At a monthly delegate meeting of the Yorkshire miners in 1874 Mr Bradlaugh's name was proposed as a referee in wages questions, but a delegate objected on the ground that he was an Atheist, and so the proposition was lost. Prejudice, however, did not carry all before it, for in the next year we find Mr Bradlaugh addressing the Yorkshire miners at Wakefield, and the Cleveland miners at Saltburn in 1876. Some years later I was with him when he addressed the Lancashire miners at a place near Wigan.

When the Somerset and Dorset agricultural labourers held their fourth annual gathering at Ham Hill, near Yeovil, in 1875, Mr Bradlaugh was invited to be present. The other speakers included Mr George Mitchell—"One from the Plough"—who was indeed the chief organiser of these meetings, Mr George Potter, Mr Ball, and Sir John Bennett, who evoked considerable indignation by his allusion to a suggestion said to have been made by Dr Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, that if Mr Arch visited the labourers in his diocese he should be ducked in the horse-pond. But, above all, it was said, "the great incident of the meeting, creating the utmost excitement, was the appearance of Mr Charles Bradlaugh."[178] My father found the gathering very different from those to which he had been accustomed—gatherings of Londoners in Hyde Park, of miners in Northumberland, of Yorkshiremen, or of Lancashire factory hands; there were ten or twelve thousand persons present at Ham Hill, but until Mr George Mitchell began to speak he doubted whether many of them cared much for the serious objects of the meeting. The attention paid to Mr Mitchell's speech, however, and the applause with which it was greeted, gave a clearer indication of the real feeling which animated the labourers.

[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]

FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA.

My father had many times been asked to go to America on a lecturing tour, but it was not until 1873 that he finally consented to do so. Then indeed he went, as he frankly said, in the hope of earning a little money, for there was so much that he wanted to be doing at home that, but for the ever-increasing pressure of debt, he would not have felt able to give the time for such a purpose. He visited America three times—in three consecutive winters—but although his lecturing met with enormous success, and he won friends amongst "all sorts and conditions of men," yet his fortunes received a check, of more or less severity, on each occasion. On every one of his visits something untoward happened; whether it took the form of an American money panic, an English election, or a serious illness.

These obstacles, unexpected and unavoidable, were over and above those prepared for him by the pious of various sects, from the Roman Catholic to the Unitarian, in the attempts to prejudice American opinion against him. As soon as it was fairly realised that Charles Bradlaugh was going lecturing in the States, the ubiquitous "London Correspondent" seemed to think it his duty to prepare the minds of his Boston or other American readers for the advent of their expected visitor, and each depicted him according to his fancy. The subjoined extracts will demonstrate not only the kindliness and veracity of the writers, but also the choice and elegant language in which they expressed their sentiments:—

I.—"You have heard of Mr Bradlaugh. Mr Bradlaugh is a creature six feet high, twenty inches broad, and about twelve thousand feet of impudence. He keeps a den in a hole-in-the-wall here, dignified by the title of the 'Hall of Science,' in which he holds forth Sunday after Sunday to a mob of ruffians whose sole hope after death is immediate annihilation.... The Pilot, if it can do nothing else, can warn our people from laying hands upon this uneducated ruffian—a trooper in a cavalry regiment, a policeman, a bailiff's cud, a vagabond, and now a speculator in the easy infidelity of the States."[179]