Chapter IV: Closing Yeabs (1)

1886.

Admitted at last to the seat for which he had fought so long and so hard, Bradlaugh set himself strenuously to work to make up for lost time. With nearly every quality that goes to make a good legislator, and with the most abundant political experience from his youth up, he had reached his fifty-third year before he sat in his place in Parliament by secure tenure. He had fought for that place, in all, eighteen years--chronically during twelve of them, against constitutional opposition; continuously through six of them, against gross injustice. And in these last six years, unhappily, his life went very much quicker than the years. Those who had lived by him through it all recognised that it had made him an old man. A certain aging effect seems to have come from the terrible attack of typhoid fever in New York in 1875; but still in 1880 his portraits show him in his prime, the face mature without being furrowed. In 1886 he looked far more than ten years older. The long battle had left its dire marks.

No private member in his prime, however, went to work in the Parliaments of 1886 with such energy. Before January was out he had obtained leave to bring in his Land Cultivation Bill,[190] which was backed by Mr Joseph Arch, Mr Thomas Burt, and Mr Labouchere; and he was extorting from the officials exact details as to the Perpetual Pensions, against which he had already for years agitated outside. In March he obtained from the new Liberal Ministry the appointment of a Select Committee on the subject. The debate on Mr Jesse Collings' amendment to the Address, calling for labourers' allotments--the amendment on which the Tory Ministry were thrown out--gave him his first opportunity of striking a blow at the party which for him was identified as much with tyranny in general as with tyranny towards himself. In February he gave the first notice of his intention to raise a question which he later pushed far--that of market rights and tolls; his first move being to call for a return giving minute particulars as to the state of the case in each municipal borough in England and Wales. And in the same month he was vigorously pressing his proposal for a Labour Bureau on the lines of that of Massachusetts--a proposal to which the Government promptly acceded. In March he took a step abundantly justifiable on public grounds, in moving the reduction of the monstrous vote of £12,000 to Sir H. D. Wolff for six months' unprofitable service abroad, and £3000 more for telegrams in connection with his mission. And he was further able to connect another enemy, Sir Henry Tyler, with systematic breaches of the Truck Act on the part of the Rhymney Iron Company, of which he was a director. Bradlaugh characterised the action of the Company as part of "an infamous system by which poor men are defrauded of part of their earnings." The result was a Government prosecution and the infliction of the fullest statutory penalty. In the way of direct service to labour, he was in the same month appointed a member of the Select Committee on the Employers' Liability Bill, on which he worked hard and carefully. In April came the epoch-marking Home Rule Bill, in the debate on which he made a powerful speech in support, loudly cheered by the Home Rulers who had so long helped to exclude him. He was emphatic against the exclusion of the Irish members, but urged that such points should be left for discussion in committee; and he did his best outside for the second reading by organising a great mass meeting in St James's Hall, presided over by Mr Labouchere, which was in its way a great success, a multitude coming sufficient to fill the hall twice over. His own Land Cultivation Bill came to its second reading; and his speech upon it was well received, though he saw fit not to try to press it to a division. Again in June, shortly before the decisive division, he delivered a second and longer speech in support of the Home Rule Bill, to listen to which to the end Mr Gladstone delayed his dinner; and on the dissolution he issued an "Appeal to the Electors: Mr Gladstone or Lord Salisbury: Which?" He had done more than justice by the people whose representatives had most zealously done him injustice. Readers of his journal had written to urge this on him as one reason for opposing Home Rule. He answered: "If I cannot try to do justice to my political and religious enemies, I am unfit to be a legislator." On the merits of the reform he tersely observed: "Home Rule is no four-leaved shamrock, but it is the beginning of justice."

[Footnote 190: Described in a previous chapter, p. 182.]

In the new General Election, a new excitement was given to the contest in Northampton by the candidature of a Liberal Unionist, Mr Turner, a leading local manufacturer, in coalition with a Conservative. His supporters were extremely confident; but when the vote was counted the figures stood: Labouchere, 4570; Bradlaugh, 4353; Turner, 3850; Lees, 3456. On the declaration of the poll, Mr Turner, being shouted down by the crowd, addressed to the reporters the intimation that he "came forward for the first time to wrest the representation of the town from the greatest and most mischievous demagogue of the present century." But by this time the old obloquy had considerably quieted down. At the beginning of the year the Bishop of Peterborough, Dr Magee, had published a review article in which, while making hostile allusion to Bradlaugh--doubtless in recollection of old criticisms--as an Atheist "whose name certainly neither softens nor sweetens any controversy with which it is connected," he declared forcibly against the Parliamentary Oath altogether. As he truly observed,

"Whatever else our present Parliamentary Oath was designed to effect, it was never designed to keep Atheists out of Parliament. It was, and is, strictly a political test, and for a purpose happily quite remote from modern English politics. It is dynastic.... It does not even ... exclude Republicans; for, should the Parliament which imposes it decide at any time upon the ultimate abolition of monarchy, there would then be no 'successors according to law' to whom to be faithful.... As a political test, it is practically all but obsolete.... It does not even incidentally and indirectly act as a religious test, for no Atheist that we know of has ever refused to take it."

Oddly enough, while arguing for the abolition of the Parliamentary Oath, the Bishop proposed to "retain" the oath in courts of justice, being apparently unaware that there it was already to some extent optional. His opinion on the other point, however, counted for something; and though an appeal was made to the Liberal ministry, as it had been made to their predecessors, to prosecute Bradlaugh afresh for sitting and voting, the ministry refused, and the matter dropped once for all. There was also, of course, a cessation of the attacks on him by Conservative members. One, a Mr E. H. Llewellyn, at a Primrose League meeting early in the year, scurrilously spoke of him as having "seemed more as if he spat upon than kissed" the Testament in taking the oath; but for this congenial indulgence Mr Llewellyn had to make a public apology to Bradlaugh and to the House of Commons alike. Bradlaugh was an excessively inconvenient enemy to have at close quarters.

No one knew this better than Lord Randolph Churchill, who was now promoted to the leadership of the House of Commons over the head of Sir Michael Hicks Beach. "The most bitter enemy of the Tory party," wrote Bradlaugh, "could hardly have planned for it greater degradation than this leadership." One Tory journalist attributed to him, quite falsely, a proposal to hiss Churchill on his first rising to address the House. That was not his way of fighting. The "new leader," on his part, was extraordinarily conciliatory. When the new Parliament met in August, Churchill made not even a sign of wish to stand again between Bradlaugh and the oath; and when Bradlaugh made his important motion that the House do not assent to the usual Sessional Order prohibiting the interference of peers in elections, his lordship actually offered him a committee for the following year to frame another Order instead, admitting that the existing one was habitually ignored. Bradlaugh, however, pressed the matter to a division, when 126 members supported him, the Liberal leaders voting with the Tory majority against him. His object had been, as the vigilant Newdegate noted, to take the "first step to getting rid of the House of Lords." By allowing peers to interfere freely in elections, he proposed to strike at their hereditary privilege. But the time for such a measure was not yet.

It was understood to be on Churchill's urging, again, that two months afterwards the Tory Attorney-General entered a _stet processus_ in the still outstanding appeal to the House of Lords, thus ending an action which the Gladstone Ministry had declined to end at Bradlaugh's request. But Bradlaugh in no way slackened his hostility on this score. On 19th September, in a discussion on the committal of Father Fahy for using threatening language towards magistrates, he reminded the House how its leader had once declared in the House that the Crown could procure the decisions it wanted from certain judges. Churchill, entering the House later, and learning what had been stated, assured Bradlaugh that he had been entirely mistaken, and gave the statement an unqualified denial. On Bradlaugh saying he thought he was right, Churchill made the curious answer: "I am sure he cannot find anywhere a record of my having said such a thing." Bradlaugh immediately went to consult Hansard, and not finding the passage he had expected, came back and frankly confessed the fact to the House. But on turning back he found that he had made an equivalent statement in his letter to Northcote on 1st March 1884, and that Northcote, while disputing in his reply certain of Bradlaugh's assertions, lest he should be taken to admit them, did not dispute this. A more leisurely search in the newspaper files cleared up part of the mystery. Churchill had repeatedly said in effect what Bradlaugh had attributed to him. In at least three speeches (30th April 1883; 21st February 1884; 12th June 1884) he had directly and indirectly insinuated that the Government could get the decisions they wanted in a collusive action against Bradlaugh by bringing it before judges who had been Liberal Attorneys-General. What had apparently happened was that the noble lord had struck at least one passage out of the Hansard report when, according to custom, the proofs of his speeches were sent to him as to other members for correction afterwards. Having done this, he felt safe in saying that Bradlaugh "could not find anywhere a record" of such a statement on his part. It was a mistaken confidence; and besides publishing the newspaper extracts at the time, Bradlaugh later found an opportunity to pay off his score with interest.

In the October of 1886, meantime, he addressed to the noble lord an open letter of scathing comment on his policy, his tactics, his speeches, and his character. It contained the sentence--referring to "old English gentlemen"--"These belong to a class to which I, as well as yourself, am a stranger--I from birth, and you from habit;" and in reference to his lordship's language (outside) towards Mr Gladstone, it had the passage: "He has often been generous to you--the great can be generous. You might, in taking a leader's place, at least have for the moment aped a leader's dignity. _Noblesse oblige_; but no such obligation weighs on you; _où il n'y a rien le roi perd ses droits_." Yet even after this Churchill sought to make his personal acquaintance and disarm his resentment making repeated attempts to be introduced, and on one occasion actually intervening with a broad compliment in a conversation between Bradlaugh and another member in the smoking-room. Bradlaugh bowed with the old-fashioned ceremony which he adhered to in such cases, but would not further accept the obtruded friendship. He had, however, passed beyond his former disposition to square accounts with the lordling who had called his supporters the "mob, scum, and dregs." I once heard him remark that it was pitiful to see Churchill, with his fidgety, lawyer's-clerk manner and tactics, trying to rise to the dignity of the leadership of the House, trying not to twist his moustache all the time, and to listen to opponents like a statesman. And some story he heard of an act of generosity on Churchill's part helped further to disarm his never very vindictive hostility.

Nothing, indeed, could well surpass the magnanimity with which he put away from him all rancour for the endless insults he had received. New Tory members, expecting perhaps to see in him a truculent demagogue, were disarmed on finding a genial gentleman and comrade, who bore no malice, was excellent company, and played chess as sociably as skilfully. As the years went on, there actually arose a sort of enthusiasm for him among the younger Tories, more than one of whom assured him that they deplored the treatment he had met with at the hands of their party. Of course they did not suffer from the embarrassment of the Liberals at the prospect that the irrepressible Atheist, with his extraordinary gift for legislation, would possibly have to be included in the next Liberal administration.

This feeling began to arise very rapidly among the Radicals outside. His prompt success in securing the Labour Bureau, and in checking the practice of truck in Scotland and England, brought him immediate votes of thanks from labour organizations, though the press at this stage practised against him such a boycott that at a time when he was constantly speaking on the estimates, correspondents wrote deploring his silence in the House. The old tactic of ostracism was not easily unlearned; and the official Liberal journals, as the _Daily News_, for years on end sought to suppress the fact that it was he who had brought about the Labour Bureau. So anxious were such journals to keep him out of sight, that when the important return moved for by him as to market rights and tolls was issued, and had to be discussed, the _News_ dealt with it elaborately without mentioning that it was Bradlaugh who had obtained it.

No conspiracy, however, could suppress general knowledge of such a mass of work as he got through, outside the House as well as inside. When it was not sitting, he was on lecturing tours, and I find that in the last three months of 1886, Parliament being in recess, he addressed nearly sixty political meetings in all parts of the country, in addition to his Secularist lecturing, which he never abandoned, though he devoted a larger proportion of his lectures to politics than formerly. In the House, besides working specially at his questions of truck and land cultivation and perpetual pensions, and serving on the committee to consider the effects of the Employers' Liability Act, he was one of the most generally industrious of legislators. All this strain was not for nothing, and at the end of the year we find him suffering from erysipelas and neuritis.

1887.

In the session of 1887, however, he went to work with unslackened energy. In a long speech delivered to a full house in the debate on the address, he attacked the Government on their permission of illegal truck practices, on their Egyptian policy, on their Burmese policy, and on their Irish policy. On the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill, the new Commons leader, Mr W. H. Smith, continued the Tory policy of concession to the former victim of the party; and he was granted a Select Committee on Perpetual Pensions, himself being a member. The point raised by him last year as to peers' interference in elections was made the subject of investigation for another committee (of seven), moved for by the Government, and on this too he sat. The majority of the committee, of course, soon reported in favour of leaving the Sessional Order unaltered, Bradlaugh and Mr Whitbread dissenting. Meanwhile, he was continuing his attacks on the practice of truck, and got down for discussion a Truck Act Amendment Bill in addition to the Affirmation Bill which he had introduced when Sir John (formerly Mr Sergeant) Simon's came to nothing. In March, too, he took an active part with Mr Howell and Mr Labouchere in the attack on certain members of the Corporation of London, including, and specially, his own old enemy, Alderman Sir R. N. Fowler, for corrupt expenditure. In Fowler's presence Bradlaugh on his part "undertook to specifically connect the hon. baronet with the issue of City funds under conditions which compelled the knowledge on his part that they were corruptly used for the purpose of influencing the decisions of that House. He would prove that up to the hilt." And again he renewed his energetic action against the huge expenditure on Sir H. D. Wolff's mission to Cairo, a mission which, he declared, amid Radical cheers, to be a gross Conservative "job;" and he had the support of 146 members to his motion to quash the vote.

The charges against the Corporation were formally heard before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, Bradlaugh acting as prosecutor. Fowler, without really denying the charges in the House, had described them as "anonymous tittle-tattle;" and on the insufficiency of this disclaimer being pointed out, one of the ministers, Lord G. Hamilton, formally denied the charges on Fowler's behalf. Before the Committee--consisting of Lord Hartington, Sir Joseph Bailey, Mr Dillwyn, Mr Houldsworth, and Mr Stevenson--the statements made as to expenditure were proved,[191] as Bradlaugh had promised, "up to the hilt." Fourteen witnesses were examined by him; the City accounts for five years and other documents were closely gone into; and when the alleged payments could no longer be disputed, the defence (conducted by Mr J. Compton Lawrence, Q.C.) took the line of arguing that the challenged payments were within the right of the Corporation. They had been made during a number of years by way of resisting the popular movement for the reform of the municipal government of London. In the words of Bradlaugh:--

[Footnote 191: See the Blue-Book, "Report London Corporation (Charges of Malversation)," together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix, Parliamentary Paper, 161, 1887. A brief account of the matter was written by Bradlaugh for _Our Corner_, July and August 1887, under the title, "How the City Fathers Fight."]

"£19,550, 10s. 10d. was proved to have been expended in financing Associations such as the Metropolitan Ratepayers' Association, Metropolitan Local Self-Government Association, Anti-One-Municipality League, and South London Municipal Association, described by Mr Howell as 'bogus' Associations, which were mostly started by paid agents employed by City officials, under the direction of, and with the knowledge of, the Special Committee; and which Associations were used as a means of creating a fraudulent, unfair, and collusive opposition to the proposed legislation for London municipal reform. Improper use and malversation of funds were also shown in promoting and carrying on collusive and fictitious charter movements in Lambeth, Woolwich, Greenwich, and other places in the metropolis, with the view of representing these to Parliament and to the Privy Council as spontaneous and _bona-fide_ movements, when they were really only intended as opposition to the Government Bill. (The fictitious nature of the charter movement is especially illustrated by Mr Stoneham's answer: 'When the London Government Bill was dropped, the charter movements were let fall through by the City to a great extent.') Improper use was further shown in paying men to attend in very large numbers for the purpose of opposing, sometimes with violence, the meetings in favour of the reform of the Corporation; in paying for sham deputations, sham meetings in favour of the City, and for unfair reports which were published in the press; in procuring signatures to petitions," etc.

The most extraordinary thing of all was the fact that in the case of one municipal reform meeting in 1883, at least 2000 forged tickets had been issued, and their distribution was not obscurely traced to Corporation officials. In regard to this matter, Fowler was shown to have helped to evade inquiry when it was challenged at the time; and in regard to the improper expenditure, he was shown to have been officially cognisant; and though the Committee let off their fellow-member as lightly as they could, he had a very bad quarter of an hour under Bradlaugh's examination. One by one, the champions of the religiosity of the legislature against the Atheist had been shown to do their cause small credit in their persons. About the same time Bradlaugh took a leading part in exposing in the House a gross and systematic fraud in the preparation of a certain petition from Haggerston, signatures having been forged and invented wholesale, to the extent even of putting names of infant children and racehorses; and this again was done for payment made by City officials. But on Bradlaugh's side there was no subordination of the public to his private interest; and when, in April 1887, Newdegate died in the odour of sanctity, he displayed no vindictiveness in his comments on the local obituary biography, which of course dealt freely with his own name. "I am credibly informed," he wrote, "that, apart from his bigotry against Catholics and heretics, Mr Newdegate was a kindly country gentleman, well liked by those who knew him. I regret to learn from his biographer that he treated the six years' harassing anxiety and cost to myself, which he did so much to continue, as a subject for merriment."

In respect of his legislative work he was as successful as he was industrious. By the end of April he had got his Truck Bill into the Committee stage; and he secured from the Government, without a blow, the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls for which he moved in a speech of an hour's length.[192] The manner of this success was singular. In the words of one Tory journal: "It was no secret that the Government intended at first to oppose Mr Bradlaugh's motion, but it gave way on receiving an intimation from a large number of Conservative members sitting below the gangway that, if a division took place, they would be compelled to vote with the junior member for Northampton." So oddly had the tables been turned. Yet he had in no way slackened his opposition to Tory policy. On the Coercion Bill he had made three forcible speeches, and he was always pursuing ministers with awkward questions. His success with the enemy was due simply to the irresistible impression he created of honesty and industry and single-mindedness. And when in May he made a merciless exposure of Churchill on the point above alluded to, of his old imputations on the integrity of Liberal judges, it did not appear that Conservatives failed to enjoy the proceedings. It was in the course of the privilege debate on the _Times'_ articles on "Parnellism and Crime." Bradlaugh first elicited from Churchill a repudiation of one of his former utterances, and then proceeded to quote in full the passage from Hansard, with the now verified reference. Another challenge elicited another denial, and yet another quotation, with the reference. They were all ready for this occasion. "I am not responsible for Hansard," cried the noble lord, in much agitation; whereupon Bradlaugh added new and sharper punishment, going on to quote yet more of the damnatory passages from Hansard. "The noble lord," he went on, "was of opinion in 1884 that the courts of law were not fair tribunals," whereupon Churchill again indicated dissent. "It was perhaps," admitted Bradlaugh, "not quite correct to say that the noble lord was of that opinion--he only said it." And still the castigation went on, the House punctuating it with laughter, till Churchill rose and protested that in regard to his recent speeches on the _Times_ question he had been utterly misrepresented. Whereupon "Mr Bradlaugh said he was not dealing with the noble lord's views--he did not know what they were. (Opposition cheers and laughter.) He was only giving the noble lord's words." At the close of the speech, which as a whole was unanswerable, Churchill rose to offer a "personal explanation" on the Hansard business. Delivered with anxious prolixity, it was primarily to the effect that in 1884 his speeches were "greatly compressed" in Hansard, "as is invariably the case with ordinary members," and that the compressed reports could not be taken as true and faithful. This gave Bradlaugh his final opportunity.

[Footnote 192: Circulated as a pamphlet in immense numbers by the Cobden Club, and reprinted among his speeches.]

"I accept the explanation of the noble lord [on the bearing of his words on the _Times_ case], and I can corroborate his statements as to the compression of his speeches, because I used at one time to hear from him expressions which, having unguardedly repeated them without verification, I could not find in Hansard when I went to look for them. (Loud laughter and cheers.) The only mental difficulty I have is to imagine how any process of compression could put words on record which were never spoken. (Loud laughter and cheers.)"

It was as sufficient and artistic a piece of punishment as the House had witnessed for a long time; and Bradlaugh thenceforth considered his accounts with his former vilifier reasonably squared. Besides, in his anxiety to propitiate his powerful opponent, Churchill immediately afterwards declared in a letter to the _Times_ that he did not see how Bradlaugh's Oaths Bill could with propriety be opposed by the Conservative party, whose duty it was, by supporting and passing it, to "secure that the Parliamentary oath in future will in all probability only be taken by those who believe in and revere its effective solemnity." This was written in anticipation of the action of a few Conservatives who, rebelling against their own leaders, obstructed the measure when it came on for discussion after other matters about five o'clock in the morning. Sir Edward Clarke, who had zealously resisted all previous bills of the kind, gave his support to this. Twice over, in a House of 300, Bradlaugh had large majorities--of 91 and 104--against adjournment, but still the motions went on. At length, having sat in the House for eleven hours, he gave way, an act for which some outsiders thought fit to blame him. Some journals, however, took the opportunity to speak of him, on the merits of the question, with a civility they had never before seen occasion to show him. Others made use of the occasion to point out how fully it proved the utter dishonesty of most of the previous Tory opposition to Bradlaugh. Some of the details in the debate gave dramatic corroboration to this view. Colonel Hughes had stood forward as one of the representatives of religion; on which Mr Healy--himself once in that galley--observed that "it was to be hoped Christianity would not be defended by a gentleman who had been scheduled for bribery."

While the Oaths Bill was thus delayed, Bradlaugh contrived by incessant vigilance to get the Truck Bill through Committee in July. He confessed that if he had known beforehand the enormous labour such a Bill involved--"the receiving deputations, the large explanatory correspondence, the huge mass of suggested amendments, the objections from various interests to each amendment, and the utter impossibility of conciliating or satisfying the various sections, some friendly, some hostile, some well-meaning but impracticable"--he might have shrunk from the task. For twenty-seven nights he had watched till the morning hours on the chance of his Bill being reached, and when all was done it seemed for a time as if the Upper House, in its customary manner, would wreck everything. Their lordships' first "amendments" were insufferable, and were sent back to them, the House of Commons backing up Bradlaugh with vigour. Finally their lordships agreed to limit their amendments to a few which, while of course doing harm, did not affect the main work of the Bill, and though some Irish and other members desired to reject it on the score of these, the measure was at length passed.

He had thus in one session carried an important Act, made considerable progress with another, and obtained a Select Committee on Perpetual Pensions and a Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, apart from the Committee appointed by the Government on his former initiative to discuss the action of peers in elections. In the Committee on Pensions his report was unanimously adopted, barring the clauses which dealt with certain payments to the Duchy of Cornwall--in other words, to the Prince of Wales. He had further prosecuted the Corporation of London before yet another Select Committee of the House, effectively damaging one of his enemies in the process, as he had in the previous year secured the prosecution of another for breach of the law in his capacity of a company director. He had seen yet another enemy, Churchill, deposed from his place of pride, and had incidentally overthrown him in debate. All the while he was doing hard work on the Employers' Liability Committee besides speaking often on the Estimates and on the Coercion Bill, putting an ever-increasing number of solid questions to ministers on grievances submitted to him, many of which were redressed, and in particular pertinaciously pursuing the Indian Office as to certain underhand dealings in the matter of the ruby mines of Burmah. No other member's work could compare with it all; and the press decided that "Bradlaugh's Session" was the proper summary of the Parliamentary season. But, of course, such success evoked jealousy no less than tribute. In the carrying of the Truck Act he had not a little experience of the jealousy of labour leaders and others; and while the official Liberal press still partly boycotted him, the Socialist press made a point of belittling or perverting everything he did. Despite his continuous attacks on Tory policy, his Truck Bill was declared to owe its success to Government adoption. The Socialist _Reynolds_ declared that he did little or nothing in Parliament; while the Tory _England_ protested that he spoke far too often. As a matter of fact, he had made some sixty-five speeches up to Whitsuntide, thirteen of them against Coercion. But the circumstance which made his Parliamentary industry absolutely unique was that it was carried on alongside of a continuous course of Sunday lecturing, with special attendances at week-day demonstrations thrown in. When the Sunday lectures were in London the strain was comparatively light, as only two were given in the day at the Hall of Science; but in the provinces it is the Secularist practice to have three discourses on the Sunday when a London lecturer comes, and the physical strain of this, it need not be said, is heavy. Thus for Bradlaugh the two days of the week which other members of Parliament could give to rest and recreation were oftenest simply days of travelling and extra speaking. Now and then he could get a Saturday's pike-fishing on the Lea or on a Thames backwater; once or twice in the year he could even run down to Loch Long for two or three days of the very much more bracing fishing there. Even the holiday became a source of fresh work, for he took up with his usual energy the case of the pollution of Loch Long by Glasgow sewage; and it was due to his persistent pressure that the nuisance was at length stopped. He thus made a rich return for the measure of rest and strength gained from his days of fishing--a gain which was at times wonderful. But though his powers of recuperation were great, the rest-days were far too few; the balance was always heavily on the side of overwork; and so his intimates now saw him year after year showing ever heavier traces of the overwhelming strain of his life. Whether he got to bed early or in the late morning hours, he was always up and at work before eight, attacking his great pile of correspondence, which alone would have seemed to many men to supply a good day's work. Every day's post brought him on an average a round dozen of grievances to be submitted to Parliament, and in every case which he thought worth attention he made careful investigation, always declining to trouble Ministers without good grounds. Then there were the continual letters from poor men of all denominations asking for legal advice gratis--a kind of request he never refused. Yet with it all he found time to write for his journal; and his articles and speeches at this time are as pregnant and efficient as any he ever penned or spoke. Among other things he wrote a weighty little pamphlet: "The Channel Tunnel: Ought the Democracy to Oppose or Support it?" which was widely circulated as the strongest possible popular plea for the undertaking. When next the public is effectively challenged for a vote on that question, it will probably be found that there has been a great transformation of opinion; and not a little of the credit will be due to his pleading. Of the extent of his influence in this and other ways the average metropolitan reader never had any accurate idea, between the grossly unjust attacks of Socialists on the one hand, and the boycotting of the Liberal press on the other. Thus we find him delivering in Birmingham, in October 1887, a great fighting speech on the party situation, of which no report whatever appears in the London papers. It dealt with the question raised by Mr Chamberlain, "Is a National Party possible?" and the answer it gave was a determined and uncompromising attack on the Unionist coalition, this at a time when Liberals and some Radicals were insinuating that he was ingratiating himself in the Tory counsels. This was a type of dozens of provincial addresses delivered by him every year, some of them at immense open-air demonstrations of miners, who always invited him to their great gatherings. Of all this activity the London press revealed hardly a trace, any more than of his hundreds of Sunday lectures every year, of which one or two out of every three were devoted to politics. It is safe to say that no other English politician of his time spoke publicly to such numbers of his fellow-countrymen in the course of each year.

A striking illustration of the new animus against him among "advanced" propagandists came up on the occasion of the deplorable Trafalgar Square episode of 13th November 1887. The Socialist press and some Radical journals sedulously circulated the intimation that "somehow or other Mr Bradlaugh was very conspicuous by his absence," while pointing to his old proceedings in similar crises. He was actually lecturing at the time at West Hartlepool, in fulfilment of an engagement made months before; and next day he was at Hull. On his return he contributed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ a careful statement of the law on the point of the use of Trafalgar Square, criticising and condemning the action of the authorities, and he followed this up with further protests, while advising the Radical M.P.'s concerned to fight out the case at law, and begging those who trusted him to await such legal settlement. Yet several times since his death it has been stated in the press that he exhumed a forgotten law which entitled the Home Secretary to prevent meetings in the Square. The laws he cited were all to the contrary effect, and were well enough known to those officially concerned; the point having been raised, as above mentioned, over one of his own Trafalgar Square demonstrations a few years before. And when Mr Cunninghame Graham and Mr Burns were prosecuted, he gave evidence on their behalf, making a hasty and difficult journey across the country from Leek to London on a telegraphic summons to arrive in time when they were tried at the Old Bailey.

A paragraph which he published in his journal in this connection will serve to mark the degree of political severance which, with no diminution of mutual regard, had arisen between him and his long-tried colleague and partner, Mrs Besant. It ran:--

"As I have on most serious matters of principle recently differed very widely from my brave and loyal co-worker, and as that difference has been regrettably emphasized by her resignation of her editorial functions on this journal, it is the more necessary that I should say how thoroughly I approve, and how grateful I am to her for, her conduct in not only obtaining bail and providing legal assistance for the helpless unfortunates in the hands of the police, but also for her daily personal attendance and wise conduct at the police-stations and police-courts, where she has done so much to abate harsh treatment on the one hand and rash folly on the other. While I should not have marked this out as fitting woman's work, especially in the recent very inclement weather, I desire to record my view that it has been bravely done, well done, and most usefully done; and I wish to mark this the more emphatically as my views and those of Mrs Besant seem more wide apart than I could have deemed possible on many of the points of principle underlying what is every day growing into a more serious struggle."

The severance spoken of had arisen over Mrs Besant's adoption of Socialist principles, a change of attitude on her part which began about 1885, and soon went the length of a somewhat extreme propaganda, afterwards modified in common with the general tone of the Fabian Society, of which she had speedily become the most active member. The joint editorship had now become a practical difficulty as well as a source of complaint among readers; and in October 1887 it was amicably ended, Mrs Besant continuing to act as sub-editor and contributor. She had fought beside Bradlaugh and for him loyally and well, and though the suddenness and vehemence of her new departure had startled and troubled him, his friendship, as the above paragraph shows, had in no way weakened. He was not the man to break a tie for even a serious difference in opinion; though he was also the last man to do what some Socialists contemptibly accused him of doing--arrange that his colleague should take one line and he another in order to promote the circulation of his journal. He did for Socialists what he did for everybody who got into legal trouble on political grounds, and he gave Mrs Besant ample assistance in fighting the case of those who were arrested by the police for open-air propaganda. The most serious change of position on Mrs Besant's part, her conversion to Madame Blavatsky's "Theosophy," was soon to come. Even when that came, in the following year, he neither withdrew his friendship nor asked her to cease contributing to the _Reformer_; but, coming after political differences, the new and deep division of opinion undoubtedly pained and depressed him. He was to find, as so many have found, that when success comes something is sure to go which leaves success a different thing from what was dreamt of.

1888.

The first important task of Bradlaugh on the re-assembling of Parliament was to fight this cause of the right of public meeting in Trafalgar Square. It had been badly enough managed by others. In January he wrote:--

"The conviction of Messrs Cunninghame Graham and Burns for unlawful assembly is, I fear, in great part due to the foolishly boastful evidence of Mr Hyndman and Mr Tims. If the first had been a Crown witness, his evidence on cross-examination could not have been more mischievous to the accused, on the count on which a verdict was found against them; and the incautious replies of Mr Tims to the counsel for the Crown were almost as fatal."

The Government on their part had carried adroitness to the point of cowardice, refusing to arrest Mrs Besant when she sought to have a legal trial on the merits of the right of meeting. The effect of it all was that not only the Liberal leaders, but such journals as the _Daily Chronicle_ and the _Daily News_, took the line of deprecating any further public meetings in the Square. Bradlaugh, standing firmly to the claim of right, commented gravely on the promoters of the meeting for "bringing together a huge mass of people whom nobody was prepared to lead or to control;" and he expressed his regret that Mr Saunders, a prosecution against whom was laid and then departed from, should have let the legal question drop. Before the assembling of the House certain metropolitan members, learning that Bradlaugh was determined to raise the question by an amendment on the Address, took the unworthy line of protesting that, as a metropolitan matter, it was no business of his. He offered to leave it to Sir Charles Russell, as the most capable of dealing with it. Sir Charles promptly replied that no one could handle it better than Bradlaugh, but undertook the moving of the leading amendment. In addition to such difficulties Bradlaugh had the trouble of opposing the action of Mrs Besant on the newly-founded Law and Liberty League, promoted by herself and Mr Stead, with its "Ironside Circles," and other risky arrangements for meeting force with force.

When the House met, Bradlaugh took occasion, before the debates began, to make a personal statement on a matter that had of late frequently come before the public. In February of 1886 he had offered in the House to show that large sums of money, excessive for such a purpose, had been supplied by leading Conservatives of both Houses of Parliament for the promotion of a Trafalgar Square demonstration for "Fair Trade," organised by a Tory agitator named Peters, which had culminated in a riot. Peters had at the time blusterously denied this, but had declined Bradlaugh's challenge to a formal investigation before an arbitrator as at _nisi prius_. In the recent prosecution of Messrs Burns and Cunninghame Graham at Bow Street, Bradlaugh had been pressed by the Crown Counsel on this point, had reaffirmed his statement, and had added that one of the cheques, which he had seen and was prepared to trace, was from Lord Salisbury. This statement was first denied by Lord Salisbury in a letter to the _Times_ (2nd December), and was afterwards characterised as wilful perjury in a published letter from his secretary to one Kelly, a colleague of Peters. On the first denial Bradlaugh promptly offered to have the matter investigated before a Committee of the House of Commons. This offer Lord Salisbury neither accepted nor declined. Bradlaugh now asked the Government to agree to a Select Committee of Investigation, pointing out that he lay under an imputation of perjury from the Prime Minister on a statement which he had made in Parliament. An action for libel, however, had been already begun against Bradlaugh by Peters; and the Ministry, after waiting a few days, answered that the matter was not a proper one for a Select Committee, especially as a lawsuit on it was pending. Bradlaugh, however, pointed out that the action in question could not raise the real issue, and offered to raise it if Lord Salisbury would acknowledge the publication of the letter to Kelly, signed by his secretary. This acknowledgment he sought to obtain by letter, but after delay the noble lord took the singular course of declining to accept legal responsibility for the publication of the letter, as he had not consented to it. When, however, Bradlaugh read this letter of disclaimer in the House, Lord Salisbury sent him a secretarial letter (22nd February) referring to the original letter to the _Times_ over his lordship's own signature (in which the truth of Bradlaugh's statement had been denied without charging perjury), and admitting his lordship's legal responsibility for that. That letter, however, was not actionable, and Bradlaugh had replied to it at the time, as he now pointed out. Lord Salisbury then wrote (25th February), repeating that he could accept no responsibility for his letter to Kelly, concerning whom he made the curious statement that he, too, was affected by Bradlaugh's false and injurious charges, though Bradlaugh had never mentioned Kelly's name in the matter. His lordship, however, professed his readiness to facilitate a legal investigation of Bradlaugh's statements, which his lordship inaccurately professed to reproduce. Bradlaugh, protesting against his lordship's tolerating the publication of the charge of perjury, and never once apologising for it, answered that he preferred to have the charge stated in the words in which he made it, and in none other. No reply was offered, and the matter was left to be settled by Peters' action for libel.

The debate on the Trafalgar Square question did not come on for a week or two, and in the meantime one notable episode occurred over a remark made by Bradlaugh in the discussion on an amendment to the Address concerning the Scotch Crofters. The report runs:--

"Mr Bradlaugh said he understood the Chief Secretary to say that the cause of the evil they had to deal with in the Highlands was over-population, and that the sole remedy for this difficulty was emigration. He also understood the right hon. gentleman to denounce the reckless increase of population in that district during the last forty or fifty years. He felt some astonishment that the right hon. gentleman should put forward such an argument, when he remembered that the right hon. gentleman, and those who sat around him, tried before all England to make him appear as one of the most immoral men alive, because he had tried to teach the people for the last quarter of a century these very evils of over-population, and these very difficulties of their condition connected with reckless increase. It was astounding to hear from the other side such a doctrine put forward to be supported, because, when urged by him in olden times, it had made him the mark for some of the most wicked language that one man could use against another.

"Mr A. J. Balfour: I never in my life used any such language against the hon. gentleman; never, never. (Cheers.)

"Mr Bradlaugh said that, at any rate, the important party of which the right hon. gentleman was then a prominent member, flooded the country with literature containing such attacks, without then one word of repudiation from the right hon. gentleman. But he would not discuss the personal position of the matter further. The sole remedy for the existing distress, according to hon. members opposite, was emigration. But how were they going to apply it? Was the State to undertake the emigration? Were the people to be sent away by force, and to what lands were they to go? In every case they would have to struggle for existence against hostile life-conditions, extremes of heat and cold, hard for starving men to hear. Everywhere they would be confronted with the labour struggle, for we were no longer the sole, or even the principal, colonising people; masses of Germans and other thrifty colonising races were now found in every distant land. Of course, emigration resulted in a few successes, and of these much was heard; but nothing was said about the many miserable failures. Medical men in America and Canada could tell many heart-rending stories of madness supervening on the home-sickness that embittered the emigrant's life. There was no country where pauper emigration would be welcomed. State emigration, if at all, must include on a large scale other distressed subjects. This was impracticable. Emigration of charity was mockery save to the veriest few. No; emigration ought not to be thought of as a remedy until other means had been tried, until the unjust conditions which hampered the poor, and which had been artificially created by the class to which the hon. gentlemen opposite belonged, had been swept away. ('Hear. hear.')"

Thus again did Bradlaugh prove that his Neo-Malthusianism was anything but an argument against the political improvement of the lot of the people. The emphatic declaration of Mr Balfour may be held to class him with Mr John Morley, Mr Leonard Courtney, and the late Lord Derby, as a believer in the importance of restriction of population; but it is not on record that he, any more than they, has sought to communicate his belief to the public or his party; and it is certain that, as Bradlaugh remarked, he never said a word in deprecation of the attacks of his fellow-Tories on Bradlaugh as a Neo-Malthusian at a time when such attacks were a main means of keeping him out of his seat.

When at length the Trafalgar Square question was reached (1st March), being raised in a masterly speech by Sir Charles Russell, Bradlaugh followed with one perhaps not less effective, which, lasting till midnight, had to be continued on the following evening. It included a sharp indictment of the conduct of the police, and a broad suggestion that the authorities seemed to have made use of _agents provocateurs_; and it made short work of the official pretence that the Square was Crown property, as having been constituted out of the King's Mews--a statement on a par with Mr Burdett Coutts' citation of the old Act against certain meetings near Parliament without the all-essential clause specifying the kind of meetings forbidden. The King's Mews, Bradlaugh pointed out, had formed only a very small part of the ground, while the rest had been bought and paid for with public money. He challenged an investigation of the conduct of the police, and wound up with an earnest appeal to "those who were elected as Liberals" to resist the tyrannous policy of the Government. The Home Secretary was stung into promising an investigation of the charges against the police; but it is matter of history that the Liberal leaders homologated the action of the Tory Ministry.

A few weeks afterwards (21st March) came the decisive struggle on Bradlaugh's Affirmation Bill (otherwise "Oaths Bill"), which he had failed to force through in the previous session. He moved the second reading in a tersely argued and conciliatory speech; and though some Conservatives, as Mr Stanley Leighton and Mr De Lisle (Catholic), made foolish speeches against it, the great majority of the House was with him. One member, Mr Gedge, made a success of absurdity by arguing that the promoters of the Bill had defined an Atheist as one "_on whom conscience had no binding effect_," and this nonsensical phrase he repeated again and again without recognising its nature, entirely failing at the same time to see the point that the "definition" he meant to quote was that given by a court of law, and not by the promoters of the Bill at all. At length, the second reading was carried over the amendment (which proposed a Royal Commission) by 247 votes to 137. On the substantive motion being put that the Bill be read a second time, obstruction was attempted, which Bradlaugh met by moving the closure. On this he had 334 votes to 50; and the second reading was then formally carried by 250 votes to 100, a majority which surpassed his most sanguine expectations.

To secure the passage of the measure, however, he had to meet the old Christian plea that the permission to affirm--which his Bill gave alike to witnesses, jurors, officials, and members of Parliament, in Scotland and Ireland as well as England--should not be given to believing Christians who, having no conscientious objections to swearing, might seek to evade it because they felt freer to lie on affirmation than on oath. This was urged on the Conservative side as a concession essential to acceptance of the Bill, and Bradlaugh consented to make the provision in Committee. No Liberal opposed; but trouble was to arise later in the matter.