A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

1Memoir of Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, ed. 1869, p. 49. Lady Holland remarks on the same page that her father’s religion had in it “nothing intolerant.” ↑

2Memoir of Sydney Smith, p. 142. ↑

3 Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l’évolution intellectuelle de l’Italie, 1906, pp. 5–7. ↑

4 Dr. Ramage, Nooks and Byeways of Italy, 1868, pp. 76, 105–13. Ramage describes the helplessness of the better minds before 1830. ↑

5 Luchaire, pp. 35, 36. ↑

6Id. p. 30. ↑

7 Doblado (Blanco White), Letters from Spain, 1822. p. 358. ↑

8 Thus the traveller and belletrist J. G. Seume, a zealous deist and opponent of atheism, and a no less zealous patriot, penned many fiercely freethinking maxims, as: “Where were the most so-called positive religions, there was always the least morality”; “Grotius and the Bible are the best supports of despotism”; “Heaven has lost us the earth”; “The best apostles of despotism and slavery are the mystics.” Apokryphen, 1806–1807, in Sämmtliche Werke, 1839, iv, 157, 173, 177, 219. ↑

9 C. H. Cottrell, Religious Movements of Germany, 1849, p. 12 sq. ↑

10 Cp. the author’s Evolution of States, pp. 138–39. ↑

11 When I thus planned the treatment of the nineteenth century in the first edition of this book, it was known to me that Mr. Alfred W. Benn had in hand a work on The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century; and the knowledge made me the more resolved to keep my own record condensed. Duly published in 1906 (Longmans, 2 vols.), Mr. Benn’s book amply fulfilled expectations; and to it I would refer every reader who seeks a fuller survey than the present. Its freshness of thought and vigour of execution will more than repay him. Even Mr. Benn’s copious work, however—devoting as it does a large amount of space to a preliminary survey of the eighteenth century—leaves room for various English monographs on the nineteenth, to say nothing of the culture history of a dozen other countries. ↑

12 Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1892, iii, 382. ↑

13 Cp. Conway’s Life of Paine, ii, 252–53. ↑

14 This translation, issued by “Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, Paternoster Row, and all booksellers,” purports to be “with additions.” The translation, however, has altered d’Holbach’s atheism to deism. ↑

15 By W. Huttman. The book is “embellished with a head of Jesus”—a conventional religious picture. Huttman’s opinions may be divined from the last sentence of his preface, alluding to “the high pretentions and inflated stile of the lives of Christ which issue periodically from the English press.” ↑

16 Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 208–209. ↑

17 See Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace, ed. 1877, ii, 87, and Mrs. Carlile Campbell’s The Battle of the Press (Bonner, 1899), passim, as to the treatment of those who acted as Carlile’s shopmen. Women were imprisoned as well as men—e.g. Susanna Wright, as to whom see Wheeler’s Dictionary, and last ref. Carlile’s wife and sister were likewise imprisoned with him; and over twenty volunteer shopmen in all went to jail. ↑

18 Hone’s most important service to popular culture was his issue of the Apocryphal New Testament, which, by co-ordinating work of the same kind, gave a fresh scientific basis to the popular criticism of the gospel history. As to his famous trial for blasphemy on the score of his having published certain parodies, political in intention, see bk. i, ch. x (by Knight) of Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace. ↑

19 Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life, i, 109–10. See p. 111 as to other cases. ↑

20 Art. by Holyoake in Dict. of Nat. Biog. Cp. Sixty Years, per index. ↑

21 Articles in Dict. of Nat. Biog. ↑

22 Holyoake, Sixty Years, i, 47. ↑

23 Kirkup, History of Socialism, 1892, p. 64. ↑

24 “From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing forms of religion” (Kirkup, p. 59). ↑

25 Reformers of almost all schools, indeed, from the first regarded Owen with more or less genial incredulity, some criticizing him acutely without any ill-will. See Podmore’s Robert Owen, 1906, i, 238–42. Southey was one of the first to detect his lack of religious belief. Id. p. 222, n. ↑

26 Podmore, i, 246. ↑

27 Kirkup, as cited, p. 64. ↑

28 Podmore, ii, 640. ↑

29 “Extraordinary self-complacency,” “autocratic action,” “arrogance,” are among the expressions used of him by his ablest biographer. (Podmore, ii, 641.) Of him might be said, as of Emerson by himself, “the children of the Gods do not argue”—the faculty being absent. ↑

30 Pamphlet sold at 1½d., and “to be had of all the Booksellers.” ↑

31 Of George Combe’s Constitution of Man (1828), a deistic work, over 50,000 copies were sold in Britain within twelve years, and 10,000 in America. Advt. to 4th ed. 1839. Combe avows that his impulse came from the phrenologist Spurzheim. ↑

32 See the details in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England. ↑

33The Gospel its Own Witness, 1799. rep. in Bohn’s ed. of The Principal Works and Remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 1852, pp. 136–37. ↑

34 See Prof. Flint’s tribute to the reasoning power of Bradlaugh and Holyoake in his Anti-Theistic Theories, 4th ed. pp. 518–19. ↑

35 See Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh, i, 149, 288–89. ↑

36 For a full record see Part II of Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh. ↑

37 After Bradlaugh had secured his seat, the noble lord even sought his acquaintance. ↑

38 Though young Conservative members, after 1886, privately professed sympathy. ↑

39 Work cited, p. 524. ↑

40 Coquerel, Essai sur l’histoire générale du christianisme, 1828, préf. ↑