Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2)

That Bradlaugh was no pedantic individualist is shown, not only by his Truck Act, but by his agitation for a Labour Bureau, which was the origin of that institution, though the official Liberal press usually gives all the credit to Mr Mundella, who merely acted on Bradlaugh's urging. And while the latter held that the action of the trade unions was in some cases mistaken, he never ceased to urge their attention to political affairs all round.

"Many of the great trades organisations and friendly societies," he wrote in 1889, "have until recently prided themselves on being non-political. Some of the trades societies and nearly all the friendly societies still so pride themselves. This has been a serious blunder, especially in a country where much legislation has been the work of a very limited class for the conservation of their own privileges."¹¹⁷

His limitary principle was one of sound common-sense, whether or not he recognised the full force of the economic indictment of competitive individualism.

"A good working doctrine for legislatures should be to mould conduct rather by the development of sound public opinion than by the operation of penal laws. Especially should the legislature be careful not to profess to do that for the worker, which it is reasonably possible for him to do for himself without the aid of the law. A duty enforced by others is seldom so well performed as a duty affirmed by the doer."

And these principles, which perhaps serve even some professed Liberals mainly as a ground for doing nothing, were with him a ground for insisting on an act of justice and expediency which such Liberals have been very loth to accede to. Bradlaugh's action in the great test case of recent English politics is a decisive proof of his foresight.

§ 5

As the story of his life has shown, Bradlaugh had had special opportunities of studying the Irish question from the inside; and from the day when his young blood boiled at the murderous cruelty of an Irish eviction, he steadfastly supported the cause of the misruled Irish people. He never ceased to love England with that touch of pride and faith which is the whole stock-in-trade of the average patriot; but, combining it as he did with an intense sense of justice, he could never let that devotion blind him to the wrongs of other peoples at England's hands. And in the first years of his political activity, when he was pleading for rebel Poles and rebel Italians, he seems to have so far recognised the right of Irishmen to use force against the force of England, that he assisted the Fenian conspirators of 1867 to draw up their Republican proclamation, so revising it as to exclude every expression of race hatred and every appeal to religious feeling; "the complete separation of Church and State" being one of its stipulations. The full details of that connection will probably never now be known; but what is quite clear is that Bradlaugh was not only then opposed to the idea of an Irish Republic, but soon ceased to have the least faith in the possibility of a successful or even a well-planned Irish rising; while his invariable opposition to useless violence was emphatic in the case of the Clerkenwell and other outrages. All the more earnestly did he continue his propaganda for Irish reform. Holding as he did that the land question was fundamental in English politics, he could not but see that it was the very heart of the Irish trouble; and to the agitation for Irish land law reform he gave energetic support. But he was always far ahead of the slow movement of average English opinion; and while English Liberals were hoping that the concessions carried out by Gladstone would make Ireland a contented partner in the Union, Bradlaugh had already given his assent to the claim for Home Rule; always, however, flatly opposing the doctrine of separation. On this he was explicit when, speaking in New York in 1873, he found otherwise friendly Irish auditors disposed to be satisfied with nothing short of absolute severance from England. Home Rule, however, he all along considered to be not only just but inevitable. While those of us who hoped for a real Union (with Irishmen admitted to perfect equality in the Executive system) were urging that as a solution which escaped the proved dangers of Federalism, he had made up his mind that Englishmen could not and would not ever deal with Ireland as an integral part of the State; and he had declared himself a Home Ruler long before Mr Gladstone, who had frustrated the hope for a true Union by consistently keeping Irishmen out of his cabinets. That, helping as he thus did the Home Rule movement, he should yet have been treated with bigoted hostility and injustice by the bulk of the Irish Nationalists in his Parliamentary struggle, was so remarkable that explanations were demanded; and the Nationalists offered several, to the effect that Bradlaugh had turned against them. It is necessary to go into some detail to show that this is untrue.

At the outset of his Parliamentary struggle Bradlaugh was not only not regarded as an opponent by the Nationalists as a political party, but was even defended by Parnell, although against the wish of most of that leader's Catholic followers; and despite the quickly shown ill-will of these, Bradlaugh continued to support their cause in the House during the nine months of his conditional tenure of his seat, 1880-81. But as he never hesitated to counter what he held to be wrong policy among English democrats, so he condemned, albeit reluctantly, what he held to be unjustifiable courses on the part of the Parnellites. This appears in his "Parliamentary Jottings" in his journal under date 5th September 1880, where he says he "much regretted, during the long conflict of Thursday-Friday, to find himself brought into collision with the Irish members." Nineteen Irish members had spoken, with his entire sympathy, against the Constabulary Vote; and after midnight they sought to postpone the discussion, on the ground that "more Irish members wished to speak," though not a penny of the estimates had been voted. There were only twelve more Home Rulers present, and they could all have spoken had they wished. They, however, appealed to the Radicals to help them to delay business, on the score that the Constabulary Vote was a "life and death question." As obstruction could only delay and not stop the vote, Bradlaugh objected, and made a speech to that effect, which was warmly cheered by the Liberals, and as warmly condemned by Home Rulers; though, when it came to voting, only 27 of the 61 Home Rulers went into the lobby. Obstruction he always condemned. This was a pretext for Irish hostility, though there had been abundance of that already. Some weeks later he writes: —

"My personal position as to Ireland is by no means an easy one. I find English Radicals in general, and myself in particular the subject of constant abuse in Irish journals. I read words attributed to Irish members of the House of Commons full of the most intense hostility to everything English, and find speakers in their presence declaring that the land movement is only the cover for the disruption of the two countries."

And after quoting some of the frenzied sayings of Irish Americans, he appeals to "Mr Parnell and his co-traversers," and other responsible Nationalists, "not to check our desire to co-operate with them by their open declarations of hostility to our race;" and "in the name of humanity … to check the tendency of the people whom they lead to waste their energies in worse than useless force." At the same time, he protested against the prosecution of Mr Parnell and his colleagues by the Liberal Government, supported the fund for their defence, and incurred new hostility in England in consequence. Correspondents wrote him on both sides, and he answered:¹¹⁸—

"We must ask both sides to be a little patient. The agrarian crimes cannot be justified, nor does our contributing to the Parnell Defence justify these. We subscribe in order that he and others may have fair play: it is never easy to be defendant in a State trial… Some remind us that three-fourths of the Irish M.P.'s voted against us, and nearly every Irish paper attacks us. That is so, but it does not alter our duty. Our duty is to work honestly for redress of Irish grievances, although even every Irishman should be personally unjust to us."

One form of the injustice is seen in an editorial sentence from the Dublin Freeman about the same time, àpropos of the argument of the Tory St James's Gazette¹¹⁹ to the effect that over-population was the cause of Irish distress. "Does the St James's propose," asked the Freeman, "the introduction of Bradlaughism into Ireland, when it says that the 'rapid growth of population, which is checked in some countries,' must be fatal to the prosperity of cotter families across the Channel?" The Tory argument was really a sample of the method of utilising the principle of population solely as a reason for not doing justice, while vilifying those who not only see the trouble but point out the remedy. Not a word of support did Bradlaugh ever get from a Tory organ in his attempt to avert the evil of over-population. But as regards Ireland, he not only recognised that over-population there was positively fostered by the unjust land system, but he again and again in the House denied that even wholesale emigration, if practicable, would cure the evil while that system endured. In July 1880 he writes: —

"I had to listen to the Hon. B. Fitzpatrick, sent by 118 votes for the borough of Portarlington, who, in the course of a wild display of imbecility, had the audacity to declare that wholesale emigration of the natives of Ireland was the 'only remedy' for Irish distress; and this was said by an Irishman."

On the 15th of the same month, in the debate on the second reading of the Irish Tenants' Compensation Bill, he protested against the irrelevance of the Tory opposition to the Bill.

"There had been renewed the argument that Ireland was over-populated, and that the tenants who were distressed ought to find in some other country the relief they could not find in Ireland. Now, there was no colony in England, and there was no part of the United States of America, to which any poor man without means could go, hoping to benefit himself at the present time. Therefore, those who recommended emigration had either never taken the trouble to investigate the matter, or were simply talking against time to delay the measure going into committee."

Again, though in January 1881 he found himself "driven into the lobby, for the first time this Session, against the Irish members, only to vote that the business of the House was not to be absolutely stopped by an utterly irregular discussion," he took a most active part in opposing the Government's coercive measures. In the debate on the address he "made one of eight English Radicals who alone had been found to record their votes in favour of Mr Parnell's amendment," though feeling that the Irish methods of hindering business had kept many English members out of the Nationalist lobby; and when Mr Forster made his appeal for special powers, Bradlaugh made a strong speech in support of one of the Irish amendments.¹²⁰ Yet again he felt bound to vote for the suspension of Mr Biggar, doing it "with very heavy heart," and grieving "that Irish members should so play into the hands of their enemies, and so totally damage the cause of their country." Of the later suspensions of Mr Dillon and the O'Gorman Mahon, he wrote with much regret; but for others who had, outside, "boasted that they wished to degrade Parliament," he confessed he had "little pity." None the less, he moved the rejection of the Coercion Bill on the second reading, in the never-explained absence of Mr Parnell, who had suddenly gone to Paris. The Irish Anti-Coercion Committee, who had just denounced him in one of their leaflets for his votes against obstruction, felt constrained about this stage to send him a vote of thanks. All the while, his journal had published numerous articles sharply attacking the Government's coercion policy.

A vote on the Arms Bill was the last act by which Bradlaugh ministered to the wish of the Nationalists to have a case against him. He had repeatedly protested against the advice given by Mr Dillon and others to Irish peasants to buy rifles; and he held that the case of Ireland was bad enough without adding to wrong and misery the freedom to seek amends in murder. His vote on this point, like his votes against obstruction, were held by the Parnellites to outweigh all his protests against coercion and all his appeals for land law reform; his exclusion from Parliament after the decision in the Law Courts in the spring of 1881 was hailed by most of them with delight; and during his long battle outside, they were among his worst enemies, the Irish press and people fully abetting them. Still he never relaxed his advocacy of the cause of the Irish peasantry, pleading for a merciful and conciliatory treatment of them when they were hooting his name; and when he at length obtained his seat in 1886 he gave his unhesitating support to the Home Rule policy of Mr Gladstone. It was in that year that a leading Irish Nationalist went up to him in the House with the greeting, "Mr Bradlaugh, you have been the best Christian of us all." Considering that only the influence of the Catholic priesthood could account for the course taken by the Parnellite party, the acknowledgment – in spirit if not in form – was suggestive of some moral progress on the Christian side.

It may be questioned whether many Liberals could have thus borne the test undergone by Bradlaugh on the Irish question. It is certain that Bright, with all his chivalry and rectitude, was somewhat influenced in his latter attitude on that question by the evil return which Irishmen had made to him for all his efforts on their behalf. Bradlaugh suffered far worse treatment at their hands, but was in no way turned by it from his conviction of what was just. He was content to recognise that the people were swayed by the priests, and that in any case it is vain to look for the moral fruits of equality from a people to whom equality has been for ages denied. He had been treated by Irish Nationalists as he had been by English Conservatives; and though he felt the ingratitude of the former, he would not admit that they had shown any grosser unscrupulousness than the latter, who had denied justice to an Englishman on motives of party strategy, reinforced by religious malice. If there was any difference, it was that the Irishmen had been more moved by religious malice and less by party strategy; and it is usual to rate the latter motive the lower of the two.

Bradlaugh himself would never have claimed that he had shown any special magnanimity in the case; but those who know how much personal interest or pique counts for in political action will recognise the singularity of his course. It belonged to his character, equally with his avowal and advocacy of unpopular opinions. Later, when the question of Woman Suffrage was being pressed on his constituency, he was told by Mr Labouchere, as he had been told by others before, that if the women of Northampton had a vote he would not be returned. His public answer was: —

"If I knew this to be true, it would not hinder me from casting my vote in favour of woman suffrage, even if my vote alone should be required to pass the Bill. I deeply value the representation of Northampton, but the grant of the right of woman to the suffrage cannot be determined by the fact that, if legalised, her exercise of that right according to her conscience would be personally hostile to myself."

It may be doubted whether Mr Labouchere gauged the situation aright. When Bradlaugh stood for Northampton in 1868 and was beaten, the wives and women-folk of his supporters subscribed their scanty pence, and bought him a gold pencil-case. If after hearing the utterance above cited the Northampton women of to-day were capable of voting in the mass against a man so declaring himself, they would indeed give Mr Labouchere a better case against their enfranchisement than he has yet been able to make out. But would they?

§ 6

In virtue of the qualities which made him a warm friend of Ireland, Bradlaugh was all his life, and in his latter years still more warmly, the friend of India. All his instincts of justice and sympathy were moved by the spectacle of that vast congeries of immemorially immature races, ruled by a bureaucracy of Englishmen, none of whom would for a moment be trusted to exercise similar power over their fellow-countrymen, but all of whom collectively are assumed by their countrymen to need next to no supervision when ruling a "lower" race. Again and again Bradlaugh protested, as other Englishmen had protested before him, against the inveterate apathy with which the House of Commons regards Indian questions, as shown by the scanty handful of members who attend to hear them discussed once a year. The death of Professor Fawcett, "the member for India," left Indian interests ill cared for indeed, and immediately on gaining his seat Bradlaugh stepped into the vacant place, although it was by itself work enough for one man, and he had three men's work on hand besides.

His speech on India in 1883 to his constituents shows the broad and systematic way in which he approached the problem. He studied it with the minute care he bestowed on every subject he handled; and in a few years he acquired by his work an amount of popularity among natives such as had never before been earned by an Englishman outside India, and by few Anglo-Indians. As this work was mostly done after his Parliamentary struggle was over, the record of it belongs to the story of his closing years; but it was only the consistent sequel to his previous political life. He took up the cause of India as he had done those of Italy, Poland, Ireland, of Boers, Zulus, and Egyptians, with no thought or prospect of personal gain, out of sheer zeal for justice and hatred of oppression. And inasmuch as Anglo-Indians of the school of Mr Rudyard Kipling have consistently derided and denounced his Indian policy, it may be fitting to note at this point the advantage that policy has over such opposition in respect of its relation to universal political principles. The doctrine of Mr Kipling's school – who may be defined as barbaric sentimentalists – is that Asia in general, and India in particular, are absolute exceptions to all the principles of European politics. The East, they say, is unprogressive, unchangeable, unimprovable. The most direct confutation of that doctrine is supplied by the simple fact of the persistence of the Congress movement, which at its outset the sentimentalists scouted as a chimera. Whatever may be its outcome, they are for ever discredited, in that they declared the thing itself, when broached, to be impossible. And those whose sociology goes deeper and wider than a rule-of-thumb acquaintance with part of the actual life of a race or a region are aware that India can no more than any other land resist the laws of social transmutation, given the transmuting forces and conditions. It is extremely unfortunate that many Englishmen are ready to accept as final the sweeping sociological dicta of Mr Kipling, on the score merely of his first-hand knowledge of Indian life and his literary genius. Foolish generalisations on social possibilities have been made in every country in every age by men with first-hand knowledge of their theme; and it must be regretfully said that foolish men of genius are among the most eminent darkeners of counsel on such matters. When Mr Kipling gives a particular account of a particular phase of Indian life, Englishmen who in the terms of the case have no knowledge of that life accept the account as a "revelation," when obviously their estimate of it in that light has no critical value whatever. Strong in the suffrages of such judges, Mr Kipling has been pleased to speak of Bradlaugh as being prepared by defective education to take that mistaken view of Indian life which Mr Kipling inexpensively imputes to all inquiring Englishmen at home. The sufficient answer to that criticism is that there are many kinds of defective education, and that nobody can well be further wrong about India than Mr Kipling, inasmuch as he has himself contradicted every one of his own numerous generalisations by others. He first came forward with pictures of the Indian Civil and Military Services, in which they appeared nearly as corrupt as those of Russia are said to be: husbands getting promotion on the score of their wives' adultery, and so forth. Later he saw fit to represent the Indian Civil Service as embodying every virtue a Civil Service can have. As a rule, he pictures the English in India as the "Dominant Race," with impressive capitals, and the natives as being universally cowards. When, however, a native officer can "play like a lambent flame" on the polo-field, and can transgress every law of hospitality by thrasonically declaring defiance to Russia in the person of a Russian officer at a British mess-table, that native becomes even as an Englishman in Mr Kipling's eyes. The simple canon of Mr Kipling is the feeling that any race which thwarts his own must be base. Thus every indiscreet Russian officer must needs be a blackguard, and every disaffected Irishman a ruffian and a sneak; the evil principle being so deep rooted that the Asiatic children of an Irishman spontaneously take to cutting off cows' tails; though at the same time the Irish soldier is a hero of heroes, if only he is duly devoted to "the Queen, God bless her." It will be a bad business for English rule in India when minds which sociologise in this fashion come to be the guides of the British people in their political relations with their dependency.

Bradlaugh, it may suffice to say, was under no delusions as to the present political capacity of the Indian races. He perfectly recognised their bias to rhetoric and their immaturity of character, as well as the enormous difficulties in the way of their political amalgamation. Hence his programme for them was an extremely gradual introduction of the principle of self-rule. Nothing could be more judicious and restrained than his brief address to the Congress on his brief visit to India after his dangerous illness of 1889, within about a year of his death. And the chances are that before a generation is over his view of the case will be the accepted commonplace of Liberal politics; while the notion of a perpetual domination of Englishmen in a country where they cannot rear healthy children will be regarded as a crowning flight of unscientific political sentiment. In any case, it implies no great rashness to predict that an England which ignores the affairs of its subjects as much as possible in Parliament will not long be able to maintain a despotic rule over a people accessible to Western ideas. The Home Rule principle, which was for Bradlaugh a principle of universal virtue, however different the degree of its application to a given case at a given moment, must in time be wrought out in India as elsewhere, if only it goes forward in the West, and the West keeps up its growing intercourse with the East. And it was one of his many political merits to have been one of the first to see this not only abstractly but in the concrete.

Enough has now been said to convey a broad idea of the manner and matter of Bradlaugh's philosophy of life, cosmical and political, as it was developed and acted on by him at the time of his most memorable appearance on the arena of British public life. At that time much work, though not many years of life, remained to him, so that some who then opposed him claimed afterwards that they could not have known his capacities for good, as exhibited in his extraordinary Parliamentary labours. But the foregoing account of his teaching and action will probably suffice to show that his political career was all of a piece, and that at the time of his ostracism he had given proof of all the powers and opinions which were later admitted to do him honour. Neither, as we shall see, did he in later life surrender any one of the teachings of his earlier years. He laid more stress on some and less on others; but he unsaid nothing, and for the most part he did but carry on his youthful programme. Before 1880 he had been the ardent and yet sagacious friend of oppressed nationalities, the advocate of Radical land law reform, the defender of liberty of conscience, the exponent of the claims of the poor against the rich, the preacher of unpopular but all-important doctrines on personal conduct. In the brief period of his first tenure of his seat he wrought vigorously against the abuse of Perpetual Pensions, which he was later the means of removing, though not in a fashion fully satisfying to himself. In the same period he exhibited a constant concern for the remedying of all manner of grievances. As early as 1863, too, he had taken what Mill rightly calls the extremely undemagoguelike line of publishing a pamphlet in favour of Proportional Representation, on the lines of Hare's scheme – a "counsel of perfection" still too high for most democrats.

As for his general tone of feeling on the questions which turn in an equal degree on feeling and judgment, it is well illustrated by the last non-personal speech he made in the House in the period of his conditional tenure of his seat. It was delivered on 28th March, and was on the subject of flogging in the army: —

"Mr Bradlaugh said he wished to say a few words on this matter from a different point of view than other members who had spoken. He had been a private in the army during the time that flogging was permitted for offences now described as trivial, and he heard the same argument used, that it would cause a relaxation of discipline if flogging were abolished. If hon. members opposite knew the feeling of the soldiers at that time it would have much modified some of the speeches delivered to-day (hear, hear); and the hon. member for Sunderland (Sir H. Havelock-Allan) would be surprised to hear the number of letters he had received from private soldiers, asking him to speak on this subject to-day. There was a feeling of utter detestation against the punishment, not simply on the part of the men who were likely to suffer from it, but on the part of every one else. Private soldiers in England occupied a position which no other private soldier in the whole of Europe occupied, and he did not know any other country in the whole world where it was a disgrace to wear the uniform of your country. He remembered upon one occasion he went into an hotel in a great city and ordered a cup of coffee, and was told that he could not be served because he wore the uniform of his country. All punishments which made soldiers seem less reputable than their fellow-citizens ought to be abolished. He asked the Government to allow nothing whatever to influence them in favour of this most degrading punishment. The men who once felt the lash were not loyal to any command, and they felt a bitterness and an abhorrence of every one connected with the ordering of the punishment. If they flogged a man engaged on active service, he was either a good man or a bad man, a man of some spirit or none at all. If he were a man of any spirit, there were weapons in his hands, and he might use them for purposes of revenge. The hon. and gallant member for Wigton Burghs talked of men who preferred the lash. The army would be far better without such men. (Mr Childers: Hear, hear.) He had seen the lash applied, the man tied up, and stripped in the sight of his comrades; he had seen the body blacken and the skin break; he had heard the dull thud of the lash as it fell on the blood-soddened flesh, and he was glad of having the opportunity of making his voice heard against it to-day, and trusted that nothing would induce the Government to retain under any conditions such a brutal punishment. (Cheers.)"

And it was with these matters in their knowledge that a majority of the House of Commons subjected him for five years to an extremity of wanton injustice of which it is still difficult to think without burning anger. The story of that injustice must now be separately told.