"the terse and argumentative speech of Mr Bradlaugh roused the feelings of the thousands assembled to their highest pitch, and as he put the case of reform in a clear light he was most enthusiastically applauded."[90]
In the course of his address, which was interrupted again and again by the cheering of his audience, he felt it incumbent upon him to deny that these meetings partook of the character of physical force demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of working men, he pointed out, had assembled and kept their own order even when the police in their officiousness had failed to preserve it. This denial was made necessary by the attitude taken up by the Tories and weak Liberals who began to be frightened by the growth of popular opinion as exhibited in these great and orderly outdoor and indoor meetings which were taking place every week in London and the provinces. In order to hide their fear of opinion they began to pretend fear of physical force, and by dint of crying "Wolf" often and loudly they did not turn belief into disbelief like the boy in the story, but reversed the process, and were at length believed by men who ought to have known a great deal better. Take, for example, Matthew Arnold, who a year or so later made a wholly unprovoked attack upon Mr Bradlaugh, speaking of him as "Mr Bradlaugh, the Iconoclast, who seems to be almost for baptizing us all in blood and fire into his new social dispensation;" and again, "Mr Bradlaugh is evidently capable, if he had his head given him, of running us all into great dangers and confusion."[91] The pious journals were of course always and increasingly alarmed at the growing popular influence of the hated and despised Atheist, and tried their best to counteract it, each according to its lights. The most common way was to decry him: thus he was not "endowed with superior attainments," nor had he "any faculty or power of teaching other men." And after devoting a column or so to showing how mean were his intellectual powers, the Christian critic would then proceed in the like amiable fashion to decry Mr Bradlaugh's personal appearance.
Just about this time Mr Bradlaugh expressed himself upon a small matter which will strike a chord in the memories of many of those who took part in meetings with him. I mean bands at processions. He said he was glad to note "a strong disposition on the part of the Executive [of the Reform League] to avoid the use of bands of music in our future processions. Ten thousand men tramping seriously along the streets towards Westminster will be unmistakable evidence of our earnestness." This is the first public expression of his feeling on this subject that I have come across, but there will still be many who can recall how much Mr Bradlaugh objected to a serious procession being accompanied by flying flags and a beating drum. A gala meeting on a Northumberland or Durham moor was one thing, but men proceeding together in orderly fashion to soberly demand a right or strenuously protest against a wrong was another. But people like noise and merriment, even when they are very much in earnest, and my father often had to submit to the band and the banner, although in his heart he wished them well at home.
He generously determined that his lectures should not cost the League one farthing. True, his Freethought friends helped him as much as lay in their power, but they were poor, and the demands upon their purses many, so that at the end of the year 1866 he found that in work for the League he had spent out of his own pocket £30 in mere travelling and hotel expenses.
At the quarterly election of officers in December 1866 Mr Bradlaugh was again elected upon the Executive, and he appealed to his friends to show renewed activity in the time of hard work which he felt lay before them. On February 11th (1867) the League held two mass meetings, one in the afternoon at Trafalgar Square, and one in the evening at the Agricultural Hall. The Trafalgar Square meeting was, if possible, "more complete, more orderly, and more resolute" than any previous one. Mr Baxter Langley and Mr Bradlaugh were appointed "deputy marshals;" they were mounted, and wore tri-coloured scarves and armlets (I have my father's now). It was their special duty to see that order was kept, and their office was no sinecure; for although the main body was entirely orderly, still on the outskirts there was a fair sprinkling of people who had come "to see the fun," and were bent on seeing it, even if they had to make it for themselves. One form of creating "fun" was the snatching off hats and throwing them into the fountain basins; another was throwing stones from above on to the crowd below. This dangerous amusement was checked by Mr Bradlaugh, who, singling out a young fellow who had thrown a stone from the front of the National Gallery, rode his horse right up the steps in pursuit. The young man escaped amongst his companions, but Mr Bradlaugh's energy stopped that form of "fun." That poor little brown horse! It would be difficult to say which was the more tired, horse or rider, before they parted company that day; the horse was small—as I have heard my father say—for the weight it had to carry, and my father had not crossed a horse since he left the army in 1853. For six and a half hours they kept order together, and both must have been heartily glad when they reached the Agricultural Hall, and the little brown horse went home to his stall and his supper whilst Mr Bradlaugh went inside to speak.[92]
The day wound up with the meeting in the Agricultural Hall, which was addressed by professors, clergymen, and members of Parliament, Irishmen, Scotchmen, and men like Ernest Jones, directly representing the working men. Never was there such a wonderful sight as this gathering. At the previous Agricultural Hall meeting "the vast hall presented a surging mass of human beings without form or coherence;" this time it was a solid body of thousands upon thousands of citizens with faces all anxiously upturned towards the platform. I know not whether it was arranged that Mr Bradlaugh should be one of the speakers or not, but in any case he was called for again and again by the audience, and in response made a brief but earnest speech.
At the next quarterly meeting of the Reform League he was re-elected on the Executive by a vote of five-sixths of those present, although he had made a grave declaration to the Council "that events were possible which would necessitate holding meetings under conditions forbidden by Act of Parliament, and that he, having determined if needful to resist the Government decision as to Hyde Park, did not desire to remain on the Executive of a body whom he might injure by a policy too advanced."
The storm of abuse now broke over Mr Bradlaugh's head in full force—always with intent to damage the Reform League, for his enemies had not yet taken the measure of his power and proportions. For the moment he was merely considered as a weapon, to be used unscrupulously, and pointed with lies. In this method of warfare the Saturday Review[93] at one bound took a front place. The Standard on the 11th of March reprinted from it the article, "Who are the Leaguers?" from which journals all over the country took their lead. It was in this article of the Saturday Review that Mr Bradlaugh is made responsible for the story of the "Fanatical Monkeys" written by Charles Southwell (who probably derived it from some old fable), and rewritten from memory by J. P. Adams, who sent it to the National Reformer, where it was published on February 17, 1867. This story was reproduced in a hundred shapes, and of course my father was said to be the author of all of them, a proof, asserted these veracious ones, of his utter depravity. I have noted a letter of Mr Bradlaugh's, written in 1868, in which he asked to deny the story for at least "the hundredth time;" but denial was of little use; the lie sown by the Saturday Review in March 1867, like most other ill weeds, throve apace, and was even repeated so late as two years ago. Speaking in Trafalgar Square on March 11th, where as usual he was "loudly called for,"[94] he said those who were carrying on the struggle had not entered into it without counting the cost, and, confident in their own strength and manhood, they were determined upon gaining their rights. He compared the people with a "resistless wave," and warned those who should dare "to stem the tide." The Weekly Dispatch jeered at "the figurative Bradlaugh" for this speech, and, trying in its turn to injure the Reform League, suggested that the demonstrations were more welcome to the thieves than to any other class of metropolitan society. Others, like the Sunday Times, struck with the determination and confident purpose betokened in such a speech, chose to interpret it to mean physical force, and said—
"The Reform Leaguers throughout the country are beginning to talk treason and must be watched. 'Iconoclast,' who, but for his disposition to violence, would be altogether too vulgar for notice, systematically threatens violation of the law, and defiance of the powers that be."