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

57

During the time he was not allowed to take his seat he attended the House constantly, sitting under the gallery in a seat technically outside the House.

58

One year he calculated that he had written 1200 letters of advice in the twelvemonth – this, of course, in addition to general correspondence.

59

The following extracts, taken at hazard from New Year's addresses to his friends in the National Reformer, will show how grateful he was to them for their help and what support he found in their love and trust: —

"Women and men, I have great need of your strength to make me strong, of your courage to make me brave. I am in a breach where I must fall fighting or go through. I will not turn, but I could not win if I had to fight alone" (1st January 1882).

"1883 has freed me from some troubles and cleared me of some peril, but it leaves me in 1884 a legacy of unfinished fighting. I thank the friends of the dead year, without whose help I, too, must have been nearly as dead as the old year itself… I have had more kindnesses shown me than my deservings warrant, more love than I have yet earned, and I open the gate of 1884 most hopefully because I know how many hundred kindly hearts there are to cheer me if my uphill road should prove even harder to climb than in the years of yesterday" (6th January 1884).

"The present greeting is first to our old friends; some poor folk who early in 1860 took No. 1 [of the National Reformer], and have through good and ill report kept steadily with us through the more than a quarter of a century struggle for existence" (3rd January 1886).

60

Bognor Observer, February 1887.

61

One at the Shoreditch Town Hall in May 1884, on behalf of the Hackney United Radical Club, realised as much as £40. The hall was packed in every corner, and hundreds were unable to gain admittance.

62

Mr Bradlaugh asked for it to be closed on 26th September.

63

This I think has been recognised by most people. In December 1884 the Weekly Dispatch spoke of the "great strain" put upon Mr Bradlaugh, "under which a man less vigorous in mind and body would long ere this have broken down."

64

The doctors would not allow Mr Bradlaugh to remain in his bedroom; one of them told him indignantly – albeit with some exaggeration – that he would have better accommodation in the workhouse!

65

Wednesday, 10th December. This was the last lecture Mr Bradlaugh ever delivered. The subject was "The Evidence for the Gospels," in criticism of Dr Watkin's Bampton lectures.

66

A person writing in the Swansea Journal for 7th February 1891 said that some time previously Mr Bradlaugh had told him of his sufferings from angina pectoris. This is utterly untrue; my father never suffered from this complaint, nor until his fatal illness was he ever conscious that he had anything wrong with his heart. In a private letter to a friend written on the 14th – almost the last written with his own hand – he says distinctly, "I have never suffered from heart or lungs before." The mania for invention is extraordinary.

67

This was exactly in accordance with Mr Bradlaugh's wishes. In a will dated 1884 he said: "I direct that my body shall be buried as cheaply as possible, and that no speeches be permitted at my funeral." His last will, which consisted of a few lines only, contained no directions on this matter.

68

The library included some 7000 volumes, in addition to about 3000 Blue Books, and a large number of unbound pamphlets. The books were sold by post from the catalogue, and went to all parts of the world. They realised £550 after all expenses were paid, and about 1000 volumes remained unsold.

69

Through the generosity of "Edna Lyall," I was able to buy these for myself.

70

This is all that can be pleaded in favour of the deliberate representation of Voltaire as an Atheist by the late Archbishop Thomson, at the Church Congress of 1881. But the ignorance of the upper English clergy in general on such matters is amazing. In January 1881, Archdeacon (then Canon) Farrar, preaching in Westminster Abbey, represented Robespierre's Reign of Terror as a "reign of avowed Atheism;" identified the Deistic cult of the "Supreme Being" with that of the "goddess of Reason;" and accounted for the fall of Robespierre by the statement that, "God awoke once more, and with one thunderclap smote the sanhedrim of the insurrection, prostrated the apostate race." This orator once expressed horror at the thought that Disestablishment might enable Bradlaugh to speak in St Paul's. Bradlaugh might have remarked on what the Establishment permitted at Westminster Abbey.

71

The English translation, in the original issue, is in parts completely perverted to the language of Theism, whether out of fear or of Deistic prejudice on the part of the translator. Even the edition prefaced by Bradlaugh – who did not think of checking the text – preserves the perversions of the first translator.

72

This fact is entirely ignored by Professor Flint in his defence of the old plea of Foster and Chalmers against Mr Holyoake in "Anti-Theistic Theories," App. ii.

73

John Mill, after stating that his father held that "concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known," remarks that "Dogmatic Atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those whom the world has considered Atheists have always done" ("Autobiography," p. 39). It is difficult to guess what is here meant by "dogmatic Atheism;" but certainly no statement made above is more "dogmatic" than the proposition cited from Mill, senior. It clearly involves rejection of all Theism.

74

One of the most capable metaphysicians I have personally known was an inferior stone-mason.

75

It was not merely the orthodoxy of past ages that saw virtual Atheism in the position of Spinoza. Jacobi expressly and constantly maintained that Spinozism and Atheism came to the same thing. A God who is not outside the world, he argued, is as good as no God. At the same time, he admitted that the understanding had no escape from the logical demonstration of the impossibility of a personal God; and that the Theist must throw himself "overhead into the depths of faith." See Pünjer's "History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion," Eng. tr., p. 632.

76

Pamphlet on "Heresy: its Utility and Morality. A Plea and a Justification," 3rd. ed. p. 35.

77

It is unnecessary here to put the further argument that if we infer intelligence behind the universe by human analogy, we are bound in consistency to infer organism for the intelligence. Dr Martineau in his "Modern Materialism," takes refuge from this argument in declamation, treating the demand for consistency as if it had been a substantive plea.