In the third chapter we met the question whether atheism and the drive towards social betterment or social revolution were linked, in a manner, fortuitously; by historical accident or juxtaposition; represented in the central place of Karl Marx in the intellectual history of working-class ideas. I now wish to illustrate the same juxtaposition in other sources, from men of different backgrounds.

I take the case of British working-class atheism.

The French Revolution begot by sympathy men who identified atheism, or deism, or at least the destruction of the churches, with liberty. The tradition of Tom Paine thenceforth survived continuously in English life. The atheists were not precisely workingmen. But they were in touch with working-men, and formed groups which contained working-men. They were small groups. Nothing in the history of English working-class atheism in the first half of the nineteenth century resembles in the least the beginning of a popular movement. They would almost have been as quaint as table-turners or phrenologists, had their leaders been less vociferous, their pamphlets less noisy, and their cause less directly bearing on high matters which troubled educated men. The ‘free-thinkers’ of 1840 differed from the ‘free-thinkers’ of 1740 in two ways. They were lower in the social scale, and they associated their religious cause with a social cause. If Chartism or Socialism declined, they declined likewise. If Chartism looked dangerous, they looked to the magistrate less contemptible.