“I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.”

Reg. v. Bradlaugh and others (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

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John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge 24
British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician 1820–1894

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