Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)

"The arrest of Mr Truelove was regarded as an attack upon the liberty of the press – an attempt to restrict the right of public discussion. So regarding it, a number of gentlemen, prominently identified with advanced opinions, formed what was called a 'Truelove Defence Fund.' Mr Bradlaugh, who was among the first to volunteer assistance, was appointed secretary of the committee; the late James Watson accepted the office of treasurer; and contributions and other help were received from John Stuart Mill, W. Cunningham, M.P., Dr Epps, Arthur Trevelyan, Professor F. W. Newman, W. J. Fox, M.P., Jos. Cowen, junr., Abel Heywood, P. A. Taylor, Harriet Martineau, etc. Six months after Mr Truelove had been arrested, the whole affair came to a most 'lame and impotent' conclusion. It was at the instance of Sir Richard Bethel, Attorney-General under Lord Palmerston, and probably at the instigation of the Government of Louis Napoleon, whom the pamphlet was alleged to have libelled, that the prosecution was commenced. The case was withdrawn by Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Attorney-General under the Government of Lord Derby, on the understanding that Mr Truelove would sell no more of the pamphlets. Down to the evening preceding the day fixed for the trial, Mr Truelove, though he had doubts as to the result, fully expected that the matter would be fought out. On that evening, however, when it was too late to instruct other counsel, Mr Truelove was informed that the counsel already retained for the defence announced that the affair would have to be compromised. So it came to pass that Chief Justice Campbell, six months after the prosecution had been instituted, dismissed Mr Truelove with many words of caution. It need not be said that Mr Bradlaugh was as much disgusted with this termination of the case as Mr Truelove himself. The secret of the collapse, I think, was this: – Edwin James, who was retained for the defence, and who had political ambitions which were never fully realised on account of misdeeds which compelled him to retire from public life and from his own country, practically sold his client in order that the Government might be relieved from a distasteful and unpleasant position."

CHAPTER IX

EARLY LECTURES AND DEBATES

I do not know at what date or at what place my father delivered his first provincial lectures, but the earliest of which I can find any record occurred in January 1858, when on the 10th of that month he delivered two lectures at Manchester, a town in which, as we shall see later on, he was not altogether unknown, although in a totally different capacity. In reading the little there is to read about these early lecturing days I have been impressed with the fact that while in London his lectures were favourably received, and he was evidently gaining goodwill as he went from one hall to another, in the country he seems to have touched the hearts and the feelings of his audiences for or against him wherever he went. At these first Manchester lectures the reporter writes: "His manly, earnest, and fearless style of advocacy were much admired, and evidently produced a deep impression. Everybody who heard him wished to hear him again." In the April following he lectured in Sheffield, and from that time forward his visits to the provinces were very frequent. Sheffield almost adopted him, and he went there again and again; in 1858 and 1859 he went also to Newcastle, Sunderland, Bradford, Northampton, Doncaster, Accrington, Blackburn, Halifax, Bolton, and other towns, leaving a trail of excitement in his wake wherever he went. The descriptions of his personal appearance and the comments on his lectures at this time are more or less amusing. The first I will note here shall be one from his own pen, written to Mr Alfred Jackson in 1858, on the occasion of his earliest visit to Sheffield. He says: "You ask me to tell you how you may know me. I am 6 ft. 1 in. in height, about twenty-five years of age, dress in dark clothing, am of fair complexion, with only the ghost of a prospective whisker."

In a brief account of his Sheffield lectures that year my father says that when he reached the Temperance Hall a copy of the Sheffield Independent was put into his hands, in which the Rev. Brewin Grant announced his intention to take no notice of him. But Mr Grant proved to be of a rather fickle temper, for on the morning following this first lecture "a small bill was printed and industriously circulated, entitled 'Iconoclast clasted,' being a challenge to myself from this very Brewin Grant who had previously determined not to notice me." On the first night Mr Bradlaugh had "a perfect crowd of opponents;" on the second he found that fresh troops had been levied against him. These "were led to the fray by the Rev. Eustace Giles (a stout Dissenting minister with a huge black bag). After the lecture this gentleman rose to reply, and commenced by extracting from his bag three huge volumes of Van der Hooght's Hebrew Bible, which he declared was the original Word of God, and which he requested me to read aloud to the audience. I complied by reading and translating a verse, to each word of which Mr Giles and his coadjutors nodded approval."

Going to Newcastle in September, my father found that the description of his personal appearance had so preceded him that the gentleman who met him, Mr Mills, came "straight to me on the platform as though we were old acquaintances instead of meeting for the first time." In Newcastle he lectured twice in the Nelson Street Lecture Hall (which has quite recently, I believe, been turned into a market), and was fairly, if briefly, reported by the Newcastle Daily Chronicle. While in the town he took the opportunity of listening to a lecture delivered by "J. Cowen, jun.," as Mr Joseph Cowen was then styled.

From Newcastle he went to Sunderland, where a person who came from the Rev. Mr Rees, a clergyman of that place, brought him a parody of the Church service entitled "The Secularist's Catechism," which was intended as some far-reaching and scathing sarcasm on the Secularist's "creed," but which is really as pretty a piece of blasphemy as ever issued from the pen of a Christian minister. Mr Bradlaugh tells how the person who brought it "gave it to me in a fearful manner, keeping as far away from me as possible, and evidently regarding me as a dangerous animal; he backed towards the room door after putting the paper in my hand, and seemed relieved in mind that I had not in some manner personally assaulted him."

On his next visit to Sheffield, where he was announced to deliver three lectures on three successive evenings, the walls were covered with bills advising the people to keep away, and the clergy in church and chapel publicly warned their congregations against attending the lectures. In spite of all these precautions (or was it because of them?) the lectures were a decided success, the audiences increasing with each evening, until on the last evening "the large Temperance Hall was full in every part, the applause was unanimous, and not one opponent appeared." The visit of "Iconoclast" to Bradford produced a great flutter in the clerical society of that town; and after he left we hear that "almost every missionary and clerical speaker opened fire upon him," and one sensitive gentleman wrote to the Bradford Observer expressing his grief that the Teetotal Hall should be "prostituted" by being let to the Freethought lecturer.

In his Autobiography my father himself puts the date of his first lecturing visit to Northampton as the year 1857, and this year is again given in the little book issued as a souvenir of the unveiling of the statue of their late member by the Northampton Radical Association in June 1894; but I am inclined to think that this is a mistake, that my father's memory misled him a little, and, that he put the date a few months too early. In any case, although I have made diligent inquiry, the first lectures of which I can find any note took place on Sunday and Monday, January 30th and 31st, 1859, in the large room of the Woolpack Inn, Kingswell Street. On the Monday evening the chair was taken by the late Mr Joseph Gurney, J.P., who, in company with his old friend Mr Shipman, had already heard Mr Bradlaugh lecture at the John Street Institution in London, and had been much impressed by the ability and earnest eloquence of the young speaker. The people crowded the street outside the Woolpack Inn for some time before the doors of the lecture-room were open, and the room was packed in a few moments. I wonder how many times after that did Mr Gurney preside at densely packed meetings for Mr Bradlaugh! Mr Gurney himself subsequently attained all the municipal honours Northampton could bestow upon her deserving townsman, nominated Charles Bradlaugh seven out of eight times that he contested the borough, and only did not nominate him on the eighth occasion because his position as chief magistrate prevented him.

In the following March it was arranged that my father should lecture in the Guildhall, at Doncaster. Doncaster, with its reputation as a race town, was also in those days the abode of the "unco' guid." Some of the inhabitants appear to have been much put out at the proposed lecture, and certain "Friends of Religion," as they called themselves, issued a "Caution to the public, especially the religious portion," in which they, the "People of Doncaster," are entreated to give "Iconoclast the extacy (sic) of gazing on the unpeopled interior of the Guildhall." The "Friends of Religion" prefaced their entreaty by announcing that "the juvenile destroyer of images" had been engaged as a "grand speculation!" Presumably this "Caution" resulted in a famous advertisement, for the Doncaster Herald says that the Guildhall was "crowded to excess," and in writing his account of the lecture, which he says was a "frantic panegyric in honour of hell and a blasphemous denunciation of heaven," the reporter to this journal seems to have worked himself up into a fine frenzy. One can almost see him with his tossed-back hair, his rolling eyes and gnashing teeth, as he hurled these dynamitic words at the readers of the Herald: —

"There boldly, defiantly, recklessly – with the air of the dreadnought bravo or the Alpine bandit – stood the creator's work [elsewhere styled 'clayformed ingrate'] toiling, sweating, labouring strenuously, to heap slander upon his creator, and to convert into odious lies the book by which that creator has made himself known to the world!.. Need we go further to express our more than disgust – our horror – at the fact of a young and accomplished man standing forth in crowded halls, and, while the beauteous moon marches aloft in the vast and indefinable firmament, and the myriad of silvery stars shoot their refulgent rays upon the desecrated lecture-room, actually telling the people that no God lives! no Supreme hand fretted the brave o'erhanging firmament with golden fire – no Jehovah made the wide carpet of fair nature bespangled with laughing flowers – no God made roaring seas and mighty rivers – no God revealed the Bible – no God made man!"

One really needs to draw breath after all that: the lecture-room lighted by star rays, the firmament fretted with golden fire, the laughing flowers and roaring seas, must surely have carried conviction. The Doncaster Chronicle, if more prosaic, is not the less hostile. Its report thus describes the lecturer: —

"He is a tall, beardless, whiskerless young man, with a pale face, and has rather a harmless and prepossessing appearance" – [compare the Herald's 'Alpine bandit!'] – "certainly not the fierce individual we had previously imagined him to be from the elements of destruction indicated in his name – 'the image breaker!' He is a person possessing great fluency of speech, of ready wit, and the declamatory style of his oratory is well calculated to excite and carry away a popular audience."

And the Chronicle, in a vain endeavour to outvie its colleague in choice epithets, winds up by styling the arguments of Atheists as "the miserable sophistry of these 'filthy dreamers,'" the delicate wording of which phrase would be hard for even a "coarse" Atheist to match, and urges that "for the sake of the youth of our town, the municipal authorities will not again lend the Guildhall for such an object." In Sheffield Mr Bradlaugh was rapidly growing in popularity; lecturing there again immediately after his Doncaster lecture, he had an audience of 2000 persons to hear his address on "Has Man a Soul?"

Later in the year he was again in Doncaster, and this time the "Friends of Religion" had succeeded so far in their endeavours that the Granby Music Hall was refused, and it was rumoured that the lectures would not be permitted. A temporary platform was however erected under the roof of the Corn Market, and, in lieu of the electric light of to-day, the lecturer was made dimly visible to his audience by means of a lamp raised upon a pole. The audience was said to number about 4000, "the hollow and partly arched roof of the Corn Market served as a sounding board, and the tones of Iconoclast, whilst speaking, were distinctly heard through the surrounding streets. Although the town was in a state of considerable excitement, the meeting was on the whole very orderly." It was a beautiful evening; and when the lecture was over several hundred persons escorted "Iconoclast in a sort of triumphant procession" to his lodgings. As this was not exactly in accordance with the anticipations of the "Friends of Religion," my father was informed by the Mayor that several magistrates had protested against the use of the Corporate property (the Corn Market), which they had occupied without the express permission of the Corporation, and in consequence the lectures must be given elsewhere. Accordingly, a large open yard near the market was obtained for that night; and although no fresh announcement was made, the news rapidly spread throughout the town. At half-past seven Mr Bradlaugh began to speak from a waggon. The subject was that of the "History and Teaching of Jesus Christ," and the audience, which increased every moment until it spread into the grounds of the adjoining Corn Market, ultimately numbering between 7000 and 8000 persons, was very quiet and attentive. Missiles were thrown from a neighbouring house, and fireworks also were thrown into the midst of the assemblage; they were soon put out, but "one cracker was kept by the lecturer and placed among other Christian evidences." On returning from the meeting to his lodgings, "a large stone was thrown, which partially stunned Iconoclast, and cut his head slightly."

In April he should have lectured at Accrington, but the proprietor of the hall was a publican, and the clergy and magistrates of the town had so worked upon his fears by threatening to refuse his license at the next Sessions that he drew back from his agreement. No other room was to be obtained; and as numbers of people had come from long distances to hear my father, he got leave to address them from a showman's waggon; but when the showman – notorious for his intemperance all over the district – "found that Iconoclast approached spiritual subjects less freely than himself," he, too, retracted his permission. Not to waste his time altogether, however, Mr Bradlaugh attended a meeting of the Accrington Mutual Improvement Society, at which, as it happened, the subject of the essay for the evening was "Jesus Christ." At Bolton the Concert Hall was engaged for his lectures on the 20th and 21st September; but when Mr Bradlaugh came from London to deliver the lectures, he found the walls placarded with the announcement that the lectures would not be permitted to take place. He brought an action against the Bolton Concert Hall Company for £7 damages for breach of contract, the £7 representing the expense to which he had been put. The jury, however, after being absent a considerable time, gave a verdict for the defendants. Needless to say that the closing of the Concert Hall did not prevent Mr Bradlaugh from lecturing in Bolton. Shortly afterwards the Unitarian Chapel, Moore Lane, was obtained, and he delivered three lectures on successive evenings, instead of two, as formerly announced.

At Halifax, in this year, his lectures produced the usual excitement. The town missionary rushed into verse upon the subject of "Iconoclast and the Devil," and issued his polite reflections in the form of a handbill. The lectures also resulted in a set debate between "Iconoclast" and the Rev. Mr. Matthias, which I shall notice later on. The story goes that at one of my father's lectures Mr Matthias was present, and wished to offer some opposition at the conclusion. His friends sought to dissuade him, and even to hold him in his seat, but the reverend gentleman was so much in earnest, and was so excited, that he shook off the restraining hands, crying, "Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me."

In Glasgow, that autumn, Mr Bradlaugh was threatened with prosecution for blasphemy, with the result that his lectures at the Eclectic Institute were better attended than they had been before. A little later the Procurator Fiscal informed him that the prosecution was in his hands, and that "in the course of law" he would have to answer for his offence in Glasgow "against the Holy Christian religion." I cannot find that the matter was carried beyond this, however, so I suppose the Glasgow pietists contented themselves with empty threats.

Although thus actively engaged in the provinces during 1858 and 1859, my father by no means neglected work in London. He lectured at various halls on theological and political subjects, and took part in more general public work. In the spring of 1858 he was elected President of the London Secular Society in the place of Mr G. J. Holyoake, and those who know anything of his unremitting labours as President of the National Secular Society will comprehend that he was no mere figure-head, or President in name only. Amongst other things, he immediately set about issuing a series of tracts for distribution, of which he himself wrote the first.

On May 16th Mr Bradlaugh spoke at the John Street Institution at the celebration of Robert Owen's 88th and last birthday, and a little thing happened then which he was always proud to recall. It was Mr Robert Cooper's custom to read Mr Owen's papers to the public for him; but on this particular evening he was himself in ill-health; and had already exhausted his strength in addressing the meeting. Mr Owen had prepared a discourse on the "Origin of Evil," which Mr Cooper commenced to read as usual; but he being unable to continue, it fell to my father's lot to take up the reading. This was the last paper of Mr Owen's read in public, and almost the last public appearance of the aged reformer, who died on the 17th of the following November.

In the provinces there was often considerable difficulty in the matter of hiring halls or in keeping the proprietor to his contract after the hall had been hired, but in London there was either less intolerance or more indifference, and the trouble arose less frequently. On one occasion, however, in March 1859, when Mr Bradlaugh was to have lectured in the Saint Martin's Hall on "Louis Napoleon," he recalls in his Autobiography that "the Government – on a remonstrance by Count Walewski as to language used at a previous meeting, at which I had presided for Dr Bernard – interfered; the hall was garrisoned by police, and the lecture prevented. Mr Hullah, the then proprietor, being indemnified by the authorities, paid damages for his breach of contract, to avoid a suit which I at once commenced against him."

In the winter of 1858 my father became editor of the Investigator, originally edited by Robert Cooper, and he was full of enthusiasm and belief in his ability to make the little paper a success. It had at that time a circulation of 1250, and he estimated that it needed twice that number to enable it to pay its printing and publishing expenses.

He commenced his conduct of the paper by a statement of his policy, and by a trenchant letter to Louis Napoleon. From the former I take the opening and concluding words as giving his first editorial utterance:24—

"We are investigators, and our policy is to ascertain facts and present them to our readers in clear and distinct language. If we find a mind bound round with Creeds and Bibles, we will select a sharp knife to cut the bonds; if we find men prostrating themselves, without inquiry, before idols, our policy is iconoclastic – we will destroy those idols. If we find a rock in our path, we will break it; but we will not quarrel with our brother who deems his proper work to be that of polishing the fragments. We believe all the religions of the world are founded on error, in the ignorance of natural causes and material conditions, and we deem it our duty to endeavour to expose their falsity. Our policy is therefore aggressive. We are, at present, of opinion that there is much to do in the mere clod-crushing sphere, in uprooting upas trees, hewing down creed-erected barriers between man and man, and generally in negating the influence of the priest. Our policy is of a humble character; we are content to be axebearers and pioneers, cutting down this obstacle and clearing away that. We respect the sower who delights in the positive work of scattering seed on the ground, but we fear that the weeds destroy much of the fruit of his labours…

"There is no middle ground between Theism and Atheism. The genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures are questions relevant to Secularism. It is as necessary for the Secularist to destroy Bible influence as for the farmer to endeavour to eradicate the chickweed from his clover field. We appeal to those who think our work fairly done to aid us in our labours; to those who will not work with us we simply say, do not hinder us.

"Our only wish and purpose is to make man happy, and this because in so doing we increase our own happiness. The secret of true happiness and wisdom lies in the consciousness that you are working to the fullest of your ability to make your fellows happy and wise. Man can never be happy until he is free; free in body and in mind; free in thought and in utterance; free from crowns and creeds, from priest, from king; free from the cramping customs created by the influences surrounding him, and which have taught him to bow to a lord and frown upon a beggar. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! That true liberty, which infringes not the freedom of my brother; that equality which recognises no noblemen but the men of noble thoughts and noble deeds; that fraternity which links the weak arm-in-arm with the strong, and, teaching humankind that union is strength, compels them to fraternise, and links them together in that true brotherhood for which we strive."

The second number of the Investigator under his editorship is interesting to-day, as containing his earliest printed views upon "Oath-taking;" the third is also notable for its paper on "Emerson," the first article from the pen of "B. V." (James Thomson); and in the fourth Mr W. E. Adams commenced his contributions. It is evident that my father spared no effort to make the paper "undoubtedly useful," as he put it; but in spite of all his energy and his able contributors the Investigator did not pay its way. In April, too, he fell ill from a very severe attack of rheumatic fever, and was laid up for many weeks; so that at length, "being unable to sustain any longer the severe pecuniary burden cast upon him, and not wishing to fill his pages with appeals for charitable assistance," the journal was, with much regret, discontinued in August 1859. In the final number he pens a few "last words," which are worth the reading, and in which he says that his reason for the discontinuance is very simple – "I am poor" – and in a rarely despondent mood he bids his readers "farewell," as he may perchance never address them again.

Delivering Freethought lectures and editing a Freethought journal undoubtedly absorbed much of Mr Bradlaugh's time, but these occupations engrossing as they were did not make him unmindful of his duties as a good citizen, and he was always taking some part or other in the political movements going on around him. At a meeting held in the Cowper Street Schoolroom in November 1858, to advocate the principles of the Political Reform League, at which the League was represented by Mr Passmore Edwards and Mr Swan, and the Chartists by Ernest Jones, Mr Bradlaugh is reported as seconding a resolution in an "earnest, lucid, and eloquent manner," and as having "enforced the duty of every man to preserve the public rights, by unitedly demanding and steadfastly, peaceably, and determinedly persevering to obtain that position of equality in the State to which they were as men entitled;" now, as always hereafter, urging the peaceful demand of constitutional rights: a point I am anxious to lay stress upon, as this is the time when some of my father's later critics assert that he was rude, coarse, and, above all, violent.