Chapter XXV: Act 1870: , I have repeatedly for nine years past affirmed in the (5)

A new point was raised by the intimation of one of the tellers that Bradlaugh had voted in the division. He had thereby completed the legal circumstances for a test case. The Speaker again asked for instructions, but Northcote, rather than begin a fresh debate, let the matter pass. Then arose the question, energetically put by Mr Storey, whether Bradlaugh should not be heard afresh in his defence; but this too had to be dropped. On the substantive motion being put, 297 voted with Northcote, and 80 against; and a motion for a new writ was at once agreed to by Mr Labouchere.

§ 15.

Not only his constituents, but the people generally, gave Bradlaugh their instant and warm support. At a great Sunday meeting at Manchester, to which hundreds of men had trudged many miles through the rain in the early morning, over hills and moors, from the country round, some of them only to find the hall full to the door, he had a reception which brought tears to his eyes. At Northampton, of course, the struggle was desperate. Mr Samuel Morley, bent on making reparation to his Deity for his one act of rational tolerance, followed up his many Tory votes by a letter to the Northampton Nonconformists, asking them to vote for the Tory candidate as an "act of allegiance to God;" but, on the other hand, the Radical Association of Bristol (the town for which he sat), who had by this time, after twice hearing Bradlaugh, determined to unseat their member, sent 3000 copies of an address begging the Northampton electors to return Bradlaugh by an overwhelming majority of votes. A meeting of delegates from some scores of workmen's clubs in London sent down 10,000 copies of a similar appeal. When Bradlaugh went down, thousands of people lined the streets to see him pass to say a few words in the Market Square. Radicals came from other towns to help in the canvassing, and Mr Labouchere gave his powerful aid. The Tories, on their part, did their utmost, using, if possible, viler weapons than before; and meantime they had been adding every possible vote to the register. The insolence of the Tory candidate to the workers was such that several of his meetings were broken up. The outcome of desperate efforts was that Corbett, the Tory, received rather more of the new votes than Bradlaugh, the figures being 3796 to 3688, a majority for Bradlaugh of 108 (2nd March 1882). In the fury of despair, the Tories had demanded a re-count of the votes, but this had only altered the majority by three. The betting fraternity, who had mostly laid their money on the side of "religion," were naturally enraged; and Corbett was reported to say on leaving, "I shan't come back to your dirty town any more." When the news spread, the fury did. One academic ruffian wrote in the _Saturday Review_:--

"The average Northampton elector and the rascal who shot at the Queen, while the average Northampton elector was voting for Mr Bradlaugh, probably acted from motives not dissimilar in kind, though the acts to which those motives led differed in degree of heinousness."

Journals which had predicted that Bradlaugh would be defeated, now propagated the lie that he had been carried by terrorism--their own terrorism having failed. By the workers in general the news was received with delight; in most towns it was waited for on the evening of the election with intense excitement, and acclaimed with unbounded enthusiasm. The House of Commons, however, was not to be turned from its evil courses.

On 4th March Northcote notified Bradlaugh of his intention to take the same course as formerly if he presented himself, and to make a motion on the writ if he did not. Bradlaugh replied, saying he presumed the motion would be one to promote the legislation which Northcote had often said ought to take place. "I congratulate you," he concluded, "on the return of at least yourself to some respect for the law, and beg to assure you that I shall in such case do my best to help you to avoid further embittering a conflict of which I am sure you must feel heartily ashamed." On Monday, 6th March, Northcote asked the Speaker whether the resolution of 7th February was still in force, and was answered in the negative. He was proceeding to say he would make a motion, when successive protests against the interruption were made by Mr Labouchere and Mr Dillwyn. The Speaker overruled both, and Northcote moved that Bradlaugh, should he present himself, be not allowed to take the oath. On the Liberal side, Mr E. Marjoribanks (now Lord Tweedmouth) moved as an amendment a resolution that it was desirable so to alter the law as to permit any elected member to take the oath or make affirmation, at his choice. With the worst of bad taste, Mr Marjoribanks, who had before declared his preference for decorous hypocrisy, went on to explain that he was "one of the very large section of that House who regarded Mr Bradlaugh's conduct both within and without that House with something very like disgust and indignation," and to describe the recent oath-taking as an "unworthy manoeuvre"--a display of class hatred which may serve to suggest the nature of the feeling on the Tory side. Mr Labouchere, after defending his colleague, undertook for him that if the amendment were carried he would not present himself until a decision was come to. Gladstone formally approved of the amendment; but after a long debate of the usual kind, it received only 244 votes against 259, to the wild delight of the Opposition. Twelve Liberals, including Mr S. Morley, Mr Torrens, and Mr Walter; and twenty-six Home Rulers, including Mr McCarthy and Mr Sexton, had voted with Northcote.

The Liberal press was now nearly unanimous for legislation and even the _Pall Mall Gazette_ went so far as to say: "All that is wanted is that the Government should pluck up a little more moral courage, and recognise that even in practice honesty is the best policy." In the foreign press, the general judgment was that the House of Commons was systematically disgracing itself. The Government, however, proposed nothing, leaving the Oaths Bill in the hands of the "disgusted" Mr Marjoribanks; while in the Upper House Lord Redesdale had on 7th March introduced a Bill providing that a declaration of Theism should be compulsory on all members of Parliament and peers. This measure, he explained, he introduced "from a deep sense of what was due to Almighty God." A little later, on its discussion, his lordship withdrew it "in deference to Lord Salisbury."

Bradlaugh, on his part, after consultation with his committee in Northampton, and after publishing a telling "Address to the Majority" for general circulation, decided that his future course must be one of systematic agitation in the constituencies. The Constitutional Rights League was reconstituted; an election fund was begun for the purpose of contesting certain seats held by renegade Liberals; and in these constituencies the Radicals quietly went about the work of making them untenable. Already a Liberal candidate had been defeated on the score of the insolence of his language towards Bradlaugh's supporters, Mr Samuel Morley had been called upon by the Bristol Radical Association to resign; other members had been sharply censured in their constituencies; and it was plain that it only needed time to ensure the unseating of most of the renegades. For the present nothing was to be hoped for from the Government; and a fresh notice by Mr Labouchere of a motion for leave to introduce an Affirmation Bill was blocked by Earl Percy. Thus the men who shrieked against "profanation" resisted all the while every attempt to make oath-taking by unbelievers unnecessary. Finally, a petition by the Northampton electors to be heard at the bar of the House was dismissed by the Speaker as unentitled to a hearing; and a notice of motion on the subject by Mr Firth never got to a hearing. There was clearly nothing for it but to carry war into the renegades' country. On the subject of the Speaker's action generally, Bradlaugh contented himself with penning a very temperate but very weighty paragraph:[162]--

[Footnote 162: _National Reformer_, April 2, 1882.]

"I am just a little troubled how to decide one or two points. The Speaker of the House of Commons is the first commoner in England, and his judgment on the various points from time to time submitted to him is practically without appeal. It is impossible to suspect him of intentional unfairness; he is a clear-sighted and courteous gentleman. Yet some of his decisions seem so conflicting that I fail in understanding how he reconciles them to himself. On the 21st February he held that Mr Labouchere was entitled, under the then circumstances, as of privilege, to move for a new writ for Northampton. On the 24th March, under precisely similar circumstances, Mr Speaker ruled that such a motion could not be made as one of privilege. On the 6th March, without any reason given whatever, except that I might come some time or other, the Speaker allowed Sir S. Northcote to raise the question of my right to my seat as one of privilege; but the Speaker now refuses to allow Mr Labouchere to raise as one of privilege the fact that one of the seats for Northampton is now in fact unfilled. On the 15th February the Speaker held that the resolution of the 7th February, which is directly in the teeth of the Standing Order of 30th April 1866, does not conflict with that order. On the 9th day of March he held that the resolution of the 6th March, which does not say one word about my coming to the table to take my seat, does so prevent my coming to the table, and that the same resolution, which does not mention my introducers or in any way forbid them introducing me, does in point of fact so act as a prohibition that he will hold any attempt to introduce me as disorderly and irregular. When my constituents wrote him, the Speaker answered that they must approach the House by petition. When they do approach by petition, he rules that their application has no privilege."

The dilemma, as between imputing to Sir Henry Brand unfairness, and pronouncing him to have failed in his duty, must be left here as Bradlaugh left it.

§ 16.

All the while the manifold litigation set up by the action of the House was moving on its slow way. The appeal of Clarke against the judgment of Justices Denman and Hawkins allowing a new trial had been heard on 21st February by Lords Justices Brett, Cotton, and Holker (the latter newly appointed), and these judges ruled that no new trial could take place, thus reversing the decision appealed against.

An independent comment on this judgment, which appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ at the time, may be here cited:--

"The Court of Appeal holds that they [the Judges of the Queen's Bench Division] ought to have closed their eyes to everything but the partial evidence given at the trial, some of which at all events both the Court of Appeal and the Court below pronounced to be unsatisfactory. Nor does it seem perfectly fair to make so much as Lord Justice Brett does of the imputation of perjury to one of Mr Newdegate's witnesses. The Lord Justice himself admits that there were blemishes in his testimony, and that he 'somewhat prevaricated and coloured his evidence, etc.' We fail to see 'the enormous difference' between evidence of this character and perjury, at least for the purpose of such an action. If a man is to be condemned in a penal action he has a right to insist that it shall be on perfectly honest and straightforward evidence only."

The curious reader who cares to form his own opinion on the subject of the evidence referred to will do well to turn to the verbatim report preserved in the _National Reformer_.

The Clarke-Newdegate combination seemed now to see their way partly clear to their great end of making Bradlaugh bankrupt. On 29th March they moved before Justice Grove and Baron Huddleston for judgment--that is, for power to compel Bradlaugh to pay the penalty sued for and the costs. Bradlaugh admitted that at that stage he could not resist a judgment for the penalty, but resisted the motion so far as it claimed costs. To this the judges agreed; and on 30th March they gave judgment for the penalty, but reserved the costs pending the appeal to the House of Lords. Bradlaugh had thus to pay £500 into Court within fourteen days. Already, too, he had had to give securities for £500 on the appeal to the House of Lords, in addition to the £200 he had paid down according to rule. For these heavy payments he had to go into debt, his normal means of earning his livelihood being in part suspended by the very lawsuits themselves.

In course of the arguments on the plaintiff's appeal it was noticeable that Justice Grove pointed to the possibility of an action against Newdegate for maintenance, and, on Bradlaugh mentioning that the magistrate had dismissed the summonses against Newdegate and his solicitor on the ground that the law was obsolete, observed, "But it is by no means obsolete. I set aside an agreement for maintenance only a little while ago."

Another item was added to the imbroglio of litigation by the friendly action of Alderman Gurney of Northampton, on behalf of the Liberal and Radical Union there, against Bradlaugh for not taking his seat--a step taken by way of getting a legal deliverance. Bradlaugh formally demurred that he had been illegally hindered by the House of Commons. When the case came on before Justices Manisty and Watkin Williams on 15th May 1882, the judges warily declined to give any judgment, on the score that the action was friendly, that the pleadings had been drawn so as to compel a decision in Bradlaugh's favour, and did not disclose all the facts of the case. Yet they excluded no material fact; and a friendly action for a precisely similar penalty had been heard and decided before in the historic case of Miller _v._ Salomons, while, as a solicitor wrote to Bradlaugh, "it is a matter of everyday occurrence in the Chancery Division for friendly actions to be brought to get a judicial decision on questions arising out of settlements, etc." In the present case it seemed pretty clear that the judges were simply very much concerned not to come in conflict with the legislature. The pleadings were however readjusted, and the case stood for re-hearing before a jury.

Still another complication was perforce set up by an action brought by Bradlaugh in April against Mr Erskine, the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons, for the assault of 3rd August--a step made necessary by the police magistrate's refusal of a summons against Inspector Denning for his formal assault; and by the risk, which was soon realised, that the Gurney action would be denied a hearing. The matter being brought before the House on 8th and 9th May, the Attorney-General was directed to defend Mr Erskine, Sir Hardinge Giffard suggesting that those who assisted in bringing such an action should be prosecuted according to old precedents for breach of privilege. Such a prosecution, if laid, would have struck at Messrs Lewis & Lewis, Bradlaugh's solicitors in the matter, and at the committee of the Constitutional Rights League, who had also instructed them.

And yet one more step in this bewildering litigation was taken on 9th May, when Bradlaugh moved before Lords Justices Brett and Cotton for leave to appeal against so much of the three orders of the Court of Appeal, dated 31st March 1881, 14th November 1881, and 23rd February 1882, as awarded costs. The application was of a highly technical character, and was dismissed, everything being now left to the House of Lords when it should hear the appeal.

§17.

The agitation in the constituencies was carried on throughout the spring and summer with an energy worthy of the cause. In addition to the crowded meetings which he held in dozens of the larger provincial towns, the Constitutional Rights League arranged for three more great demonstrations in London--two on 10th May, and one on Sunday, 14th May. On the 10th was held, first, an immense mass meeting in Trafalgar Square, attended by delegates from over a hundred towns, and addressed by, among other speakers, the Rev. Mr Freeston of Stalybridge, Mr Ashton Dilke, Mr Labouchere, and Mr Broadhurst; and in the evening a second audience packed St James's Hall to the doors. On the Sunday an enormous mass meeting took place in Hyde Park, the attendance being estimated at 70,000 or 80,000. At all of these meetings Bradlaugh's claim was affirmed with the greatest enthusiasm. The attitude of the Tory press may be gathered from a reference in the _Evening Standard_ to

"that section of the people which holds Mr Bradlaugh's coat-tails in veneration. They would get to Westminster, see the fun, shout out encouragement, and possibly pick up something to pay the expenses of the expedition."

An earlier demonstration, held in the Shoreditch Town Hall on 8th May, presided over by Mr Broadhurst and addressed by Bradlaugh and Labouchere, received no notice in the leading morning papers, though the crowd which sought admittance would have sufficed to fill the hall thrice over. It was necessary for such journals to ignore such matters as much as possible, since the main plea on the Tory side had now come to be that the public feeling was "universally" against Bradlaugh. To suppress the facts, and then to deny that the facts existed, was a natural tactic.

Naturally the Tories on their own part were not idle, either in the House or out of it. In the House they were safe from answer by Bradlaugh; and accordingly Sir Henry Tyler, who had already distinguished himself by a dastardly attack on the ladies of "the Bradlaugh family" and Mrs Besant as being unfit teachers of Science,[163] was foolish enough to call upon the Home Secretary, during May, to prosecute the _National Reformer_ for blasphemy, on the score, not of any editorial utterances, but of certain articles by an outside contributor, controverting, as too favourable, an estimate of the Gospel Jesus by a member of the staff. Sir Henry was no less zealous for Jesus than he had been for "God;" and he was backed by Mr Healy, who asked whether the paper could not be seized. The Home Secretary deprecated the attempt in the name of the interests of orthodoxy, as he had previously done an attempt to secure a prosecution of the _Freethinker_. But Tyler and those of his kidney, baffled here, only looked about for another means of gaining their point.

[Footnote 163: A question put to Mr Mundella on 18th June in the House elicited the fact that the Hall of Science classes had been established, and received grants, under the late Tory administration. On this Lord George Hamilton was petty enough to put the blame on his subordinates. Mr Mundella answered that for his part he was responsible for anything done by his subordinates.]

Among the most prominent of the attacks made on Bradlaugh about this time were the (second and third) articles contributed by Cardinal Manning to the _Nineteenth Century_, one under the title "An Englishman's Protest." The second was in time for the election in March, and much was hoped from it. Later, after illegally visiting Northampton in prelatic state, to turn the Irish voters against the Atheist, he contributed yet a third article to the _Nineteenth Century_ of September 1882; and still the editor denied Bradlaugh all right of reply. It is probable that at no time in the long strife were Freethinkers more roused to wrath, more moved to smite arrogant insolence upon its blatant mouth, than by this manifesto from a prince of the Church of Rome, the murderous organism which had eaten out the mind of Spain and barely missed destroying Italy. Certain it is that from these malevolent outbreaks of the unsleeping Romish spirit of persecution may be dated a new birth of enmity towards Rome on the part of English rationalists, who had before been disposed to class the bloody-mindedness of Catholicism with the kindred rancours of Protestantism. It was left to Manning to put his Church in the worst light of all; to show once for all that the fundamental mission of priestly Rome is not _parcere subjectis et debellare superbos_, but to fight the ignoble battle of the million against one. And it is to his action that his co-religionists owe most of the measure of acceptation found among Freethinkers by the fierce verse in which Mr Swinburne has named the Church of Rome "Grey spouse of Satan, church of name abhorred," and taunted the "withered harlot" with the shame of her defeat on the Field of Flowers.

But Bradlaugh met the priest's attack with a prose that suffered no weakening from hysteria. In his journal it met a detailed and judicial criticism: he himself, roused as he had never been roused before, published his tract, "A Cardinal's Broken Oath," one of the hardest blows ever struck in written controversy.

"Three times," it begins, "your Eminence has--through the pages of the _Nineteenth Century_--personally and publicly interfered and used the weight of your ecclesiastical position against me in the Parliamentary struggle in which I am engaged, although you are neither voter in the borough for which I am returned to sit, nor even co-citizen in the State to which I belong. Your personal position is that of a law-breaker, one who has deserted his sworn allegiance and thus forfeited his citizenship, one who is tolerated by English forbearance, but is liable to indictment for misdemeanour as 'member of a society of the Church of Rome.' More than once when the question of my admission to the House of Commons has been under discussion in that House, have I seen you busy in the lobby, closely attended by the devout and sober Philip Callan, or some other equally appropriate Parliamentary henchman."

After telling the Cardinal how he had "blundered alike in his law and his history," making absurd mis-statements concerning the French Revolution and the case of Horne Tooke, the pamphlet takes up the point of persecution, in regard to Manning's advice that Bradlaugh should be indicted for blasphemy:--

"When I was in Paris some time since, and was challenged to express an opinion as to the enforcement of the law against the religious orders of France, I, not to the pleasure of many of my friends, spoke out very freely that in matters of religion I would use the law against none; but your persecuting spirit may provoke intemperate men even farther than you dream. In this country, by the 10th George IV., cap. 7, secs. 28 and 29, 31, 32, and 34, you are criminally indictable, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. You only reside here without police challenge by the merciful forbearance of the community. And yet you parade in political contest your illegal position as 'a member of a religious order of the Church of Rome,' and have the audacity to invoke outlawry and legal penalty against me."

And then came a hail of blows at the Cardinal Archbishop's own personality, so rashly put in the way of retaliation:--

"In the current number of the _Nineteenth Century_ you fire your last shot, and are coarse in Latin as well as in the vulgar tongue. Perhaps the frequenting Philip Callan has spoiled your manners. It also seems impossible that one who was once a cultured scholar and a refined gentleman could confuse with legitimate argument the abuse of his opponents as 'cattle.' But who are you, Henry Edward Manning, that you should throw stones at me, and should so parade your desire to protect the House of Commons from contamination? At least, first take out of it the drunkard and the dissolute of your own Church. You know them well enough. Is it the oath alone which stirs you? Your tenderness on swearing comes very late in life. When you took orders as a deacon of the English Church, in presence of your bishop, you swore 'so help me God,' that you did from your 'heart abhor, detest, and abjure,' and with your hand on the 'Holy Gospels' you declared 'that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm.' You may now well write of men 'whom no oath can bind.' The oath you took you have broken; and yet it was because you had, in the very church itself, taken this oath, that you for many years held more than one profitable preferment in the Established Church of England. You indulge in innuendoes against my character in order to do me mischief, and viciously insinuate as though my life had in it justification for good men's abhorrence. In this you are very cowardly as well as very false. Then, to move the timid, you suggest 'the fear of eternal punishment' as associated with a broken oath. Have you any such fear? or have you been personally conveniently absolved from the 'eternal' consequences of your perjury? Have you since sworn another oath before another bishop of another church, or made some solemn vow to Rome, in lieu of, and in contradiction to, the one you so took in presence of your bishop, when, 'in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,' that bishop of the Church by law established in this country accepted your oath, and gave you authority as a deacon in the Church you have since forsaken. I do not blame you so much that you are forsworn; there are, as you truly say, 'some men whom no oath can bind;' and it has often been the habit of the cardinals of your Church to take an oath and break it when profit came with the breach; but your remembrance of your own perjury might at least keep you reticent in very shame. Instead of this, you thrust yourself impudently into a purely political contest, and shout as if the oath were to you the most sacred institution possible. You say 'there are happily some men who believe in God and fear Him.' Do you do either? You, who declared, 'so help me God,' that no foreign 'prelate ... ought to have any jurisdiction or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm'? And you who, in spite of your declaration on oath, have courted and won, intrigued for and obtained, the archbishop's authority and the cardinal's hat from the Pope of Rome--you rebuke Lord Sherbrooke for using the words 'sin and shame' in connection with oath-taking: do you hold now that there was no sin and no shame in your broken oath? None in the rash taking or the wilful breaking? Have you no personal shame that you have broken your oath? Or do the pride and pomp of your ecclesiastical position outbribe your conscience? You talk of the people understanding the words 'so help me God.' How do you understand them of your broken oath? Do they mean to you: 'May God desert and forsake me as I deserted and forsook the Queen's supremacy, to which I so solemnly swore allegiance'? You speak of men being kept to their allegiance by the oath 'which binds them to their sovereign.' You say such men may be tempted by ambition or covetousness unless they are bound by 'the higher and more sacred responsibility' involved in the 'recognition of the law-giver in the oath.' Was the Rector of Lavington and Graffham covetous of an archbishopric that he broke his oath? Was the Archdeacon of Chichester ambitious of the Cardinal's hat that he became so readily forsworn?"

The eight small but pregnant pages of this concentrated diatribe were carefully translated into Italian by or for a certain Monsignor, once resident in England, who was understood to owe no goodwill to Manning; the translation was no less carefully circulated among the higher Roman clergy; and if anything had been needed to thwart Manning's ambition of becoming Pope, this little tractate, it was believed, would have served not a little to that end. At all events, Manning never again ventured to attack Bradlaugh publicly. He had had enough. And not only had he failed to destroy Bradlaugh, he had evoked furious Protestant protests against his action at Northampton, and this even from journals like the _Rock_, which hated Bradlaugh as much as he did. His alliance was rejected with insult. And even in his own Church the far more highly esteemed Newman, answering a correspondent on the subject of the Affirmation Bill of 1883, expressly declared that he thought "nothing would be lost to religion by its passing and nothing gained by its being rejected."[164]

[Footnote 164: Letter of 8th May 1883.]

It would be superfluous to load this already over-burdened narrative with any detailed account of the stream of insults, imbecilities, brutalities, and falsehoods which was cast forth continuously at this period against Bradlaugh in the press and on the platform. From the fatuity of Viscount Folkestone--who argued that an Atheist, being guilty of treason to God, who gave the Queen her power, should be treated like one guilty of treason to the Queen--to the brutish licence of the Tory journals who likened Bradlaugh's sympathisers to thieves and assassins, there was, as Mr Moncure Conway wrote at the time, "no circumstance of heartlessness, injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood[165] wanting to this last carnival of theological[166] hatred and ferocity." It was not, of course, theological hate alone. Bradlaugh had just been leading a popular movement for land law reform; and he had set in motion a second movement for the abolition of perpetual pensions, which went on wheels, and the petitions in support of which were signed by the hundred thousand.[167] There are few resentments more bitter than that of a menaced interest. But malice once aroused in men of a low type stops at nothing; and as we have seen, everybody associated with Bradlaugh was included in the hatred bestowed on him. One Tory journal, the _Manchester Courier_, went the length of saying that Bradlaugh's success in Northampton was due to an exceptionally bad state of education there; the pretext being that one Northamptonshire village was in such a state. The Government inspector testified that as regarded the town he had often paid tribute to the heartiness of the people of Northampton, and especially of the working-classes, in carrying out the Education Act, and that it would be hard to find anywhere a more active School Board, a higher average of regular attendance, or a higher general standard of proficiency.

[Footnote 165: If further samples are needed of the general untruthfulness, they can be given by the dozen. Even men of good standing spoke with a disregard of scruple which put them outside courteous correction. Bradlaugh was driven to characterise Sir Edward Watkin as "an exceedingly and wantonly untruthful person." In November 1882 he represented to his Folkestone constituents that he would not have stood in the way of Bradlaugh either swearing or affirming, but that he resisted when Bradlaugh "distinctly outraged all that they held sacred." This presumably referred to the self-administered oath of 1882. But Sir E. Watkin had voted against Bradlaugh being allowed to swear on 27th April 1881. The Hon. Mr Stansfeld, speaking at Halifax in October 1882, actually represented that the oath was "on the true faith of a Christian;" and repeated the untruth that Bradlaugh had "said that the oath had no binding effect on his conscience." The Rev. Canon Gascoigne Weldon, of Rothesay, asserted in writing that Bradlaugh "boasted publicly that he sought entrance into the House of Commons to insult its members and all its past glorious history, and level it, if possible, with its sister House, to the ground."]

[Footnote 166: Mr Samuel Morley, speaking at Bristol in November 1882, admitted to his constituents that "while Mr Bradlaugh was in the House of Commons, nothing could exceed the propriety of his conduct;" but declared he would oppose his re-entrance because Bradlaugh continued "his system of violent, offensive, and disgusting attacks on the faith which he (Mr Morley) in common with the great bulk of the English people, held." To men like Mr Morley, all rationalist propaganda was "violent, offensive, and disgusting;" but they had no scruples about violent, offensive, and disgusting attacks on rationalists. Soon afterwards Mr Morley grossly misrepresented Bradlaugh's action, and on being challenged admitted the fact and made a correction. Soon again, however, Mr Morley spoke of Bradlaugh as writing in the _Freethinker_, and on being challenged, made neither admission nor correction. The champions of the oath, generally speaking, exhibited a constitutional incapacity for accuracy.]

[Footnote 167: In the summer of 1882 the total of petitions had mounted to over 100, and the signatures numbered over 250,000.]

Of course such a testimony did little to check the scurrility of Tory tongues. At a meeting of the Bible Society at Exeter Hall, in May 1882, with Mr Samuel Morley in the chair, a Herefordshire vicar, the Rev. H. W. Webb Peploe, alleged that to his knowledge "the first condition imposed upon one whom he knew when he had joined an association under the leadership of a notorious infidel was that he should burn his Bible;" and that he had further "been told that two nights ago, at a meeting of a notorious infidel, the things said were so grossly immodest that a member of the press had said that they did not dare to report what had been spoken, however, in the presence of young women." On being challenged, the rev. gentleman declined to attempt any substantiation of his statements, only pleading that he had not meant to specify Bradlaugh. Of these cretinous calumnies, there were hundreds afloat for years on end. It is a comfort to be able to say that some score or more of single clergymen in different places, of different sects, spoke out bravely and generously from time to time in repudiation of the whole policy of persecution and slander. But a few voices, of course, could not avail to hinder that for thoughtful men the effect of the persecution was to identify religion with injustice. Freethinkers reasoned that the Christians who stood for justice and tolerance did but do what Freethinkers themselves did, without accepting the Christian creed; while the army of bigots did their evil deeds in virtue of a religious motive. And the effect of it all was to multiply Freethought as it had never been multiplied before. A barrister, who had no personal sympathy with Bradlaugh, wrote that "One consequence has been that the cause of Freethought has made surprising progress.... I do not think that at any time Freethought literature has been so widely read, and the Freethought propaganda so actively and intelligently carried on." Active members of the Secular Society were enrolled by hundreds; and the sale of Bradlaugh's journal rose to its highest figure. Men who had before been unquestioningly orthodox became newly critical. One wrote to an editor:--

"That 'Mr Bradlaugh had brought his troubles on himself' I fully admit. So did Jesus Christ. In the latter case the ultimate result was a judicial execution as a blasphemer. But I am not aware that he is any the worse thought of by his followers on that account."

Even among Conservatives there were searchings of heart. One wrote a pamphlet in his favour. Another sent an open letter of merciless criticism to Sir Stafford Northcote, saying, "I am a Conservative, and my father before me. But there is something I put before party. That is self-respect." The letter concluded:--

"If you wish an outlet for your zeal against 'profanation,' why do you ignore in the Church the presence of numerous Broad Churchmen, including the father-in-law of your own son, Canon Farrar, who swear loyalty to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and follow the late Dean Stanley in rejecting many of them? Why should you have reserved your fervent indignation against apparent insincerity in sacred things to be expended upon a man whose admission to the House as silently as possible, so as not to promote his notoriety, justice and expediency would alike have suggested: the whole stupidity, duplicity, and inhumanity of Conservative tactics in this matter are patent to all straightforward minds. You are responsible for giving Mr Bradlaugh a name and a place in the history of this country which will survive long after those of the present Conservative leaders are consigned to oblivion."

The harvest was not immediate; but the seed was abundantly sown, and inevitably bore its due fruit. That this was not unrecognised in high places was sufficiently proved by the introduction of an Affirmation Bill in the House of Lords by the Duke of Argyll, then already sundered from official Liberalism. The Duke, on moving the second reading of his Bill, took occasion to scold Bradlaugh after his manner for "violence and scurrility," denying by implication that the violence and scurrility were on the other side. But this prudent tactic did not avail. The Earl of Carnarvon told the usual untruth about the "binding effect" of the oath on Bradlaugh, by way of showing that he deserved no relief; and the Archbishop of Canterbury opposed the Bill in the name not only of the English Church, but of the Romish, the Wesleyan, and the Scotch Presbyterian. It was accordingly rejected (July) by 138 votes to 62.

§ 18.

On 11th July 1882 a new Tory battery was opened. The _Freethinker_, a penny weekly journal of a more popular character than the _National Reformer_, edited by Mr G. W. Foote and then owned by Mr W. J. Ramsey, was sold at the shop of the Freethought Publishing Company, 28 Stonecutter Street, of which Mr Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant, the partners of the Company, were the lessees. For a short time after its first issue it had been published by them, but soon they decided not to take that responsibility; and thenceforward it had been sold independently by Mr Ramsey, their manager, who, in the terms of his engagement with them, was free to do other trading on his own account. Sir Henry Tyler, supposing Bradlaugh to be the publisher all along, had bethought himself of prosecuting the _Freethinker_ for blasphemy, and so striking a possibly decisive political blow at Bradlaugh--a course which he was enabled to take by a readily granted "fiat" from the Director of Public Prosecutions. It had been made clear by his references to the _National Reformer_ in the House of Commons that he had hoped to convict Bradlaugh of blasphemy on something he had either written or published; but that hope he had had to abandon. There remained the hope of connecting Bradlaugh with the _Freethinker_; and Tyler's solicitors coolly wrote Bradlaugh on 8th July, asking whether he would personally sell the paper, so as to prevent the prosecution either of a subordinate of his, or of the editor and printer. He replied by sending the printed catalogue of all the things he published, and offering personally to sell any of these. As it did not include the _Freethinker_, the prosecution was begun against Messrs Foote and Ramsey and their printer, Mr Whittle, on 11th July, before the Lord Mayor (Sir John Whittaker Ellis), at the Mansion House; and after evidence had been led, the prosecutor's counsel applied to have Bradlaugh's name added as a defendant. The case was then adjourned, the Lord Mayor stating that he would hear the application against Bradlaugh in private--a proceeding for which the reasons will afterwards appear. It having appeared that the selling of the _Free-thinker_ in the Freethought Publishing Company's shop tended to implicate the partners of that company, Mr Ramsey at once decided to suspend its sale for some weeks till he could arrange for its publication in a distinct office, thus partly safeguarding Bradlaugh from the attempt to identify him with it. The danger was serious; for if Bradlaugh were convicted of blasphemy under the statute, he would become legally incapable of further defending himself in Clarke's or any other suit for Parliamentary penalties. This was fully recognised on the Tory side, and the _Whitehall Review_, in an indecent article, pressed the point. Tyler's move was, in fact, a new attempt to cause the ruin aimed at by Newdegate, and hitherto warded off; and Newdegate's junior counsel (and private friend) duly attended the prosecution at the Mansion House. At the same time, Bradlaugh was defending a Freethinker prosecuted for blasphemy at the Maidstone Assizes, and after attending the adjourned hearing before the Lord Mayor on Monday, 17th July, he had to travel to Maidstone on the following day.

Before the Lord Mayor Bradlaugh led the prosecutor's counsel a grievous dance. He appealed to have the cases taken separately, and counsel was confused enough to say that this was "a most unusual and unheard-of application," which drew from Bradlaugh the comment, "There are several decided cases upon it, although it may be unheard of and unusual in your experience, Mr Moloney." Then ensued hours of fencing as to whether the case was or should be under common law or statute, and what the Lord Mayor ought to do. His lordship was at times somewhat rashly dogmatic on points of law and procedure, and had to be corrected. He finally decided to refuse to ask the prosecutor to choose whether he would proceed under common law or statute; and Bradlaugh then demanded that the case should begin _de novo_, putting every possible technical obstacle in the way of his cowardly enemies. Their evil way, he determined, should be made hard for them; and it was. As the proceedings went on, and the prosecution, who had previously succeeded in obtaining from the Lord Mayor a warrant to inspect Bradlaugh's banking account, took the dishonourable course of producing on subpoena the manager of the bank used by Bradlaugh, and his very passbook, his indignation mounted. What was intended was evidently a fishing investigation into his financial affairs, for the production of cheques at that stage was wholly irrelevant to the points proposed to be made out in evidence, and needing to be so proved. Fighting the case with all his force and acuteness, point by point, and with no mincing of matters, Bradlaugh commented on Tyler's tactics in language of which the libel law prevented the republication. Tyler's counsel protested that he "did not quite see what these observations were intended for." "They are intended," replied Bradlaugh, "to do the same mischief to your client that he is trying to do to me;" and counsel said no more on that head, though he tried unsuccessfully to retaliate on others.

The case was adjourned to the 21st; and though the passbook was left in the Lord Mayor's hands for inspection, the prosecuting counsel so mismanaged matters that he closed his case without having applied to see it. Bradlaugh's account, however, had been personally ransacked on Tyler's behalf, in gross abuse of the order of the Court. The Lord Mayor finally committed Bradlaugh for trial on the singularly scanty evidence offered as to his connection with the prosecuted paper, the incriminated numbers of which were all dated after the time when Bradlaugh ceased to be concerned in publishing it; and in committing Messrs Foote and Ramsey (the charge against the printer had been withdrawn), his lordship refused to allow Mr Foote to make a statement in his defence, though the law clearly gave the defendant that right. His lordship repeatedly gave the extraordinary ruling that "the charge" against Mr Foote was "that he was the editor of the _Freethinker_"--as if that could possibly be a "charge"--and on this pretext declined to hear anything on the actual charge, which was one of "blasphemous libel." He similarly tried to prevent Bradlaugh from reading a formal statement, but after disallowing it he gave way on consultation with the Clerk of Court. The statement was a terse and telling account of Tyler's tactics from the time of Bradlaugh's election.

In the press the prosecution was sharply condemned, even the _Times_ censuring it; and one journal took occasion to point out that Tyler represented "one of the smallest and most corrupt constituencies in England."[168] Bradlaugh, being "committed" for blasphemy, at once put himself in the hands of his constituents, who unanimously voted their unabated confidence in him. He immediately (27th July) applied to a judge (Justice Stephen) in chambers for leave to issue a summons calling on Tyler to show cause why a writ of _certiorari_ should not issue to remove the proceedings to the Queen's Bench division; and on the 29th the _certiorari_ itself was directed to issue by the judge. Tyler's counsel at this stage insisted on Bradlaugh's giving two sureties for £300 in addition to his own recognisances of £300 ordered by the Lord Mayor. They also asked for an order to expedite the trial, but the judge curtly refused. Another typical detail was the charging of the grand jury on the point of "returning a true bill" on the indictment. The Recorder for the City, Sir Thomas Chambers, was one of Bradlaugh's bitterest enemies in Parliament, and he gave his direction to the grand jury to return a true bill, not only without putting it to them to decide whether they were satisfied with the evidence against Bradlaugh, but with expressions of gross prejudice, appealing to their feelings as "Christian men."

[Footnote 168: He sat for Harwich.]

Not content with his prosecution of Bradlaugh, Tyler in the House of Commons (10th August) at length brought forward an express motion which he had had on the paper for twelve months, to the effect that the Hall of Science was not a proper place, and the teachers not proper persons, to teach science in connection with the Science and Art Department. The argument was that persons who had expressed themselves in print to the effect that science undermined religion should be held to have taught the same thing in their science classes. Mr Mundella in reply pointed out that no fewer than thirty-five clergymen of all denominations were science teachers under the department; and that the reports on the teaching given in the Hall of Science classes, even by a religious visitor who made surprise visits, were highly satisfactory. He concluded by sharply censuring Tyler, as Mr Labouchere had already done, for his malice; and, the Tory members having all left the House, the matter was ignominiously dropped. Even the editor of the _St James's Gazette_ snubbed Tyler, while himself proceeding to repeat Tyler's contention in a gratuitously insulting statement as to the teaching of the Misses Bradlaugh. In the outside public one immediate effect of Tyler's malicious action was to set on foot a movement and an association for the repeal of the blasphemy laws, the lead being ably taken by the Rev. Mr Sharman (Unitarian) of Plymouth, who had already done admirable service in the constitutional struggle.

The blasphemy prosecution not being "expedited," went on slowly enough. Intermediate technical proceedings arose, partly out of irregularities on the part of the prosecution; and in one of Bradlaugh's visits to the Courts with his sureties, the driver of a four-wheeler who conveyed the party declined to accept any fare, declaring that it should be his contribution towards fighting Tyler. At length, on 6th November, Bradlaugh made an _ex parte_ motion before Justices Field and Stephen, to have the indictment against him quashed, mainly on the score that he ought to have been definitely sued under the statute 9 and 10 William III., and that the provisions of that statute had not been observed in the indictment. The pleadings were extremely interesting as a matter of pure law, the judges debating the points courteously but closely all along, and both commenting finally on the "candour" and "propriety" with which he had argued his case. Their decision was for the most part hostile; and this was one of his very few cases in which there can be little difficulty in taking the judge's view against him. The main point decided was that the statute had not abrogated the common law in the case in hand. They gave him a rule _nisi_ on only two counts in the indictment, on the ground of irregular procedure on the part of the prosecution; but Justice Stephen's judgment supplied a very useful conspectus of the history of the blasphemy laws, and incidentally declared that the statutory penalties could not be inflicted under a verdict on the indictment laid.

Very different must be the comments passed on the treatment of the friendly action, Gurney _v._ Bradlaugh, which came on afresh before Mr Justice Mathew and a common jury on 10th November. Everything had been done that could be done to meet the criticisms formerly passed by Justices Manisty and Watkin Williams; and indeed the whole pleadings had from the first been drawn from the journals of the House of Commons, which were put in evidence. But Justice Mathew summarily decided not to hear the case, and discharged the jury, on the old ground that the action was collusive. Now Bradlaugh, in swearing himself in, had in law done exactly what Alderman Salomons did in 1851; and the action of Miller _v._ Salomons was notoriously collusive, yet it was fully heard and carefully decided. We can only do now what Bradlaugh did then--leave the judge's action to the judgment of the instructed public. The _Law Times_ of that time (November 1882) took the unusual step of declaring:--

"It is plain that it should be possible to try a friendly action to establish a constitutional right; and we regard the action of the judge as very questionable on constitutional grounds, and as being an arbitrary interference with a suitor's right to the verdict of a jury."

What a law journal thus describes, plain men may well call by a plainer name.

One of Bradlaugh's five contemporary lawsuits was thus quashed, but the remaining four kept his hands sufficiently full. The civil suit against Newdegate for maintenance came on before Justice Field on 2nd December, on a preliminary "demurrer," when, on the advice of the judge, both aides agreed to let the demurrer stand over till after the trial. A day or two afterwards Newdegate, speaking at the London Sheriffs' banquet, at which six judges were guests, had the indecency to comment before them on the maintenance case, and to denounce Bradlaugh. On the 5th the action against Mr Erskine, the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, came on before Justice Field. It was a long pleading on both sides; the case was adjourned till the 18th; and after the Attorney-General had spoken two hours and a half, and Bradlaugh had replied for an hour and a quarter, the judge reserved his decision. He finally gave it (15th January) against Bradlaugh, on the general ground that the House of Commons was the judge as to how it might exercise its privileges, of which the power to expel a member was one. On the point of legality he ruled that "it is not to be presumed that any Court, whether it be the High Court of Judicature or this Court, will do that which in itself is flagrantly wrong." The decision was one which might very reasonably have been appealed against. As the _Legal Advertiser Supplement_ remarked at the time, Justice Field's ruling would cover a case in which the House of Commons might, say, confiscate the goods and chattels of a member expelled or suspended for obstruction. Bradlaugh, however, decided not to appeal. He had only commenced the action reluctantly because of the likelihood that the Gurney suit would be denied a hearing; and the judge had in this case at least listened to his arguments. He contented himself with a letter to the _Times_, pointing out the constitutional effect of the decision.

Thus far he had endured defeat after defeat in the law courts as in Parliament; and it may be that discouragement and debt counted for something in his surrender of the suit against the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. But he was now within a short distance of three signal successes which more than counterbalanced all his previous legal defeats. On 9th and 17th March his action against Newdegate for maintenance was argued for him before Lord Coleridge [169] by Mr Crump and Mr W. A. Hunter, he himself giving evidence on his own behalf. The broad ground of action was that Newdegate had maliciously "maintained" Clarke, having himself no interest in the ground of action, which was the penalty sued for, and being desirous only to make Bradlaugh bankrupt. There was no question of principle, as Bradlaugh was already unseated, and was held disentitled to sit either on oath or on affirmation. Bradlaugh incidentally gave testimony that already he had had to spend on the action two legacies, and in addition £1100 he had borrowed; while Clarke testified that the total costs on his side were estimated at about £2000.

[Footnote 169: A jury had been sworn in, but it was agreed all round that there was no question of fact for them, and they were discharged on the 9th, Lord Coleridge trying the case as one of law.]