Chapter XXI: Act 1870: , I have repeatedly for nine years past affirmed in the (1)

highest Courts of Jurisdiction in this realm. I am ready to make the declaration or affirmation of allegiance."

The Speaker thereupon requested him to withdraw, and formally restated the claim to the House, remarking that he had "grave doubts" on the matter, and desired to refer it to the House's judgment. On behalf of the Treasury bench, Lord Frederick Cavendish, remarking that the advice of the new law officers of the Crown was not yet available, moved that the point be referred to a Select Committee. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Tory leader in the Commons, was at this stage not actively hostile. A man of well-meaning and temperate though meagre quality, made up of small doses of virtues and capacities, well fitted to be a country gentleman, but of too thin stuff and too narrow calibre to be either a very good or a very bad statesman, he was a Conservative by force of tradition and mental limitation, and a partisan leader in respect of his pliability to his associates. As his biographer puts it, he was "not recalcitrant to compromise" in matters of party strategy and leadership. Being personally willing to substitute affirmation for oath,[124] he seconded the Liberal motion without any show of animus, and only some of his minor followers, as Earl Percy and Mr Daniel Onslow, sought to effect the adjournment of the debate. This attempt, however, was not pressed to a division, and the Select Committee was agreed to.

[Footnote 124: He wrote in his diary at the time: "It seems strange to require an oath from a Christian, and _to dispense with it from an Atheist_. Would it not be better to do away with the member's oath altogether, and make the affirmation general?" (Mr Lang's "Life of Northcote," ii. 154.)]

Only a few of the speeches in the House thus far had indicated a desire among the Tory party to make Bradlaugh the victim of their feud with the Liberals. But outside the House, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, member for Portsmouth, speaking at Christchurch, had already publicly declared his intention to oppose Bradlaugh's entry: the broaching of the oath question in legal and other journals before the assembling of Parliament having given to such politicians their cue. Over and above the purely factious motive of such men, and of the mass of the Tories, there was the motive of genuine religious malice; and the two instincts in combination wrought memorable results.

On 10th May Lord Richard Grosvenor, the Liberal Whip, announced to the House the names of the proposed members of the Select Committee whose appointment he should move next day:--Mr Whitbread, Sir J. Holker, Mr John Bright, Lord Henry Lennox, Mr W. N. Massey, Mr Staveley Hill, Sir Henry Jackson, the Attorney-General (Sir Henry James), the Solicitor-General (Mr Farrer Herschell), Sir G. Goldney, Mr Grantham, Mr Pemberton, Mr Watkin Williams, Mr Spencer H. Walpole, Mr Hopwood, Mr Beresford Hope, Major Nolan, Mr Chaplin, and Mr Serjeant Simon. Although the motion was not to come on till next day, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff sought, in despite of the Speaker's opposition, to raise at once a debate on the legitimacy of the Committee; and on the following day he was able to do so. He moved "the previous question," and pronounced the course taken "inconvenient, unprecedented, and irregular," although it had been agreed to by his nominal leader; thus beginning the tactic of independent action which served to mark him off with three colleagues,[125] as constituting a "fourth party" in the House, the other three being the main bodies of Liberals and Tories, and the Irish Home Rulers. The debate, once begun, was carried on with great violence and recklessness, Mr Stanley Leighton alleging that Bradlaugh had been pressed on the Northampton constituency by the Liberal "whip," prompted by Mr Gladstone; and Sir R. Knightley affirming that the election had been determined by the interference of Mr Samuel Morley. A member known as F. H. O'Donnel, but originally named Macdonald, an Irish Catholic, asserted that Bradlaugh had "explained religion as a disease of the brain, and conscience as a nervous contraction of the diaphragm." After more random discussion the House divided, when there voted for the appointment of the Committee 171, against it, 74, giving a majority of 97 to the Government. Most of the Conservative leaders walked out of the House before the division, thus already showing a disposition to surrender to the irresponsibles on their side.[126]

[Footnote 125: These were Mr Gorst, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr A. J. Balfour. The latter took little oral part in the Bradlaugh struggle, but always voted with his party.]

[Footnote 126: Northcote's diary, so far as published, naturally offers no confession or explanation as to the change in his attitude. Under date May 24, he simply records that "we agreed to stand firm for Wolff's motion" (Mr Lang's "Life," ii. 159).]

Already, too, there began to be apparent what can now no longer be disputed--the mismanagement of the Speaker. Only bad judgment or partiality could account for his permission of such gross irrelevance as filled the speeches of Mr Leighton and Mr F. H. O'Donnel, _alias_ Macdonald. On the language of the latter now forgotten personage Mr Bradlaugh thus commented in the _National Reformer_:--

"I remember, fourteen or fifteen years ago, when the countrymen of that member's constituents came to me for help and counsel. The honourable member professes to now represent those Irishmen who then sought and had my aid; and on Tuesday he in effect told the House that it ought to exclude from it one who did not believe in God, and had no standard of morality. But I see from the division list that the 'third party,' of which he pretended to be the spokesman at the election of the Speaker, went into the lobby opposed to that into which their leader went, so that the really Irish members did not forget old ties."

Unfortunately the latter tribute was not long to be deserved.

On 20th May the Select Committee presented its report. There had been eight members in favour of the view that Bradlaugh was legally entitled to affirm, and eight against; and the casting vote of the chairman, Mr Spencer H. Walpole, was given for the Noes. It was said, and it was believed by Mr Bradlaugh, that Sir John Holker had avowed a belief that his claim was valid, but Sir John Holker on the Committee voted with his party. Save for the fact that the Noes included Mr Hopwood, the vote would stand as a purely party one, the rest of the Noes being Conservatives, while the rest of the Liberals took the affirmative side. And so general was the attitude of reckless prejudice that we still find the Chairman's son giving a flatly misleading account of the situation. Mr Spencer Walpole, in his work on "The Electorate and the Legislature"[127] published in 1881, and re-issued in 1892, has made (p. 75) this statement (italics ours):--

[Footnote 127: Macmillan & Co., "The English Citizen" series.]

"In 1880 ... the legislature was suddenly confronted with a new dilemma. The borough of Northampton sent a representative to Parliament who _refused to take an oath_--not because he had any conscientious objection to be sworn, but because an appeal to a God--in whom he had no belief--seemed to him an idle formula which was not binding on his conscience."

Since Mr Walpole has chosen to print and reprint this maliciously untrue statement, and takes no notice whatever of published protests against it, I am obliged to say in so many words that he, a professed historian, is here grossly perverting history. Much might indeed be set down to his carelessness. Issuing in 1892 the second edition of what should be an authoritative treatise, Mr Walpole inserts (p. 77) a passage as to Parliamentary affirmation which is completely quashed by the passing of Mr Bradlaugh's Affirmation Act of 1888. Of this Act, in 1892, Mr Walpole does not seem to have any knowledge; but however he may contrive to overlook such a fact as this, he cannot have been unaware in 1880 that Mr Bradlaugh did _not_ refuse to take the oath, and that he repudiated the expression that the oath would not be binding on his conscience,[128] repeatedly declaring that any promise he made would as such be binding on his conscience, whether or not an idle formula should be appended to it. Bradlaugh's position on this point was always explicit; for him a promise, however embellished, was a promise which as an honourable man he was bound to keep. By the majority of the British House of Commons it is still implicitly ruled that a certain promise would not necessarily be binding on the consciences of Christian members unless accompanied by the popular imprecation "So help me God."

[Footnote 128: A technical assent to this ambiguous question was, as we have seen, the condition attached to affirmation in the law courts. But common decency usually gave the formula there a purely technical and non-natural force.]

The decision of the first Select Committee, on the casting vote of the chairman, at once carried the question to a new phase. Bradlaugh immediately published a statement[129] of his position as to the oath, the taking of which he now held to be forced upon him by the refusal of the right to affirm.

[Footnote 129: Printed in _National Reformer_ of 30th May 1889, p. 338, and in several London newspapers.]

It ran:--

"When elected as one of the Burgesses to represent Northampton in the House of Commons, I believed that I had the legal right to make affirmation of allegiance in lieu of taking the oath, as provided by sec. 4 of the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866. While I considered that I had this legal right, it was then clearly my moral duty to make the affirmation. The oath, although to me including words of idle and meaningless character, was and is regarded by a large number of my fellow-countrymen as an appeal to Deity to take cognizance of their swearing. It would have been an act of hypocrisy to voluntarily take this form if any other had been open to me, or to take it without protest, as though it meant in my mouth any such appeal. I therefore quietly and privately notified the Clerk of the House of my desire to affirm. His view of the law and practice differing from my own, and no similar case having theretofore arisen, it became necessary that I should tender myself to affirm in a more formal manner, and this I did at a season deemed convenient by those in charge of the business of the House. In tendering my affirmation I was careful, when called on by the Speaker to state my objection, to do nothing more than put, in the fewest possible words, my contention that the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, gave the right to affirm in Parliament to every person for the time being by law permitted to make an affirmation in lieu of taking an oath, and that I was such a person, and therefore claimed to affirm. The Speaker, neither refusing nor accepting my affirmation, referred the matter to the House, which appointed a Select Committee to report whether persons entitled to affirm under the Evidence Amendment Acts, 1869 and 1870, were under sec. 4 of the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, also entitled to affirm as Members of Parliament. This Committee, by the casting vote of its Chairman, has decided that I am not entitled to affirm. Two courses are open to me--one, of appeal to the House against the decision of the Committee; the other, of present compliance with the ceremony, while doing my best to prevent the further maintenance of a form which many other members of the House think as objectionable as I do, but which habit and the fear of exciting prejudice has induced them to submit to. To appeal to the House against the decision of the Committee would be ungracious, and would certainly involve great delay of public business. I was present at the deliberations of the Committee, and while, naturally, I cannot be expected to bow submissively to the statements and arguments of my opponents, I am bound to say that they were calmly and fairly urged. I think them unreasonable, but the fact that they included a legal argument from an earnest Liberal deprives them even of a purely party character. If I appealed to the House against the Committee, I, of course, might rely on the fact that the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, Sir Henry Jackson, Q.C., Mr Watkin Williams, Q.C., and Mr Sergeant Simon, are reported in the _Times_ to have interpreted the law as I do; and I might add that the Right Honourable John Bright and Mr Whitbread are in the same journal arrayed in favour of allowing me to affirm. But even then the decision of the House may endorse that of the Committee, and should it be in my favour, it could only--judging from what has already taken place--be after a bitter party debate, in which the Government specially, and the Liberals generally, would be sought to be burdened with my anti-theological views, and with promoting my return to Parliament. As a matter of fact, the Liberals of England have never in any way promoted my return to Parliament. The much-attacked action of Mr Adam had relation only to the second seat, and in no way related to the one for which I was fighting. In 1868 the only action of Mr Gladstone and of Mr Bright was to write letters in favour of my competitors, and since 1868 I do not believe that either of these gentlemen has directly or indirectly interfered in any way in connection with my parliamentary candidature. The majority of the electors of Northampton had determined to return me before the recent union in that borough, and while pleased to aid their fellow-Liberals in winning the two seats, my constituents would have at any rate returned me had no union taken place. My duty to my constituents is to fulfil the mandate they have given me, and if to do this I have to submit to a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have reverently made, so much the worse for those who force me to repeat words which I have scores of times declared are to me sounds conveying no clear and definite meaning. I am sorry for the earnest believers who see words sacred to them used as a meaningless addendum to a promise, but I cannot permit their less sincere co-religionists to use an idle form, in order to prevent me from doing my duty to those who have chosen me to speak for them in Parliament. I shall, taking the oath, regard myself as bound not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it. So soon as I am able I shall take such steps as may be consistent with parliamentary business to put an end to the present doubtful and unfortunate state of the law and practice on oaths and affirmations. Only four cases have arisen of refusal to take the oath, except, of course, those cases purely political in their character. Two of those cases are those of the Quakers John Archdale and Joseph Pease. The religion of these men forbade them to swear at all, and they nobly refused. The sect to which they belonged was outlawed, insulted, and imprisoned. They were firm, and one of that sect sat on the very Committee, a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council and a member of the actual Cabinet. I thank him gratefully that, valuing right so highly, he cast his vote so nobly for one for whom I am afraid he has but scant sympathy. No such religious scruple prevents me from taking the oath as prevented John Archdale and Joseph Pease. In the cases of the Baron Rothschild and Alderman Salomons the words 'upon the true faith of Christian' were the obstacle. To-day the oath contains no such words. The Committee report that I may not affirm, and, protesting against a decision which seems to me alike against the letter of the law and the spirit of modern legislation, I comply with the forms of the House."

As might have been expected, this decision to take the oath evoked fresh outcry, and this time some Freethinkers joined. The most injurious attack of this kind came from Mr George Jacob Holyoake, who had long been on strained terms with Bradlaugh, and avowedly regarded him with disfavour as a too militant Atheist. Before the assembling of Parliament Mr Holyoake, in answer to a correspondent who asked him whether Mr Bradlaugh would take the oath, had written to the effect that Mr Bradlaugh had taken the oath scores of times before, and would doubtless do so now. This remark had reference to a long-standing dispute as to the propriety of oath-taking by a Freethinker under any circumstances. Before the reform of the law which permitted unbelievers to affirm, Mr Bradlaugh had without hesitation taken the oath in courts of law, holding the forced formality a much smaller matter than the evil of a miscarriage of justice. Mr Holyoake condemned all such oath-taking; but it was pointed out that while he was in business partnership with his brother Austin, the latter, a highly esteemed Freethinker, had taken the oath wherever it was necessary for the purposes of the business. This, of course, would not altogether set aside Mr G. J. Holyoake's argument, if put forward only as a statement of his own position; but he was not content with that. After avowing his expectation that Bradlaugh would take the oath, he expressed surprise and reprobation when Bradlaugh proposed to do so. Needless to say, such a deliverance was eagerly welcomed by Bradlaugh's enemies, and zealously used against him; as it was when repeated by Mr Holyoake in the following year, with expressions about Freethinkers being made to hang their heads for shame by the action of their nominal leader. Were there not reason to presume that Mr Holyoake would not now repeat or defend his former language, it might be fitting to endorse here some of the very emphatic comments made on it at the time by Mrs Besant and others. It may suffice to say, however, that Mr Holyoake had never before taken such an attitude against Freethinkers who took the oath; that he had once himself expressed readiness to take it in court if it were regarded as a civil act, and not as a confession of faith (exactly Bradlaugh's case); and that he later seemed to other Freethinkers to quash once for all his own case by justifying quite gratuitous acts of conformity and co-operation with churches whose teaching he held to be false. The common sense of nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand Freethinkers, including attached friends of Mr Holyoake, decided that such an act of enforced ceremonial as official oath-taking by an avowed Atheist surrenders no jot of principle or self-respect, particularly when the Atheist is openly striving for the abolition of all such compulsions. Of all Freethinkers who have taken oaths in England, Bradlaugh was the very least open to the charge of temporising; and the expressions used by Mr Holyoake at different times in this connection as to "apostolic" conduct have been, to say the least, unfortunate as coming from a professed Freethinker, not usually acquiescent in orthodox phraseology.

§ 4.

The document above quoted, announcing Bradlaugh's intentions, was dated 20th May, the date of the Committee's report. On the following day Bradlaugh went to the House to take the oath and his seat. Immediately on his presenting himself, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff rose and objected to the oath being administered, whereupon Mr Dillwyn protested against the interruption. The Speaker now made the fatal mistake of allowing the interruption to be carried out. It is established by the highest possible authority--that of the present Speaker--that the holder of the Chair as such had and has no right to permit any such intervention between an elected member and the statutory oath. Sir Henry Brand, intimidated by the action of men like Wolff, weakly stated that he "was bound to say he knew of no instance" in which such an intervention had taken place; but "at the same time" he would allow Wolff so to intervene. That personage then made a speech, resting on the two arguments that Atheists who had made affirmation in the law courts thereby admitted that an oath "would not be binding on their conscience," and that Bradlaugh had further, in his "Impeachment of the House of Brunswick," affirmed that Parliament "has the undoubted right to withhold the Crown from Albert Edward Prince of Wales." The hon. baronet "could not see how a gentleman professing the views set forth in that work could take the oath of allegiance." It was in the course of this speech that the hon. baronet was understood by all his auditors to say, of the sects permitted by law to affirm, that they "had a common standard of morality, a conscience, and a general belief in some divinity or other."[130]

[Footnote 130: Some years afterwards he stated in the House that what he had really said was "one Deity or the other," meaning either the Unitarian or the Trinitarian God. The explanation did not seem to be credited.]

The Tory case against Bradlaugh's admission to Parliament was thus at the outset a combination of a moral subterfuge and a notorious political fallacy. All concerned knew perfectly well that the oath was habitually taken by men to whom the adjuration was an idle form, and that their consciences could only be "bound" by the simple promise. It had further been ruled by the highest judicial authority, in the cases of Miller _v._ Salomons, and the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway Company _v._ Heaton, that the essence of the oath consisted in the promise, and not in the words of imprecation. Yet further, Wolff had before him, and in his speech quoted from, the statement above cited, in which Bradlaugh expressly declared that he held himself bound, in taking the oath, "not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it." These words he suppressed. On the other hand, as regards the point of allegiance, he was negating the whole established doctrine of the British constitution. It is a commonplace of that doctrine that Parliament can repeal, as Parliament passed, the Act of Settlement. The contrary is now maintained by nobody, and was not really maintained even by Burke, in his furious feint of disputing the constitutional principle in his "Reflections." As the law stands, any member of Parliament is entitled to move constitutionally for the abolition of the Monarchy. The oath, framed though it be for the dynasty, and not for the State, promises allegiance to the sovereign as by the law established. If the law in future quashes sovereignty, there will be no sovereign to whom to bear legal allegiance.[131]

[Footnote 131: It is worth noting that Mr Keir Hardie, a professed Christian Socialist, when recently (28th June) protesting against the foolish ceremony of congratulating the Queen on the birth of a great-grandchild in the direct line, went the length of declaring, "I owe no allegiance to any hereditary ruler"--this after he had sworn allegiance to the Queen. Bradlaugh never stultified himself in this fashion.]

But such protests as those of Wolff were perfectly fitted to serve the turn of the Tory party in a campaign of faction. The cue of shocked piety and the cue of "loyalty" came alike easily to the representatives of the feudal and the capitalistic interests; and the "bag-baron" and the "crag-baron" vied with each other in the display of sham godliness and sincere zeal for the Throne. Never was there such a reek of cant in St. Stephen's before. All the English gift for hypocrisy, unrivalled in Europe, was brought to bear on the task. Alderman Fowler, a fitting exponent of the cult of Mammon in His sacred city, followed up Wolff with a petition emanating from bankers and merchants, all praying with one consent that an unbeliever in their gods should not be allowed to sit at Westminster. The honour of God was avowedly the one concern of the Alderman and of the men, so many of them gross with fortuitous gain, who made him their mouthpiece. And those strategists who knew the imperfect efficacy of bogus religion as a means of keeping an Atheist member out of his seat, took care to supply the additional weapons needed.

Mr Gladstone met Sir Henry Wolff's motion with a counter motion for the appointment of a fresh select committee to consider Bradlaugh's competence to take the oath--a sufficiently unwise course, in view of the action of the previous committee. At once, however, the official Tories gave their full support to Wolff's motion, declaring that the matter should not even go to a committee. Mr Gibson, formerly Attorney-General for Ireland, argued that Bradlaugh had deserved all that befell him for raising the question. "The hon. member might have taken his seat without opposition, but he had chosen to obtrude himself on the House and the country. He must therefore accept the grave responsibility of thus thrusting his opinions on the House." Observe the situation. Bradlaugh had acted not only as a scrupulous man in his place was bound to do, but as a man careful of other men's susceptibilities would do. Had he simply taken the oath, he would certainly have been yelled at as a hypocrite, and further as a blasphemer. The point had been publicly discussed in the press beforehand, and his enemies were prepared. Trying to avoid at once inconsistency and scandal, he quietly and circumspectly sought to make affirmation. The right to affirm was denied him in committee by the champions of the oath, joined by one conscientious Liberal. When he then came to take the compelled oath, these men and their fellows assailed him as one who "obtruded his opinions"; and Mr Gibson, their spokesman, proceeded to allege in so many words that the member for Northampton had "walked up the floor of the House with that oath and Book before him and declined to take the oath." It was a falsehood; and Mr Gibson himself had just before, in the same speech, admitted that Bradlaugh had "claimed for himself, in careful and guarded language, the right to make an affirmation."

There are many points in the story of this struggle at which it is hardly possible to abstain from imputing wilful falsehood to some of the actors. But on this point it seems right to conclude that one or other form of prejudice or passion made men all round incapable of realising when and how they grossly perverted a simple fact. It was not merely the factious Tories who repeated the mis-statement, though they naturally used it most industriously. Mr Chaplin, M.P., was reported in two newspapers as having asserted that at a public meeting on 1st June "Mr Bradlaugh announced his intention of refusing the oath, and asked that he might affirm instead." Mr Chaplin, at the time of speaking, was a member of the second select committee appointed to sit on the oath question, and Bradlaugh indignantly protested to the Chairman, who was again Mr Spencer Walpole. Mr Chaplin, after some fencing, declared that the report was inaccurate. Baron Henry de Worms, another of the champions of Omnipotence, publicly averred[132] that "he was in the House when Mr Bradlaugh came to the Speaker and said he could not and would not take an oath which in no way bound him, as he did not acknowledge any God." Challenged as to this statement, Baron Henry de Worms avowed that the words from "which" onwards were his own comment, but could not see anything unwarrantable in the previous statement as to the facts. Such were the notions of truth and honour among English--and other--oath-taking gentlemen and noblemen with which Bradlaugh had to contend. And he was only in part supported by the remarks of Mr John Morley in the _Fortnightly Review_ for July 1880:--

[Footnote 132: Report in _Standard_ of 11th June 1880.]

"There is no precedent for Mr Bradlaugh's case, for the simple reason that there is no precedent for the frank courage with which he has considered it desirable to publish his views as to the nature of an oath. That the oath is just as meaningless, so far as its divine appeal is concerned, to many past and present members of the House of Commons as Mr Bradlaugh protested it would be to him, no one doubts. Whether and how far he was justified in asking to be sworn, _after he had declined to be sworn_, is a different question. Whatever the answer to that may be, it cannot at least be said that the course adopted by Mr Bradlaugh involved the surrender of any principle."

The last clause is so candid that it is a pity Mr Morley should have "considered it desirable" to fortify his own position by penning that above italicised. He had previously spoken of Bradlaugh's "pertinacity" in "parading" his views--a statement which obtrudes its inspiration. When a leading Liberal publicist wrote so, the godly multitude naturally asserted in chorus that Bradlaugh had first ostentatiously refused to take the oath, and then insisted on taking it. Dean Boyd, of Exeter, capped the record by asserting that when Bradlaugh first "advanced to the table of the House," he "openly, boldly, and defiantly affirmed that he believed there was no such being as a Deity."

In the frame of mind represented by a variety of such utterances as these, the House of Commons deliberated on Mr Gladstone's motion that the question of Bradlaugh's competence to swear should be referred to a second special committee. On the second day of the debate, Sir Stafford Northcote, the nominal leader of the Conservative party in the House, accepted the position into which he had been ignominiously forced by irresponsible and even semi-defiant adherents, and opposed the appointment of the Committee. He is reported as saying:--

"Without raising any question as to whether there is anything irreverent in the course which the hon. member proposes to take, it seems to me that we, in allowing him to take it, should be incurring a responsibility from which our better judgment ought to make us shrink"

--a fair sample of the hon. baronet's forcible-feeble oratory. Some Tory speakers, as Earl Percy, admitted that "the hon. member, to do him justice, had sought to avoid taking an oath to which he attached no sacred character"; but these ingenuous combatants were concerned only to prevent the House from "incurring the guilt of an act of hypocrisy," and had no anxiety about avoiding an act of iniquity. When John Bright met the subterfuges of the Opposition with the retaliatory criticism of which he was a master, the temperature naturally rose. If, he asked, they set up the principle of a creed test, where were they going to end? Would they next question members known to be unbelievers, though not publicly professed ones? As certain Conservative members were actually known by their comrades to be Gallios in these matters, Bright's challenge created the appropriate resentment, as did his emphatic avowal, "One thing I believe most profoundly, that there is nothing amongst mankind that has done more to destroy truthfulness than the forcing of men to take an oath." But the memorable part of his speech was this:--

"I have no right to speak of the member for Northampton. I think it never happened to me more than once to address to him a single sentence, or to hear any expression from him. I never saw him to my knowledge but once, before he appeared in this House; but he is returned here by a large constituency, to whom his religious opinions were as well known as they are now to us.... Now, I have no doubt whatever, though I have no authority to say so, that the oath as it stands is binding on the conscience of the member for Northampton, in the sense that an affirmation would be binding on his conscience--that the words of the oath, so far as they are a promise, are words which would be binding upon him, but that their binding character is not increased by the reference to the Supreme Being, of whose existence, unhappily as we all think--such is the constitution of his mind, and such has been the constitution of many eminent minds of whom we have all heard--he is not able to form that distinct opinion and belief which we, who I think are more happy, have been able to do. Therefore if he were to come to the table and to take the oath as it is, and as he proposes to take it, I have no doubt that it would be binding on his conscience as my simple affirmation is binding on mine; because in my affirmation there is no reference to the Deity. I make a promise. My word is as good, and is taken to be as good, as your oath. (Loud Ministerial cheers.) And that is declared by an irrevocable Act of Parliament. And if Mr Bradlaugh takes this oath, as he proposes to take it, I have no doubt that, though the last words of the oath have no binding effect upon him, yet his sense of honour and his conscience--(Opposition laughter, and cries of 'Hear, hear' from some Ministerialists)--his sense of honour and his conscience would make that declaration as binding on him as my affirmation is on me, and as your oath is on you."

Among those who joined in the brutal laughter of the gentlemen of the Conservative party at these passages were men who had committed bribery, unscrupulous stock-jobbers and company promoters, men about town, topers, libellers, and liars. But some who thought it fitting to laugh with these would be normally classed as chivalrous and well-bred gentlemen.

The debate remained picturesque to the close. Lord Randolph Churchill, who has within the present year proved afresh his capacity to create a Parliamentary sensation, protested that "if the words 'so help me God' were held to be a mere superstitious invocation, the idea or the faith which had for centuries animated the House of Commons that its proceedings were under the guidance of Providence would lose its force, and would very soon have to be abandoned altogether." The better to exemplify the energy of the divine supervision, the noble lord, after quoting a somewhat strong passage from Bradlaugh's "Impeachment of the House of Brunswick," threw the pamphlet violently on the floor of the House, in parody of Burke's performance with the daggers. Baron de Worms hazarded the proposition that "this was an irreligious, not a religious question." The late Mr Thorold Rogers, an economist whose incapacity for logical thought led to his not unsuccessful cultivation of the department of historical detail, made a foolish and offensive speech on the Liberal side, setting out with a statement of his sense of intellectual superiority to Bradlaugh. "In his opinion, a person who recognised no law beyond that of his own mind, and such scanty rules as he thought fit to lay for his own guidance, very much weakened his own character and lessened the value of his own life and acts." Further, Mr Rogers had over and over again found "in the course of the study of history" that Atheists were Conservatives; and he cited in proof the names of Hobbes, a Theist; Hume, who till the latter part of his life was an emphatic Deist; and Gibbon, who was one till his death. "He knew something of the political views of educated sceptics; and when this unhappy gentleman became a little better educated it would undoubtedly be found that he was migrating towards the opposite benches." After other remarks to similar effect, Mr Rogers provoked even the protest of the much-tolerating Speaker by charging the Tories with being indisposed to "act as generously as they did in their sports, and to give a little law even to vermin." For this felicitous figure Mr Rogers made a stumbling apology. On this being privately repeated, Bradlaugh, with his usual magnanimity, later forgave the speech as a whole.

Where a professed Radical could be thus insolent, on the score of his sense of superiority to opinions which he was incapable of discussing, the language of the customary Tory may readily be imagined. The revelations of ardent piety made by some eminent capitalists and company-promoters were unexpectedly gratifying to the religious feelings of the nation; and the unrelieved malignity of the personal allusions of these and other Christians to a man precluded from turning unto them there and then the other cheek, proved the injustice of the charge that this is an age of lukewarm religious convictions.

After two days of largely irrelevant debate, Wolff's motion was rejected by 289 votes to 214--a result not ungratifying to the Tories, as showing that already certain Liberals had taken their side. A select committee of twenty-three was duly appointed, the Tories being defeated in an attempt to strengthen their representation on it. The members were:--The Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, Messrs Bright, Chaplin, Childers, Sir Richard Cross, Mr Gibson, Sir Gabriel Goldney, Mr Grantham, Mr Staveley Hill, Sir John Holker, Mr Beresford Hope, Mr Hopwood, Sir Henry Jackson, Lord Henry Lennox, Mr Massey, Major Nolan, Messrs Pemberton, Simon, Trevelyan, Walpole, Whitbread, and Watkin Williams. The Committee began by examining Sir Thomas Erskine May as to precedents; and Mr Bradlaugh was allowed to put questions to him likewise, bringing forward precedents Sir Thomas had not noted, among them the important case of Sir Francis Bacon, who, as Attorney-General, was challenged for breaking the law in making oath that he was duly qualified to sit, when, as a practising barrister, he was legally disqualified under an Act of Edward III. (It was in this case that the House ruled: "Their oath their own consciences to look unto, not we to examine it.") After Sir Thomas May, Bradlaugh was himself examined, and conducted his case with the lawyer-like exactitude and the more than lawyer-like concision and cogency which even his enemies admitted to belong to all his legal pleadings.[133] He pointed out that if it were competent to the House to interfere between a member and the oath, the first forty members sworn in a Parliament might prevent the sitting of any of the rest; and that if he were held legally incompetent to make affirmation of allegiance, he stood legally bound, as an elected member, to take the oath, no matter what his opinions were. He formally stated--

[Footnote 133: See the report of the Committee's proceedings, reprinted in his "True Story of my Parliamentary Struggle."]

"That there is nothing in what I did when asking to affirm which in any way disqualifies me from taking the oath.

"That all I did was--believing, as I then did, that I had the right to affirm--to claim to affirm, and that I was then absolutely silent as to the oath.

"That I did not refuse to take it; nor have then or since expressed any mental reservation or stated that the appointed oath of allegiance would not be binding upon me.

"That, on the contrary, I say and have said that the essential part of the oath is in the fullest and most complete degree binding upon my honour and conscience, and that the repeating the words of asseveration does not in the slightest degree weaken the binding effect of the oath of allegiance upon me."

These explicit statements he repeated again and again in answer to questions, saying once:--

"Any form that I went through, any oath that I took, I should regard as binding upon my conscience in the fullest degree. I would go through no form, I would take no oath, unless I meant it to be so binding."

This emphatic explanation was given in reply to a question on what is, to my mind, the only obscure point in his examination. Asked: "Do you draw any distinction between the binding effect upon your conscience of the assertory oath, as it is called, and the promissory oath?" he answered--

"Most certainly I do. The testimony oath is not binding upon my conscience, because there is another form which the law has provided which I may take, which is more consonant with my feelings. The promissory oath is and will be binding upon my conscience if I take it, because the law, as interpreted by your Committee, says that it is the form which I am to take, and the statute requires me to take it."

There is here, I think, a momentary confusion among the terms "assertory," "promissory," and "testimony"; and the phrase "not binding on my conscience" is also used in a sense probably not intended by the questioner, and not that intended by Bradlaugh in his next answer, above quoted. The "because" is inconsequent. What he meant to convey was simply that he expressly rejected the testimony oath because in giving evidence he was free to affirm; whereas he was compelled to take the oath of allegiance, there being no legal alternative in the opinion of a Committee of the House. He had been forced to submit in the law courts to the invidious formula that the oath was not binding on his conscience, because it had been expressly ruled in law[134] that if a witness simply said "I am an Atheist," the judge was bound to infer that an oath did not "bind" him. But Bradlaugh's answers to the Select Committee, taken together, made it superfluously clear that in the natural sense of the words he held any formula of promise he took to be binding on him, whether with or without an imprecatory tag. And inasmuch as members of the Committee nevertheless thought fit afterwards to allege that he had all along declared the contrary with regard to the oath, we are driven to one of two conclusions. Either (_a_) these gentlemen hold that a formal public promise is not fully binding on _their_ consciences unless they add "so help me God," or something of the sort, and that an Atheist cannot be more conscientious than they; or (_b_) they deliberately chose to bear false witness for party purposes. And it finally matters little which conclusion we draw; for the acceptance of the first leaves open the chance of the second being true also.

[Footnote 134: In a case not legally reported, however--that of _ex parte_ Lennard _vs_ Woolrych, in the Court of Queen's Bench, in April 1875.]

The Committee, after a variety of votes, finally reported to the effect that Bradlaugh, by simply stating [though in answer to official question] that he had repeatedly affirmed under certain Acts in courts of law, had brought it to the notice of the House that he was a person as to whom judges had satisfied themselves that an oath was "not binding on his conscience"; that, under the circumstances, an oath taken by him would not be an oath "within the true meaning of the statutes"; and that the House therefore could and ought to prevent him from going through the form. They further suggested that he should be allowed to affirm with a view to his right to do so being tested by legal action, pointing to the nearly equal balance of votes in the former committee as a reason for desiring a decisive legal solution.

For this report of course only those members are responsible who voted for its main clauses. Under this reservation it falls to be said that the use made of the mean technicality of an oath being held not "binding on the conscience" of an Atheist was in itself profoundly unconscientious. That formality was, to begin with, expressly intended to prevent the evasion of the oath by religious knaves, and not at all to imply that an Atheist who took the oath could not be believed. What was more, Bradlaugh had only specified the Evidence Amendment Acts in reply to the express challenge of the Clerk of the House of Commons. To turn an accidental ambiguity to the account of an iniquity, to decide that a man was untrustworthy under the pretext of a legal subterfuge, was merely to show that the oath is less than no security for right action, and that under its cover men can far outgo the lengths of injustice that they are likely to venture on in the name of simple law. In the words of Bright, who opposed the conclusion come to as "absolutely untenable," "the course taken was one involving a mean advantage over Mr Bradlaugh." What the proceeding proved against Bradlaugh was simply this: that he had done wrong in ever accepting, even as a technical phrase, the juridical formula that an oath as a whole is not "binding on the conscience" of one to whom an imprecation is an idle barbarism. He ought in the law courts to have repudiated even the technical shadow of an implication that a rationalist's word is worth less than a religionist's oath. Nothing but persistent resistance will ever make tyrannous religion give way to justice; and he, who was habitually accused of gratuitously defying religion, had simply not defied it enough. And the lesson taught to other rationalists by his struggle is this, that oath-taking must in future be stigmatised and warred against as implying not a higher but a lower moral standard than that of rational ethics. Men who must swear to be believed are not to be believed.

§ 5.

On 21st June, a few days after the presentation of the Committee's report to the House, Mr Labouchere moved a resolution to the effect that Bradlaugh be allowed to make affirmation instead of taking the oath--the course the Committee had recommended. He had previously given notice of a general Affirmation Bill, but had postponed the discussion of it, pending the report. He now moved his resolution, after presenting a petition in support of Bradlaugh from some thousands of the people of Northampton, on the heels of a large Tory petition, also from Northampton, praying that Bradlaugh "might not be permitted to take the holy name of God in vain." Mr Labouchere in an extremely able and persuasive speech dwelt on the prime fact that the Parliamentary Oaths Act of 1866 gave to all persons legally qualified to affirm in courts of law the right to affirm in Parliament, and that by later Acts Bradlaugh was entitled to affirm in courts of law. [The opposition view presumably was that the Act of 1866 could only refer to persons _then_ entitled to affirm; but no argument to that effect appears on the reports consulted by the present writer.] He further warned the enemy that if they carried their hostility to the point of unseating Bradlaugh, he would simply be re-elected--a statement which evoked confident "No's" from members whose faith in Deity was more deep than philosophical; and remarked what was perfectly true--that there were "exceedingly few persons in Northampton of Mr Bradlaugh's views" on religious matters. Sir Hardinge Giffard (now Lord Halsbury) rang the changes on the argument about obtrusion of views; and pietists like Alderman Fowler and Mr Warton expressed afresh their corpulent horror of Atheism. One Irish member, Mr Arthur O'Connor, took occasion to protest--in a debate on a proposal to permit an affirmation--against letting Bradlaugh take the oath; and the Speaker seems to have made no objection. On the other side, Mr Hopwood, whose vote in the first committee had possibly permitted all the trouble, made a powerful speech against the "obtrusion" argument, which, as he justly said, amounted to telling Bradlaugh, "If you had come to the table with a lie on your lips, we would have allowed you to be sworn." But again the great speech in the debate was Bright's. The remark, "There are many members of this House who take the oath and greatly dislike it," was his first home-thrust; and soon, after a temperate and weighty argument, he nobly repeated his declaration of belief in the honour of the Atheist, whose opinions were probably as repugnant to Bright as to any other man in the House. "I pretend," he said--and his voice rose with his theme,--"I pretend to have no conscience and honour superior to the conscience of Mr Bradlaugh. (Ironical cheers from the Opposition.) It is no business of mine to set myself up--perhaps it is no business of yours to set yourselves up--(cheers)--as having conscience and honour superior to that which actuates Mr Bradlaugh." He went on to protest that the course taken by the majority of the committee was "one involving a mean advantage over Mr Bradlaugh." The speech, however, mainly ran to perfectly judicial argument; and it was the obvious determination of the Tories to give no ear to argument that evoked the flashes of feeling which lit it up. Bright having said that the oath was now made a theistic test, where before it had been a Protestant and a Christian test, a "No," came from Mr Spencer Walpole, the Chairman of the Committee. "Why," retorted Bright, "the right hon. gentleman must have forgotten everything in the committee; he cannot have been conscious of his own opinions. Why, surely the object of this motion is to establish the test of theism." There were again "No's" from the party which denies; and Bright, after establishing his point, thrust afresh. "The theistic test," he repeated, "is proposed by the member for Portsmouth--the front bench opposite appears to have abdicated entirely--there is now only an abject, a remarkable submission to gentlemen who sit in the lower part of the House." A plain statement of the obvious fact that Wolff was establishing a precedent for intervention elicited more blatant "No's," and Bright began to warm up to his peroration. He reminded the House that a Positivist or Comtist who had been concerned in the issue of an anti-theistic pamphlet might quite as plausibly be challenged as Mr Bradlaugh; going on to speak of certain Positivists as "some men for whom I have the utmost respect in regard to everything but their opinions on the question of religion, which I deplore, and in connection with which I can only commiserate them. But," he went on, correcting the touch of superciliousness,--

"I know that many people have much greater power of belief than others have; and I am not one of those--having myself passed through many doubts--to condemn, without sympathy at any rate, those who are not able to adopt the views which I myself hold. (Hear, hear.) Now, sir, only one word more. There are members of this House of different Churches, but generally all, I trust, of one religion--of the religion which inculcates charity, and forbearance, and justice, and even generosity. There are those who belong to the Roman Catholic Church. I need not remind them of what they and their ancestors have gone through in Ireland--(hear)--for the last 200 or 300 years or more, or of how long a time they were kept out of this House, and by the very same class of arguments which the honourable and learned member for Surrey used. (Cheers.) He tells us that for a very long time past there has been a gradual relaxation. Yes, no doubt. Did he ever sit among those who have promoted those relaxations? I have been here for thirty-seven years, and I have heard these questions discussed over and over again; but I never found that the time had come when the party opposite, represented by gentlemen who now sit there, were willing to make these relaxations. They submitted not to argument, not to sentiments of generosity or of justice; they submitted only to a majority which sat on this side of the House. (Cheers.) Then there are the Nonconformists. I am told that there are some Nonconformists even--but I think it is rather in the nature of a mistake or a slander--who have great doubts as to how they should vote on this occasion. It is occasions like this that try men and try principles. (Hear, hear.) Do you suppose that in times past the Founder of Christianity has required an oath in this House to defend the religion which He founded? Or do you suppose now that the supreme Ruler of the world can be interested in the fact that one man comes to this table and takes His name--it may be often in vain--(murmurs)--and another is permitted to make an affirmation, reverently and honestly, in which His name is not included? But one thing is essential for us, the House of Commons representing the English people, which is, to maintain as far as we can the great principles of freedom--freedom of political action and freedom of conscience."

An allusion to the remark of Mr Labouchere that the Northampton constituency in the mass had no sympathy with Bradlaugh's theological opinions evoked another Conservative laugh, and Bright continued:--