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

Only a few of the speeches in the House thus far had indicated a desire among the Tory party to make Bradlaugh the victim of their feud with the Liberals. But outside the House, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, member for Portsmouth, speaking at Christchurch, had already publicly declared his intention to oppose Bradlaugh's entry: the broaching of the oath question in legal and other journals before the assembling of Parliament having given to such politicians their cue. Over and above the purely factious motive of such men, and of the mass of the Tories, there was the motive of genuine religious malice; and the two instincts in combination wrought memorable results.

On 10th May Lord Richard Grosvenor, the Liberal Whip, announced to the House the names of the proposed members of the Select Committee whose appointment he should move next day: – Mr Whitbread, Sir J. Holker, Mr John Bright, Lord Henry Lennox, Mr W. N. Massey, Mr Staveley Hill, Sir Henry Jackson, the Attorney-General (Sir Henry James), the Solicitor-General (Mr Farrer Herschell), Sir G. Goldney, Mr Grantham, Mr Pemberton, Mr Watkin Williams, Mr Spencer H. Walpole, Mr Hopwood, Mr Beresford Hope, Major Nolan, Mr Chaplin, and Mr Serjeant Simon. Although the motion was not to come on till next day, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff sought, in despite of the Speaker's opposition, to raise at once a debate on the legitimacy of the Committee; and on the following day he was able to do so. He moved "the previous question," and pronounced the course taken "inconvenient, unprecedented, and irregular," although it had been agreed to by his nominal leader; thus beginning the tactic of independent action which served to mark him off with three colleagues,125 as constituting a "fourth party" in the House, the other three being the main bodies of Liberals and Tories, and the Irish Home Rulers. The debate, once begun, was carried on with great violence and recklessness, Mr Stanley Leighton alleging that Bradlaugh had been pressed on the Northampton constituency by the Liberal "whip," prompted by Mr Gladstone; and Sir R. Knightley affirming that the election had been determined by the interference of Mr Samuel Morley. A member known as F. H. O'Donnel, but originally named Macdonald, an Irish Catholic, asserted that Bradlaugh had "explained religion as a disease of the brain, and conscience as a nervous contraction of the diaphragm." After more random discussion the House divided, when there voted for the appointment of the Committee 171, against it, 74, giving a majority of 97 to the Government. Most of the Conservative leaders walked out of the House before the division, thus already showing a disposition to surrender to the irresponsibles on their side.126

Already, too, there began to be apparent what can now no longer be disputed – the mismanagement of the Speaker. Only bad judgment or partiality could account for his permission of such gross irrelevance as filled the speeches of Mr Leighton and Mr F. H. O'Donnel, alias Macdonald. On the language of the latter now forgotten personage Mr Bradlaugh thus commented in the National Reformer: —

"I remember, fourteen or fifteen years ago, when the countrymen of that member's constituents came to me for help and counsel. The honourable member professes to now represent those Irishmen who then sought and had my aid; and on Tuesday he in effect told the House that it ought to exclude from it one who did not believe in God, and had no standard of morality. But I see from the division list that the 'third party,' of which he pretended to be the spokesman at the election of the Speaker, went into the lobby opposed to that into which their leader went, so that the really Irish members did not forget old ties."

Unfortunately the latter tribute was not long to be deserved.

On 20th May the Select Committee presented its report. There had been eight members in favour of the view that Bradlaugh was legally entitled to affirm, and eight against; and the casting vote of the chairman, Mr Spencer H. Walpole, was given for the Noes. It was said, and it was believed by Mr Bradlaugh, that Sir John Holker had avowed a belief that his claim was valid, but Sir John Holker on the Committee voted with his party. Save for the fact that the Noes included Mr Hopwood, the vote would stand as a purely party one, the rest of the Noes being Conservatives, while the rest of the Liberals took the affirmative side. And so general was the attitude of reckless prejudice that we still find the Chairman's son giving a flatly misleading account of the situation. Mr Spencer Walpole, in his work on "The Electorate and the Legislature"127 published in 1881, and re-issued in 1892, has made (p. 75) this statement (italics ours): —

"In 1880 … the legislature was suddenly confronted with a new dilemma. The borough of Northampton sent a representative to Parliament who refused to take an oath– not because he had any conscientious objection to be sworn, but because an appeal to a God – in whom he had no belief – seemed to him an idle formula which was not binding on his conscience."

Since Mr Walpole has chosen to print and reprint this maliciously untrue statement, and takes no notice whatever of published protests against it, I am obliged to say in so many words that he, a professed historian, is here grossly perverting history. Much might indeed be set down to his carelessness. Issuing in 1892 the second edition of what should be an authoritative treatise, Mr Walpole inserts (p. 77) a passage as to Parliamentary affirmation which is completely quashed by the passing of Mr Bradlaugh's Affirmation Act of 1888. Of this Act, in 1892, Mr Walpole does not seem to have any knowledge; but however he may contrive to overlook such a fact as this, he cannot have been unaware in 1880 that Mr Bradlaugh did not refuse to take the oath, and that he repudiated the expression that the oath would not be binding on his conscience,128 repeatedly declaring that any promise he made would as such be binding on his conscience, whether or not an idle formula should be appended to it. Bradlaugh's position on this point was always explicit; for him a promise, however embellished, was a promise which as an honourable man he was bound to keep. By the majority of the British House of Commons it is still implicitly ruled that a certain promise would not necessarily be binding on the consciences of Christian members unless accompanied by the popular imprecation "So help me God."

The decision of the first Select Committee, on the casting vote of the chairman, at once carried the question to a new phase. Bradlaugh immediately published a statement129 of his position as to the oath, the taking of which he now held to be forced upon him by the refusal of the right to affirm.

It ran: —

"When elected as one of the Burgesses to represent Northampton in the House of Commons, I believed that I had the legal right to make affirmation of allegiance in lieu of taking the oath, as provided by sec. 4 of the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866. While I considered that I had this legal right, it was then clearly my moral duty to make the affirmation. The oath, although to me including words of idle and meaningless character, was and is regarded by a large number of my fellow-countrymen as an appeal to Deity to take cognizance of their swearing. It would have been an act of hypocrisy to voluntarily take this form if any other had been open to me, or to take it without protest, as though it meant in my mouth any such appeal. I therefore quietly and privately notified the Clerk of the House of my desire to affirm. His view of the law and practice differing from my own, and no similar case having theretofore arisen, it became necessary that I should tender myself to affirm in a more formal manner, and this I did at a season deemed convenient by those in charge of the business of the House. In tendering my affirmation I was careful, when called on by the Speaker to state my objection, to do nothing more than put, in the fewest possible words, my contention that the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, gave the right to affirm in Parliament to every person for the time being by law permitted to make an affirmation in lieu of taking an oath, and that I was such a person, and therefore claimed to affirm. The Speaker, neither refusing nor accepting my affirmation, referred the matter to the House, which appointed a Select Committee to report whether persons entitled to affirm under the Evidence Amendment Acts, 1869 and 1870, were under sec. 4 of the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, also entitled to affirm as Members of Parliament. This Committee, by the casting vote of its Chairman, has decided that I am not entitled to affirm. Two courses are open to me – one, of appeal to the House against the decision of the Committee; the other, of present compliance with the ceremony, while doing my best to prevent the further maintenance of a form which many other members of the House think as objectionable as I do, but which habit and the fear of exciting prejudice has induced them to submit to. To appeal to the House against the decision of the Committee would be ungracious, and would certainly involve great delay of public business. I was present at the deliberations of the Committee, and while, naturally, I cannot be expected to bow submissively to the statements and arguments of my opponents, I am bound to say that they were calmly and fairly urged. I think them unreasonable, but the fact that they included a legal argument from an earnest Liberal deprives them even of a purely party character. If I appealed to the House against the Committee, I, of course, might rely on the fact that the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, Sir Henry Jackson, Q.C., Mr Watkin Williams, Q.C., and Mr Sergeant Simon, are reported in the Times to have interpreted the law as I do; and I might add that the Right Honourable John Bright and Mr Whitbread are in the same journal arrayed in favour of allowing me to affirm. But even then the decision of the House may endorse that of the Committee, and should it be in my favour, it could only – judging from what has already taken place – be after a bitter party debate, in which the Government specially, and the Liberals generally, would be sought to be burdened with my anti-theological views, and with promoting my return to Parliament. As a matter of fact, the Liberals of England have never in any way promoted my return to Parliament. The much-attacked action of Mr Adam had relation only to the second seat, and in no way related to the one for which I was fighting. In 1868 the only action of Mr Gladstone and of Mr Bright was to write letters in favour of my competitors, and since 1868 I do not believe that either of these gentlemen has directly or indirectly interfered in any way in connection with my parliamentary candidature. The majority of the electors of Northampton had determined to return me before the recent union in that borough, and while pleased to aid their fellow-Liberals in winning the two seats, my constituents would have at any rate returned me had no union taken place. My duty to my constituents is to fulfil the mandate they have given me, and if to do this I have to submit to a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have reverently made, so much the worse for those who force me to repeat words which I have scores of times declared are to me sounds conveying no clear and definite meaning. I am sorry for the earnest believers who see words sacred to them used as a meaningless addendum to a promise, but I cannot permit their less sincere co-religionists to use an idle form, in order to prevent me from doing my duty to those who have chosen me to speak for them in Parliament. I shall, taking the oath, regard myself as bound not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it. So soon as I am able I shall take such steps as may be consistent with parliamentary business to put an end to the present doubtful and unfortunate state of the law and practice on oaths and affirmations. Only four cases have arisen of refusal to take the oath, except, of course, those cases purely political in their character. Two of those cases are those of the Quakers John Archdale and Joseph Pease. The religion of these men forbade them to swear at all, and they nobly refused. The sect to which they belonged was outlawed, insulted, and imprisoned. They were firm, and one of that sect sat on the very Committee, a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council and a member of the actual Cabinet. I thank him gratefully that, valuing right so highly, he cast his vote so nobly for one for whom I am afraid he has but scant sympathy. No such religious scruple prevents me from taking the oath as prevented John Archdale and Joseph Pease. In the cases of the Baron Rothschild and Alderman Salomons the words 'upon the true faith of Christian' were the obstacle. To-day the oath contains no such words. The Committee report that I may not affirm, and, protesting against a decision which seems to me alike against the letter of the law and the spirit of modern legislation, I comply with the forms of the House."

As might have been expected, this decision to take the oath evoked fresh outcry, and this time some Freethinkers joined. The most injurious attack of this kind came from Mr George Jacob Holyoake, who had long been on strained terms with Bradlaugh, and avowedly regarded him with disfavour as a too militant Atheist. Before the assembling of Parliament Mr Holyoake, in answer to a correspondent who asked him whether Mr Bradlaugh would take the oath, had written to the effect that Mr Bradlaugh had taken the oath scores of times before, and would doubtless do so now. This remark had reference to a long-standing dispute as to the propriety of oath-taking by a Freethinker under any circumstances. Before the reform of the law which permitted unbelievers to affirm, Mr Bradlaugh had without hesitation taken the oath in courts of law, holding the forced formality a much smaller matter than the evil of a miscarriage of justice. Mr Holyoake condemned all such oath-taking; but it was pointed out that while he was in business partnership with his brother Austin, the latter, a highly esteemed Freethinker, had taken the oath wherever it was necessary for the purposes of the business. This, of course, would not altogether set aside Mr G. J. Holyoake's argument, if put forward only as a statement of his own position; but he was not content with that. After avowing his expectation that Bradlaugh would take the oath, he expressed surprise and reprobation when Bradlaugh proposed to do so. Needless to say, such a deliverance was eagerly welcomed by Bradlaugh's enemies, and zealously used against him; as it was when repeated by Mr Holyoake in the following year, with expressions about Freethinkers being made to hang their heads for shame by the action of their nominal leader. Were there not reason to presume that Mr Holyoake would not now repeat or defend his former language, it might be fitting to endorse here some of the very emphatic comments made on it at the time by Mrs Besant and others. It may suffice to say, however, that Mr Holyoake had never before taken such an attitude against Freethinkers who took the oath; that he had once himself expressed readiness to take it in court if it were regarded as a civil act, and not as a confession of faith (exactly Bradlaugh's case); and that he later seemed to other Freethinkers to quash once for all his own case by justifying quite gratuitous acts of conformity and co-operation with churches whose teaching he held to be false. The common sense of nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand Freethinkers, including attached friends of Mr Holyoake, decided that such an act of enforced ceremonial as official oath-taking by an avowed Atheist surrenders no jot of principle or self-respect, particularly when the Atheist is openly striving for the abolition of all such compulsions. Of all Freethinkers who have taken oaths in England, Bradlaugh was the very least open to the charge of temporising; and the expressions used by Mr Holyoake at different times in this connection as to "apostolic" conduct have been, to say the least, unfortunate as coming from a professed Freethinker, not usually acquiescent in orthodox phraseology.

§ 4

The document above quoted, announcing Bradlaugh's intentions, was dated 20th May, the date of the Committee's report. On the following day Bradlaugh went to the House to take the oath and his seat. Immediately on his presenting himself, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff rose and objected to the oath being administered, whereupon Mr Dillwyn protested against the interruption. The Speaker now made the fatal mistake of allowing the interruption to be carried out. It is established by the highest possible authority – that of the present Speaker – that the holder of the Chair as such had and has no right to permit any such intervention between an elected member and the statutory oath. Sir Henry Brand, intimidated by the action of men like Wolff, weakly stated that he "was bound to say he knew of no instance" in which such an intervention had taken place; but "at the same time" he would allow Wolff so to intervene. That personage then made a speech, resting on the two arguments that Atheists who had made affirmation in the law courts thereby admitted that an oath "would not be binding on their conscience," and that Bradlaugh had further, in his "Impeachment of the House of Brunswick," affirmed that Parliament "has the undoubted right to withhold the Crown from Albert Edward Prince of Wales." The hon. baronet "could not see how a gentleman professing the views set forth in that work could take the oath of allegiance." It was in the course of this speech that the hon. baronet was understood by all his auditors to say, of the sects permitted by law to affirm, that they "had a common standard of morality, a conscience, and a general belief in some divinity or other."130

The Tory case against Bradlaugh's admission to Parliament was thus at the outset a combination of a moral subterfuge and a notorious political fallacy. All concerned knew perfectly well that the oath was habitually taken by men to whom the adjuration was an idle form, and that their consciences could only be "bound" by the simple promise. It had further been ruled by the highest judicial authority, in the cases of Miller v. Salomons, and the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway Company v. Heaton, that the essence of the oath consisted in the promise, and not in the words of imprecation. Yet further, Wolff had before him, and in his speech quoted from, the statement above cited, in which Bradlaugh expressly declared that he held himself bound, in taking the oath, "not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it." These words he suppressed. On the other hand, as regards the point of allegiance, he was negating the whole established doctrine of the British constitution. It is a commonplace of that doctrine that Parliament can repeal, as Parliament passed, the Act of Settlement. The contrary is now maintained by nobody, and was not really maintained even by Burke, in his furious feint of disputing the constitutional principle in his "Reflections." As the law stands, any member of Parliament is entitled to move constitutionally for the abolition of the Monarchy. The oath, framed though it be for the dynasty, and not for the State, promises allegiance to the sovereign as by the law established. If the law in future quashes sovereignty, there will be no sovereign to whom to bear legal allegiance.131

But such protests as those of Wolff were perfectly fitted to serve the turn of the Tory party in a campaign of faction. The cue of shocked piety and the cue of "loyalty" came alike easily to the representatives of the feudal and the capitalistic interests; and the "bag-baron" and the "crag-baron" vied with each other in the display of sham godliness and sincere zeal for the Throne. Never was there such a reek of cant in St. Stephen's before. All the English gift for hypocrisy, unrivalled in Europe, was brought to bear on the task. Alderman Fowler, a fitting exponent of the cult of Mammon in His sacred city, followed up Wolff with a petition emanating from bankers and merchants, all praying with one consent that an unbeliever in their gods should not be allowed to sit at Westminster. The honour of God was avowedly the one concern of the Alderman and of the men, so many of them gross with fortuitous gain, who made him their mouthpiece. And those strategists who knew the imperfect efficacy of bogus religion as a means of keeping an Atheist member out of his seat, took care to supply the additional weapons needed.

Mr Gladstone met Sir Henry Wolff's motion with a counter motion for the appointment of a fresh select committee to consider Bradlaugh's competence to take the oath – a sufficiently unwise course, in view of the action of the previous committee. At once, however, the official Tories gave their full support to Wolff's motion, declaring that the matter should not even go to a committee. Mr Gibson, formerly Attorney-General for Ireland, argued that Bradlaugh had deserved all that befell him for raising the question. "The hon. member might have taken his seat without opposition, but he had chosen to obtrude himself on the House and the country. He must therefore accept the grave responsibility of thus thrusting his opinions on the House." Observe the situation. Bradlaugh had acted not only as a scrupulous man in his place was bound to do, but as a man careful of other men's susceptibilities would do. Had he simply taken the oath, he would certainly have been yelled at as a hypocrite, and further as a blasphemer. The point had been publicly discussed in the press beforehand, and his enemies were prepared. Trying to avoid at once inconsistency and scandal, he quietly and circumspectly sought to make affirmation. The right to affirm was denied him in committee by the champions of the oath, joined by one conscientious Liberal. When he then came to take the compelled oath, these men and their fellows assailed him as one who "obtruded his opinions"; and Mr Gibson, their spokesman, proceeded to allege in so many words that the member for Northampton had "walked up the floor of the House with that oath and Book before him and declined to take the oath." It was a falsehood; and Mr Gibson himself had just before, in the same speech, admitted that Bradlaugh had "claimed for himself, in careful and guarded language, the right to make an affirmation."

There are many points in the story of this struggle at which it is hardly possible to abstain from imputing wilful falsehood to some of the actors. But on this point it seems right to conclude that one or other form of prejudice or passion made men all round incapable of realising when and how they grossly perverted a simple fact. It was not merely the factious Tories who repeated the mis-statement, though they naturally used it most industriously. Mr Chaplin, M.P., was reported in two newspapers as having asserted that at a public meeting on 1st June "Mr Bradlaugh announced his intention of refusing the oath, and asked that he might affirm instead." Mr Chaplin, at the time of speaking, was a member of the second select committee appointed to sit on the oath question, and Bradlaugh indignantly protested to the Chairman, who was again Mr Spencer Walpole. Mr Chaplin, after some fencing, declared that the report was inaccurate. Baron Henry de Worms, another of the champions of Omnipotence, publicly averred132 that "he was in the House when Mr Bradlaugh came to the Speaker and said he could not and would not take an oath which in no way bound him, as he did not acknowledge any God." Challenged as to this statement, Baron Henry de Worms avowed that the words from "which" onwards were his own comment, but could not see anything unwarrantable in the previous statement as to the facts. Such were the notions of truth and honour among English – and other – oath-taking gentlemen and noblemen with which Bradlaugh had to contend. And he was only in part supported by the remarks of Mr John Morley in the Fortnightly Review for July 1880: —

"There is no precedent for Mr Bradlaugh's case, for the simple reason that there is no precedent for the frank courage with which he has considered it desirable to publish his views as to the nature of an oath. That the oath is just as meaningless, so far as its divine appeal is concerned, to many past and present members of the House of Commons as Mr Bradlaugh protested it would be to him, no one doubts. Whether and how far he was justified in asking to be sworn, after he had declined to be sworn, is a different question. Whatever the answer to that may be, it cannot at least be said that the course adopted by Mr Bradlaugh involved the surrender of any principle."