Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh

by G. W. Foote

Mr. Bradlaugh's legal exploits, if properly recorded, would fill a good-sized volume. When his life is adequately written, as it will be some day, this department will have to be entrusted to a skilled lawyer. No other person could do anything like justice to a most important part of the career of one whom the Tories used to call "that litigious man," when they were trying to ruin him in the law courts and he was only defending himself against their base attacks.

Those who had only known Mr. Bradlaugh as a platform orator had some difficulty in recognising him when they first met him in one of our "halls of justice." His whole manner was changed. He was polite, insinuating, and deferential. His attitude towards the judges was admirably calculated to conciliate their favor. I do not mean that he calculated. He had quite a superstitious veneration for judges. It was perfectly sincere and it never wavered. He would not hear a word against them. When he pleaded before them his personal sentiments ran in a line with his best interests; for although judges are above most temptations, their vanity is often sensitive, and Mr. Bradlaugh's manner was intensely flattering.

Had he followed the legal profession, Mr. Bradlaugh would have easily mounted to the top and earned a tremendous income. I have heard some of the cleverest counsel of our time, but I never heard one to be compared with him in grasp, subtlety and agility. He could examine and cross-examine with consummate dexterity. In arguing points of law he had the tenacity of a bull-dog and the keenness of a sleuth-hound. He always fortified himself with a plethora of "cases." The table in front of him groaned with a weight of law. Here as elsewhere he was "thorough." An eminent jurisprudist once remarked to me, "there is little gleaning to be done after Bradlaugh."

As a pleader before juries, however, I doubt whether he would have achieved a great success. He was too much of a born orator. He began well, but he soon forgot the limited audience of twelve, and spoke to a wider circle. This is not the way to humor juries. They like to feel their own importance, and he succeeds best who plays upon their weakness. "Remember," their looks say, "you are talking to us; the other gentlemen listen accidentally; we make you or damn you."

My first recollection of Mr. Bradlaugh in the law courts is twenty-two years old. How many survivors are there of the friends who filled that dingy old court at Westminster where he argued before a full bench of judges in 1869? He was prosecuted for note giving sureties in the sum of £400 against the appearance of blasphemy or sedition in his paper. The law was resuscitated in his single case to crush him; but he fought, as he said he would, to the bitter end, and the Gladstone Government was glad to repeal the obsolete enactments. The Crown retired from the suit with a stet processus, and Mr. Bradlaugh was left with the laurels—and his costs.

I obtained an hour or two's leave from my employment, and heard a portion of Mr. Bradlaugh's argument It gave me a new conception of his powers. That is the only impression I retain. The details have dropped out of my memory, but there remains as fresh as ever the masterful figure of Charles Bradlaugh.

The best view I ever had of Mr. Bradlaugh in litigation was in the old Court of Queen's Bench on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 19 and 20, 1881, when he cross-examined poor Mr. Newdegate. For a good deal of the time I sat beside him, and could watch him closely as well as the case. By raising the point whether the writ against him for penalties had been issued before or after he gave his vote in the House, he-was able to put all the parties to the prosecution into-the witness-box and make them give an account of themselves. Mr. Newdegate was one of the victims, and the poor man made confessions that furnished Mr. Bradlaugh with ground for a successful action against him under the law of Maintenance. Mr. Newdegate was a hard-mouthed witness, but he-was saddled, bridled, and ridden to the winning-post. His lips opened literally, making his mouth like the slit of a pillar-box. Getting evidence from him was like extracting a rotten cork from the neck of a bottle but it all came out bit by bit, and the poor man must have left the witness-box feeling that he had delivered himself into the hands of that uncircumcised Philistine. His cross-examination lasted three hours. It was like flaying alive. Once or twice I felt qualms of pity for the old man, he was such an abject figure in the hands-of that terrible antagonist. Every card he held had to-be displayed. Finally he had to produce the bond of indemnity he had given the common informer Clarke against all the expenses he might incur in the suit; When this came out Mr. Bradlaugh bent down to me and said, "I have him." And he did have him. Despite the common notion that the old law of Maintenance was obsolete, Mr. Bradlaugh pursued him under it triumphantly, and instead of ruining "Bradlaugh," poor Newdegate was nearly ruined himself.

What a contrast to Mr. Newdegate was Mr. Bradlaugh! He was the very picture of suppressed fire, of rampant energies held in leash: the nerves of the face playing like the ripple on water, the whole frame quivering, and the eyes ablaze. It was wonderful how he managed to keep his intellect alert and his judgment steady. Six hours of such work as he had in court that day were enough to tax the greatest strength. Before it was over I saw bodeful blood-rims under his eyes. It did not surprise me, on meeting him at the Cobden Workmen's Club the next evening, to learn that he had been frightfully ill. "Mr. Bradlaugh," I wrote at the time, "is a wonderfully strong man, but the Tories and the bigots are doing their best to kill him, and if this sort of thing is to continue very much longer they may succeed." Alas, they did succeed. That terrible struggle killed him. No man ever lived who could have passed through it unbroken.

Mr. Bradlaugh was clearly right on the point raised, but the jury went against him, apparently out of sheer prejudice. When he went out into Westminster Hall he was loudly cheered by a crowd of sympathisers, who, as the Times sneered, "applauded as lustily as though their champion had won." Precisely so. Their applause would have greeted him in the worst defeat. He was not a champion on whom they had "put their money." He represented their principles, and the Times forgot, if it ever knew, that men are devoted to leaders in proportion to the depth of the interests they espouse. Conviction "bears it out even to the edge of doom."

Now let me mention something that shows Mr. Bradlaugh's tact and consideration. My work on the Freethinker brought me no return. I had just read the proof of an article for Mr. Bradlaugh's paper. While we were waiting for the jury's verdict he referred to the article, and guessing my need he said, "Shall I give you the guinea now?" My answer was an expressive shrug and a motion of the eye-brows.