Human exculpation was Blatchford's declared project
Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to maintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants, from Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity.
The objection asks whether an argument excusing Adam also excuses tyrants. Blatchford's God and My Neighbour (1903; inspected in Project Gutenberg's electronic transcription, which does not identify its print exemplar), under ‘Determinism: Can Man Sin Against God?’, argues that responsibility belongs to the maker of a person's nature. Since a person did not make that nature, he cannot ultimately answer for the actions it produces. This supplies a real basis for Chesterton's charge: the exemption cannot consistently stop with Adam or sympathetic offenders. Read the argument.
But Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog (a London edition is catalogued in 1906; inspected in the New York, Boni and Liveright, 1918 edition transcribed by Gutenberg) makes rejection of both human and divine blame its declared project in ‘The Author's Apology’. It is therefore misleading to treat the human consequence as a concession merely slipped in during biblical controversy. Chapters I and VIII also dispute Chesterton directly. Read Not Guilty.
Chesterton's strongest point is about consistency: a theory devised to excuse the oppressed also excuses their oppressors from ultimate desert. The correction concerns the history and presentation of the argument: Blatchford acknowledges that universal consequence as part of his position, rather than stumbling into it unnoticed. The named tyrants illustrate Chesterton's inference; they should not be read as a verified quotation from Blatchford.
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