It would be absurd to deny that liberty of
speech may sometimes cause particular harm. Every good thing sometimes
does harm. Government, for instance, which makes fatal mistakes; law,
which so often bears hardly and inequitably in individual cases. And can
the Christians urge any other plea for their religion when they are
unpleasantly reminded that it has caused untold
[244] suffering by its principle of exclusive salvation?
Once the principle of liberty of thought is accepted as a supreme
condition of social progress, it passes from the sphere of ordinary
expediency into the sphere of higher expediency which we call justice.
In other words it becomes a right on which every man should be able to
count. The fact that this right is ultimately based on utility does not
justify a government in curtailing it, on the ground of utility, in
particular cases.
The recent rather alarming inflictions of penalties for blasphemy in
England illustrate this point. It was commonly supposed that the
Blasphemy laws (see above, p. 139), though unrepealed, were a dead
letter. But since December, 1911, half a dozen persons have been
imprisoned for this offence. In these cases Christian doctrines were
attacked by poor and more or less uneducated persons in language which
may be described as coarse and offensive. Some of the judges seem to
have taken the line that it is not blasphemy to attack the fundamental
doctrines provided "the decencies of controversy" are preserved, but
that "indecent" attacks constitute blasphemy.
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