These are his lordship's words:
"Mr. Foote is anxious to have it impressed on your minds that
he is not a licentious writer, and that this word does not fairly
apply to his publications. You will have the documents before
you, and you must judge for yourselves. I should say that he
is right. He may be blasphemous, but he certainly is not licentious,
in the ordinary sense of the word; and you do not find him
pandering to the bad passions of mankind."
I ask my readers to notice these clear and emphatic sentences, for
we shall recur to them in the next chapter.
The jury retired at twenty minutes past twelve. At three minutes past
five they were discharged, being unable to agree. It was a glorious
victory. Acquittal was hopeless, but no verdict amounted practically
to the same thing. Two juries out of three had already disagreed,
and as the verdict of Guilty by the third had been won through the
scandalous partiality and mean artifices of a bigoted judge, the results
of our prosecution afforded little encouragement to fresh attacks on
the liberty of the press.
I have since had the pleasure of conversing with one of the jury.
Himself and two others held out against a verdict of Guilty, and he
told me that the discussion was extremely animated. My informant
acted on principle. He confessed he did not like my caricatures,
and he considered my attacks on the Bible too severe; but he held
that I had a perfect right to ridicule Christianity if I thought fit,
and he refused to treat any method of attacking opinions as a crime.
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