But there were more to rejoice over his defeat than to sorrow for it. The Rev. Thomas Arnold, addressing an audience of Northampton men, said, regardless of his own blasphemy, that they had shown that "they would not be servants of the man who trampled on their God and their Saviour;" and the Rev. A. Mursell, who a few years later found more kindly things to say of my father, speaking at Dundee, "thanked God that Mr Bradlaugh had been so signally defeated."
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
SOUTHWARK ELECTION, 1869.
About a year after the General Election the appointment of Mr Layard as ambassador at Madrid created a vacancy at Southwark, and a number of working men electors immediately asked Mr Bradlaugh to become a candidate for that borough. Meetings were summoned for the purpose of proposing his name, and a committee was formed with a view of promoting his election, and a very active committee it proved to be. At a crowded meeting, convened by forty of the "chiefs of the Liberal Party," held in the middle of November, six names of possible representatives were brought forward—Mr Milner Gibson, Sir Francis Lycett, Sir Sydney Waterlow, Sir John Thwaites, and Mr Odger. The "forty chiefs" did not propose Mr Bradlaugh, whose name was however received with great cheering, when it was proposed by way of amendment by Mr Hearn, a Southwark Radical. A week later a meeting was held to decide upon a candidate to be supported by the working-class electors of the borough, and this meeting both Mr Odger and Mr Bradlaugh were invited to attend. The room engaged for the purpose was soon full to overflowing, and at length the speakers adjourned to the balcony in front of the house and addressed the crowd of three thousand people congregated in the road below. Mr Odger was unable to come, and after Mr Bradlaugh had addressed the meeting a resolution in his favour was passed by "an overwhelming majority."[125] He said that although he was there at the earnest invitation of several working men, he was not to be regarded as a candidate until he had issued his address. If Mr Odger came definitely before the constituency and was pledged to go to the poll, he should not contest the borough himself. He wished to see Mr George Odger in Parliament, and he believed that he would be an admirable representative.
Apart from any question of Mr Odger's possible candidature, my father had another reason for hesitating before incurring such heavy expenses as the contest of Southwark would entail: the Northampton election, in spite of the long subscription lists made up from slender purses, had left him heavily burdened with debt. In August (1869) he wrote that he had still £250 of borrowed money to repay; by November this had become reduced, though even then there was still £100 "due to a friend at Norwich, and £20 to another friend in Huddersfield." A debt of £120 will seem a mere bagatelle to a rich man, who will pay more for a handsome dog that takes his fancy, and ten times as much for a thoroughbred horse; to a poor man, however, a debt of £120 is a millstone. And for that matter, if this debt had been the only one, my father would soon have repaid it, but he was hampered on all sides. Being so encumbered, he naturally felt bound "to exercise extra caution in contracting further liabilities for election purposes, especially as the large portion of the funds for such a struggle would probably be provided by my working friends throughout the United Kingdom, whose subscriptions I have no right to take except with the certainty of fighting a creditable if not a successful fight."
However, at the end of November all hesitation on my father's part was brought to an end by the receipt of the following letter from Mr Odger:—
"Dear Mr Bradlaugh,—I have decided on going to the poll. I shall see the Southwark Committee this evening (November 29th), and make the declaration to-morrow.