DEBATES 1862-1866.
In September 1862 Mr Bradlaugh held a six nights' discussion with the
Rev. W. Barker, a gentleman who had been lecturing against Atheism to
a Christian Society in Clerkenwell. The debate was held in the Cowper
Street School Rooms, City Road. The report I have by me was published
by Ward & Co., and was taken from the notes of a shorthand writer, and
approved by both disputants. The first two evenings were controlled by
a chairman for each speaker, with Mr James Harvey for umpire; but Mr
Harvey's impartial judgments gave so much satisfaction that the last
four meetings were left entirely under his charge. The attendance--on
some nights so great that people were turned away--averaged twelve
hundred persons, and it was estimated that a thousand heard the whole
of the debate. Some enthusiastic people journeyed long distances,
such as from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Devonshire, and Norfolk, to be
present. After all expenses were defrayed the surplus of £20 was sent
to the Lord Mayor for the Lancashire Relief Fund. The subjects under
discussion were:--
"I. Are the representations of Deity in the Bible irrational and
derogatory?
"II. Is Secularism, which inculcates the practical sufficiency of
morality, independent of Biblical religion, calculated to lead to the
highest development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of
man?
"III. Is the doctrine of Original Sin, as taught in the Bible,
theoretically unjust and practically pernicious?
"IV. Does Secularism, which admits the authority of nature alone, and
which appeals to reason as the best means of arriving at truth, offer
a surer basis for human conduct than Christianity, which rests its
claims on a presumed Divine revelation?
"V. Is the plan of Salvation through the Atonement repulsive in its
details, immoral in its tendency, and unworthy of the acceptance of
the human race?
"VI. Is the doctrine of personal existence after death, and of eternal
happiness or misery for mankind, fraught with error and injurious to
humanity?"
My father, writing during the progress of this debate, described Mr
Barker as a speaker not calculated, so far as he had yet seen, to
excite his audience. "He is," said he, "a robust, happy-looking man,
slightly inclined to go to sleep during his speeches, and hardly lively
enough in his sallies. He appears to wish to strike occasionally,
but fears the result of his own blow. Perhaps as the debate proceeds
he will be more vigorous in his replies, and more piquant in his
affirmations."
Mr John Watts spoke of the reverend gentleman in much the same
terms,[75] paying special tribute to Mr Barker's evident desire to
fairly represent his opponent's views.
[Footnote 75: Contrast the delicate words of personal description
written by a Christian in the _Clerkenwell News_: "The manner and
appearance of the minister and the Atheist were as much at variance as
the Gospel of the one is with the 'reasoning' of the other. The one
with a kind, affectionate air--a calm self-reliance, resulting from
faith in a beneficent God and loving Redeemer--was a fit defender of
love and mercy. On the other hand, the Atheist's looks stamped him as
a low demagogue. He was throughout restless; now displaying his ring,
after admiring it himself; now turning with an idiotic grin towards his
followers, who certainly resembled Falstaff's recruits in appearance;
and throughout conducting himself as a boastful, ill-bred man. His
personal appearance did not aid him, for it partook of that animal
which is said much to resemble some men. His voice, like the whine of
a dog, was rendered more unpleasant by a spluttering lisp, occasioned
by his inability to bring his lower jaw forward enough to meet his
protruding upper lip."]
The report of this debate, carried on for six nights, and dealing
with six separate questions in eighteen speeches a side, makes quite
a formidable volume of more than two hundred pages. It has in it much
that is interesting and much that is dull, a little that is witty,
and more that is weak. It would weary the reader, and serve no useful
purpose, were I to attempt a representation of the arguments used.
I will only note that on the sixth and last evening Mr Bradlaugh
opened with an impeachment of the morality of the doctrine of a future
existence in happiness or in torment, the bribe and the penalty of the
Christian religion; and in his final speech, after briefly reviewing
the whole debate, he stated his position. Mr Barker, he tells his
listening audience, "comes as an exponent of God's will to man. I come
as a student of rising thought, of the endeavour to know--as a student
of the great problem of life. I have no revelation; I have no bitter
excommunications--no anathemas to hurl upon you; but I have this to
say: the wide book of humanity lies open before you. Turn its pages
over. I can offer you no inducements to come here. I admit that to be
a Freethinker is to be an outlaw, according to the laws of England. I
admit that to profess your disbelief renders you liable at the present
moment to fine and imprisonment and penal servitude. I admit that that
is the statute law of England. I admit that if you are free enough
to say you are an infidel, your evidence may in a court of justice
be rejected, and that so you may be robbed.[76] I admit we have not
wealth and power on our side--power which the Christian Church, through
eighteen centuries of extortion, has managed to get together. But I
tell you what we have. We have the pleasant consciousness that we
make the public conscience and public opinion step by step with each
thought we give out and each good deed we do. Our church is not a
narrow church, nor narrow chapel, nor Bible sect, but the wide church
of humanity, covered by no steeple, with texts preached from no pulpit,
but with each man as his own priest, working out his own salvation,
and that of his fellows too--not on his knees, but on his feet, with
clenched hand and nervous brain, fighting wrong and asserting right,
and striving to make humanity freer."
[Footnote 76: This was in 1862, before the Evidence Amendment Act,
1869, and Mr Bradlaugh's Oaths Act, 1888.]
On Monday and Wednesday, the 1st and 3rd of February 1864, Mr Bradlaugh
met Thomas Cooper, the sometime Freethinker, author of the "Purgatory
of Suicides," and now "Lecturer on Christianity," in debate. This
debate had been talked of for nearly eight years, but although Mr
Bradlaugh was eager for the fray Mr Cooper was more reluctant; he
affected to despise his junior for his lack of learning, and several
times publicly derided his "ignorance"; he himself was reputed a
scholar, and boasted a knowledge of fourteen languages. As it was, Mr
Cooper himself worded the subjects to be discussed, and refused to
meet my father under his _nom de guerre_ of "Iconoclast." On the first
evening Mr Cooper was to affirm "the Being of God as the Maker of the
Universe," and on the second "the Being of God as the Moral Governor
of the Universe." As the affirmer he had the advantage of leading the
discussion each night.
The wording of the question put Mr Bradlaugh in a peculiar position: he
was "to state the argument on the Negative side," and as any reasonable
person will, I think, clearly see, he could only do this by showing the
fallacy of the arguments used by the affirmer. He told his audience: "I
do not stand here to prove that there is no God. If I should undertake
to prove such a proposition I should deserve the ill words of the
oft-quoted Psalmist applied to those who say there is no God. I do not
say there is no God, but I am an Atheist without God. To me the word
'God' conveys no idea, and it is because the word 'God' to me never
expressed a clear and definite conception ... that I am Atheist....
The word 'God' does not, to my mind, express an eternal, infinite,
omnipotent, intelligent, personal conscious being, but is a word
without meaning and no effect other than it derives from the passions
and prejudices of those who use it."
This debate should have been of more than ordinary interest, both
disputants were lecturers and debaters of long standing, and as an
exponent of the evidences of Christianity Mr Thomas Cooper's reputation
was, I believe, considerable. And since he had himself once spoken from
the Freethought standpoint, he, more than another, should have been
prepared to grapple with the difficulties which lay between the Atheist
and a belief in God the Creator and Moral Governor of the Universe.
Having read his speeches, I am surprised at the poorness of his
arguments, and am driven to the conclusion that his reputation has been
considerably overstated--that is to say, his reputation as an expounder
of Christian doctrines: his language was sometimes absolutely childish;
of his merits as a poet I know nothing. "B. V." wrote some amusing
verses[77] descriptive of Mr Cooper's position as laid down by him in
his opening speech, and a writer in the _Christian Times_ for February
3rd related the impression produced on him by Mr Bradlaugh on the first
night:
[Footnote 77: See "Poems, Essays, and Fragments." (A. and H. B. Bonner)]
"Let me do this gentleman justice. He was neither vulgar nor
arrogantly egotistical. He has a loud, harsh voice. He is thoroughly
earnest in address. His thoughts come to him with admirable
orderliness. His logical faculty is strong, and his speaking faculty
is something to be amazed at. He combines precision with volubility.
He makes argument rhetorically climacteric. In retort, by-play, and
insinuation, he evinces very considerable skill. He is an adept in the
use of satire. His style is sharp, clear, incisive. In short, he is
evidently a young man of somewhat remarkable abilities, who with his
present opinions must do much mischief, but under a holier inspiration
would do immense good. In saying this about him, I am but speaking
honest truth. I have already said with what a prejudice against him
I went to the hall. I am frank enough to confess that I found that
prejudice to be to a great extent based on ignorance of the man. It
has been the custom of many Christian organs to hold the teachers
of Atheism up to scorn for ignorance, conceit, incapacity, and a
wanton indulgence in gross and vulgar blasphemies. Often enough the
representation has been only too faithful; but it would be simply an
absurd and self-refuting falsehood to charge any of these things on Mr
Bradlaugh, as far as his behaviour on Monday night would enable one to
form an estimate of his character. He used sharp weapons, it is true,
but he used them skilfully; he had a most repulsive task, granted,
but he came up to it with a manly candour and went through it without
resorting to a word, gesture, or glance that was indicative of the
desire to be unnecessarily offensive."[78]
[Footnote 78: Despite the sharpness--to use no harsher term--of Mr
Cooper's words and manner towards him, my father bore no malice,
and showed himself quite ready to forgive and forget. A few months
later, hearing that Mr Cooper was in very straitened circumstances, he
expressed his desire to be allowed to join in the scheme for assisting
his old opponent, for he believed him "to have been a well-intentioned,
warm-hearted man, and one who, as a politician, has done good work."]
I have taken this somewhat lengthy extract from the article as giving
a frank avowal of a prejudgment of my father, unwarranted by the real
facts as realised by a Christian auditor. And yet it was in these
early years that Mr Bradlaugh is said to have been so "unnecessarily
offensive" by those who during the last few years of his life were
compelled to own that he was not so bad after all. These persons,
lacking the generous candour of the writer in the _Christian Times_ of
1864, endeavour to excuse their earlier injustice by saying that, if
not coarse and offensive now, he had been at one time, and his manners
had much improved. This quotation may serve, to those who still need
it, as a hostile contemporary witness in Mr Bradlaugh's favour.
On September 25th and 26th, 1865, Mr Bradlaugh had yet another debate
with his Swedenborgian antagonist, the Rev. Woodville Woodman. The
debate was held in the theatre at Northampton, which was crowded,
numbers of people being unable to obtain admission on the first night.
He had arranged for a three nights' discussion six weeks later at
Keighley with the Rev. Mr Porteous of Glasgow. He was to lecture at
Liverpool on Sunday, October 29th, and the debate was down for the
following Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On the Saturday the express
train in which he was travelling to Liverpool ran into some luggage
vans between Woodhouse and Sheffield, and he was very severely shaken.
How severely he did not at once realise, and with his usual disregard
of himself he insisted upon fulfilling his engagement at Liverpool.
After the exertion of delivering three lectures he felt so much worse
that the journey to Keighley, followed by three nights' discussion,
seemed out of the question. He communicated with Mr Porteous and came
home; I have a distinct recollection of seeing my father come into
the house, looking terribly ill. The Rev. Mr Porteous refused to
postpone his engagement; in fact, he never answered Mr Bradlaugh's
letter, but insisted on proceeding in his absence. For the first two
nights he "debated" in solitary grandeur, but on the third night Mr
Bradlaugh was represented by Mr John Watts, who, "at Iconoclast's
request," went to Keighley to meet Mr Porteous on one night at least.
The committee of the Rev. Mr Porteous paid their champion out of the
proceeds, but "_he nevertheless afterwards claimed and received from
Iconoclast the further sum of £2 10s., not for expenses, but to make
up his 'fee.'_"[79] In June of the following year Mr Bradlaugh was
lecturing at Keighley, and when he arrived there he found the walls of
the town and neighbourhood placarded with a "Challenge to the Image
Breaker" from Mr Porteous. This "challenge" rather prematurely assumed
reluctance on Mr Bradlaugh's part; it was at once accepted, and the
debate fixed for two or three days later, the 14th and 15th June. The
subject for the discussion, which was held in the Temperance Hall, was
"Is the Bible a divine revelation?" and people attended from Burnley,
Leeds, Bradford, and outlying districts; but judging from a brief
report which is all I have to guide me, I doubt whether it was much
worth a journey to listen to. Mr Porteous angrily spoke of my father as
"one who, being a lawyer's clerk, had never been trusted with a brief;
but who, in swollen rhetoric and with blatant voice, had indulged in
misstatements and misrepresentations of the Bible which nothing could
justify."[80]
[Footnote 79: _National Reformer_, June 24th, 1866.]
[Footnote 80: _National Reformer_, June 24th, 1866.]
It is rather curious to note, too, that during the evening the Rev. Mr
Porteous, just as the Rev. Brewin Grant had done on a former occasion,
strongly complained that Iconoclast looked at him whilst he was
speaking.[81]
[Footnote 81: "Look at me," said Bagheera, and Mowgli looked at him
steadily between the eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half
a minute.
"_That_ is why," he said, shifting his paw on the leaves, "not even I
can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love
thee, little brother. The others they hate thee, because their eyes
cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out
thorns from their feet; because thou art a man!"
_Mowgli's Brothers_, by RUDYARD KIPLING.]