The True Story of My Parliamentary Struggle

by Charles Bradlaugh

To the Right Hon. Sir Stafford H. Northcote, M.P., G.C.B.

Sir,—If, on either of the occasions when recently moving against me in the House of Commons, you had accorded or claimed for me opportunity of speech in self-defence, I might have been spared the need for this letter.

Apparently your view is that a member unfortunate enough to have the majority of the House against him need not have even the semblance of fairness shown him—that you, being strong, need not be troubled with scruples, and that the mere fact that the member is, like yourself, the chosen member of a constituency does not entitle him to the smallest courtesy or consideration.

You have taught me, Sir, many lessons during the past four years. Some of these I trust to remember and profit by in the future. You have taught me that a temporary majority of the House may, year after year, exclude any member of Parliament from his seat, although he has strictly obeyed every Standing Order—and this without vacating that seat—that it may so exclude the member although he has been a decent and orderly member of the House, attending regularly for months to all its duties, and one against whom no charge or pretence of Parliamentary misconduct was made whilst he so served in it.

You have taught me, Sir, that the leader of a great party may sit silent, and acquiesce in it by his support, while the law-abiding electors of a great constituency are called “mob,” “dregs,” and “scum”—that such a leader may permit his followers to openly accuse two of the highest judges of our country of having judicially decided unfairly from corrupt party motives—that he may even, without dishonor, keep silence whilst it is suggested that the whole judicial bench is so corrupt that it will be ready to decide unjustly at the bidding of a government—and that the first law officer of the Crown is ready to be fraudulently collusive with myself. Did you believe these things, Sir, when they were stated and loudly cheered by those who sit around you on your side of the House? If yes, I am glad that your experience of humanity has been less fortunate than my own. I have regarded our judges as at least striving to be just and independent. You seem to think it nothing that the highest judges should, in your presence, be charged with judging unjustly from favoritism for the government of the day.

You have encouraged and practised deliberate violation of the law, and, to cover this law-breaking, you have connived at, and been party to, the basest insinuations against those whose duty it is to judicially pronounce on matters of legal dispute. You have, without rebuke, permitted your followers to declare that if the High Court of Judicature declared the law to be in my favor, that then they and you still intended to defy and disobey the law.

The first resolution you moved against me, on the 11th February, was worse than futile, for it forbade me to do that which I had already done, and which you well knew that I had so done, in order to compel the submission to the judgment of a competent tribunal of the legality of my act.

The ridiculous form of your resolution arose because you—having bargained with me in writing through Mr. Winn that I should come to the table immediately after questions, and not before—intended to interpose ere I could reach the table. This would have been a dishonest trick had you succeeded; it became contemptibly ridiculous when you failed; but it is a lesson to me that I must be careful, indeed, when English gentlemen of name and family make treaties with me.

Your second resolution, on February 11th, was a spiteful, paltry, and cowardly insult to myself and to my constituents, for it was pressed by you despite that my colleague offered for me the express undertaking that you pretended you wished to secure, and was still pressed by you though Mr. Burt offered for me that I would at once personally give such undertaking. These two resolutions, utterly illegal and dangerous to Parliamentary repute, you have renewed on Thursday, the 21st, although you had heard read by Mr. Speaker an undertaking from me to the House that I would not attempt to take my seat until the judicial interpreters of the law had given formal judgment. And they are very cowardly and inexcusable resolutions, spiteful in excess of any ever passed in previous years. They exclude me, not only from the House, but from the reading-room, library, tea-room, dining-rooms, and exterior lobbies, though there is not the faintest suggestion that I have used my right to go to those places to enable me to disturb the House. If I had not taken the precaution to anticipate your malice, I should actually have been hindered by force from going to the proper officer to obtain the certificate of my return. Yours is a mean and spiteful act, Sir, unworthy an English gentleman. And I admit that you have inconvenienced me, for you have deprived me of access to the library of the House, and you may thus put me to some expense and annoyance in the procurement of law books and Parliamentary records in the litigation in which I am involved in defending the rights of my constituents.

It is too much that, in 1884, a duly-elected and properly-qualified burgess of Parliament should be shut outside by such votes.