While visiting Boston, Mr Bradlaugh was by special invitation of the Columbian and Adelphi Lodges present at their Masonic festivals. The last occasion should almost be looked upon as historic, as far as the annals of Freemasonry are concerned, since it was a special festival in honour of the installation of Joshua B. Smith as Junior Warden of the Adelphi Lodge, South Boston, the first coloured Freemason elected to hold office in any regular Lodge. Eight years before[74] the St Andrew's Lodge had made Mr Smith and six other coloured men Freemasons, with the idea that they should establish a coloured men's Lodge, but the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts would not issue the warrant. In the interval Joshua B. Smith, already a Justice of the Peace, was elected to the Senate, and joined the Adelphi Lodge, which now took this opportunity of showing him honour.
Mr Bradlaugh himself always liked to remember that he was a "Free and accepted mason," and the outward and visible sign of that is to be found in the fact that he almost invariably selected the Masonic Boys' School as the charity to be benefited by any money paid as damages for libelling his personal character.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
DEBATES 1862-1866.
In September 1862 Mr Bradlaugh held a six nights' discussion with the Rev. W. Barker, a gentleman who had been lecturing against Atheism to a Christian Society in Clerkenwell. The debate was held in the Cowper Street School Rooms, City Road. The report I have by me was published by Ward & Co., and was taken from the notes of a shorthand writer, and approved by both disputants. The first two evenings were controlled by a chairman for each speaker, with Mr James Harvey for umpire; but Mr Harvey's impartial judgments gave so much satisfaction that the last four meetings were left entirely under his charge. The attendance—on some nights so great that people were turned away—averaged twelve hundred persons, and it was estimated that a thousand heard the whole of the debate. Some enthusiastic people journeyed long distances, such as from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Devonshire, and Norfolk, to be present. After all expenses were defrayed the surplus of £20 was sent to the Lord Mayor for the Lancashire Relief Fund. The subjects under discussion were:—
"I. Are the representations of Deity in the Bible irrational and derogatory?
"II. Is Secularism, which inculcates the practical sufficiency of morality, independent of Biblical religion, calculated to lead to the highest development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man?
"III. Is the doctrine of Original Sin, as taught in the Bible, theoretically unjust and practically pernicious?