was convicted upon two counts; though he
afterwards (1864) succeeded in obtaining an acquittal upon them also on
an appeal to the committee of the Privy Council. Lord Westbury gave
judgment, and, as was said, deprived the clergy of the Church of
England of their 'last hopes of eternal damnation.' On the last
occasion Dr. Williams defended himself.

The case increased Fitzjames's general reputation and led to his being
consulted in some similar cases, though it brought little immediate
result in the shape of briefs. For my purpose the most important result
is the indication afforded of his own religious position. He argues the
question as a matter of law; but not in the sense of reducing it to a
set of legal quibbles or technical subtleties. The prosecutors have
appealed to the law, and to the law they must go; but the law secures to
his client the liberty of uttering his conscientious convictions. Dr.
Williams, he says, 'would rather lose his living as an honest man than
retain it by sneaking out of his opinions like a knave and a liar.'[81]
He will therefore take a bold course and lay down broad principles. He
will not find subterfuges and loopholes of escape; but admit at once
that his client has said things startling to the ignorant, but that he
has said them because he had a right to say them. The main right is
briefly the right to criticise the Bible freely. Fitzjames admits that
he has to run the risk of apparently disparaging that 'most holy volume,
which from his earliest infancy he has been taught to revere as the
choicest gift of God to man, as the guide of his conduct here, the
foundation of his hopes hereafter.'[82] He declares that the articles
were framed with the confidence which has been 'justified by the
experience of three centuries,' and will, he hopes, be justified 'so
long as it pleases God to continue the existence of the human race,'
that the Scripture stands upon a foundation irremovable by any efforts
of criticism or interpretation.[83] The principle which he defends,
(that the Bible contains, but does not constitute revelation) is that
upon which the divines of the eighteenth century based their 'triumphant
defence of Christianity against the deists' of the period. I am certain
that Fitzjames, though speaking as an advocate, was also uttering his
own convictions in these words which at a later period he would have
been quite unable to adopt. I happened at the time to have a personal
interest i