At this point the Judge interfered, and after pointing out that the lectures to be delivered at Mirfield were of a political character, warned Mr Seymour that such questions were unnecessary. "If they were to destroy Mr Bradlaugh's credit I should not object, but there is really no part of his evidence in dispute," he said.

As Mr Bradlaugh had not otherwise sufficient evidence of the lettings of the hall, he was obliged to call the hall-keeper himself. This man, Thomas Balme, was, as might be expected, a very unwilling witness, with a peculiarly defective memory. Having heard him, Mr Justice Mellor came to the conclusion that he really had no authority to let the hall, and that consequently the plaintiff must be non-suited.

Mr Bradlaugh decided to try for a new trial, and applied to Mr Justice Willes at Judges Chambers a few days later that judgment might be stayed until the fifth day of Michaelmas Term, in order to enable him to move the Court of Queen's Bench. Mr Thomas Chitty appeared for the defendants.

When Mr Justice Willes read the receipt, which ran as follows: "Mirfield Town Hall Company, Limited. Mr Charles Bradlaugh have taken the Hall for two nights, November 18th and 19th, for the sum of four guineas. Paid 21st of September 1870. Thomas Balme, Hall-keeper, liable to damages,"—he said to Mr Bradlaugh, "I shall be very glad if you can make out that the law helps you, for I think your case a very hard one. (Turning to Mr Chitty) With such a receipt and memorandum as this, having paid my four guineas, I should most certainly expect to lecture. It is very hard for the plaintiff so be defeated by the mere statement of your own servant that he had no authority."

Mr Chitty opposed the application. "There is really no good ground shown for a new trial," he said. "Perhaps at this moment no legal ground," replied the Judge, "but a strong suggestion which I am inclined to listen to. This is an application by a plaintiff who will be stopped if I do not aid him, and the circumstances, not ordinary ones, are certainly in his favour."

In the end it was arranged that Mr Bradlaugh should have an opportunity to move, if he could pay £60 into Court within seven days, and on his side my father pledged himself not to trouble the Court unless he was quite satisfied that he could prove that Balme had let the hall on other occasions. I gather that he was unable to get sufficient evidence on this point, for he carried the case no further. The taxed costs of the Mirfield Town Hall Company amounted to £98 7s., and as Mr Bradlaugh was unable to pay this at once an attempt was made to enforce immediate judgment, but this failed, and it was ultimately arranged that Mr Bradlaugh should pay £10 per month. So here was another addition to debt to the load of an already over-weighted man. The debt incurred in the Devonport trial took him three and a half years to pay. Happily, his own expenditure in this (the Mirfield) case was covered by the subscriptions of his poor friends, and they also ultimately contributed £25 towards the costs of the Hall Company.

CHAPTER XXIX.

PERSONAL.

In our house the year 1870, which was to bring death and sorrow to so many homes, and rage and despair to so many hearts, opened cheerlessly indeed. The outlook for my father was dark and gloomy in the extreme. Overweighted with debt, he seemed to be sinking ever deeper and deeper in financial difficulties. The prosecution of the National Reformer, the De Rin and the Razor litigation, had each and all left him more or less deeply involved. The great panic of 1866 had dealt him a serious blow from which he vainly attempted to recover; the identification of "C. Bradlaugh, of 23 Great St. Helen's," with "Bradlaugh, the Atheist lecturer," was fatal to business. The spirit of the boycott existed long before Captain Boycott lived to give it his name. People were much too good to do business with an Atheist, and just as the baker's wife took her custom from the boy coal merchant in 1848, so customers of a different class took their business from the City merchant twenty years later.

My father began to despair of making his business succeed under these conditions, and to think seriously of giving up his City life, and of devoting himself to public work. This course would relieve him from the anxieties of two clashing occupations; moreover, as he said, "while prejudice and clamour bring ruin to me as a business man, they can do me no injury as a lecturer and a journalist."[128]

In addition to all these difficulties—the outcome of his public work—there were others, less serious in some respects, it is true, but far more so in the discredit attaching to them and the anguish they caused. I refer to those home extravagances and home debts, due to my mother's infirmity, which all helped to pile up the total liabilities to unmanageable figures. In March or April a man was put into possession at Sunderland Villa, and remained there for several weeks. My father felt this bitterly, but his course of conduct was now clear before him, and unhesitatingly decided upon; thus once more we see the pressure of money difficulties directly shaping his path. A few personal words in the National Reformer[129] indicated his resolve: "After five years' severe struggle," he wrote, "so severe, indeed, as to repeatedly endanger my health, I find it is utterly impossible to remain in business in the City in the face of the strong prejudice excited against me on political and religious grounds. I have determined to entirely give up all business, and devote myself to the movement. I have, therefore, taken steps to reduce the personal expenditure of myself and family to the lowest possible point, in order that I may set myself free from liability as early as I can, and I shall be glad now to arrange for week-night lectures in any part of Great Britain."

Hence, when these people, moved by their "political and religious" prejudices, drove Mr Bradlaugh from the City, and prevented him from making a livelihood in the ordinary way of business, they were unconsciously forging a weapon against themselves. Instead of giving a small portion of his time to writing and speaking against Theology, and on behalf of Radicalism and Republicanism, my father henceforth devoted the whole of his life to that work.

In accordance with his determination to reduce his personal expenditure to the lowest point, in the middle of May—before his words could have been read by those to whom they were addressed—my mother, my sister, and myself went to Midhurst, to find a home in my grandfather's little cottage, and my father set aside a modest sum weekly for our board and clothing. My brother remained with Mr John Grant of the Grenadier Guards for tuition, and Mr Bradlaugh himself took two tiny rooms at 3s. 6d. a week, at 29 Turner Street, Commercial Road, in the house of a widow who had been known to our family from her early girlhood. The size and style of these rooms may be guessed from the neighbourhood in which they were situated, and from the weekly rental asked for them. Within a few days or so from our leaving London, our household effects at Sunderland Villa were sold, my father retaining a few of the least saleable articles of furniture to supply what was necessary for his two rooms.

Instead of taking the most comfortable bedstead, he took the one which had been used by us little girls, and this was the bed upon which he slept until a year before his death, when I removed it without his knowledge during his absence in India, and put a more comfortable one in its place. Our nursery washstand, a chest of drawers, a writing-table, and half-a-dozen chairs comprised all the furniture he thought necessary for his use. My mother was not allowed to take anything whatever with her beyond our wearing apparel and a few trifles of small actual worth, but which she specially valued. My father's books, of course, he took with him, these, and one other thing which I had almost forgotten. The bedroom and sitting-room at Turner Street communicated, and the walls of both were covered with shelves, except just over the bed-head, which was reserved for the one other treasure brought from home. This was a large canvas painted in oils for Mr Bradlaugh by an artist friend, Emile Girardot. The subject was very simple, being nothing more than a tired hurdy-gurdy boy sleeping in a doorway, with a monkey anxiously watching. Whatever the intrinsic value of the picture might be, to my father it was above all price. He had quite a love for it, and often spoke of it—even in his last illness he talked of it, and wondered where it was, and longed for it, for by that time it had gone out of his hands.

So by the end of May we were all adrift and separated—my father in his small book-lined rooms in the east end of London; my brother Charlie with the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, wherever it happened to be; my mother, sister, and self vegetating in a Sussex hamlet. But bad as all this was, 1870 held still worse things in store for us. In June my brother was taken ill with a mild attack of scarlatina, of which we knew nothing until he came home to us for his holidays on the 20th of the month. Due precautions had been neglected, and almost immediately after he reached us kidney disease began to manifest itself. From this he died on the 15th July, and he was buried exactly a month from the day on which he came home. The shock of his death was terrible to all of us, and not least so to my father. Although barely eleven years old at his death, Charlie was a lad full of promise, quick to learn and to comprehend, amiable, honourable, and generous; and of these traits I can recall many little instances. I have a photograph of him taken at the age of seven or eight, and as I look at it I see his eyes gaze out from under his square brow with a wonderfully clear and fearless look.

He was buried on the 20th day of July in Cocking Churchyard, my grandfather's cottage at Cocking Causeway (Midhurst) being in the parish of Cocking. Of course, we had to submit to the Church of England service, for it was before the Burials Act was passed, but the Rev. Drummond Ash was a kindly, courteous gentleman, and he made things as easy as the circumstances would allow. The burial would have taken place at the Brookwood Necropolis had my father been able to afford the expense. As he was not, Charlie was laid perforce in consecrated ground at the foot of the South Down Hills with Christian rites and ceremonies.

The Rev. Theophilus Bennett, a later Rector of Cocking, has stated that his predecessor, Mr Ash, "attended" my brother "in his dying moments." This statement is entirely without foundation; I am not aware that Mr Ash ever saw or spoke with my brother at all, and certainly the only persons present when the boy was dying were my grandmother, my mother, our nurse Kate (who remained with us at her own wish to help nurse him in his illness), my sister, and myself; moreover, Mr Ash was at that time reported to be himself ill and away from home, having left word that if "the little boy at the Causeway should die," all facilities for his funeral were to be given, or some such message.

The telegram bearing the totally unexpected summons to my father to hasten to see his son for the last time was handed to him on the platform at Bury just as he was about to deliver a lecture. I have been told that when he read the words he turned deathly pale, but with that self-control which never failed him in adversity, he rose, and with the least perceptible hesitation, commenced and went through with his lecture. On Tuesday night he received his summons; on Wednesday he was with us, though only to leave again by the early train on Thursday morning. On Friday the boy died, and on that same day and the next my father had to be in the law-courts as witness in a case relating to the Naples Colour Company.[130] His grief for the loss of his son was intense, but he shut it up in his heart, and rarely afterwards mentioned the name of his boy, of whom he had been so proud.

CHAPTER XXX.

LECTURES—1870-1871.

The early part of the seventies was a period of much Freethought and Republican activity in England; everywhere in the Freethought ranks there was movement and life. In spite of the persistent refusal of Messrs W. H. Smith & Son to sell the National Reformer, its circulation was largely increasing, and in 1870 it was read in the four quarters of the globe. In England all sorts of devices were resorted to damage the sale; country news-agents refused, like Messrs Smith & Son, to sell it, or said they were unable to obtain it, or quietly returned it "out of print"; contents bills were no sooner posted in some towns than they were torn down, and on occasion the police employed themselves, or were employed, in this work. At Scarborough[131] evidence was obtained against Police Constable Charlton, and legal proceedings were commenced. At the last moment, however, the sum of 2s. was paid into Court, together with costs proportionate to the summons, and Mr Bradlaugh, overwhelmed with other work and worries, contented himself with this acknowledgment of the wrongdoing and did not pursue the matter further.

The high pressure at which my father had been living had so undermined his health that for a long time he was a martyr to acute neuralgia; still, notwithstanding this, in the early part of the year he was lecturing once or twice a week, and as soon as he was able to extricate himself from the City his lecture list grew tremendously. In the month of July alone—a month which, as we have seen, brought its own peculiar burdens—he gave as many as twenty-six lectures. I find it noted that during this last half-year he delivered as many as one hundred and seventy lectures, in forty-nine of which the proceeds were insufficient to cover his railway expenses, and in the case of twenty more, although his railway was covered, there was not enough to clear his hotel bill.

Except in one or two very special cases[132] Mr Bradlaugh never took a fee for his lectures. He took whatever surplus remained from the admission money, after paying all expenses of the meeting. He made this arrangement originally so that no town or village might be hindered from promoting lectures on account of the expense. "Large and small places," he said, "will be visited indifferently." A charge for admission was always made at his lectures, usually a small one, varying from twopence or threepence to a shilling. He objected very strongly to "free" lectures and collections. Of course he now, as ever, very often gave away the proceeds of his lectures. His audiences were frequently very large, especially in places where he was known. He happened to make a note of the numbers who came to hear him on the Sundays in January 1871, and he records that on the Sunday evenings alone he had audiences whose total numbers reached six thousand, and at three morning lectures there was a total of two thousand five hundred.

Halls were often refused to him, although not quite so frequently as in former years. In 1870 the Stratford Town Hall was refused by the West Ham Local Board, and for many years he had great difficulty in obtaining a hall in Stratford. The St. Mary's Hall, Coventry, was refused to him by the Mayor of Coventry for a lecture on "The Land and the People," and the Mirfield Town Hall after it had been duly engaged for two political lectures was closed against him by the proprietors.[133] An exactly similar case occurred at Glossop a year and a half later. The Town Hall was taken for a political lecture, and at almost the last moment, after the lapse of several weeks, the Council instructed that the money paid for the hire should be returned. The effect of this was to produce a much greater and more widespread excitement and discussion than half a dozen lectures would have done.

It was in 1870 that Mr Bradlaugh began that close scrutiny of the history of our reigning family which resulted in the publication of his "Impeachment of the House of Brunswick," a little book which created some considerable stir both when it was first published in 1871,[134] and when an edition partly revised by Mr Bradlaugh was brought out after his death. The "Impeachment" has been widely read both here and in America, where it was reprinted. Besides writing upon the Brunswick family, Mr Bradlaugh used to take the history of one or more of the members of it as a subject for his lecture, and taught many a good Republican lesson whilst discoursing upon the exceptional virtues of "George, Prince of Wales," or "the four Georges." A friend has told me an amusing story concerning one of these lectures. My father had promised to speak one Saturday evening at Sowerby Bridge on "George, Prince of Wales." By some curious blunder the friends who were making the arrangements placarded the town with the subject announced as "Albert Edward, Prince of Wales." The effect of this was to cause a large number of police to be drafted into the town, and a Government shorthand reporter was sent down from London, travelling by the same train as my father. The hall was, of course, crowded, but whether the audience were disappointed when my father explained the mistake in the subject of the lecture, my informant did not say. In any case I expect that the officials who had been so busy in preparing for treason and riot, and found only history and order, felt that the proceedings had turned out rather flat. At Stourbridge, where Mr Bradlaugh was invited[135] by some "gentlemen of Republican tendencies" to discourse upon the "House of Brunswick," Lord Lyttleton, as Lord Lieutenant of the county, tried to induce the Stourbridge Town Commissioners to withdraw from their agreement to let the Corn Exchange for the lectures, but his efforts were in vain. His Lordship seems to have been a little angry, and it was even rumoured that he went so far as to tell the magistrates that he would have Mr Bradlaugh arrested for treason. He succeeded in raising such a scare that a large extra body of police were drafted into the town under the order of the Chief Constable of the county. There were two lectures, and Colonel Carmichael, the Chief Constable, was present at both, but, as I gather from the printed reports, the meetings were large, the audiences delighted, and of both the end "was peace."

In the summer of 1871 Mr Bradlaugh went one Monday evening to Newton Abbot to address a meeting in the New Vegetable Market, used then for a public gathering for the first time. The subject on which he was to speak was "The Land, the People, and the Coming Struggle." Very few of the tradesmen in the town would consent to expose bills of the lecture, and several who did display them at first took them from their windows at the advice of the "respectable and pious," and in the end only two showed the announcements. Two gentlemen who were present at the meeting—one as a reporter for the local paper, the other, one of the five Radicals who invited Mr Bradlaugh to Newton—have given a vivid account of a little incident which enlivened the evening's proceedings. It appears that in 1871 a certain Mr John George Stuart was the High Bailiff of the town. "This gentleman," I am told, "was a Methodist, and had at that time two sons who were studying for the ministry. He was also a distinguished boxer, and he had the reputation of being the most formidable wielder of the gloves in England." Mr Stuart, supported by two friends, "attended the meeting with the avowed intention of obstructing Mr Bradlaugh. As soon as Mr Bradlaugh began to speak, Mr Stuart commenced to disturb the meeting. Mr Bradlaugh repeatedly requested him to reserve his criticisms until the close of the lecture, when an opportunity would be offered him of speaking from the platform. But Mr Stuart continued to shout his opinions upon Mr Bradlaugh's Atheism, although the lecture was on a purely political question. At last Mr Bradlaugh said that unless the interruptions ceased, he should be compelled to act as his own chairman, and to request Mr Stuart to leave the building. As Mr Stuart and his friends would not desist from shouting, Mr Bradlaugh stepped from the platform, walked up to the athlete, and carried him to the door with ease. At the doorway Mr Stuart spread his arms and held the jambs, but Mr White, who was acting as doorkeeper pushed one of his hands aside, and Mr Bradlaugh set the disturber down in the street. None of Mr Stuart's friends offered the least resistance, and the crowd, which was made up of hostile as well as friendly hearers, loudly cheered Mr Bradlaugh's unceremonious ejectment of the local hero of the 'noble art.'" The friends to whom I am indebted for the foregoing say further that Mr Stuart's pride was brought very low by this episode, and that he rarely appeared afterwards among the former admirers of his prowess.

In the course of my father's lecturing experiences, he several times met with local "champions," as defenders of the faith. A few months later, at Sowerby Bridge, a local champion wrestler entered the room during the delivery of his lecture and commenced abusing him loudly. The man was spoken to several times, but he would neither remain quiet, nor quit the place. Mr Bradlaugh was at length obliged to leave the platform and put him out vi et armis. Put out at one door, he reappeared at another; but this time the audience took the matter into their own hands, and kept him out. Another "champion" conducted a serious disturbance at Congleton, but of that later.

In the month of March (1871) Dr Magee, then Bishop of Peterborough, delivered three discourses in the Norwich Cathedral in "vindication and establishment of the Christian faith," and "directed against modern forms of infidelity." The Freethinkers of Norwich, anxious to give these discourses the attention which the high position and high reputation of the speaker demanded, had asked Mr Bradlaugh to come to Norwich to represent them on the occasion of the Bishop's discourses. This he consented to do, and attended all the lectures, but—as perhaps it is superfluous to say—he was not allowed to make any remark upon them. It was however desired that he should make some reply in the town where the lectures had been delivered, at least, if not in the Cathedral to Dr Magee himself, but it was not easy to obtain the use of a hall for the purpose. A circuit of the town was made in the vain endeavour to hire a building, and it was only after considerable difficulty that the Free Library Hall was at last procured. As my father truly said, "the approved mode of encountering modern infidelity seemed to be that of free speech for the Church advocate, and gagged mouth for the pleader on behalf of heresy."[136] In the Norwich Free Library Hall he delivered three lectures in reply to Dr Magee. These he afterwards published, together with the Bishop's discourses; and as a statement of the cases for and against Christianity and for and against Freethought, coming from such representative men as the late learned and eloquent Archbishop of York and Mr Bradlaugh, they cannot fail to be of special interest.

During the autumn my father gave a lecture on behalf of the London Republican Club, and upon this speech all sorts of rumours were founded, not indeed upon what my father actually did say, but upon what his detractors chose to believe he said. Mr Disraeli had recently stated at an agricultural meeting at Hughenden[137] that it could not be concealed that Her Majesty was "physically and morally incapacitated from performing her duties," and my father took these words as the text of his lecture for the Republican Club in London. His speech, which was unusually long, occupying close upon an hour and a half, was a most careful recital of the duties of the Monarch and the rights and duties of the people, with special reference to the course pursued during the periods when George III. was officially declared incapable of performing the royal functions. Shorthand writers were present, and this address, or parts of it, was telegraphed all over the United Kingdom, to America and to the Continent. Much of it appeared in the American and Continental press of the next day or so, and after a short interval distorted accounts of it were to be heard of in most parts of England. There was one passage in particular upon which a whole mountain of misrepresentation and worse[138] was afterwards based. In the course of his address Mr Bradlaugh had said: "Many of you are aware that I have lately repeatedly declared my most earnest desire that the present Prince of Wales should never dishonour this country by becoming its King. My opinion is that if four or five years of political education are allowed to continue in this land, that worthy representative of an unworthy race will never be King of England. My thorough conviction is that neither his intelligence, nor his virtues, nor his political ability, nor his military capacity—great as all these are for a member of his family—can entitle him to occupy the throne of Great Britain. I am equally opposed to his ever being Regent of England. I trust that he may never sit on the throne or lounge under its shadow."

Of course my father showed himself much too sanguine as to the time necessary for the political education of this country towards a Republican form of Government; but those who recall the seeming vigour of the Republican movement in England during the early seventies will know that he was not without excuse for his hopeful views. In any case, one would have thought that his expression in regard to the Prince of Wales was strong enough to have been dealt with by English Monarchists as he made it; but instead, it was perverted into an "impudent and disloyal announcement that he and a certain number of his friends would take care that the Prince should never come to the throne."[139] A very different thing indeed to the "desire" my father had uttered. The effect of all this was to raise such a tremendous journalistic storm against him, that a few weeks later he wrote: "As to the hostile attacks, they are during the past fortnight so numerous that I have not space even to catalogue them. Many journals call for my prosecution." One paper, a century or so behind the times, recommended a pillory and flogging.

A curious little incident which occurred ten or twelve days after Mr Bradlaugh's lecture helped to strengthen the outcry against him, especially on the part of Conservative speakers and the Conservative press. On the 28th of October Mr Gladstone addressed a vast meeting of his constituents on Blackheath. He spoke for two hours, defending the conduct of his colleagues and himself since they had taken office three years ago. During this important speech he quoted, from what he called a "questionable book," these lines, which he said contained "much good sense"—

This sentiment was greeted with deafening applause by the thousands listening with eager ears to every word that fell from the Prime Minister. But the epithet bestowed upon the book whence he drew this example of the "good sense" it contained, roused a perfect frenzy of curiosity. Literary Conservatives imagined that Mr A. C. Swinburne was the author, and the dismay exhibited was almost beyond description when it was discovered—by the horrified Scotsman, I believe—that Mr Gladstone's "questionable book" was the "Secularists' Manual of Songs and Ceremonies," edited by Austin Holyoake and Charles Watts, with a preface by Charles Bradlaugh. The press comments upon the discovery are amusing to read, especially as Mr Bradlaugh was often made in some way responsible, not merely for the verse, but for Mr Gladstone's quoting it on Blackheath. Mr Giffard, Q.C., was amongst those who thought it "an outrage" that such a book should have been so quoted by the Prime Minister of England. The publisher was indictable, said he wrathfully, and the writer would have been sent to prison in the good old days when the Christian religion was more thought of.[140] But neither he nor any one else moved to prefer the indictment.

CHAPTER XXXI.

FRANCE—THE WAR.

When hostilities were declared between France and Germany in 1870, Mr Bradlaugh did not take sides with either nation; he entirely and unreservedly condemned the war. He and his friends kept clear of the war fever which seemed coursing through the blood of most people. "All the evil passions of Europe are aroused," wrote Austin Holyoake, "and even children gloat over the narratives of slaughter where thousands perish. The soldier, instead of the schoolmaster, has become the foremost man, and Rage, Revenge, and Murder are the gods of public idolatry." Not a word would Mr Bradlaugh or his colleagues say to commiserate the "insulted honour of France," not a word to glorify the triumphant arms of Germany.

But my father was not neutral because he was unmoved. His sympathies were always strongly with the French people, but these very sympathies made him bitterly antagonistic to the French Emperor. In the middle of August he replied to a correspondent: "You do not understand my position. I regard Napoleon as one of the greatest amongst modern scoundrels, and Bismarck as a crafty diplomatist striving to make a great German Empire under Prussia. I love Bismarck so little that when the Reform League wrote him an address, I refused to sign it. I hope to see a German republic, and I believe I shall, but this war will postpone it. I deeply regret the evoking the 'nationality' madness in France, for I fear that many of our brave Republican friends will be killed in striving to save, as they think, the flag of France from disgrace."

On the 4th of September was declared the third French Republic. The National Reformer was quick to give it welcome, but my father himself was away in the provinces just then, lecturing and debating with scarce a day's respite, and so overwrought with much speaking in heated rooms and much travelling in wet and changeable weather, that his health seemed on the point of breaking down. At Leigh he had lectured on two successive nights in a wooden theatre, admirably adapted to give free admittance to every gust of the damp night wind. On the morning (Sunday) following these lectures he had left at six o'clock to go to Darwen. By that time his voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper, and the Darwen friend who met him looked grave when he saw how ill he seemed, especially when my father announced his intention of going to bed until the lecture hour. Three lectures he gave that day—morning, afternoon, and evening—with an hour's discussion after the morning lecture, but his appearance made such an impression upon his Lancashire friends that they wrote him an address of sympathy.

Ill-health, overwork, financial worries, and domestic sorrows made a heavy burden to carry; still, notwithstanding all this, he made the opportunity to write his sympathy with Republican France.

"First," he said, "that there may be no mistake, I throw in my lot with France—Republican France. While Louis Napoleon reigned at the Tuileries the memories of December were too bloody, nineteen-year-old hatreds too bitter, to let me even be just to any cause he led. A perjured liar, a cold-blooded murderer, a heartless coward, a paltry trickster, a dishonourable cheat, all this was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. I was, therefore, well inclined to Germany from my utter hatred of the imperial demoralisation of France. But now, when events are moving so rapidly that perhaps ere this sees the light all may be changed, it is worth while to ask, Was Prussia guiltless in the war? and I answer, No! Bismarck and Prussian armies are evidence on this side. Bismarck using craft of a higher order than Napoleonic scoundrelism, and moved by a broader ambition than the mere embezzlement of national funds or personal aggrandisement, has outwitted Napoleon; but the English people, while repudiating with fullest indignation the wicked and most monstrous declaration of war, cannot forget that by-divine-right-ruling and for-victory-God-thanking William is as much a detester of popular rights as was Napoleon himself.... At this moment the world's most fearful curse is in its armies, and our cry is Peace."

It was only just, he said, that the French Republic should pay some penalty for the previous folly of the nation, and if Prussia exacted ever so heavy a war indemnity in money, it should be cheerfully paid. But he spoke most strenuously against the surrender of Alsace and Lorraine. To Germany he appealed for peace "while yet the glory is yours—if indeed it be glory to kill and maim, scorch and scathe, and this at the cost of as many killed and wounded, scorched and scathed, on your own side." Last of all he appealed to the peoples of England, France, and Germany to unite for peace; if they were earnest, he wrote, they must be obeyed, and their "glorious desire must be conceded."

This article was in print on the 14th September; and as he was at breakfast at his Turner Street lodgings one morning, three days later, my father received a somewhat startling visit from a French lady, at that time well known in French and English political circles. Madame la Vicomtesse de Brimont Brassac was a lady of great beauty and great persuasive powers, although in her errand that September morning she had no occasion for the use of either one or the other. She came to my father with the idea of persuading him to undertake the attempt to create a feeling in favour of France amongst the English masses; this was a work after his own heart, and one indeed to which he had already set his hand in the article to which I have just referred. This interview had for its immediate result a succession of public meetings, held both in London and the provinces, in favour of France and Peace. The first, held at the Hall of Science on Monday the 19th, was, despite the short notice, attended by upwards of 1400 persons. Through Madame de Brimont my father learned that Lord Granville was moving against the French Republic, and was in favour of replacing the Emperor in Paris. Friends everywhere were urged to counteract Lord Granville's efforts by striving to make a living public opinion in favour of France and Peace. At this first demonstration two addresses were agreed to: one to Mr Gladstone, praying him to use his high office "actively in favour of peace," for, it was urged, "it will be to England's lasting shame if every possible effort be not made to prevent further carnage;" the second was sent to the French Government of National Defence and to the French people, offering congratulations on the position taken by Jules Favre, and tendering deep and heartfelt sympathy to the nation in its sorrow.

In co-operation with Dr Congreve, Prof. Beesly, and other prominent Positivists, Mr Bradlaugh organised a series of meetings in London and the provinces. One at St James's Hall on the 24th was a great success. The hall was densely crowded by an enthusiastic meeting, which was addressed by Dr Congreve, Prof. Beesly, Sir Henry Hoare, M.P., Mr George Odger, Colonel Dickson, and others. The addresses to Mr Gladstone and to the French Nation were voted unanimously, and a resolution moved by Prof. Beesly, calling upon the English Government to give an immediate and frank recognition of the French Republic, met with the utmost enthusiasm. The two addresses were sent for signature to thirty of the largest towns in England and Scotland, and in two days forty thousand signatures were obtained.

Just before the commencement of the proceedings at St James's Hall an incident occurred that admitted of an extremely simple explanation, but which the Tory press endeavoured to turn to the discredit of the "France and Peace" Committee. A little while before the speakers were expected on the platform, the gas, which had been wavering somewhat uncertainly for a few minutes, suddenly went out, leaving the hall in complete darkness. As may be imagined, there was great dismay, and with it all the dangers of a panic. A gentleman who acted as steward at the meeting tells me that the light was hardly out before Mr Bradlaugh's voice was heard crying, "Lead me to the front; lead me to the front!" This he and another friend succeeded in doing. Once at the front of the platform, he says that my father began to speak, and the audience, recognising his voice, gave a ringing cheer. He told the people that the gas would be relighted as soon as possible, and entreated the people to keep their seats. "He kept speaking for about fifteen minutes, when the gas was re-lit, and all danger past. The thought of what would have happened had not Mr Bradlaugh been there gives one an uncomfortable sensation. A panic under such circumstances would have been terrible, but the way the people responded to the desire of Mr Bradlaugh to keep their seats, and to keep quiet until all was put right, was extraordinary." Not less extraordinary was the explanation suggested by the Observer. Said the veracious chronicler of this high-class Sunday paper: "This contretemps created a good deal of speculation, and the general opinion was that the Committee and the proprietors had been unable to come to terms, and that the latter, in order to secure their money, turned out the gas." From this it would seem that to jeopardise the lives of thousands of people[141] (without counting certain damage to the building) would have been a mere trifle to the proprietors compared with the possible loss of a few pounds. It must have been quite a shock to the originators of so diabolical an idea to learn that the accident was an accident pure and simple, and due to a matter so ordinary and commonplace as a defect in the water meter which supplied the gas to the hall.

The St James's Hall meeting was immediately followed by forty-eight others, and in every case the size of the meeting was restricted only by the capacity of the building in which it was held. It may be asked, but what was the outcome of all these meetings, what was their practical value? In 1873 Mr Bradlaugh gave the answer to this in the pages of his Autobiography. "They exercised," he said, "some little effect on the public opinion of this country, but unfortunately the collapse on the part of France was so complete, and the resources commanded by Bismarck and Moltke so vast, that, except as expressing sympathy, the results were barren."

Sympathy, however, is often very welcome; his efforts to help the cause of Peace were warmly received in France, and without any previous communication having passed between them, the Republican Government at Tours sent him the following letter:—

Leon Gambetta.Ad. Crémieux.

L. Fournichon.Al. Glais Bizoin."[142]

To this letter are appended the following lines written in September 1871 by Monsieur Emanuel Arago, Member of the Provisional Government of September 4:—

About the same time (October 1870) M. Tissot, the Chargé d' Affaires of France in England, wrote him:—