MR. BRADLAUGH'S STRUGGLE.
And now dawned the year 1880, the memorable year in which commenced
Mr. Bradlaugh's long Parliamentary battle. After a long and bitter
struggle he was elected, with Mr. Labouchere, as member for
Northampton, at the general election, and so the prize so long fought
for was won. Shall I ever forget that election day, April 2, 1880? How
at four o'clock Mr. Bradlaugh came into the room at the "George",
where his daughters and I were sitting, flung himself into a chair
with, "There's nothing more to do; our last man is polled." Then the
waiting for the declaration through the long, weary hours of suspense,
till as the time drew near we knelt by the window listening--listening
to the hoarse murmur of the crowd, knowing that presently there would
be a roar of triumph or a howl of anger when the numbers were read out
from the steps of the Town Hall. And now silence sank, and we knew the
moment had come, and we held our breath, and then--a roar, a wild roar
of joy and exultation, cheer after cheer, ringing, throbbing, pealing,
and then the mighty surge of the crowd bringing him back, their member
at last, waving hats, handkerchiefs, a very madness of tumultuous
delight, and the shrill strains of "Bradlaugh for Northampton!" with a
ring of triumph in them they had never had before. And he, very grave,
somewhat shaken by the outpour of love and exultation, very silent,
feeling the weight of new responsibility more than the gladness of
victory. And then the next morning, as he left the town, the mass of
men and women, one sea of heads from hotel to station, every window
crowded, his colours waving everywhere, men fighting to get near him,
to touch him, women sobbing, the cries, "Our Charlie, our Charlie;
we've got you and we'll keep you." How they loved him, how they joyed
in the triumph won after twelve years of strife. Ah me! we thought the
struggle over, and it was only beginning; we thought our hero
victorious, and a fiercer, crueller fight lay in front. True, he was
to win that fight, but his life was to be the price of the winning;
victory for him was to be final, complete, but the laurel-wreath was
to fall upon a grave.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by T. Westley, 57, Vernon Street,
Northampton._ CHARLES BRADLAUGH AND HENRY LABOUCHERE.]
The outburst of anger from the more bigoted of the Christian community
was as savage as the outburst of delight had been exultant, but we
recked little of it. Was he not member, duly elected, without
possibility of assailment in his legal right? Parliament was to meet
on April 29th, the swearing-in beginning on the following day, and Mr.
Bradlaugh had taken counsel with some other Freethinking members as to
the right of Freethinkers to affirm. He held that under the Act 29 and
30 Vict. c. 19, and the Evidence Amendment Acts 1869 and 1870, the
right to substitute affirmation for oath was clear; he was willing to
take the oath as a necessary form if obligatory, but, believing it to
be optional, he preferred affirmation. On May 3rd he presented himself
and, according to the evidence of Sir Erskine May, the Clerk of the
House, given before the second Select Committee on his case, he "came
to the table and delivered the following statement in writing to the
Clerk: 'To the Right Honourable the Speaker of the House of Commons.
I, the undersigned, Charles Bradlaugh, beg respectfully to claim to be
allowed to affirm, as a person for the time being by law permitted to
make a solemn affirmation or declaration, instead of taking an oath.
(Signed) Charles Bradlaugh.' And being asked by the Clerk upon what
grounds he claimed to make an affirmation, he answered: 'By virtue of
the Evidence Amendment Acts, 1869 and 1870.' Whereupon the Clerk
reported to Mr. Speaker" the claim, and Mr. Speaker told Mr. Bradlaugh
that he might address the House on the matter. "Mr. Bradlaugh's
observations were very short. He repeated that he relied upon the
Evidence Further Amendment Act, 1869, and the Evidence Amendment Act,
1870, adding: 'I have repeatedly, for nine years past, made an
affirmation in the highest courts of jurisdiction in this realm. I am
ready to make such a declaration or affirmation.' Substantially those
were the words which he addressed to the Speaker." This was the
simple, quiet, and dignified scene which took place in the House. Mr.
Bradlaugh was directed to withdraw, and he withdrew, and, after
debate, a Select Committee was appointed to consider whether he could
make affirmation; that Committee decided against the claim, and gave
in its report on May 20th. On the following day Mr. Bradlaugh
presented himself at the table of the House to take the oath in the
form prescribed by the law, and on the objection of Sir Henry Drummond
Wolff, who submitted a motion that he should not be allowed to take
the oath, another Committee was appointed.
Before this Committee Mr. Bradlaugh stated his case, and pointed out
that the legal obligation lay on him to take the oath, adding: "Any
form that I went through, any oath that I took, I should regard as
binding upon my conscience in the fullest degree. I would go through
no form, I would take no oath, unless I meant it to be so binding." He
wrote in the same sense to the _Times_, saying that he should regard
himself "as bound, not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit
which the affirmation would have conveyed, had I been permitted to use
it." The Committee reported against him, and on June 23rd he was heard
at the Bar of the House, and made a speech so self-restrained, so
noble, so dignified, that the House, in defiance of all its own rules,
broke out over and over again into applause. In the debate that
preceded his speech, members had lost sight of the ordinary rules of
decency, and had used expressions against myself wholly gratuitous in
such a quarrel; the grave rebuke to him who "was wanting in chivalry,
because, while I can answer for myself and am able to answer for
myself, nothing justified the introduction of any other name beside my
own to make prejudice against me," brought irrepressible cheers. His
appeal was wholly to the law. "I have not yet used--I trust no passion
may tempt me into using--any words that would seem to savour of even a
desire to enter into conflict with this House. I have always taught,
preached, and believed the supremacy of Parliament, and it is not
because for a moment the judgment of one Chamber of Parliament should
be hostile to me that I am going to deny the ideas I have always held;
but I submit that one Chamber of Parliament--even its grandest
Chamber, as I have always held this to be--had no right to override
the law. The law gives me the right to sign that roll, to take and
subscribe the oath, and to take my seat there [with a gesture towards
the benches]. I admit that the moment I am in the House, without any
reason but your own good will, you can send me away. That is your
right. You have full control over your members. But you cannot send me
away until I have been heard in my place, not a suppliant as I am now,
but with the rightful audience that each member has always had.... I
am ready to admit, if you please, for the sake of argument, that every
opinion I hold is wrong and deserves punishment. Let the law punish
it. If you say the law cannot, then you admit that you have no right,
and I appeal to public opinion against the iniquity of a decision
which overrides the law and denies me justice. I beg your pardon, sir,
and that of the House too, if in this warmth there seems to lack
respect for its dignity. And as I shall have, if your decision be
against me, to come to that table when your decision is given, I beg
you, before the step is taken in which we may both lose our
dignity--mine is not much, but yours is that of the Commons of
England--I beg you, before the gauntlet is fatally thrown, I beg you,
not in any sort of menace, not in any sort of boast, but as one man
against six hundred, to give me that justice which on the other side
of this hall the judges would give me, were I pleading there before
them."
But no eloquence, no plea for justice, could stay the tide of Tory and
religious bigotry, and the House voted that he should not be allowed
to take the oath. Summoned to the table to hear the decision
communicated by the Speaker, he answered that decision with the words
firmly spoken: "I respectfully refuse to obey the order of the House,
because that order was against the law." The Speaker appealed to the
House for direction, and on a division--during which the Speaker and
Charles Bradlaugh were left together in the chamber--the House ordered
the enforcement of Mr. Bradlaugh's withdrawal. Once more the order is
given, once more the refusal made, and then the Serjeant-at-Arms was
bidden to remove him. Strange was the scene as little Captain Cosset
walked up to the member of Herculean proportions, and men wondered how
the order would be enforced; but Charles Bradlaugh was not the man to
make a vulgar brawl, and the light touch on his shoulder was to him
the touch of an authority he admitted and to which he bowed. So he
gravely accompanied his small captor, and was lodged in the Clock
Tower of the House as prisoner until the House should further consider
what to do with him--the most awkward prisoner it had ever had, in
that in his person it was imprisoning the law.
In a special issue of the _National Reformer_, giving an account of
the Committee's work and of Mr. Bradlaugh's committal to the Clock
Tower, I find the following from my own pen: "The Tory party, beaten
at the polls by the nation, has thus, for the moment, triumphed in the
House of Commons. The man chosen by the Radicals of Northampton has
been committed to prison on the motion of the Tory ex-Chancellor of
the Exchequer, simply because he desires to discharge the duty laid
upon him by his constituency and by the law of the land. As this paper
goes to press, I go to Westminster to receive from him his directions
as to the conduct of the struggle with the nation into which the House
of Commons has so recklessly plunged." I found him busily writing,
prepared for all events, ready for a long imprisonment. On the
following day a leaflet from my pen, "Law Makers and Law Breakers,"
appealed to the people; after reciting what had happened, it
concluded: "Let the people speak. Gladstone and Bright are for
Liberty, and the help denied them within the House must come to them
from without. No time must be lost. While we remain idle, a
representative of the people is illegally held in prison. Northampton
is insulted, and in this great constituency every constituency is
threatened. On freedom of election depends our liberty; on freedom of
conscience depends our progress. Tory squires and lordlings have
defied the people and measured their strength against the masses. Let
the masses speak." But there was no need to make appeals, for the
outrage itself caused so swiftly a growl of anger that on the very
next day the prisoner was set free, and there came protest upon
protest against the high-handed action of the House. In Westminster
Hall 4,000 people gathered to cheer Mr. Bradlaugh when he came to the
House on the day after his liberation. In less than a week 200
meetings had thundered out their protest. Liberal associations, clubs,
societies, sent up messages of anger and of demand for justice. In
Trafalgar Square there gathered--so said the papers--the largest crowd
ever seen there, and on the Thursday following--the meeting was held
on Monday--the House of Commons rescinded its resolution, refusing to
allow Mr. Bradlaugh to affirm, and admitted him on Friday, July 2nd,
to take his seat after affirmation. "At last the bitter struggle is
over," I wrote, "and law and right have triumphed. The House of
Commons has, by rescinding the resolution passed by Tories and
Ultramontanes, re-established its good name in the eyes of the world.
The triumph is not one of Freethought over Christianity, nor is it
over the House of Commons; it is the triumph of law, brought about by
good men--of all shades of opinion, but of one faith in justice--over
Tory contempt of law and Ultramontane bigotry. It is the reassertion
of civil and religious liberty under the most difficult circumstances,
the declaration that the House of Commons is the creation of the
people, and not a club of the aristocracy with the right of
blackballing in its own hands."
The battle between Charles Bradlaugh and his persecutors was now
transferred to the law courts. As soon as he had taken his seat he was
served with a writ for having voted without having taken the oath, and
this began the wearisome proceedings by which his defeated enemies
boasted that they would make him bankrupt, and so vacate the seat he
had so hardly gained. Rich men like Mr. Newdegate sued him, putting
forward a man of straw as nominal plaintiff; for many a weary month
Mr. Bradlaugh kept all his enemies at bay, fighting each case himself;
defeated time after time, he fought on, finally carrying the cases to
the House of Lords, and there winning them triumphantly. But they were
won at such heavy cost of physical strength and of money, that they
undermined his strength and burdened him heavily with debt. For all
this time he had not only to fight in the law courts and to attend
scrupulously to his Parliamentary duties, but he had to earn his
living by lecturing and writing, so that his nights away from the
House were spent in travelling and his days in incessant labour. Many
of his defeated foes turned their weapons against me, hoping thus to
give him pain; thus Admiral Sir John Hay, at Wigton, used language of
me so coarse that the _Scotsman_ and _Glasgow Herald_ refused to print
it, and the editor of the _Scotsman_ described it as "language so
coarse that it could have hardly dropped from a yahoo." August 25th
found me at Brussels, whither I went, with Miss Hypatia Bradlaugh, to
represent the English Freethinkers at the International Freethought
Conference. It was an interesting gathering, attended by men of
world-wide reputation, including Dr. Ludwig Büchner, a man of noble
and kindly nature. An International Federation of Freethinkers was
there founded, which did something towards bringing together the
Freethinkers of different countries, and held interesting congresses
in the following years in London and Amsterdam; but beyond these
meetings it did little, and lacked energy and vitality. In truth, the
Freethought party in each country had so much to do in holding its own
that little time and thought could be given to international
organisation. For myself, my introduction to Dr. Büchner, led to much
interesting correspondence, and I translated, with his approval, his
"Mind in Animals," and the enlarged fourteenth edition of "Force and
Matter," as well as one or two pamphlets. This autumn of 1880 found
the so-called Liberal Government in full tilt against the Irish
leaders, and I worked hard to raise English feeling in defence of
Irish freedom even against attack by one so much honoured as was Mr.
Gladstone. It was uphill work, for harsh language had been used
against England and all things English, but I showed by definite
figures--all up and down England--that life and property were far
safer in Ireland than in England, that Ireland was singularly free
from crime save in agrarian disputes, and I argued that these would
disappear if the law should step in between landlord and tenant, and
by stopping the crimes of rack-renting and most brutal eviction, put
an end to the horrible retaliations that were born of despair and
revenge. A striking point on these evictions I quoted from Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, who, using Mr. Gladstone's words that a sentence of eviction
was a sentence of starvation, told of 15,000 processes of eviction
issued in that one year. The autumn's work was varied by the teaching
of science classes, a debate with a clergyman of the Church of
England, and an operation which kept me in bed for three weeks, but
which, on the other hand, was useful, for I learned to write while
lying on my back, and accomplished in this fashion a good part of the
translation of "Mind in Animals."
And here let me point a moral about hard work. Hard work kills no one.
I find a note in the _National Reformer_ in 1880 from the pen of Mr.
Bradlaugh: "It is, we fear, useless to add that, in the judgment of
her best friends, Mrs. Besant has worked far too hard during the last
two years." This is 1893, and the thirteen years' interval has been
full of incessant work, and I am working harder than ever now, and in
splendid health. Looking over the _National Reformer_ for all these
years, it seems to me that it did really fine educational work; Mr.
Bradlaugh's strenuous utterances on political and theological matters;
Dr. Aveling's luminous and beautiful scientific teachings; and to my
share fell much of the educative work on questions of political and
national morality in our dealings with weaker nations. We put all our
hearts into our work, and the influence exercised was distinctly in
favour of pure living and high thinking.
In the spring of 1881 the Court of Appeal decided against Mr.
Bradlaugh's right to affirm as Member of Parliament, and his seat was
declared vacant, but he was at once returned again by the borough of
Northampton, despite the virulence of slander directed against him, so
that he rightly described the election as "the most bitter I have ever
fought." His work in the House had won him golden opinions in the
country, and he was already recognised as a power there; so Tory fear
was added to bigoted hatred, and the efforts to keep him out of the
House were increased.
He was introduced to the House as a new member to take his seat by Mr.
Labouchere and Mr. Burt, but Sir Stafford Northcote intervened, and
after a lengthy debate, which included a speech from Mr. Bradlaugh at
the Bar, a majority of thirty-three refused to allow him to take the
oath. After a prolonged scene, during which Mr. Bradlaugh declined to
withdraw and the House hesitated to use force, the House adjourned,
and finally the Government promised to bring in an Affirmation Bill,
and Mr. Bradlaugh promised, with the consent of his constituents, to
await the decision of the House on this Bill. Meantime, a League for
the Defence of Constitutional Rights was formed, and the agitation in
the country grew: wherever Mr. Bradlaugh went to speak vast crowds
awaited him, and he travelled from one end of the country to the
other, the people answering his appeal for justice with no uncertain
voice. On July 2nd, in consequence of Tory obstruction, Mr. Gladstone
wrote to Mr. Bradlaugh that the Government were going to drop the
Affirmation Bill, and Mr. Bradlaugh thereupon determined to present
himself once more in the House, and fixed on August 3rd as the date of
such action, so that the Irish Land Bill might get through the House
ere any delay in business was caused by him. The House was then
closely guarded with police; the great gates were closed, reserves of
police were packed in the law courts, and all through July this state
of siege continued. On August 2nd there was a large meeting in
Trafalgar Square, at which delegates were present from all parts of
England, and from as far north as Edinburgh, and on Wednesday, August
3rd, Mr. Bradlaugh went down to the House. His last words to me were:
"The people know you better than they know any one, save myself;
whatever happens, mind, whatever happens, let them do no violence; I
trust to you to keep them quiet." He went to the House entrance with
Dr. Aveling, and into the House alone. His daughters and I went
together, and with some hundreds of others carrying petitions--ten
only with each petition, and the ten rigidly counted and allowed to
pass through the gate, sufficiently opened to let one through at a
time--reached Westminster Hall, where we waited on the steps leading
to the passage of the lobby.
An inspector ordered us off. I gently intimated that we were within
our rights. Dramatic order: "Four officers this way." Up they marched
and looked at us, and we looked at them. "I think you had better
consult Inspector Denning before you use violence," I remarked
placidly. They thought they had, and in a few moments up came the
inspector, and seeing that we were standing in a place where we had a
right to be, and were doing no harm, he rebuked his over-zealous
subordinates, and they retired and left us in peace. A man of much
tact and discretion was Inspector Denning. Indeed, all through this,
the House of Commons police behaved admirably well. Even in the attack
they were ordered to make on Mr. Bradlaugh, the police used as little
violence as they could. It was Mr. Erskine, the Deputy
Serjeant-at-Arms, and his ushers, who showed the brutality; as Dr.
Aveling wrote at the time: "The police disliked their work, and, as
brave men, had a sympathy for a brave man. Their orders they obeyed
rigidly. This done, they were kindness itself." Gradually the crowd of
petitioners grew and grew; angry murmurs were heard, for no news came
from the House, and they loved "Charlie," and were mostly north
country men, sturdy and independent. They thought they had a right to
go into the lobby, and suddenly, with the impulse that will sway a
crowd to a single action there was a roar, "Petition, petition,
justice, justice," and they surged up the steps, charging at the
policemen who held the door. Flashed into my mind my chief's charge,
his words, "I trust to you to keep them quiet," and as the police
sprang forward to meet the crowd I threw myself between them, with all
the advantage of the position of the top of the steps that I had
chosen, so that every man in the charging crowd saw me, and as they
checked themselves in surprise I bade them stop for his sake, and keep
for him the peace which he had bade us should not be broken. I heard
afterwards that as I sprang forward the police laughed--they must have
thought me a fool to face the rush of the charging men; but I knew his
friends would never trample me down, and as the crowd stopped the
laugh died out, and they drew back and left me my own way.
Sullenly the men drew back, mastering themselves with effort, reining
in their wrath, still for his sake. Ah! had I known what was going on
inside, would I have kept his trust unbroken! and, as many a man said
to me afterwards in northern towns, "Oh! if you had let us go we would
have carried him into the House up to the Speaker's chair." We heard a
crash inside, and listened, and there was sound of breaking glass and
splintering wood, and in a few minutes a messenger came to me: "He is
in Palace Yard." And we went thither and saw him standing, still and
white, face set like marble, coat torn, motionless, as though carved
in stone, facing the members' door. Now we know the whole shameful
story: how as that one man stood alone, on his way to claim his right,
alone so that he could do no violence, fourteen men, said the Central
News, police and ushers, flung themselves upon him, pushed and pulled
him down the stairs, smashing in their violence the glass and wood of
the passage door; how he struck no blow, but used only his great
strength in passive resistance--" Of all I have ever seen, I never saw
one man struggle with ten like that," said one of the chiefs, angrily
disdainful of the wrong he was forced to do--till they flung him out
into Palace Yard. An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press:
"The strong, broad, heavy, powerful frame of Mr. Bradlaugh was hard to
move, with its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion.
Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held every
inch with surprising tenacity, and only surrendered it after almost
superhuman exertions to retain it. The sight--little of it as was seen
from the outside--soon became sickening. The overborne man appeared
almost at his last gasp. The face, in spite of the warmth of the
struggle, had an ominous pallor. The limbs barely sustained him....
The Trafalgar Square phrase that this man might be broken but not bent
occurred to minds apprehensive at the present appearance of him."
They flung him out, and swift, short words were there interchanged. "I
nearly did wrong at the door," he said afterwards, "I was very angry.
I said to Inspector Denning, 'I shall come again with force enough to
overcome it,' He said, 'When?' I said, 'Within a minute if I raise my
hand.'" He stood in Palace Yard, and there outside the gate was a vast
sea of heads, the men who had journeyed from all parts of England for
love of him, and in defence of the great right he represented of a
constituency to send to Parliament the man of its choice. Ah! he was
never greater than in that moment of outrage and of triumphant wrong;
with all the passion of a proud man surging within him, insulted by
physical violence, injured by the cruel wrenching of all his
muscles--so that for weeks his arms had to be swathed in bandages--he
was never greater than when he conquered his own wrath, crushed down
his own longing for battle, stirred to flame by the bodily struggle,
and the bodily injury, and with thousands waiting within sound of his
voice, longing to leap to his side, he gave the word to tell them to
meet him that evening away from the scene of conflict, and meanwhile
to disperse quietly, "no riot, no disorder." But how he suffered
mentally no words of mine may tell, and none can understand how it
wrung his heart who does not know how he reverenced the great
Parliament of England, how he honoured law, how he believed in justice
being done; it was the breaking down of his national ideals, of his
pride in his country, of his belief that faith would be kept with a
foe by English gentlemen, who with all their faults, he thought,
held honour and chivalry dear. "No man will sleep in gaol for me
to-night," he said to me that day; "no woman can blame me for her
husband killed or wounded, but--" A wave of agony swept over his face,
and from that fatal day Charles Bradlaugh was never the same man.
Some hold their ideals lightly, but his heart-strings were twined
round his; some care little for their country--he was an Englishman,
law-abiding, liberty-loving, to his heart's core, of the type of the
seventeenth-century patriot, holding England's honour dear. It was the
treachery that broke his heart; he had gone alone, believing in the
honour of his foes, ready to submit to expulsion, to imprisonment, and
it was the latter that he expected; but he never dreamed that, going
alone amongst his foes, they would use brutal and cowardly violence,
and shame every Parliamentary tradition by personal outrage on a
duly-elected member, outrage more worthy of a slum pot-house than of
the great Commons House, the House of Hampden and of Vane, the House
that had guarded its own from Royal violence, and had maintained its
privileges in the teeth of kings.
These stormy scenes brought about a promise of Government aid; Mr.
Bradlaugh failed to get any legal redress, as, indeed, he expected to
fail, on the ground that the officials of the House were covered by
the House's order, but the Government promised to support his claim to
his seat during the next session, and thus prevented the campaign
against them on which we had resolved. I had solely on my own
responsibility organised a great band of people pledged to refrain
from the use of all excisable articles after a certain date, and to
withdraw all their moneys in the Savings Bank, thus seriously
crippling the financial resources of the Government. The response from
the workers to my appeal to "Stop the supplies" was great and
touching. One man wrote that as he never drank nor smoked he would
leave off tea; others that though tobacco was their one luxury, they
would forego it; and so on. Somewhat reluctantly, I asked the people
to lay aside this formidable weapon, as "we have no right to embarrass
the Government financially save when they refuse to do the first duty
of a Government to maintain law. They have now promised to do justice,
and we must wait." Meanwhile the injuries inflicted on Mr. Bradlaugh,
rupturing the sheaths of some of the muscles of the arm, laid him
prostrate, and various small fights went on during the temporary truce
in the great struggle. I turned up in the House two or three times,
haled thither, though not in person, by the people who kept Mr.
Bradlaugh out, and a speech of mine became the subject of a question
by Mr. Ritchie, while Sir Henry Tyler waged war on the science
classes. Another joy was added to life by the use of my name--which
by all these struggles had gained a marketable value--as author of
pamphlets I had never seen, and this forgery of my name by
unscrupulous people in the colonies caused me a good deal of
annoyance. In the strengthening of the constitutional agitation in the
country, the holding of an International Congress of Freethinkers in
London, the studying and teaching of science, the delivering of
courses of scientific lectures in the Hall of Science, a sharp
correspondence with the Bishop of Manchester, who had libelled
Secularists, and which led to a fiery pamphlet, "God's Views on
Marriage," as retort--in all these matters the autumn months sped
rapidly away. One incident of that autumn I record with regret. I was
misled by very partial knowledge of the nature of the experiments
performed, and by my fear that if scientific men were forbidden to
experiment on animals with drugs they would perforce experiment with
them on the poor in hospitals, to write two articles, republished as a
pamphlet, against Sir Eardley Wilmot's Bill for the "Total Suppression
of Vivisection." I limited my approval to highly skilled men engaged
in original investigations, and took the representations made of the
character of the experiments without sufficient care to verify them.
Hence the publication of the one thing I ever wrote for which I feel
deep regret and shame, as against the whole trend and efforts of my
life. I am thankful to say that Dr. Anna Kingsford answered my
articles, and I readily inserted her replies in the paper in which
mine had appeared--our _National Reformer_--and she touched that
question of the moral sense to which my nature at once responded.
Ultimately, I looked carefully into the subject, found that
vivisection abroad was very different from vivisection in England, saw
that it was in very truth the fiendishly cruel thing that its
opponents alleged, and destroyed my partial defence of even its less
brutal form.
1882 saw no cessation of the struggles in which Mr. Bradlaugh and
those who stood by him were involved. On February 7th he was heard for
the third time at the Bar of the House of Commons, and closed his
speech with an offer that, accepted, would have closed the contest. "I
am ready to stand aside, say for four or five weeks, without coming to
that table, if the House within that time, or within such time as its
great needs might demand, would discuss whether an Affirmation Bill
should pass or not. I want to obey the law, and I tell you how I might
meet the House still further, if the House will pardon me for seeming
to advise it. Hon. members have said that would be a Bradlaugh Relief
Bill. Bradlaugh is more proud than you are. Let the Bill pass without
applying to elections that have taken place previously, and I will
undertake not to claim my seat, and when the Bill has passed I will
apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. I have no fear. If I am not fit for
my constituents, they shall dismiss me, but you never shall. The grave
alone shall make me yield." But the House would do nothing. He had
asked for 100,000 signatures in favour of his constitutional right,
and on February 8th, 9th, and 10th 1,008 petitions, bearing 241,970
signatures, were presented; the House treated them with contemptuous
indifference. The House refused to declare his seat vacant, and also
refused to allow him to fill it, thus half-disfranchising Northampton,
while closing every avenue to legal redress. Mr. Labouchere--who did
all a loyal colleague could do to assist his brother member--brought
in an Affirmation Bill; it was blocked. Mr. Gladstone, appealed to
support the law declared by his own Attorney-General, refused to do
anything. An _impasse_ was created, and all the enemies of freedom
rejoiced. Out of this position of what the _Globe_ called "quiet
omnipotence" the House was shaken by an audacious defiance, for on
February 21st the member it was trying to hold at arm's length took
the oath in its startled face, went to his seat, and--waited events.
The House then expelled him--and, indeed, it could scarcely do
anything else after such defiance--and Mr. Labouchere moved for a new
writ, declaring that Northampton was ready, its "candidate was Charles
Bradlaugh, expelled this House." Northampton, ever steadfast, returned
him for the third time--the vote in his favour showing an increase of
359 over the second bye-election--and the triumph was received in all
the great towns of England with wild enthusiasm. By the small majority
of fifteen in a House of 599 members--and this due to the vacillation
of the Government--he was again refused the right to take his seat.
But now the whole Liberal Press took up his quarrel; the oath question
became a test question for every candidate for Parliament, and the
Government was warned that it was alienating its best friends. The
_Pall Mall Gazette_ voiced the general feeling. "What is the evidence
that an Oaths Bill would injure the Government in the country? Of one
thing we may be sure, that if they shirk the Bill they will do no good
to themselves at the elections. Nobody doubts that it will be made a
test question, and any Liberal who declines to vote for such a Bill
will certainly lose the support of the Northampton sort of Radicalism
in every constituency. The Liberal Press throughout the country is
absolutely unanimous. The political Non-conformists are for it. The
local clubs are for it. All that is wanted is that the Government
should pick up a little more moral courage, and recognise that even in
practice honesty is the best policy." The Government did not think so,
and they paid the penalty, for one of the causes that led to their
defeat at the polls was the disgust felt at their vacillation and
cowardice in regard to the rights of constituencies. Not untruly did I
write, in May, 1882, that Charles Bradlaugh was a man "who by the
infliction of a great wrong had become the incarnation of a great
principle"; for the agitation in the country grew and grew, until,
returned again to Parliament at the General Election, he took the oath
and his seat, brought in and carried an Oaths Bill, not only giving
Members of Parliament the right to affirm, but making Freethinkers
competent as jurymen, and relieving witnesses from the insult hitherto
put upon those who objected to swearing; he thus ended an
unprecedented struggle by a complete victory, weaving his name for
ever into the constitutional history of his country.
In the House of Lords, Lord Redesdale brought in a Bill disqualifying
Atheists from sitting in Parliament, but in face of the feeling
aroused in the country, the Lords, with many pathetic expressions of
regret, declined to pass it. But, meanwhile, Sir Henry Tyler in the
Commons was calling out for prosecutions for blasphemy to be brought
against Mr. Bradlaugh and his friends, while he carried on his crusade
against Mr. Bradlaugh's daughters, Dr. Aveling, and myself, as science
teachers. I summed up the position in the spring of 1882 in the
following somewhat strong language: "This short-lived 'Parliamentary
Declaration Bill' is but one of the many clouds which presage a storm
of prosecution. The reiterated attempts in the House of Commons to
force the Government into prosecuting heretics for blasphemy; the
petty and vicious attacks on the science classes at the Hall; the
odious and wicked efforts of Mr. Newdegate to drive Mr. Bradlaugh into
the Bankruptcy Court; all these are but signs that the heterogeneous
army of pious and bigoted Christians are gathering together their
forces for a furious attack on those who have silenced them in
argument, but whom they hope to conquer by main force, by sheer
brutality. Let them come. Free-thinkers were never so strong, never so
united, never so well organised as they are to-day. Strong in the
goodness of our cause, in our faith in the ultimate triumph of Truth,
in our willingness to give up all save fidelity to the sacred cause of
liberty of human thought and human speech, we await gravely and
fearlessly the successors of the men who burned Bruno, who imprisoned
Galileo, who tortured Vanini--the men who have in their hands the
blood-red cross of Jesus of Nazareth, and in their hearts the love of
God and the hate of man."