The Life & Work of Charles Bradlaugh. J. M. Robertson
are working to the fullest of your ability to make your fellows happy and wise. Man can never be happy until he is free; free in body and in mind; free in thought and in utterance; free from crowns and creeds, from priest, from king; free from the cramping customs created by the influences surrounding him, and which have taught him to bow to a lord and frown upon a beggar. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! That true liberty, which infringes not the freedom of my brother; that equality which recognises no noblemen but the men of noble thoughts and noble deeds; that fraternity which links the weak arm-in-arm with the strong, and, teaching humankind that union is strength, compels them to fraternise, and links them together in that true brotherhood for which we strive."
The second number of the Investigator under his editorship is interesting to-day, as containing his earliest printed views upon "Oath-taking;" the third is also notable for its paper on "Emerson," the first article from the pen of "B. V." (James Thomson); and in the fourth Mr. W. E. Adams commenced his contributions. It is evident that my father spared no effort to make the paper "undoubtedly useful," as he put it; but in spite of all his energy and his able contributors the Investigator did not pay its way. In April, too, he fell ill from a very severe attack of rheumatic fever, and was laid up for many weeks; so that at length, "being unable to sustain any longer the severe pecuniary burden cast upon him, and not wishing to fill his pages with appeals for charitable assistance," the journal was, with much regret, discontinued in August 1859. In the final number he pens a few "last words," which are worth the reading, and in which he says that his reason for the discontinuance is very simple—"I am poor"—and in a rarely despondent mood he bids his readers "farewell," as he may perchance never address them again.
Delivering Freethought lectures and editing a Freethought journal undoubtedly absorbed much of Mr. Bradlaugh's time, but these occupations engrossing as they were did not make him unmindful of his duties as a good citizen, and he was always taking some part or other in the political movements going on around him. At a meeting held in the Cowper Street Schoolroom in November 1858, to advocate the principles of the Political Reform League, at which the League was represented by Mr. Passmore Edwards and Mr. Swan, and the Chartists by Ernest Jones, Mr. Bradlaugh is reported as seconding a resolution in an "earnest, lucid, and eloquent manner," and as having "enforced the duty of every man to preserve the public rights, by unitedly demanding and steadfastly, peaceably, and determinedly persevering to obtain that position of equality in the State to which they were as men entitled;" now, as always hereafter, urging the peaceful demand of constitutional rights: a point I am anxious to lay stress upon, as this is the time when some of my father's later critics assert that he was rude, coarse, and, above all, violent.
The chairman of the meeting, who was also the churchwarden of Shoreditch, and a man apparently much respected, at the close quaintly said "he had not met that young man (Mr. Bradlaugh) before that night, but he was most highly pleased to find in him such an able advocate of principle; he hoped he would be as good and faithful an advocate when he became old."
On the first Sunday in March 1859, the working men of London held a great meeting in Hyde Park to protest against the Government Reform Bill. They were very much in earnest, and although the time for the speaking was fixed for three o'clock in the afternoon, long before that hour the Park was thronged with people. About half-past two a man was hoisted on the shoulders of two others, and was greatly cheered by the crowd, who thought this was the opening of the proceedings. When, however, the person so elevated proclaimed to his listening auditors that "those who dared to take part in a political meeting on the Sabbath would be grossly offending the Almighty," the cheering was changed to uproar and confusion, which only the advent of the real chairman sufficed to calm. The Times says that after the meeting had been duly opened, "Mr. Bradlaugh, a young man well known in democratic circles, came forward and addressed the meeting." The report which follows is probably the first vouchsafed to Charles Bradlaugh by the great daily; and, judging from the number of "Cheers" and "Hear, hears," and even "Loud cheers" that the reporter managed to include in his score of lines of report, it was much more generous to him in '59 than at any later period. This meeting, like so many of its kind, and like the great majority of those with which my father was concerned, was remarkable for its orderliness; there was no police interference at any of the groups (several meetings were held simultaneously), and there was hardly a constable visible. On the Friday following, the 11th, a meeting was held at the Guildhall "to consider the measure of Parliamentary Reform introduced by the Ministry." The chair was taken by the Lord Mayor, and the speakers included Baron Rothschild, one of the three members for the City, Samuel Morley, P. A. Taylor, and Serjeant Parry. Ernest Jones, who rose to move an amendment, was refused a hearing—under a misapprehension, it is said. When Baron Rothschild began to speak he was considerably interrupted. "Loud calls," said the Times on the following day (when it was a trifle less polite than on the previous Monday), "were also raised for 'Bradlaugh'—a youthful orator who seemed a great favourite with the noisier Democrats." The poor Lord Mayor vainly tried to restore order, but louder grew the tumult and "more deafening" the calls for "Bradlaugh." Baron Rothschild was at length obliged to limit his speech to "I beg to second the motion;" and even these few words were only audible to those within two or three yards of him. When the meeting was drawing to a close, and the usual vote of thanks to the chair had been proposed—
"The Lord Mayor acknowledged the compliment, at the same time expressing his deep regret that persons should have come to the hall bent on creating a disturbance. At this juncture a young man, with fair hair and thin but intelligent features, was seen gesticulating vehemently at the extreme end of the platform, to which he had worked his way unobserved amid the general confusion. His name, it appeared, is Bradlaugh, and his object evidently was to gratify his admirers by delivering an harangue. His words were, however, drowned by the conflicting clamour from the body of the hall. The Lord Mayor seemed to beckon him to the rostrum, as though his claim to speak were to be allowed; but a minute or two of indescribable confusion intervening, his Lordship came forward and then declared the meeting to be dissolved. This announcement had hardly been made when Mr. Bradlaugh reached the part of the platform for which he had been struggling. His triumph was, however, very short lived. In an instant the Lord Mayor, though having one of his arms in a sling, was upon the refractory Chartist leader, and collared him with the energy and resolution of a Sir William Walworth. Two of the city officers promptly seconding his Lordship's assertion of his authority, Mr. Bradlaugh was dragged forcibly to the back of the platform, and fell in the scuffle. All this was but the work of a moment, yet the uproar which it provoked continued after every occupant of the platform had retired. The undaunted orator found his way to the body of the hall unhurt, where he addressed such portions of the crowd as had not dispersed in frantic and excited eloquence. A considerable time elapsed before the building was cleared, during which Anarchy and Bradlaugh had undisputed possession of the scene."
How much of fact and how much of fiction there is in this lively account the Times only knoweth. The idea that a "Sir William Walworth" with one arm in a sling could "collar" a man of my father's herculean strength is sufficiently ridiculous. I myself saw him as late as 1877 at a stormy meeting take two unruly medical students in one hand and one in the other, and force them down the hall to the door, where he cast them out. His resistance to his fourteen assailants on August 3rd, 1881, is historic. It is hardly probable that a man who could do these things when he had passed the fulness of his strength would, when in the height of his vigour, have tamely submitted to be "collared" by a one-armed man and then dragged back and thrown to the ground by two "city officers;" and all "the work of a moment!"
Gatherings opposing the Government Reform Bill were held in different parts of London and the country; and Mr. Joseph Cowen, himself President of the Northern Reform Union, writing to a friend in reference to them, on the 16th March, says incidentally: "Bradlaugh is a clever young fellow—full of vigour and daring—and is altogether a likely man to go ahead if he has any backing."
Considering the limited time at his disposal, there is really a tremendous record of public work for these two years, 1858 and 1859; for in addition to that which I have already mentioned, my father held several debates, some of them continuing for three or four nights in succession. He had his first formal encounter in June 1858. Prior to this, he had gained a little practice in discussing with the numerous opponents who used to rise after his lectures; then there was the more extended, but apparently