Secondly, the injustice of punishing men for their opinions and arguments will be still more visible if we reflect on the nature of punishment. Punishment is one of the classes of coercion, and, as such, may perhaps be allowed to have an occasional propriety, where the force introduced is the direct correlative of corporal violence previously exerted. But the case of false opinions and perverse arguments is of a very different nature. Does any man assert falsehood? Nothing further can appear requisite than that it should be confronted with truth. Does he bewilder us with sophistry? Introduce the light of reason, and his deceptions will vanish. Where argument, erroneous statements, and misrepresentation alone are employed, argument alone should be called forth to encounter them.
To enable us to estimate properly the value of laws for the punishment of heresy, let us suppose a country to be sufficiently provided with such laws, and observe the result. The object is to prevent men from entertaining certain opinions, or, in other words, from thinking in a certain way. What can be more absurd than to undertake to put fetters upon the subtlety of thought? How frequently does the individual who desires to restrain it in himself fail in the attempt? Add to this that prohibition and menace in this respect, will frequently give new restlessness to the curiosity of the mind. I must not so much as think of the propositions that there is no God; that the stupendous miracles of Moses and Christ were never really performed; that the dogmas of the Athanasian creed are erroneous.
I must shut my eyes, and run blindly into all the opinions, religious and political, that my ancestors regarded as sacred. Will this, in all instances, be possible?
There is another consideration, trite indeed, but the triteness of which is an additional argument of its truth. Swift says 'Men ought to be permitted to think as they please, but not to propagate their pernicious opinions.'
The obvious answer to this is, 'We are much obliged to him: how would he be able to punish our heresy, even if he desired it, so long as it was concealed?' The attempt to punish opinion is absurd: we may be silent respecting our conclusions, if we please; the train of thinking by which those conclusions are generated cannot fail to be silent.
'But, if men be not punished for their thoughts, they may be punished for uttering those thoughts.' No. This is not less impossible than the other. By what arguments will you persuade every man in the nation to exercise the trade of an informer? By what arguments will you persuade my bosom-friend, with whom I repose all the feelings of my heart, to repair immediately from my company to a magistrate, in order to procure my commitment, for so doing, to the prisons of the inquisition? In countries where this is attempted, there will be a frequent struggle, the government endeavouring to pry into our most secret transactions, and the people excited to countermine, to outwit and to execrate their superintendents.
But the most valuable consideration which this part of the subject suggests is, Supposing all this were done, what judgement must we form of the people among whom it is done? Though all this cannot, yet much may be performed;Chapter hough the embryo cannot be annihilated, it may be prevented from expanding itself into the dimensions of a man. The arguments by which we were supposing a system for the restraint of opinion to be recommended were arguments derived from a benevolent anxiety for the virtue of mankind, and to prevent their degeneracy. Will this end be accomplished? Let us contrast a nation of men daring to think, to speak, and to act what they believe to be right, and fettered with no spurious motives to dissuade them from right, with a nation that fears to speak, and fears to think upon the most interesting subjects of human enquiry. Can any spectacle be more degrading than this timidity? Can men in whom mind is thus annihilated be capable of any good or valuable purpose? Can this most abject of all slaveries be the genuine state, the true perfection of the human species?
Another argument, though it has often been stated to the world, deserves to be mentioned in this place. Governments no more than individual men are infallible. The cabinets of princes and the parliaments of kingdoms, if there by any truth in considerations already stated, are often less likely to be right in their conclusions than the theorist in his closet.
But, dismissing the estimate of greater and less, it was to be presumed from the principles of human nature, and is found true in fact, that cabinets and parliaments are liable to vary from each other in opinion. What system of religion or government has not, in its turn, been patronized by national authority? The consequence therefore of admitting this authority is not merely attributing to government a right to impose some, but any, or all, opinions upon the governed. Are Paganism and Christianity, the religions of Mahomet, Zoroaster and Confucius, are monarchy and aristocracy, in all their forms, equally worthy to be perpetuated among mankind? Is it certain that the greatest of human calamities is change? Must we never hope for advance and improvement? Have no revolution in government, and no reformation in religion, been productive of more benefit than disadvantage? There is no species of reasoning, in defence of the suppression of heresy, which may not be brought back to this monstrous principle that the knowledge of truth, and the introduction of right principles of policy, are circumstances altogether indifferent to the welfare of mankind.
The same reasonings that are here employed against the forcible suppression of religious heresy will be found equally valid with respect to political.