THE NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY.
I am now closely approaching the end of my task, and as yet I have
only mentioned the National Secular Society incidentally. To leave it
without further notice would be doing scant justice both to my father
and to the association with which he worked so actively, and with which
his name must ever remain connected, whatever its future history may be.
The National Secular Society has sometimes been confounded with the
London Secular Society, of which Mr George Jacob Holyoake and Mr
Bradlaugh were successively presidents; but that was merely a London
Society, and not a general association. Indeed, I believe there had
never been any general association of the Freethinkers of Great Britain
until 1866, when it was felt that some endeavour should be made to
organise them. There were local secular Societies all over the kingdom,
there were isolated Freethinkers to be found everywhere, but hitherto
there had been no attempt to unite them into one general federation.
Without organisation much propagandist work had been done: in a single
year, for instance, 250,000 tracts were distributed; with organisation
it was believed that much more might be accomplished. But propaganda
was by no means the only object to be gained by uniting Freethinkers
in one general society. In September a provisional programme for the
proposed National Secular Society was put forward. Mr Bradlaugh by
consent assumed the office of President of the Society until the first
Conference. In the programme it was stated that the objects of the
Society would be:--
To form an Association for mutual help for all the Freethinkers of
Great Britain.
To conduct in the United Kingdom a more vigorous Freethought
propaganda, especially in districts where Freethinkers are few, and
Freethought lectures rare.
To establish a fund for the assistance of aged or distressed
Freethinkers.
To promote Parliamentary and other action in order to remove all
disabilities on account of religious opinions.
To establish secular schools and adult instruction classes in
connection with every local society having members enough to support
such schools or classes.
The idea of a National Society was well taken up, and members were
enrolled in all directions. It was intended to hold a Conference early
in the following year, but this was postponed, partly on account of
Mr Bradlaugh's ill-health, and did not actually take place until the
end of November, when it was found that the Society had made a very
successful start in life--a success which was fully confirmed by
the time the Conference met again a year later. A special Lecturing
Fund was established in 1867, and by the aid of this the accredited
lecturers of the Society went into places where the Freethinkers
were too poor and too few to themselves bear the whole expenses of
a meeting; and in this way towns and villages were visited by a
Freethought lecturer where before Freethought was almost unheard of.
The provisional statement of the principles and objects of the Society
was very soon amended in some minor details, and ten or twelve years
later a Revision Committee was appointed and the rules newly stated.
In 1869 the Society brought out the first Secular almanack ever
published. It was edited by "Charles Bradlaugh and Austin Holyoake,"
and met with an immediate and complete success, transcending even the
hopes of its promoters, the first edition being sold out in one day.
This almanack has been continued without intermission until the present
time. At Mr Austin Holyoake's death, Mr Charles Watts became co-editor
with Mr Bradlaugh, and in 1878 he was superseded by Mrs Annie Besant.
When Mr Bradlaugh resigned his office as President of the National
Secular Society--in 1890, after his serious illness of the previous
winter--the new President, Mr G. W. Foote, became editor of the
almanack in conjunction with Mr J. M. Wheeler.
With the exception of the year 1872, when Mr Arthur Trevelyan, J.P.,
was elected President, Mr Bradlaugh held the chief office of the
Society from the time of its foundation until his resignation, and
it was always a source of immense pride to him that he was chosen
representative of the Freethinkers of Great Britain and Ireland. He
laboured untiringly for the Society; not merely for the organisation as
a whole, but for the separate branches and for the individuals which
comprised it. "During thirty years," he said on the day he resigned,
"I think I may say I have never refused any help to any branch that I
thought was justified in asking for help."
He never held any paid office, but on the contrary often paid money out
of his own pocket for the purposes of the Association. He estimated
that the sum he had earned and given in actual cash to the Society
and its branches during the time he was connected with it amounted to
£3000. The Society, on its side, released him and Mrs Besant from a
payment of £420[42] due to it at the time of his resignation.
[Footnote 42: At his death in 1879 Mr William Thomson of Montrose left
£1000 to Mr Bradlaugh as President of the National Secular Society,
which sum he was at liberty to invest in the Freethought Publishing
Company, on condition that he paid the Society £5 a month while it
lasted. This he did regularly from 1879 until February 1890, when the
Society generously released him from the remainder.]
His yearly Conference reports, although they make no pretence at
being detailed records, are yet landmarks, as it were, of the work
accomplished by the Society; his yearly Conference speeches[43]
often give the most vivid glimpses of himself, of his pride in work
accomplished, and his aspirations for work yet undone. Often, too,
their terse and moving language reveals the truest, most unstudied
eloquence.
[Footnote 43: See Speeches by Charles Bradlaugh.]
The National Secular Society proved itself an organisation of the
utmost value, not merely as a propagandist association, but in all
cases in any degree connected with the Freethought movement where
combined action was required. When Mrs Besant was deprived of her
child; at the time of Mr Bradlaugh's Parliamentary struggle, with
its countless phases; during the prosecutions for blasphemy, and on
many other occasions, meetings were held or petitions were got up
simultaneously all over the country. The members of the Society were
and are nearly all poor men and women; but what they have lacked in
riches they have made up in energy; what they could not contribute in
money, they have given eagerly and cheerfully in work.
Many people misconstrued Mr Bradlaugh's reason for resigning his office
as President of the National Secular Society. Some said he made a
choice between his Freethought and his Parliamentary work, and selected
the latter; others said he had long been gradually subordinating his
anti-theological work to his political work, with a view to dropping
the former; others, that his action was entirely due to a modification
in his heretical opinions; and others again said that he was not in
harmony with the members of the Society. The truth was so obvious
and so simple that all seemed loth to accept it, and searched for
complicated motives under the plain facts. At the special Conference
summoned to receive his resignation, Mr Bradlaugh gave his reasons in
a voice which was low and faltering, as much from the feelings which
overcame him as from his recent illness.
"With very slight break," he said, "I have led in this movement for
over thirty years--a fairly long period in any life. I have been
President of the Society, with the same slight break, since the Society
began, and I am very sorry, very sorry, to resign office this morning.
Unfortunately, while the work was never easy, it has become much harder
since 1880, with the Parliamentary struggle and the litigation in
which the struggle involved me. I have felt for the past three or four
years--and I think I have conveyed that feeling to you in my annual
speeches--that the pressure must sooner or later bring a breakdown.
Last October that breakdown came, and the wonder is that I am here to
tender you my resignation at all. I was then brought face to face with
the difficulty that I could no longer do all the work I had done....
No resource is then open to me but to resign. Some kind friends have
suggested that I might hold the office nominally.... But I could not do
that; I must be a real President or none. My fault has been that I have
sometimes been too real a one, but it is no easy matter to lead such a
voluntary movement as ours.... I don't want to leave you. I could not
take any other office in the Society after having been so long your
President; but if you thought it right to elect me a member for life, I
should be grateful to you for doing it."
* * * * *
In this statement from Mr Bradlaugh's own lips is contained the whole
and sole reason for his resignation. To be a "real" President of the
National Secular Society involved the performance of a vast amount of
labour, the greater part of which was unrecognised and unseen. This he
felt had become beyond his powers; it was not in him to bear the name
and let others do the work; in giving up the duties of his position
he must also give up its honours. Only those who knew the pride he
had always felt in holding this office of President of the associated
Freethinkers of the nation knew the pain it cost him to lay that office
down.