Charles Southwell, who died in Auckland in 1860 at the young age of 46, managed to fit into his relatively short life more than many whose lives are twice as long. He has the distinction of being the first active exponent of freethought in New Zealand's history. I would like, in this article, to introduce readers to this freethinking pioneer whose life has been described as 'one of the romances of Rationalism'. [1]

The most comprehensive research so far undertaken on Southwell was by Harry Hastings Pearce, and his work was published in the NZ Rationalist between May 1957 and September 1958. One of Pearce's aims was to clear Southwell of a piece of gossip that the English freethought leader George Jacob Holyoake had begun. Holyoake, recently estranged from his erstwhile friend, had insinuated that, on arrival in New Zealand, Southwell had edited a Wesleyan newspaper here, and had in fact died a Wesleyan. The story was repeated by Joseph McCabe in his two-volume biography of Holyoake. [2] But it was never true. I shall not repeat the sound historical research that Pearce undertook to restore Southwell's name. Suffice it to say, that Pearce is quite right to assert that Southwell continued the fine work as a freethinker in his years in New Zealand that he had pursued in Britain and in Australia.

Charles Southwell was born in 1814, the youngest of 33 (or 36, the accounts differ) children. His father, not surprisingly perhaps, had married three times. Edward Royle, one of Britain's leading historians of freethought, described Southwell as a rough and impetuous man (who), on his own account, had always been this way inclined. [3] In the way of the poor of nineteenth-century England, Southwell found education where and when he could. As a teenager he had been given a copy of Timothy Dwight's Sermons. Dwight was a rather self-satisfied Calvinist whose overbearing certainty converted Southwell instantly to a militant form of atheism. In his early twenties he opened a radical bookshop in London and founded a Rational School after the manner of Robert Owen. His foundation speech mentioned the fine role played by the blasphemous and seditious press. As all newspapers at this time had to be stamped as a form of government tax and censorship, this was a brave statement to make.

Southwell wasn't a man to stick at things for long, and he soon tired of his life, and sought more adventure. So in 1835 he volunteered for the British Legion to fight in Spain for Queen Isabella and her liberal supporters against the Carlists. Queen Isabella had granted a Royal Constitution based loosely on the departements that the French revolutionary government had established. Naturally, conservative elements, especially the Catholic Church, were alarmed at this innovation and supported a pretender to the throne, Don Carlos, which brought about civil war. Southwell fought for Queen Isabella and the liberals for two years before returning to Britain high with fever.

For the next eighteen years Southwell fought tirelessly for freethought across the length and breadth of Britain. By 1839 he was one of the most popular freethought lecturers in London and could attract audiences of over a thousand. Among one of his many audiences was the young Charles Watts, who went on to found the Rationalist Press Association. Watts would later recall that Southwell was one of the main inspirations for him to devote his life to Freethought. [4] He was once asked to speak on behalf of the Anti-Persecution Union to prisoners in an Edinburgh gaol. He spoke with such 'wit, vivacity and discursiveness' for an hour and a half that neither he nor the enthralled inmates remembered that he had forgotten to mention the Anti-Persecution Union once. [5] To be popular as a lecturer then required a quick mind, a commanding presence, and a ready tongue to face aggressive heckling. Only one man was to possess those qualities to a greater degree than Southwell, and that was Charles Bradlaugh.

From 1839 till 1841 Southwell lectured and toured for Robert Owen's movement. Southwell had never liked Owen personally, however, and began to tire of the Owenite organisation's pandering to business for funds. He also objected to what he saw as playing down the anti-theological side of Owenism. Southwell saw no future for Owenism, or any other programme of social renewal, while religion remained a force in society. [7]

He and a friend set up what Pearce is sure is the world's first avowedly atheist magazine, the Oracle of Reason. The Oracle was uncompromising in tone and was directly challenging the system. One of Southwell's articles tried to be as deliberately offensive to pious tastes as possible. It succeeded brilliantly. 'The revoltingly odious Jew production,' he began, 'called BIBLE, has been for ages the idol of all sorts of blockheads, the glory of knaves, and the disgust of wise men. It is a history of lust, sodomies, wholesale slaughtering, and horrible depravity; that the vilest parts of all other histories, collected in one monstrous book, could scarcely parallel!' [8]

Not surprisingly Southwell was charged with blasphemous libel and brought before the Bristol magistrate, Sir Charles Wetherell (a staunch Methodist), and was imprisoned for a year and fined £100, an enormous sum. Southwell served the full sentence and on 6 February 1843 was released from gaol. He made good use of his time in prison, writing a pamphlet entitled Paley refuted in his own words. William Paley's (1743-1805) book Natural Theology (1802) articulated one of the most comprehensive design arguments to prove the existence of God. It was probably while in prison that Southwell wrote The Confessions of a Freethinker, a 'candid and fascinating piece of autobiography.' [9]

Southwell did not return to the Oracle after his release from gaol but began a new paper called the Investigator. This paper was less militant in tone, though he was still an atheist. He had attracted a great deal of support while in prison, and became a popular lecturer throughout the country for quite a long period alter that. He spent time in Scotland, helping freethinkers deflect the hostile attentions of the Kirk. And he ran a particularly successful freethought programme in Lancashire, with the inevitable paper, the Lancashire Beacon.

Southwell had a quick mind, and understood some of the distinctions that the atheist position required. His atheism was founded upon the materialist notion that matter is eternal and requires no creator. His was a negative atheism, in that he thought the existence of God can't be proved, as opposed to positive atheism which goes one stop further by saying that the non-existence of God can be proved. This recognition from Southwell places him ahead of his time. Charles Bradlaugh was the next Englishman with the same perceptive grasp of the dynamics of atheism. Southwell wrote in the Oracle that 'the word God does not imply anything positive; and no man has any ideas except those he found in nature, as a whole, or in part, for the imagination itself borrows all from the material world.' He also commented that to 'the Atheist, a moth in the candle's flame, or a poor fly in the fangs of a spider, is a proof that the world could not have been designed by one being, infinitely wise, infinitely good, and infinitely powerful.' [10]

Southwell's career in English freethought was blown apart by the quarrel he had with Holyoake. Pearce speculates that it involved an inheritance that Holyoake prised away from Southwell to himself by gaining the ear of the benefactor and denigrating Southwell. The complete truth of that ignoble episode will probably never be known, but Pearce's theory does seem to fit all the available facts. It is difficult otherwise to explain why Southwell should have suddenly have torn up his roots and sailed to the farthest corner of the earth. Anyway he did, and he ended up in Melbourne. Unable to stay away from public affairs for long, Southwell soon made a name for himself in Victorian politics. Once it became known to the Melbourne Age that this new arrival had been a notorious infidel back in England he was subjected to a vicious campaign of insult and slander. For once Southwell was without a paper of his own, and could not reply to the attacks the press persisted with. It was time to move on again.

Southwell arrived in New Zealand aboard the 'William Denny' on 29 January 1856 and by April was lecturing on topics of current interest. By December of that year he began what was to be his last project, the Auckland Examiner. This was different from the papers he had run as a younger man in England. For a start, his opinions on religion had changed; he no longer described himself as an atheist. Back in 1852 he had written a pamphlet on The Impossibility of Atheism arguing that it was nothing more than the 'negation of a hallucination'. He remained clear, however, that talk of God or gods remained essentially a waste of time.

Southwell stood for the Auckland Provincial Council in 1857, where his flamboyant style worked to some effect in what was a fairly primitive local political scene. For example, a successful campaign slogan the year before had been 'Down with the bloody Scotch!' [12] Unfortunately for Southwell, his experience in Victoria was to be lived through again. At a meeting outside the Courthouse in a short while before the election, Southwell rose to address the gathering. Or rather attempt to address them, said the Southern Cross report,

'for all at once a most infernal din arose from below the hustings. A mob, the ringleaders of which were Peter Grace, Thos. Murphy, Inspector of Roads, and a pensioner named Dunn, were there avowedly to prevent
Mr Southwell being heard... The basis of this mob's objection was frankly theological. Murphy ... who glared and yelled like a hyena, read a paper charging Mr Southwell with not being a Christian...'

But, the report continued

'he was not to be put down. He kept his ground till exhaustion partly silenced the mob, and was then enabled, by dint of good lungs and much perseverance to make himself heard. His speech, lengthened by interruptions, was not over till past two o'clock and it would be impossible, had we the space, to give even a précis of it.' [13]

It is difficult not to warm to Southwell after reading of incidents such as this. Southwell won on the show of hands, but lost on the final count. When he stood again a couple of months later that year, he lost by 31 votes. [14]

What annoyed Southwell at this late stage in his career was not so much religion per se, but the hypocrisy of politicians publicly parading their Christianity. In an answer to a correspondent on the 25 June 1859 issue of the Examiner Southwell has this to say:

'Our mission is political. With Catholics and Protestants as religionists we have nothing to do. With Catholics and Protestants as politicians, we have everything to do. Political religion is fair game. By political religion we mean religion profaned by party hands and prostituted to party purposes; religion that venal men make the stepping-stone to political power; religion less like angel of light than demon of darkness.'

Were Southwell to find himself reincarnated into the 1990's, he might well feel a strange sense of deja vu.

Southwell died on August 7 1860, of pulmonary tuberculosis, aged only 46. His gravestone lies in the Symonds Street cemetery in the heart of Auckland. Rationalists have done what they can to preserve the memory of New Zealand's first freethinker. Seventy-four years after his death, Southwell was described as a 'brilliant and unfortunate man [who] fought well and suffered much in the cause of Liberty.' [15] A gifted speaker, a talented controversialist, a natural rebel, Charles Southwell was indeed one of the romances of Rationalism.

It is for this reason that the NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists named the award for the defence of the open society after this extraordinary man. The award is open to anyone whose defence of the principles of freedom and secularism has been outstanding. The award-winner does not need to be a member of the Association. We also have an award, named after Bertrand Russell, for any member of the Association who has worked or contributed toward the furtherance of the Association's aims and objects in an outstanding way.
 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Literary Guide, December 1 1917, p 188.

[2] See Joseph McCabe, The Life and Letters of George Jacob Holyoake (Watts, London, 1908), Volume 1, p 211. This is one of the very few errors in McCabe's huge body of writings.

[3] Edward Royle, Victorian Infidels (Manchester University Press, Manchester), 1974.

[4] Marley Denwood, 'An Evangelist of Freethought', Literary Guide, July 1936, p 136.

[5] George Jacob Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life (T Fisher Unwin, London, 1906) p 110.

[6] Royle, op.cit., pp 71-2.

[7] Edward Royle, The Infidel Tradition from Paine to Bradlaugh (Macmillan Basingstoke, 1976), p 42.

[8] See Edward Royle, Radical Politics 1790-1900: Religion and Unbelief (Longman, London, 1977), pp 116-7.

[9] Literary Guide, op.cit.

[10] See Royle, Victorian Infidels, op.cit., pp 115-6.

[11] David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain, Routledge, London, 1990) p 212.

[12] Russell Stone, 'Auckland Party Politics in the Early Years of the Provincial System, 1853-58', NZ Journal of History, Vol. 14, No 2, October 1980.

[13] Southern Cross, 28.8.1857.

[14] F B Smith 'Southwell, Charles, 1814-1860', The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume One (Allen & Unwin / Dept of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1990) pp 401-2.

[15] Mimnermus 'Charles Southwell and his Colleagues', Freethinker, 16.9.34, p 579.
 

Return to Awards page