the first half of the century was not greatly dissimilar to that
seen in France, though less rapid and expansive. Thus we find the
Spanish Inquisitor-General in 1815 declaring that "all the world
sees with horror the rapid progress of unbelief," and denouncing
"the errors and the new and dangerous doctrines" which have passed
from other countries to Spain. [1712] This evolution was to some
extent checked; but in the latter half of the century, especially
in the last thirty years, all the Catholic countries of Europe were
more or less permeated with demotic freethought, usually going hand
in hand with republican or socialistic propaganda in politics. It is
indeed a significant fact that freethought propaganda is often most
active in countries where the Catholic Church is most powerful. Thus
in Belgium there are at least three separate federations, standing
for hundreds of freethinking "groups"; in Spain, a few years ago,
there were freethought societies in all the large towns, and at
least half-a-dozen freethought journals; in Portugal there have
been a number of societies--a weekly journal, O Secolo, of Lisbon,
and a monthly review, O Livre Exame. In France and Italy, where
educated society is in large measure rationalistic, the Masonic
lodges do most of the personal and social propaganda; but there are
federations of freethought societies in both countries. In Switzerland
freethought is more aggressive in the Catholic than in the Protestant
cantons. [1713] In the South American republics, again, as in Italy
and France, the Masonic lodges are predominantly freethinking; and in
Peru there was, a few years ago, a Freethought League, with a weekly
organ. As long ago as 1856 the American diplomatist and archæologist,
Squier, wrote that, "Although the people of Honduras, in common with
those of Central America in general, are nominally Catholics, yet,
among those capable of reflection or possessed of education, there
are more who are destitute of any fixed creed--Rationalists or, as
they are sometimes called, Freethinkers, than adherents of any form
of religion." [1714] That the movement is also active in the other
republics of the southern continent may be inferred from the facts
that a Positivist organization has long subsisted in Brazil; that its
members were active in the peaceful revolution which there substituted
a republic for a monarchy; and that at the Freethought Congresses of
Rome and Paris in 1904 and 1905 there was an energetic demand for a
Congress at Buenos Aires, which was finally agreed to for 1906.
While popular propaganda is hardly possible save on political lines,
freethinking journalism has counted for much in the most Catholic parts
of Southern Europe. The influence of such journals is to be measured
not by their circulation, which is never great, but by their keeping up
a habit of more or less instructed freethinking among readers, to many
of whom the instruction is not otherwise easily accessible. Probably
the least ambitious of them is an intellectual force of a higher order
than the highest grade of popular religious journalism; while some of
the stronger, as De Dageraad of Amsterdam, have ranked as high-class
serious reviews. In the more free and progressive countries, however,
freethought affects all periodical literature; and in France it partly
permeates the ordinary newspapers. In England, where a series of
monthly or weekly publications of an emphatically freethinking sort
has been nearly continuous from about 1840, [1715] new ones rising
in place of those which succumbed to the commercial difficulties,
such periodicals suffer an economic pinch in that they cannot hope
for much income from advertisements, which are the chief sustenance
of popular journals and magazines. The same law holds elsewhere; but
in England and America the high-priced reviews have been gradually
opened to rationalistic articles, the way being led by the English
Westminster Review [1716] and Fortnightly Review, both founded with
an eye to freer discussion.
Among the earlier freethinking periodicals may be noted The
Republican, 1819-26 (edited by Carlile); The Deist's Magazine,
1820; The Lion, 1828 (Carlile); The Prompter, 1830 (Carlile);
The Gauntlet, 1833 (Carlile); The Atheist and Republican, 1841-42;
The Blasphemer, 1842; The Oracle of Reason (founded by Southwell),
1842, etc.; The Reasoner and Herald of Progress (largely conducted
by Holyoake), 1846-1861; Cooper's Journal; or, unfettered
Thinker, etc., 1850, etc.; The Movement, 1843; The Freethinker's
Information for the People (undated: after 1840); Freethinker's
Magazine, 1850, etc.; London Investigator, 1854, etc. Bradlaugh's
National Reformer, begun in 1860, lasted till 1893. Mr. Foote's
Freethinker, begun in 1881, still subsists. Various freethinking
monthlies have risen and fallen since 1880--e.g., Our Corner,
edited by Mrs. Besant, 1883-88; The Liberal and Progress, edited
by Mr. Foote, 1879-87; the Free Review, transformed into the
University Magazine, 1893-1898. The Reformer, a monthly, edited by
Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner, subsisted from 1897 to 1904. The Literary
Guide, which began as a small sheet in 1885, flourishes. Since
1900, a popular Socialist journal, The Clarion, has declared for
rationalism through the pen of its editor, Mr. R. Blatchford
("Nunquam"), whose polemic has caused much controversy. For a
generation back, further, rationalistic essays have appeared
from time to time not only in the Fortnightly Review (founded
by G. H. Lewes, and long edited by Mr. John (now Lord) Morley,
much of whose writing on the French philosophes appeared in its
pages), but in the Nineteenth Century, wherein was carried on,
for instance, the famous controversy between Mr. Gladstone and
Prof. Huxley. In the early 'seventies, the Cornhill Magazine,
under the editorship of Leslie Stephen, issued serially Matthew
Arnold's Literature and Dogma and St. Paul and Protestantism. In
the latter years of the century quite a number of reviews, some of
them short-lived, gave space to advanced opinions. But propaganda
has latterly become more and more a matter of all-pervading
literary influence, the immense circulation of the sixpenny
reprints of the R. P. A. having put the advanced literature of
the last generation within the reach of all.