"The Provisional Government."

This proclamation was printed by Colonel Kelly,[106] who obtained possession of some printing works at Islington, and in one night set up this famous manifesto. Mr J. M. Davidson says that the document was drawn by Mr Bradlaugh's hand.[107] Mr Adolphe S. Headingley[108] says that "the informers Massey and Corydon in their evidence insist that Bradlaugh himself drew up the proclamation." In spite of a very considerable search I have not yet been able to find the words used by Massey or Corydon; but on this point, at least, I am able to quote the highest authority—my father himself. I was talking to him in his study one day, and in the course of our conversation he pulled down a thick green volume—an Irish history—and opening it, put his finger upon this proclamation. "They say I wrote that," he said with a smile. "And did you?" I asked. He then told me that the draft of the proclamation, as it left his study after being approved, was in his handwriting; but that when he saw it in print he found that it had been altered after leaving his hands. Unfortunately, I did not go over it with him to ask where it had been altered; but words written by him in January 1868 throw a little light on the matter. He then said:

"I am against the present establishment of a republic in Ireland, because, although I regard republicanism as the best form of government possible, I nevertheless think that the people of England and of Ireland are yet too much wanting in true dignity and independence, and too ignorant of their political rights and duties, to at present make good republicans. We are growing gradually towards the point of republican government; but it is not, I think, the question of to-day. A forcible separation of Ireland from England would not unnaturally be resisted by the latter to her last drop of blood and treasure; and I do not believe that the Irish party are either strong enough or sufficiently united to give even a colour of probability to the supposition of a successful revolution."[C]

Again, "I do not believe in an enduring revolution to be effected by revolvers;... I do not believe it a lasting republic to be formed by pike aid."[109]

Hence from Mr Bradlaugh's own words, written in January 1868, it will be seen that he could not possibly have joined in the proclamation of a force-established republic in March 1867.

Throughout the year (1867) the country was in a very disturbed state. The Fenians were numerous, but inefficiently organised; they made isolated attacks on police barracks in Ireland, and attempted to seize Chester Castle, which contained a considerable store of arms. In September Kelly and Deasy were arrested at Manchester, and on the 18th of that month they were rescued while being moved with a number of other prisoners in the police van from the police court to the city jail. This rescue was destined to cost a number of lives, commencing with that of poor Sergeant Brett, whose death was followed, on the 23rd of November, by the execution of the three patriots, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. For several months from the time of the Manchester rescue our house was watched, back and front, night and day, and two policemen in uniform were stationed at Park Railway Station to scrutinise all the passengers who alighted there. I hardly know in what light my father regarded this surveillance, but I do not think he can have taken it very much to heart; we children looked upon it sometimes as a great distinction and sometimes as a capital joke, and we must to some extent have reflected the mood of our elders—not that I mean that Mr Bradlaugh was silly enough to regard this unremitting attention on the part of the police as a "distinction," but that we could not so have felt it had he been even a little troubled by it.

Just before the trial of the Manchester Martyrs, Mr Bradlaugh wrote a short but most eloquent plea for Ireland. He concluded it by urgently entreating:

"Before it be too late, before more blood shall stain the pages of our present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try and do justice to our sister land. Abolish once and for all the land laws, which in their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry. Sweep away the leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has given her back no word even of comfort in her degradation. Turn her barracks into flax mills, encourage a spirit of independence in her citizens, restore to her people the protection of the law so that they may speak without fear of arrest, and beg them to plainly and boldly state their grievances. Let a Commission of the best and wisest amongst Irishmen, with some of our highest English judges added, sit solemnly to hear all complaints, and let us honestly legislate, not for the punishment of the discontented, but to remove the causes of the discontent. It is not the Fenians who have depopulated Ireland's strength and increased her misery. It is not the Fenians who have evicted tenants by the score. It is not the Fenians who have checked cultivation. Those who have caused the wrong at least should frame the remedy."[110]

Then came November and the sentence of death upon the four men who had taken part in the rescue of Deasy and Kelly at Manchester. Despite the bitter weather that followed, thousands of people assembled at Clerkenwell Green to memorialize the Government to pardon the condemned men. Mr Bradlaugh spoke at the meetings held there, and at Cambridge Hall, Newman Street. But such meetings were of no avail. Englishmen were panic-stricken, and sought to protect their own lives by taking other people's. Eloquence, justice, right are pointless weapons when used to combat blind fear.

Hard upon the "Manchester Sacrifice"—December 13th—followed the Clerkenwell explosion, by which four persons were killed and about forty men, women, and children were injured, in a mad attempt to blow up Clerkenwell Prison in order to rescue Burke and Casey, who were then on their trial.

This dastardly crime was a shock to all true friends of Ireland, just as the crime of the Phœnix Park murders was fourteen years later. Mr Bradlaugh wrote in the National Reformer a most earnest and pathetic denunciation of the outrage. He wrote it with the consciousness that he might lose many friends by the declaration that he had been "and even yet am favourable to the Irish Cause, which will be regarded by a large majority as most intimately connected with this fearfully mad crime." The Committee of the Irish Republican Brotherhood also, I believe, hastened to protest against and repudiate the outrage.

In the same issue of his paper, Mr Bradlaugh had an article on the Irish Crisis, in which he laid stress upon his opinion that "it is utterly impossible to hope for improvement in the general condition of Ireland until the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland are completely altered." In January 1868 he published an essay on "the Irish Question," which he afterwards issued as a pamphlet.[111] In this he dealt with four methods which had been put forward as giving a "fair prospect of solution for the Irish difficulty." These were (1) Separation of Ireland from England: the people deciding their own form of government by vote; (2) "Stamping out" the rebellious spirit by force; (3) A Commission of Inquiry into Irish grievances having extensive powers of amnesty, to act immediately, and to be followed by the redressal of all bona fide grievances; (4) Political enfranchisement of Ireland, or a separate legislature. The first two methods, which he discussed at some length, he rejected as "impracticable and objectionable"; the third course he favoured strongly; and the main difficulty to the fourth seems to have been the existing suffrage. A separate legislature, he observed, had been advocated by "some very thoughtful writers, some able politicians, and some men of extraordinary genius." He wound up his essay with an appeal—an appeal to the Government and an appeal to the Irish Republican party. To both he pleaded for "forbearance, for mercy, for humanity." The Irish Republican party he specially and in most eloquent language entreated to "repress all violence—to check all physical vengeance."

Ireland was now more than ever the subject of Mr Bradlaugh's advocacy, and in connection with it there occurred on the 17th of January (1868) a rather curious incident. A gentleman—perhaps I ought not to mention his name—who was a correspondent and friend of my father's, belonged to a Quaker family, and was at the period of which I write a member of the Society of Friends, although he subsequently resigned his membership. He belonged also to a discussion society connected with the Friends' Institute, Bishopsgate Street. A debate was arranged upon the Irish question, and Mr ——, knowing how interested Mr Bradlaugh was in this subject, wrote inviting him to come to the meeting. This friend writing to me says: "He did come, and by a curious coincidence I was elected to the chair. Your father spoke, and quite delighted the Quakers with his earnestness and eloquence. They did not, however, know who the stranger was, but they pressed him to attend the adjourned meeting; he said he would, and come fortified with facts and statistics." My father was extremely gratified by the courtesy shown him, and the permission given him as a stranger to speak for double the usual time. At the same time he felt very awkward at receiving the cheers, congratulations, and special compliments, because he feared that they would hardly have been so freely accorded if his "real name and wicked character had been generally known there." His fears were fully justified, as Mr ——'s letter to me shows. He goes on to say:

And Mr Bradlaugh actually did receive a letter officially inviting him not to attend their next meeting on the Irish question.

In February the formation of an "Ireland Society" was announced in the National Reformer. This was an effort to bring Englishmen together with the aim of forming "a sounder public opinion" on Irish matters, but I doubt whether it met with the success the idea deserved. It had specially for its objects (1) The abolition of the Irish State Church; (2) A harmonious settlement of the land question; (3) Education for the poor in Ireland; (4) Atonement for English oppression by encouraging Irish Industries. At Leeds, at Sheffield, at Newcastle, Mr Bradlaugh spoke to his audiences on the subject of Ireland until they were moved to tears by his pictures of the wretched condition of the unhappy Irish people. At Newcastle, a warm-hearted Irish Catholic stepped upon the platform and gave his earnest thanks "to the orator" for expressing the sentiments held by all true Irishmen,[112] and the audience from end to end rose cheering and waving their hats. At Ashton-under-Lyne in April he spoke to an audience of 5000 persons, and reminded them that the Irish question might equally be called the English question, as it affected England as well as Ireland. Previous to this lecture there were rumours of violence, and threats "against life and limb," and the town was in a state of extreme excitement, a strong police force were mustered, and one magistrate attended the meeting with the Riot Act ready in his pocket! About a score or so of Orangemen managed to get into the hall and created considerable disorder at the outset, but they reckoned without chairman or speaker. The chairman, J. M. Balieff, Esq., J.P., despite the outcry raised against Mr Bradlaugh on account of his views on religion, had yet the moral courage to support him in his political opinions. The Orangemen opened up with a storm of hisses and groans, which was responded to by the friends of Ireland with excited cheering. This went on for some minutes, but was quickly quieted when the chairman resolutely stated that if it were necessary he should stay there all night, for he was quite determined that Mr Bradlaugh should state his views. At the conclusion of the lecture Mr Balieff publicly rebuked the bigotry which, unable to answer Mr Bradlaugh's political advocacy, assailed him for his speculative opinions. Amongst other places, my father went to Huddersfield to speak on the Irish question. My sister and I were in Huddersfield at the time staying with some friends, and we, of course went to the lecture, which was held in the theatre on Saturday, the 25th of April. This is the first lecture of my father's that I distinctly remember. I had been present at very many before, but of those I have only the vaguest recollections. The one at Huddersfield stands out as a complete picture in my memory. A stormy day, followed by a stormy night with strong wind and rain, had not prevented the earnest Yorkshire folks from coming to hear "the lad" (as they so often called him), and the theatre was full of eager, sympathetic faces when we went upon the platform. Mr Woodhead took the chair, and we, my sister and I, sat a little to the back of the stage, where I remember we were much troubled by the cold wind blowing round the "wings." So vivid is the memory that it seems almost as though I could recall the very words my father uttered, and the tones of his voice—now earnest, now impassioned, at one time severely rebuking, at another ardently pleading, or gravely narrating. Or there was some joke or amusing anecdote, and the audience—who a moment before had been brushing away their tears openly or surreptitiously, each according to his temperament—now with one consent burst into hearty laughter. There was one old man in the front row, who with ear-trumpet to ear remained eagerly bent forward throughout the whole lecture, so unwilling was he to lose a single word. I was just ten years old then, and it seemed a revelation to me; for the first time I felt and realised something of my father's power over men.

In spite of fears entertained for his safety as a suspected man entering a disturbed country during the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, on the 18th of March Mr Bradlaugh was lecturing in Dublin under the auspices of the Irish Reform League. It was St Patrick's day, and "an enthusiastic barrister" whom he knew drove him about in his carriage. He wrote home that he heard the band play "'God save the Queen,' and the populace acknowledged it with a mixed sort of hiss and groan, which I believe is called 'keening.'" The lecture was delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, the hall was crammed to its utmost capacity, and lengthy reports of the speech appeared in the Freeman's Journal and Dublin Evening Post. At the conclusion an address was presented to Mr Bradlaugh as some testimony of Irish appreciation of his "disinterested and sincere devotion to our country's cause." The address reads: "We can but offer you our best thanks and warmest admiration, and tender you the unaffected and sincere love of warm Irish hearts, thus proving that Irishmen are never insensible to kindness," etc. By the light of later events, what bitter irony all this seems! The "sincere love of warm Irish hearts" looked much more like hate and malice in the years of Mr Bradlaugh's Parliamentary struggle. However, it was doubtless honest at the moment, and the greatest enthusiasm prevailed amongst the Dublin audience when the address was formally read and presented. The proceedings were orderly and unanimous throughout; nevertheless when the meeting separated they found the front of the building occupied by a detachment of police numbering about a hundred men; inspectors in attendance took the names and addresses of those who had taken any prominent part in the business of the evening; while the rank and file scrutinised the faces of the audience. The Dublin correspondent of an Irish Catholic paper published in London indulged in a tirade of abuse against Mr Bradlaugh, whom he described as "the hired agent of the English Reform League, the Atheist Bradlaugh;" but he only aroused a host of defenders, whose defence, since he was unable to answer, he affected to despise.

When the turn of Elections in 1868 brought Mr Gladstone into power, Mr Bradlaugh applied at the Treasury for the withdrawal of the warrant out against General Cluseret for his arrest on the charge of treason-felony, but this clemency was refused.[113] With the subsidence of the Fenian agitation and the relief anticipated by the Disestablishment of the Irish Church there was less and less immediate need to Ireland for Mr Bradlaugh's activity, and when 1870 ushered in the Franco-Prussian War, his energies were turned for the time in another and more instantly pressing direction.

CHAPTER XXVI.

NORTHAMPTON, 1868.

There is, I think, not the least doubt that very early in my father's life he began to nurse dreams of one day playing his part in the legislature of his country, and indeed it is currently reported in Northampton that as early as 1859 he spoke to some friends there of his wish to represent that borough in Parliament. As I have no exact evidence that Mr Bradlaugh went to the town before that year, I think the report puts the date a little too early, but in any case I do not find that the idea took any definite shape in his mind until about the end of 1865 or early in the following year. In 1867 it is clear that the possibility of his candidature was realised even by those outside the circle of his personal friends, for in the spring of that year we find a sarcastic prognosis of the possible results of the extended franchise in a West of England paper, in which the writer says: "Mr Bradlaugh would perhaps take the Government of India from the hands of Sir Stafford Northcote, his intelligence being not less, and his catholicity in religious matters making him a more acceptable ruler to the 'mild' but shrewd Hindoo." In place of the Government of India Mr Bradlaugh was destined to take other things of not quite so pleasant a nature from the hands of Sir Stafford Northcote, although it is rather curious that the Western Times should have selected in jest an appointment which would have afforded him so much scope for good and useful work.

Some time before anything definite had been said as to my father's candidature at the forthcoming elections in 1868, it was regarded as so much of a certainty that people began spontaneously to subscribe towards his election expenses. In June he notified his friends through the National Reformer that he would shortly announce the name of the borough to which he proposed to offer himself, and at the same time he would issue his address. This was done within the next few days, in the midst of the burden and anxiety of the Government prosecution of the Reformer.

My father was well known in Northampton. Since he went there to lecture on the invitation of Mr Gurney and Mr Shipman, he had, as we have seen, many times visited the town, and his opinions on political, social, and religious questions were thoroughly well understood. As his address forms a sort of landmark of Mr Bradlaugh's views on many of these important subjects, some of which are still hotly discussed, and most of which still await a satisfactory solution, I give it exactly as he issued it.

In the above address as it appears in the pages of the National Reformer for July 5, paragraphs 7 and 9 are lightly struck through in pencil by my father's hand, but whether these pencil marks have any significance I am not prepared to say. His ideas for a reform of the House of Lords certainly went very much farther, in later years at least, than those indicated in the ninth paragraph. He believed in a single Legislative Chamber and considered two unnecessary, but as a rule he disliked any sudden abolition of old-established customs, and therefore in advocating reforms of the House of Lords, he put forward such as would lead gradually and naturally to its discontinuance as a House of hereditary legislators.

This address was read in Northampton to a large audience on the last Sunday in June. Two days later, at a public meeting of about four thousand persons held in the Market Square, a vote was taken as to Mr Bradlaugh's candidature, and only one hand was lifted against it.

The issue of this address and the subsequent public meeting produced a considerable flutter in the political dovecots of Northampton. A great outcry was raised at Mr Bradlaugh's unheard-of audacity in putting himself forward without receiving the usual requisition, but, as he calmly explained at a meeting in the Northampton theatre a few weeks later, he had for two years intended to become a candidate for Parliament, and had determined to offer himself to any body of men wherever he thought he had a fair chance of success. He believed Northampton was that place, and in putting himself forward without formal invitation he did not think he had imperilled either his own dignity or that of the electors. The Northampton Mercury,[114] the local Whig paper, affected the utmost scorn for his candidature, saying that he had "no more chance of being elected member for Northampton than he has of being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury." "Nous verrons" was Mr Bradlaugh's only comment upon this declaration, which was afterwards taken up and repeated by different papers as a sort of bon mot.

But the disdain of the Northampton Whigs was well balanced by the enthusiasm of the Northampton working-men. They threw themselves into the work of the election contest, from the very outset, with the utmost zeal and ardour; they delivered the address by hand at every house in Northampton—and the work was all done gratuitously. And so with all the elections in which my father took part: he had neither paid agents nor paid canvassers; he had no paid speakers (beyond, in some cases, out-of-pocket expenses) and few paid clerks; all such work was freely and eagerly volunteered. Nor were the women less ardent than the men. They soon decided upon his election colours, and at the conclusion of a meeting held by him in the theatre in the middle of July, they presented him with a rosette made of mauve, white, and green ribbons, a combination unique amongst election colours, afterwards generally identified with Mr Bradlaugh and loved for his sake. Some of these same rosettes fashioned and worn at this election in 1868 were cast into the grave at Brookwood in 1891, and some others, which their owners had carefully treasured for six-and-twenty years, were worn for the last time on the 25th June 1894, when the statue of Mr Bradlaugh was unveiled in the town whose name will be for ever associated with his own.

Amongst those who came to speak for him the first place must be given to George Odger, who was himself trying to win a seat at Chelsea. Besides Mr Odger there were the Rev. J. K. Applebee, Austin Holyoake, R. A. Cooper, E. Truelove, C. Watts, and others, and everywhere the meetings were large and enthusiastic. Poor men—freethinkers and radicals—throughout the country vied to help in this election; but men in Edinburgh and men in Lancashire could neither vote nor canvass, so they resolved to give aid in money. Long and costly was the candidature; the elections did not come off until November, and thus the campaign continued over five months. Some of the northern towns endeavoured to raise a regular monthly subscription, some a weekly one, and soon long lists appeared in the columns of the National Reformer, long lists made up mostly of small sums, of threepences or sixpences, or shillings; sums of £1 and over were rare, and seldom indeed was there such a heavy donation as £10, Mr Bradlaugh's supporters being, with scarcely an exception, poor working men. At the end of August John Stuart Mill drew upon himself a hailstorm of abuse by sending £10 to Mr Austin Holyoake, secretary of the Election Fund, with the following letter:—

Much capital was made out of the assertion that Mr Bradlaugh was trying to divide the Liberal vote at Northampton, and so let in a Tory, but it was an assertion entirely without foundation. Over and over again he stated that it was Lord Henley's[115] seat that he was trying to win, and that rather than risk the losing of it to a Tory he was prepared to submit to a decision of a test meeting of the electors. At that time there were 5,729 electors on the register, and of these as many as 3,400 were new voters, so extensively had the new Act affected the voting power in the single borough of Northampton. Mr Bradlaugh's offer to be governed by the decision of a public meeting of the electorate was entirely ignored. "It was in vain," says the writer of the little Souvenir book issued on the occasion of the unveiling of my father's statue at Northampton, "it was in vain that Mr Bradlaugh offered to abide by any fair test that might be devised to settle beforehand which of the two Liberal candidates in the field should go to the poll." A test ballot had been taken at Manchester to decide the claims of Ernest Jones. "If, however," continued the writer of the Souvenir, "the Manchester method were unacceptable, Mr Bradlaugh was prepared to agree to any other form of gauging the opinion of the constituency that was equally just to him" and to Lord Henley. But the Whigs seemed afraid to put it "to the touch," and my father's address was rapidly followed by one signed jointly by Charles Gilpin and Lord Henley. The Tories followed considerably later with two candidates, Messrs Merewether and Lendrick, and later still came a sixth candidate, Dr F. R. Lees, well known as a Temperance advocate. Why he came it is a little difficult to say, for before coming he wrote my father that he was not hostile to him; and he publicly declared that if he were elected in Mr Gilpin's place, he would at once resign in that gentleman's favour. Mr Bradlaugh therefore asked him, as it was impossible that both could win Lord Henley's seat, "to at once consent to adopt some course which will avoid division of the Radical strength." At his first meeting amendments were carried in Mr Bradlaugh's favour, but Dr Lees persisted right up to the last day, and abandoned his candidature "only on the day of the poll, when it was too late to prevent nearly five hundred electors recording their votes on his behalf."[116]

During the whole time, from the end of June to mid-November, Mr Bradlaugh was of course constantly addressing meetings from one end to the other of the constituency, and it is rather curious to note that in one of his earliest speeches he shadowed forth what really happened to him twenty years later. At the conclusion of an address delivered in the theatre on the 16th of July on the subject of "Capital and Labour and Trades Unions," some one asked him whether if he were delegated to the House of Commons he could "guarantee to enact laws that should satisfy all Trades Unions and the public generally." "Certainly not," was the reply; "I daresay I should give as much dissatisfaction to Trades Unionists as anybody. But that would not be my fault. I should act honestly, and if the Trades Unionists were the bulk o£ my constituency, and they thought I acted in contravention of my programme, I should resign my trust into their hands." And when Mr Bradlaugh did act thus honestly in the matter of the Employers' Liability Bill in 1889, the Trades Unions were exceedingly dissatisfied with him, and were for the most part very bitter against him.

In a very short time the Northampton election became the subject of discussion everywhere, and the press from one end of England to the other had some sort of comment to make upon it—hostile to Mr Bradlaugh, of course. The Daily Telegraph, then professing Liberal views, was one of the earliest to raise the odium theologicum against him;[117] it speculated in pious dismay as to "what outrage on good taste and on the conscientious convictions of his fellow-citizens 'Iconoclast' may not attempt in the wider circle to which he seeks admittance," and held up its Jewish hands in holy horror in imagining the possibilities of a time "when Englishmen will revile the sublime moralities of the New Testament." My father challenged Mr Levy, the editor, to give an instance of any such "outrage" committed by him, adding, "I do more than this; the Government have, out of the public funds, paid for shorthand notes of several of my speeches since 1865. These notes still exist; I know in some cases the actual professional reporters employed, and I dare the publication of these notes."

The cowardly insinuations of the Daily Telegraph were printed as a placard and posted all over the town, where they produced the strongest excitement and bitterness. This placard was quickly followed by another of bright green, conveying a message from "The Irish Reform League to the Irishmen and friends of Ireland in Northampton." Northampton was entreated to return to Parliament "a man like Charles Bradlaugh, who advocated the cause of Ireland with pen and tongue when such advocacy was unpopular, if not dangerous." Irishmen in Dublin appealed to Irishmen in Northampton not to deserve the reproach of the defeat of such a man. "We, the Reformers of Ireland, gladly and heartily recommend him: by his works in the cause of Reform we know him; as a politician we endorse him; ... we believe him to be true, we have faith in his political honesty, in his undaunted perseverance, and in his desire to elevate the downtrodden in our land and in his own."[118]

In September one of the newly enfranchised electors wrote to Mr John Bright for his advice as to the casting of his "maiden vote," and received from Mr Bright the following letter in reply:—

When Mr Bradlaugh saw this letter, which was given the fullest publicity, he wrote Mr Bright as follows:—

To my father's letter Mr Bright made answer that he had written an honest reply to a simple question, with no suspicion that he should be considered as taking sides with any party in the contest, adding some remarks as to his regard for past services and a tried fidelity, without any further definite opinion on Lord Henley's fitness. But if Mr Bright did not suspect that he should be considered as taking sides—and my father loyally accepted his statement—other people took a different view of the matter, and his letter was freely used against Mr Bradlaugh. The Spectator was of opinion that Mr Bright had succeeded "in more than neutralising the effect of Mr J. S. Mill's very injudicious and unexpected testimonial to Mr Bradlaugh's (Iconoclast's) claims as candidate for Northampton;" whilst the Saturday Review considered that if this letter saved Northampton "from the discredit of electing Mr Bradlaugh," Mr Bright would have done the borough "valuable service."

Finding that this letter had been such a success, the Whigs next addressed themselves to Mr Gladstone, asking him if he endorsed the opinion expressed by Mr Bright. Mr Gladstone promptly replied in these terms:—

I confess that I cannot understand the object of the postscript, for it must be manifest to the meanest intelligence that immediately it transpired that an elector had received a communication from Mr Gladstone upon the subject of the representation of the constituency, all the rest would be wild with curiosity "to know the purport of it." As a matter of course, it was read at the next meeting of the Liberal Association, and then reproduced in the public press.

In striving to win Lord Henley's seat, Mr Bradlaugh had not only Lord Henley, and Mr Bright, and Mr Gladstone fighting against him, but also Mr Gilpin, whose seat he was most anxious not to imperil. Mr Gilpin, although personally very friendly to my father, felt in honour bound to support his colleague, as he repeatedly stated at meeting after meeting: "Infinitely would he rather go back to London the rejected of Northampton than be the man who had deserted a friend in order to get another in." Nor was this by any means all that he had to contend against; he had actively against him nearly the whole of the press of England and Scotland, and no terms seemed too vile or slander too mean to use to injure him. Of all the newspapers circulating throughout the United Kingdom, there were not more than three or four—of which the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle was one—who dared to say so much as a kindly word of him or of his candidature.

In the town of Northampton itself the opposition of the Whigs and the Tories grew so bitter and was carried to such an excess that in October it was found necessary to form a society for the purpose of aiding working men who lost their employment through their support of Mr Bradlaugh.

Dr F. R. Lees started a personal house-to-house canvass; this was followed by the joint canvass of Henley and Gilpin—undertaken at the urgent request of Lord Henley, for Mr Gilpin publicly declared it to be a practice which ought not to be encouraged—and then came my father's canvass. Much as he disliked it, he felt obliged in this case to do as the other candidates were doing; he issued an address, however, in which he said: "I desire to put on record my formal protest against the system of house-to-house canvassing, in which I only take part in obedience to the wish of my General Committee, and because all my opponents having resorted to it, some might think me slighting them if I abstained. I hold with Mr Gilpin that the system is a bad one. In canvassing, I do not come to beg your vote; if you need such a pitiable personal appeal, I prefer not having your support. I come to you that, seeing me, you may question me if you desire, and that you who cannot be present at the meetings may have the opportunity of better knowing my principles."

The canvassing in those days of open voting was even harder work than it is to-day; but Mr Bradlaugh was gallantly supported by a number of warm friends, amongst whom he was proud to have the veteran Thomas Allsop, and there was also much that was inspiring in coming face to face with the ardour and enthusiasm of the Northampton Radical working men. But if there was much to inspire, there was likewise sometimes much to sadden; in several instances a voter's wife answered that her husband "must look to his bread," and one threw an ominous light upon the penalty liable to be paid for a conscientious vote by saying that her husband "had lost his situation last election, and this time she would take care that he voted as his employer wished." My father, in the course of his canvass also, as might be expected, met with instances of "bitter and coarse fanaticism," which must have been peculiarly unpleasant in the somewhat defenceless position of a candidate making a personal canvass.

At a great town's meeting, held for the purpose of hearing an expression of their political views and an account of their political action from the borough members, Mr Bradlaugh's committee sent a deputation to ask whether their candidate would be heard. They were told that he would be refused admission; he attended, and was refused admission, but his friends carried him in. The report before me says that "Mr Gilpin, on appearing on the platform, shook hands with Mr Bradlaugh and with Dr Lees; Lord Henley, supported chiefly by his legal advisers and their friends, shook hands with nobody, but shook himself when the groans echoed through the building." The four candidates addressed the meeting, but the uproar during Lord Henley's speech was so great that he could scarcely be heard, and the proceedings terminated with "three cheers for Bradlaugh."

As the weeks flew on, fiercer and fiercer grew the fight. The Lord's Day Rest Association came to the aid of the Northampton Whigs and Tories, and posted the town with placards headed: "Do not vote for Charles Bradlaugh unless you wish to lose your Sunday rest;" other candidates for other constituencies rushed to the rescue. Mr Giffard, Q.C.—now Lord Halsbury, then the Tory candidate for Cardiff, and the all-time bitter enemy of Mr Bradlaugh—said, with that fine regard for accuracy for which he has ever been distinguished: "Mr Bradlaugh was the avowed author of a work so blasphemous that one or two boroughs had refused to have anything to do with him."[119] Mr Charles Capper, M.P., also betrayed a similar inclination towards fiction. At a public meeting in Sandwich he related that he had been