The Sunday Times then went on, in the same paragraph, to speak in terms of reprobation of "a person" who, at some meeting at Newcastle, urged that an attempt should be made to win the sympathies of the army, so that in the event of "a collision" the people and the army would be on the same side. The remarks of an unnamed person at some meeting at which Mr Bradlaugh was not even present, were thus used as though he were responsible for them.
Lord Derby's Government began to be frightened at the possibilities evoked by its own fears and the determined persistence of the League. Special reporters were sent to the meetings in order to verify speeches for the purposes of a prosecution, a course which merely made the speakers more stern and more outspoken. In May it was resolved to hold another mass meeting in Hyde Park: the Reform League leaders were convinced that they had the law on their side, and they meant to insist on their rights. Mr Edmund Beales issued an address to the men of London, calling upon them to meet the Council of the League in Hyde Park on Monday evening, May 6th. "Come," he said, "as loyal, peaceful, and orderly citizens, enemies of all riot and tumult, but unalterably fixed and resolved in demanding and insisting upon what you are entitled to. If time presses, stay not to form in processions, but come straight from your work, come without bands and banners." On the same evening that Mr Beales' address was read over to the Council of the League, an "admonition" from the Government was served upon the delegates, warning all persons "to abstain from attending, aiding, or taking part in any such meeting, or from entering the Park with a view to attend, aid, or take part in such meeting."
Much pressure was put upon Mr Beales to prevent the meeting from being held, but he, knowing that he and his colleagues were in the right, and knowing that the Government knew it also, persisted in the determination arrived at, after due deliberation, by the Council. The Government reluctantly, and at the last moment—that is, in the issue of the Times for May 6th—acknowledged that they had no power to eject the demonstrators from the Park. Having decided that they had not the law on their side, Lord Derby, snitching at a straw, thought the Park regulations would help them, and sent a message to the League in the afternoon that the meeting would be prohibited; and there was a talk of prosecuting for trespass each person who had received the notice of prohibition. But all this "tall talk" was absolutely without effect: 200,000 persons went to the Park. Mr Bradlaugh was one of the first to enter; and Platform No. 8 was a "very great centre of attraction, for this was the scene of Mr Bradlaugh's oratory."[95]
Mr Bradlaugh was, as I said, re-elected on the Executive of the League on the full understanding that he had determined to resist the Government decision as to Hyde Park. During the spring-time he lectured week after week in London and the provinces, not only bearing his own expenses, but on one occasion, at least, actually paying for tickets for his wife and friends. On May 6th, the demonstration maintaining the right of the people to meet in the people's park was held, in spite of Lord Derby's opposition and prohibition. On the following day, May 7th, Mr Bradlaugh tendered his resignation as vice-president and member of the Council and the Executive of the Reform League; he took this course "in order to deprive the enemies of reform of the pretext for attack on the League afforded by my irreligion, and to save some of the friends of the League from the pain of having their names associated with my own." Especially Mr Bradlaugh praises the honourable and straightforward conduct of Mr Beales, but deeply regrets that he (Mr Beales) should have felt it necessary publicly to disclaim responsibility for his sayings, and hopes that his resignation will relieve him from pain. The League only accepted Mr Bradlaugh's resignation, as far as it related to the Executive Council; he continued a Vice-President of the League from its foundation to the end, but after this date he rarely appeared upon its platforms. If there should be trouble, and his services were desired, he said, he was ready to do his duty; otherwise he preferred to remain aloof. Now, mark the generosity of his opponents! Finding he did not appear as frequently as before on the Reform platform, they began to circulate every reason for his abstention save the true one—his honourable desire to aid the cause of Reform even to the extent of self-effacement, since his persecutors made that necessary. The Pall Mall Gazette in 1868 said:
"Mr Bradlaugh, who furnished the Saturday Reviewers with an additional sting to articles in which his name was coupled with Mr Beales', avowed Atheistical views, but they met with so little favour that he had to leave the Committee of the Reform Association because he brought discredit on the cause."
Mr Bradlaugh in reply asked if it was true his views found "little favour," and answering his own question said, "Let the audiences crowding the theatre at Huddersfield, the circus at Grimsby, the theatre at Northampton, the halls in London, Dublin, Newcastle, Ashton, Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield, and Bradford—let these enthusiastic audiences reply." And, in conclusion, he printed this letter from Mr Beales in reply to his resignation, which he had received in the previous May, but now for the first time made public.
"4 Stone's Buildings, Lincoln's Inn,
17th May 1867.
"My Dear Sir,—Pray excuse my not having sooner answered, or noticed, your letter of the 7th inst. to me, tendering your resignation as a member of the Executive of the Reform League, and asking that your name may be erased from the list of the Council and Vice-Presidents. I really have been in such a whirl of occupation since receiving your letter that it was not in my power sooner to write to you, as I wished. Meanwhile you have, I believe, received through Mr Cooper and others intimation that the Executive were unwilling to accept your resignation, and lose your services. In that unwillingness I concur, whilst I avail myself of this opportunity of communicating to you with the utmost openness and frankness, and with very sincere regard, my feelings in the matter. I have already expressed in public my strong sense of the services you have rendered to the League by your ability and good sense, and of the invariable fidelity, delicacy, and admirable taste with which you have studiously abstained from uttering a word at our meetings that could offend the religious scruples of the most sensitive or fastidious Christian. At the same time that your known and published opinions on these matters (I do not allude to the subject of the Saturday Review's savage attack, which was not, I believe, from your pen) have injured the League with many in a moral and pecuniary point of view must, I am afraid, be admitted, though I doubt whether such injury has outweighed the aid you have rendered to the League by your oratorical power and talent. At all events, I am not disposed to allow the evil to have outweighed the good. You say that the conduct of the Press in constantly coupling your name with mine has given me pain. Well, it has, but not quite from the cause you suppose. I despise from my soul the base motives of the writers in thus coupling our names together, and it would only make me more strongly tender to you the hand of friendship. But I do feel great pain at the thought of a man of your undoubted ability, and, I believe, purity of purpose and high honesty, being in such a position from your antagonism to Christianity as to make men imagine that they could pain or injure me or the League by thus coupling our names together.
"C. Bradlaugh.
"E. Beales."