrangements which have been made for them by their betters. I
may quote from an essay of Mr. Frederic Harrison an anecdote which
admirably expresses the becoming attitude of the poor towards
ecclesiastical institutions. "The master of a workhouse in Essex was
once called in to act as chaplain to a dying pauper. The poor soul
faintly murmured some hopes of heaven. But this the master abruptly cut
short and warned him to turn his last thoughts towards hell. 'And
thankful you ought to be,' said he, 'that you have a hell to go to.' "

[224]

The most important English freethinkers who appealed to the masses were
Holyoake, [3] the apostle of "secularism," and Bradlaugh. The great
achievement for which Bradlaugh will be best remembered was the securing
of the right of unbelievers to sit in Parliament without taking an oath
(1888). The chief work to which Holyoake (who in his early years was
imprisoned for blasphemy) contributed was the abolition of taxes on the
Press, which seriously hampered the popular diffusion of knowledge. [4]
In England, censorship of the Press had long ago disappeared (above, p.
139); in most other European countries it was abolished in the course of
the nineteenth century. [5]

In the progressive countries of Europe there has been a marked growth of
tolerance (I do not mean legal toleration, but the tolerance

[225] of public opinion) during the last thirty years. A generation ago
Lord Morley wrote: "The preliminary stage has scarcely been reached--the
stage in which public opinion grants to every one the unrestricted right
of shaping his own beliefs, independently of those of the people who
surround him." I think this preliminary stage has now been passed. Take
England. We are now far from the days when Dr. Arnold would have sent
the elder Mill to Botany Bay for irreligious opinions. But we are also
far from the days when Da