After all their prohibitions and precautions to prevent the people from holding orderly meeting and giving public expression to their opinion, backed too as they were by police and soldiers, the Government could only feebly say in the House that the measures they had taken had prevented "some part of the contemplated proceedings from taking place." They might also have truthfully added that these same measures had also brought about the destruction of the Park railings, and numerous broken heads, "proceedings" which were not "contemplated," at least, by the conveners of the meeting.
A week later, before the excitement had time to cool down, another great meeting was held in the Agricultural Hall, and I have often heard my father say he had never seen gathered together in any building so many men as found their way into the Agricultural Hall on that occasion. He reckoned there must have been upwards of 25,000 persons present, without counting those who came and went away in despair at not being able to see or hear on the outskirts of so large a crowd. The great difficulty seems to have been to hear the speakers, and with such a vast assembly it is not surprising to find that many of them could only be heard by those nearest to the platform. Mr Bradlaugh himself felt how impossible it was to make every one hear. He moved the second resolution, praying the House of Commons to institute an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Richard Mayne and his subordinates at Hyde Park on the previous Monday, and wound up what the Times describes as a "telling speech," with his favourite quotation from Shelley's "Masque of Anarchy."
One of the results of this week of disturbance was the arrest of several "good men and true," amongst whom was Mr Nieass, whose recent death his friends and co-workers have good reason to mourn. On the evening of July 25th Mr Bradlaugh was suddenly summoned to Bow Street; some member of the Reform League Council was reported to be under arrest. When he reached the police station he found Mr Nieass, who had been seized by the police in the Strand on a charge of inciting the people to resistance, whereas, as it was afterwards proved, he had been persuading them to disperse, and but for Mr Bradlaugh's pertinacity, Mr Nieass would have been, as others actually were, locked up all night, in spite of the fact that good bail was offered.
The Reform movement seemed to grow and spread through England with marvellous rapidity. The great meetings in London found their echo in great meetings in the provinces. As Mr Bradlaugh was not possessed of any mysterious power of reduplicating himself, he was not of course present at all these gatherings, although he somehow (I hardly know how) contrived to make time to attend a goodly number. On the first day of September, 12,000 persons met at short notice on Brandon Hill, Bristol, Mr Beales and Mr Bradlaugh attending as a deputation from London. I find it noted[88] that Mr Bradlaugh was much applauded during his address, and that he sat down amidst long and continued cheering and waving of hats. In the Bristol Times and Mirror there is a letter about the meeting from "A Man in the Crowd," and among much that was hostile and absurd he wrote: "The speech that told more than any other on Brandon Hill was that of Charles Bradlaugh, Esq., and it was the best portion of it that was appreciated; ... his exhortation to men to be manly carried his hearers along with him.... Nothing was listened to after Mr Bradlaugh had finished." In a day or so, however, the good people of Bristol began to realise who this eloquent man was who had so moved that great crowd, and two days later he was referred to in the Times and Mirror in most abusive and scurrilous terms, whilst the Wiltshire County Mirror tried to work upon the imagination of its more timid readers by drawing a lurid picture of what was likely to happen if the Reformers were triumphant: "Mr Beales is not a professed infidel, we believe, but we are persuaded that his religious convictions and feelings are of a very indiarubber kind.... Let these two gentlemen [Mr Bradlaugh and Mr G. J. Holyoake] have their way, and there would be an end to the institution of marriage, and communism with all its abominations would be established amongst us." When a too fertile imagination has carried a man thus far it is difficult to see why he should not put even a little more colour on to his brush; as it was, his statements only frightened "old ladies" (masculine and feminine), and so served the purpose of political, religious, or social intriguers. In this case it was the political intriguers who were specially served, for it was considered a capital notion to associate Mr Beales—and through him the cause of Reform—with "Infidelity," the abolition of "the institution of marriage," and the "abominations" of Communism. The four ideas well mixed together by not over-scrupulous writers, formed such a fine jumble that the ignorant and pious could not always distinguish the one from the other.
In London, during the autumn and winter, Mr Bradlaugh spoke for the Reform League at Chelsea, Cleveland Hall, Battersea, Pimlico, South Lambeth, the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel, and many other places, but the note we found struck in the Wiltshire County Mirror reverberated with such force that at length my father said that he was not sure whether "the course taken by the cowardly respectable press in denouncing the movement as an infidel one, may not render it wiser for me to leave the platform advocacy of Reform at the large gatherings to men whose religious or irreligious views are not so well known as my own." But when a few weeks later he was re-elected upon the Executive of the Reform League, he resolved to allow no sneer at his creed to influence him; no slander to make him hesitate, but to do his best, whatever that best might be, to aid in winning the battle
"between Tory obstructiveness and the advancing masses; between vested interests and human happiness; between pensioned and salaried lordlings and landowners' off-shoots on the one hand, and the brown-handed bread-winner on the other." "The people must win," he said.
Yes, "the people must win"—in the end; but complete manhood suffrage is not ours yet, and universal suffrage is still far off. "The people must win," but Oh how long the winning; and alas! the cost to the victors.
In October Mr Bradlaugh was speaking for the League in Northampton. I wonder whether there are Northampton men who still remember that Reform demonstration held in their town in the autumn of sixty-six, when they carried out their programme in the pelting, pitiless rain, just as "cheerily and as steadfastly as though it had been sunshine and a clear sky." Do they remember the procession, I wonder, when men and women marched through the incessant downpour, the women as earnest as the men? And the meetings in the Corn Exchange and the Mechanics' Institute, where Mr Bradlaugh's speeches were received with great applause by an enthusiastic audience? There was a meeting at the Town Hall too, to which he went at Col. Dickson's invitation; though on arriving it was only to find that the Town Hall was reserved for the "respectable great guns," and therefore there was no room for him on that platform. But other times, other customs, and many a time has the Northampton Town Hall rung with his voice since that wet October day twenty-eight years ago, when, "too proud to intrude," he went away slighted and scorned.
Great spontaneity and heartiness met him at Luton, which, "though a small town in a small county, gave us great welcome," said Mr Bradlaugh. It had been arranged that a conference of delegates (amongst whom were Mr Beales and Mr Bradlaugh, representing London) should be held previous to the Town Hall meeting, at Messrs Willis & Co.'s factory, but, much to the amazement of the delegates, when they reached the factory gates they found a meeting of several thousand persons collected there without call or summons; the gathering was such as "no living man had ever seen in that still increasing town."[89] Every one was so anxious to hear the speakers from London and elsewhere that the conference of delegates was abandoned, and a public meeting was at once held in Park Square, an open space in the centre of the town. The Mercury devoted a little leader to this Reform demonstration at Luton, in which it said that