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

Sir Hardinge Giffard, now prosecuting for the Crown, fought the case as he might have done it for Tyler, declaring in his opening speech that he would call witnesses to prove certain things, and afterwards carefully omitting to call them, seeing that that course would help Bradlaugh to clear himself. In replying, he did not attempt to rebut the criticisms passed on his client and on his conduct of the case, professing to take the attitude of dignified disregard. His main line of argument was that one or two isolated woodcuts had been published in the Freethinker during the few months in which the Freethought Company published it, that Bradlaugh was an original promoter, and that the change made in the registration was only a stratagem, Bradlaugh remaining the real publisher. As regarded the blasphemy charged, Sir Hardinge did not take the customary line of distinguishing between vulgar and refined blasphemy, describing the contents of the Freethinker as deadly "poison to men's soul" – an expression which could not be supposed to apply to the mere element of vulgarity. He spoke with horror of a cartoon which exhibited Ignorance, Money, and Fear as "the true Trinity," and would doubtless have spoken similarly of the account of the Trinity as "three Lord Shaftesburys," given by Lord Coleridge's esteemed personal friend, Mr Matthew Arnold. The blasphemous matter on which the learned counsel expressed himself most strongly in detail, however, was a vulgar travesty of the extremely silly and artistically worthless religious picture known as "The Calling of Samuel." "You have that picture," he told the jury, "represented as a startled child, roused from his slumber by two cats on the tiles. And this is the sort of thing which is to be scattered broadcast over the land – !"

Lord Coleridge, on his part, summed up with great literary skill and dignity, carefully guarding against theological prejudice on the part of the jury by the avowal that he himself, despite his years and comparative detachment from the world, found it difficult to clear his mind of it. Incidentally he remarked that it was to Bradlaugh's credit that he did not disavow a general sympathy with the opinions of his co-defendants, while clearing himself of all complicity in the publications indicted. But on the point of the blasphemy charge he also incidentally expressed an opinion, which is worth citing as showing how little even an exceptionally considerate judge with strong religious feelings can get rid of the vulgar notion that irreverence to his – the popular – religious opinions is immeasurably more reprehensible than irreverence towards other less popular opinions, or vilification of unpopular men's characters. His objection to blasphemy prosecutions was mainly that they injured the cause of religion: —

"I say not how far the institution of a prosecution of this kind wounds the most sacred feelings and does injury to the holiest convictions. Some persons may think that this is not so; some may think that by such prosecutions the most sacred truths are pierced through the sides of those who are their enemies. With all that we have nothing to do. We may dislike, we may – I do not hesitate to say, we may loathe – the expressions made use of in these libels. We may think the persons who can speak in this way of things which they themselves may disapprove of and disbelieve, which they themselves may possibly think superstitious and mischievous, but which they must know have been the life and the soul of the virtue, the morality, the self-denial, the civilisation of hundreds, and thousands, and millions of people in all ages, are persons who forget – I will not say what is due to God, for they do not believe in Him, but to man, for they are men – what is due to themselves, and to the community of which they form a part, and for whom they ought to have some consideration. All that may be perfectly true, but it has nothing to do with the question."

Here the judge assumes that there is no dispute whatever as to the claim that the Christian religion is the essence of morality and modern civilisation, and proceeds to express disgust for a line of polemic which was zealously followed by the early Christians for centuries, which is invariably followed in the Old Testament when there is any question of alien religions, which is endorsed by Paul, which is commonly followed by Christian missionaries and by Protestant assailants of Catholicism, and which was even then being followed by the Christian multitude in the very case of Bradlaugh. The Christian position is that it is right to ridicule and asperse Freethinkers, materialists, and polytheists; and the Protestant position is that it is right to deride the Catholic worship of saints, images, and relics; but Christians in the mass hold it abominable for unbelievers and "heathen" in turn to deride their opinions, these being "holy" and "dear." And all the while, in the case under notice, the people who thus felt the most intense animal resentment towards a handful of men for speaking irreverently of a supposed Infinite, which by no possibility could human folly or contumely disturb or hurt, were as often as not zealous accomplices in casting the vilest personal insults against a representative Atheist who confessedly could not be shown to have attacked their opinions in such a way as to lay him open to a successful prosecution for blasphemy. The Christian plea is that unbelievers should not be free to cause Christians pain. Yet the whole of Bradlaugh's life was and is in evidence to show that the first instinct of the average Christian is to cause not merely endless mental pain but material ruin to every man who ventures, however decorously, to pronounce the Christian creed untrue. Perhaps the profoundest impeachment of the religious instinct in general is this very fact that the express conviction of the absolute supremacy of a personal power over all things human never by any chance enables the believer to regard with serenity and compassion the human denials which that power in the terms of the case is alleged to permit.

Some approach to the recognition of all this must have taken place in connection with the trial of Bradlaugh on the score of the Freethinker, although of course it was on the point of non-complicity that the jury gave their verdict of acquittal. They deliberated for an hour and ten minutes, calling for several of the documents in the case. The foreman's pronouncement of "Not Guilty" was received with loud cheers, which the judge indignantly rebuked, with the customary remark that "this is not a place of entertainment;" but a Conservative journal, endowed with the regulation horror of Atheism, commented that the cheer expressed a sentiment not at all confined to Atheists. In general, the press rejoiced with the acquitted man, who had now won in rapid succession three decisive successes in his long battle. It was noted, too, that he had won them against one leading counsel, Sir Hardinge Giffard. Asked later how it was that he had so often and so signally defeated this counsel, Bradlaugh remarked that he believed it was because Giffard despised him as an antagonist, and neglected precautions against him, while he, Bradlaugh, was careful at all times to do his utmost, and never to undervalue the enemy's strength. The moral is an old one.

In addition to the discredit put upon the prosecution in Court, it happened that Sir Henry Tyler about this time figured rather dubiously before the public in his capacity of company-promoter. His treatment of the financial affairs of the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation, in which he was deeply concerned, gave such dissatisfaction to most of the shareholders that they took the unusual course of presenting a memorial insisting on his resignation, after he had been hissed and hooted at a shareholders meeting.¹⁷² It may have been a sense of the unfitness of such a personage to represent the cause of religion that led to the foundation of a "Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature," the secretary of which wrote to the newspapers¹⁷³ as follows: —

"We propose to get up cases, as our funds will allow, against Professor Huxley, Dr Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Swinburne, the author of 'Supernatural Religion,' the publishers of Mill's works, the publishers of Strauss's works, Leslie Stephen, John Morley, the editor of the Jewish World, Dr Martineau, and others, who by their writings have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank Atheism, in cultivated families."

That goodly project, however, came to nothing, though in the view of Justice Stephen most if not all of the writers and publishers named were certainly open to conviction for blasphemy under the existing law. It would appear that the spiritual interests of "cultivated families" arouse less solicitude than do those of the poor, in matters religious as well as Malthusian. Above all, none of the writers threatened, save Mr John Morley, was likely to give the Tory party any chance of turning his heresy to political advantage, and Mr Morley was already safe in his seat, having taken the oath without demur and without opposition, after editorially criticising Mr Bradlaugh for his willingness to take it. Mr Morley had perhaps put himself right with the religious party by applauding the prosecution of Foote and Ramsey – he who had expressly justified the polemic of Voltaire.¹⁷⁴ A clergyman of the Church of England, the Rev. Stewart Headlam, whose championship of the principle of religious equality has all along been above all praise, wrote to Mr Morley in his editorial capacity, protesting "as a Christian priest" against a policy which made it "almost impossible for Christians to meet Atheists on equal terms." "It seems," Mr Headlam began, "as though you were one of those who say, 'There is no God, but it's a family secret.'" The letter was suppressed. It is bare justice to cite it here¹⁷⁵ as being perhaps the most telling protest made against the blasphemy prosecutions, albeit written by a sincerely orthodox clergyman.

The original case against Bradlaugh's co-defendants, Messrs Foote and Ramsey, who had been already sentenced to imprisonment on the second prosecution by Mr Justice North, came on before Lord Coleridge and a special jury on 24th April. The judge treated the prisoners with signal consideration and courtesy; and when the prosecuting counsel, Mr Moloney, persisted in putting a question to which Lord Coleridge had objected, his lordship indignantly asked, "Why cannot this case be conducted like any other case? It seems all of a piece with the learned counsel inspecting a man's bank-book." The accused defended themselves, Mr Foote making a particularly able speech, on which the judge, in his summing-up, repeatedly complimented him. That summing-up (delivered on the 25th) was in its way a masterly performance, marking the judge as the most admirably persuasive of pleaders. Deeply averse to all punishment of opinion, he showed the jury that the blasphemy law, as interpreted by past judges, was not nearly so outrageous as had been supposed; and the definition of "the late Mr Starkie," of which a scanty quotation had been given by the prosecution, he showed to be much less illiberal than it had been understood to be, though nothing could make it out to be a precise or practical formulation of law. As in the previous trial, he demolished the absurd plea that "Christianity is part of the law of the land," by the reductio ad absurdum that the marriage law and the monarchy are part of the law of the land, but are yet open to being argued against – at least in all modern opinion. As, however, no interpretation could do away with the hard facts of the blasphemy laws, and the accused had unfortunately put their heresy at times with extreme pictorial crudeness, his lordship could not definitely charge the jury that no blasphemy had been committed in law. He admitted that the objection against their practice on the score of violence would apply to some passages read by Mr Foote from prominent modern writers, which were new to him; but while the law stood as it was, that was no defence for Mr Foote, as the writers in question would be equally open to indictment. The jury, thus unavoidably left in doubt, disagreed. The prosecution, acting judiciously for the first time, took the course of entering a nolle prosequi, and the case dropped, but not without the Lord Chief Justice having to point out that the petition grossly misrepresented him as having pronounced the prosecution "unadvisable," which he had carefully abstained from doing. Unluckily, the dropping of this case did not affect the sentence passed by Justice North, and the then Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, declined to mitigate the punishment, on the score of the offensiveness of one of the incriminated woodcuts, which he called "an obscene libel," though the charge was one of blasphemy. Some Liberal journals indignantly protested; but the Liberal leaders felt they must show no consideration to blasphemy, though even the Spectator censured them for their timidity.

§ 19

While the decisive trials were yet in the future, Bradlaugh had never slackened his energetic action on the political side of the fight. The last move in the House had been taken on 18th July 1882, when Mr Labouchere moved that Bradlaugh be appointed a member of the Committee to consider the Agricultural Tenants' Compensation Bills. The right of a member in Bradlaugh's position to serve on committees had been established by the precedents of Alderman Salomons and Baron Rothschild. The point was a curious one, and could not be got over argumentatively, but of course the House could outvote the motion, which it did by 120 to 35. Not till the next year was the campaign indoors reopened.

On 15th February 1883, the day of the reassembling of Parliament, a great demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square in support of Bradlaugh's and Northampton's claim, about a thousand delegates attending from some four hundred Radical associations of provincial towns. At first some of the railway companies were understood to be willing to run cheap excursion trains, but that concession was of course violently opposed, and at a meeting of representatives of the companies held in the Railway Clearing House on 29th January a resolution was carried by a majority of votes, binding all the companies to give no special facilities whatever. An attempt to get the use of the Floral Hall, Covent Garden, for the meeting was defeated by the veto of the Duke of Bedford's agent, though the Directors were willing to grant it; and no other sufficiently large hall was available for the date. The meeting, which would have been several times larger had the railway companies given the desired special trains, was nevertheless a great success, the square being densely packed, despite bad weather; and despite some attempts at rioting by hired roughs, there was almost perfect order throughout. The Pall Mall Gazette had deprecated the meeting as held in an illegal place, though for a perfectly legal purpose. This was a misconstruction of the Act 57th Geo. III. cap. 19, sec. 23, which prohibited meetings within a mile of Parliament House for the purpose of petitioning the Crown or Parliament "for alteration of matters in Church or State." As there was no petition under consideration, the meeting was perfectly legal. Other papers went further, the Daily Telegraph applauding the railway companies for refusing to "start trains in order to bring up country roughs;" and generally it must be recorded that some of the leading Liberal journals discouraged the whole procedure. The Daily News and Daily Chronicle even suppressed resolutions sent them in support of Bradlaugh's claim from provincial clubs before the demonstration – such resolutions being part of the manifold machinery of preparation for a great public demonstration; and the Tory papers as a rule suppressed all reports tending to show the support given to Bradlaugh in the country. Other forms of boycotting were freely employed. In the cathedral town of Peterborough a debating society set up by the local Young Men's Christian Association was deprived of the use of the Association's rooms because it carried a motion in favour of Bradlaugh's right to sit and vote. This episode typified hundreds. The most skilful device employed, perhaps, was the issue of a forged circular, purporting to come from Bradlaugh, calling on "all Atheists, as well as Socialists," to "assemble in their thousands round the House of Commons," and show that "the Atheists of this country have a right to be represented" in Parliament.¹⁷⁶ Newspapers which had no space for genuine news about Bradlaugh gave prominence to this.

As the meeting of Parliament drew near, expectation naturally rose high on both sides. The sentiment of many Tories may be presumed to have been expressed by Lord Newark, son of Earl Manvers, when at the annual dinner of the Nottinghamshire Agricultural Society he was ruffianly enough to say:

"He supposed that Mr Bradlaugh meant to make himself objectionable as usual. He heard from an honourable member who sat near him¹⁷⁷ that he thought of going with a big stick, and he (Lord Newark) hoped that if he came within reach of Mr Bradlaugh he would make use of it."

The stick, however, was not on exhibition at the House of Commons. Bradlaugh's course was to send to the Speaker a letter stating the then position of matters, in view of the action of the law courts; and stating that he proposed to present himself as before. This letter was read to the House before any other business was taken. On Mr Labouchere asking the Government what course they meant to take, Lord Hartington at once answered that on the following night they would move for leave to bring in an Affirmation Bill. Sir Richard Cross, on the Conservative side, at once announced that he would oppose the Bill, and his statement was loudly cheered. At this stage Inspector Denning asked Bradlaugh to leave the House and reassure the multitude outside, who were beginning to fancy they might be "ill-using him inside."

On 20th February the motion for leave was made, when Sir Henry Drummond Wolff was understood to express himself with ironical approbation, while Mr Chaplin opposed, and Northcote explained that he should vote against the second reading. The motion was carried by 184 votes to 53, most of the Irish party voting in the minority. Not till 23d April did the Bill reach its second reading; and in the meantime a desperate effort was made by the entire Tory party to arouse feeling against the Bill. In the previous session the petitions in Bradlaugh's favour had been signed by 275,000 persons, and those against him by only 65,000, many of these being children. The leeway was now made up. The machinery of the Anglican and Catholic Churches was worked to the utmost to beat up petitions; schools were swept wholesale for signatures, not only in England but abroad;¹⁷⁸ and large employers of labour were got to procure the signatures of employees en masse, reluctant workers being not obscurely threatened with the consequences of refusal. By these means half a million signatures were got up by the 23rd of April, the great majority being those of school-children and coerced employees. Tantum religio– . The Tory press likewise put its best foot foremost. In the St James's Gazette of 22nd February, Mr Greenwood made an abominable attack on Bradlaugh, the foulest of many foul blows, describing him as "a preacher of certain theories of the sexual relation which, in the opinion of the great majority of Englishmen, are not only immoral but filthy," going on to speak of him as having long been known as the publisher of an obscene tract, and representing him as an advocate of "Free Love, and sundry other doctrines and practices which benefit greatly by the impossibility of referring to them distinctly among decent people." The pamphlet formerly put together by Varley, largely consisting of matter Bradlaugh never wrote, falsified even at that, and partly of passages from him, wrested from their context and falsified in application, was circulated more widely than ever. Many members of Parliament repeated the palpable falsehood that Bradlaugh had been "declared by the House of Commons and the courts of law incapable of sitting in Parliament;" and Mr H. S. Northcote, son of Sir Stafford, in addition to making this statement to his constituents at Exeter, told them that "when Mr Bradlaugh led a mob of unwashed ruffians down to Parliament Yard" the Government introduced their Bill.

On the second reading, Sir Richard Cross opened the opposition, and began by making the statement that "it was a former Government whip, Mr Adam, who first invited Mr Bradlaugh to go to Northampton" – the grossest form ever given to that particular untruth. He was seconded by Mr M'Cullagh Torrens, a nominal Liberal, who in his work on "Empire in Asia" had affected a high esteem for the principle of religious toleration – in other countries. The Bill, he said, tended "to begin the abjuring of all responsibilities to heaven." Mr W. E. Baxter, following, declared that "not only had Atheists been members of Parliament, but they had sat on the Treasury Bench" – and a member called out "And sit!" Giffard, seeking his revenge at once on Bradlaugh and Lord Coleridge, "repeated without the smallest fear of contradiction that Christianity was a part of the common law of the kingdom." Mr Illingworth happening to speak of "recreant members of the Jewish community," Baron de Worms rose to order, and the Speaker ruled the term "out of order." None of the epithets directed at the Atheist had struck him in that light.

The debate was thrice adjourned. On 26th April Sir H. D. Wolff took it upon him to accuse Lord Chancellor Selborne of using his position to help his political party; and Lord R. Churchill, in a later speech, said the same thing of Lord Coleridge. On the Liberal side, Gladstone made the greatest speech delivered by him during the whole controversy. At first he was elaborate and deprecatory, but gradually he rose to warmth and cogency. "Do you suppose," he asked —

"Do you suppose that we are ignorant that in every contested election which has happened since the case of Mr Bradlaugh came up you have gained votes and we have lost them? (Opposition cheers and counter cheers.) You are perfectly aware of it. We are not less aware of it. But if you are perfectly aware of it, is not some credit to be given to us – we giving you the same under circumstances rather more difficult – for presumptive integrity and purity of motive?"

It was a naïve and a vain appeal, but the speech was none the less fine. The most powerful part of its argument was the demonstration that those who consented to drop the Christian element from the oath and held by the Theistic were treating Christianity, as such, as a thing that could be dispensed with.

"I am not willing, sir, that Christianity – if the appeal is to be made to us as a Christian legislature – shall stand in any rank lower than that which is indispensable." He would not accept bare Theism as the main thing. "The adoption of such a proposition as that – and it is at the very root of your contention – seems to me in the highest degree disparaging to the Christian faith."

And then, contending that a bare belief in a remote and abstract Deity could exist with a complete disbelief in that Deity's having any relation with men, he rolled out "the noble and majestic lines, for such they are, of the Latin poet: " —

 
"Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse'st
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur
Semota ab nostris rebus sejunctaque longe;
Nam privata dolore omni, private periclis,
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri
Nec bene promeritis capitur neque tangitur ira."¹⁷⁹
 

There was no one to follow him up with a citation of the lines which follow on these where they used to stand misplaced in the first book of Lucretius' poem: —

 
"Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret
In terris oppressa gravi sub religione;"
 

but some listeners there must have been who bethought them how perfectly this long controversy had answered to the Roman's picture of "life crushed to the earth under the weight of religion;" and they may fitly have murmured "primum Graius homo" of the man whose long battle was even then visibly tending to relieve them one day of the old hypocrisy of adjuring the unknown God.

Touching his mother earth of classic verse, Gladstone drew new strength of eloquence.

"The Deity exists, as those I must say magnificent words set forth, in the remote, inaccessible recesses of which we know nothing, but with us it has no dealing, with us it has no relation. I have purposely gone back to ancient times, but I do not hesitate to say that the specific evil or specific form of irreligion with which in the educated society of this country you have to contend, and with respect to which you ought to be on your guard, is not blank Atheism. That is a rare opinion that is seldom met with; but what is frequently met with are those forms of opinion which say that whatever is beyond the visible scene, whatever there be beyond this short span of life, you know, and can know, nothing of it. It is a visionary and bootless undertaking to try to fathom it. That, sir, is the specific mischief of the age; but that mischief of the age you do not attempt to touch… Whom do you seek to admit? You seek to admit Voltaire. You would admit Voltaire, and that is a specimen of your liberality. Voltaire was no taciturn unbeliever. He was the author of that phrase which goes to the heart of every Christian, and of many a professor of religion who is not a Christian – 'Ecrasez l'Infâme.' Voltaire would not have had the slightest difficulty in taking your oath; and yet that is the state of the law for which you are working up the country to madness." (Loud ministerial cheers.)

Speeches followed varying between imbecility and commonplace; and on the debate being again adjourned, it was re-opened (1st May) by Churchill in a speech of characteristic scurrility.

"The personal supporters of the representative of Atheism," said the noble Lord, "were the residuum, and the rabble, and the scum of the population. The bulk of them were men to whom all restraint, religious, moral, or legal, was odious and intolerable."

An effective reply to other parts of the speech was made by Mr Labouchere, who incidentally made the startling revelation that to his knowledge there were several members who had never taken the oath at all, having signed the roll, but missed swearing in the scramble for the Testaments. At length, on a third adjournment, the question came to the vote. Northcote made an ignominious speech, in which he defended himself on the point of having formerly urged that special legislation was the right course for the Government to take. He admitted that he had said so, but contended that saying so did not commit him to voting for that course when taken. The positive part of the argument was worthy of the negative. But bad as the pleading on the Tory side was, it had with it a majority of votes. On the division there voted only 289 for the second reading, and 292 against. Irish and renegade Liberal votes had just turned the scale; and it was noted that in the majority there voted several members too drunk to walk straight without support.¹⁸⁰ The result was received with a positive frenzy of delight by the Tories and their Home Rule allies, all alike shouting that they had "beaten Bradlaugh." "The Irish have beaten Bradlaugh," was the cry of Mr Sexton. The Liberals who voted with the majority were the three Hon. Fitzwilliams of Yorkshire, Sir Edward Watkin,¹⁸¹ Dr Lyons, Messrs Guest, Nicholson, and Torrens, and Mr Jerningham, a Roman Catholic, who had owed his recent election for Berwick mainly to his having promised to support Bradlaugh's claim to sit, and who all along broke his word in the House.¹⁸²

Bradlaugh without hesitation took his usual course, with a difference. He sent a letter to the Speaker, asking to be called to the table in the usual way to take the oath, and, in the case of that course being declined, to be heard at the bar. On 4th May he duly re-presented himself at the bar, and the letter was read by the Speaker. Northcote moved as usual that Bradlaugh be not allowed to swear; and Mr Labouchere moved that he be heard at the bar, which being allowed, he made his Fourth Speech at the Bar. It was comparatively brief, tersely repeating the old pleas, and the old protest —

"I submit that any hindrance which is not prescribed by law is an act which in itself is flagrantly wrong, whoever may commit it, and that the mere fact that a majority of voices in one Chamber may prevent a citizen from appealing to the law in no sense lessens the iniquity of the illegal act, and that history will so judge it, whatever to-day you may think it your right and your duty to do."

After disposing of the old falsehood that the late Liberal whip had recommended him to the Northampton electors, he remarked: —

"I have always regarded the Liberal party as standing in the way of my election, rather than as in any way helping my return. This, however, I submit, was matter unworthy of this House. No such consideration has ever entered at any time into the discussion of any other candidature. I submit that a great House, which claims the powers of one of the highest courts of these realms, should try to be judicial."

Again he exposed the persistent lie that he had "paraded his views," pointing out that even when, at official request, he named the statutes under which he claimed to affirm, he did not in law profess Atheism, since a Theist was legally incompetent to swear if he did not believe in future rewards and punishments, and such Theists were only entitled to affirm under the Acts under which he claimed. Again he protested that he had never uttered his opinions in the House.