WHAT IS OUR CIVIL POSITION ?

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 April 1884, Page 10

WHAT IS OUR CIVIL POSITION ?

TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREETHOUGHT REVIEW. Sir, —A few days ago a gentleman intimately connected with the Legislature of the colony pointed out to me that the Freethinkers of New Zealand -would he doing a good work for themselves if they agitated to have the civil disabilities which they arc under removed. As much ignorance exists even amongst Freethinkers as to what these disabilities are, you would be doing a service to the freethought cause by enlightening your readers. I have known a J.P., who is also an M.H.R., lecture a witness who declined to swear because he was a materialist, and I have known a citizen summoned on a Coroner’s jury also lectured, and not allowed to serve because he declined to swear, and confessed to being an infidel ; but like many others I do not know in how many matters, or to what extent, Freethinkers are outlawed. lam informed that a Freethinker, or to use a more definite term, an atheist, is so much an outlaw that his property maybe destroyed, stolen, and himself beaten within an inch of his life, and that within the strict letter of the law he could not witness in the conviction of the perpetrators. Is it really so ? I had an idea that in the matter of legal protection Freethinkers were left out in the cold, but did not think they were so mercilessly exposed as that. Do throw some light on this subject. I hope the Conference at Dunedin has taken this matter up. We sympathise freely with Mr Bradlaugh in his tedious struggle for the removal of civil disabilities from Freethinkers in England ; but let us prove our sympathy by setting to work to expunge from the statute book of New Zealand the disabilities, whatever they may be, which outlaw Freethinkers here. I hope soon to see these disabilities —articles of outlawplainly stated in your Review, and that early thereafter petitions for their repeal from every Freethought organisation in these islands will be poured into Parliament, and that there should be no desistance from agitating, remonstrating, and petitioning until the atheist has had accorded to him equal civil rights with those of the Christian. Auckland, March 12th, ISSL A. Campbell. [Mr. Stout has given an opinion that the English law of blasphemy does not prevail in the colony. See the account of the Freethought Conference in another column. Atheists in the colony are under no disabilities as witnesses. They can affirm where they conscientiously object to take the oath, and their testimony must be received.— Ed.]