The original case against Bradlaugh's co-defendants, Messrs Foote and Ramsey, who had been already sentenced to imprisonment on the second prosecution by Mr Justice North, came on before Lord Coleridge and a special jury on 24th April. The judge treated the prisoners with signal consideration and courtesy; and when the prosecuting counsel, Mr Moloney, persisted in putting a question to which Lord Coleridge had objected, his lordship indignantly asked, "Why cannot this case be conducted like any other case? It seems all of a piece with the learned counsel inspecting a man's bank-book." The accused defended themselves, Mr Foote making a particularly able speech, on which the judge, in his summing-up, repeatedly complimented him. That summing-up (delivered on the 25th) was in its way a masterly performance, marking the judge as the most admirably persuasive of pleaders. Deeply averse to all punishment of opinion, he showed the jury that the blasphemy law, as interpreted by past judges, was not nearly so outrageous as had been supposed; and the definition of "the late Mr Starkie," of which a scanty quotation had been given by the prosecution, he showed to be much less illiberal than it had been understood to be, though nothing could make it out to be a precise or practical formulation of law. As in the previous trial, he demolished the absurd plea that "Christianity is part of the law of the land," by the reductio ad absurdum that the marriage law and the monarchy are part of the law of the land, but are yet open to being argued against—at least in all modern opinion. As, however, no interpretation could do away with the hard facts of the blasphemy laws, and the accused had unfortunately put their heresy at times with extreme pictorial crudeness, his lordship could not definitely charge the jury that no blasphemy had been committed in law. He admitted that the objection against their practice on the score of violence would apply to some passages read by Mr Foote from prominent modern writers, which were new to him; but while the law stood as it was, that was no defence for Mr Foote, as the writers in question would be equally open to indictment. The jury, thus unavoidably left in doubt, disagreed. The prosecution, acting judiciously for the first time, took the course of entering a nolle prosequi, and the case dropped, but not without the Lord Chief Justice having to point out that the petition grossly misrepresented him as having pronounced the prosecution "unadvisable," which he had carefully abstained from doing. Unluckily, the dropping of this case did not affect the sentence passed by Justice North, and the then Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, declined to mitigate the punishment, on the score of the offensiveness of one of the incriminated woodcuts, which he called "an obscene libel," though the charge was one of blasphemy. Some Liberal journals indignantly protested; but the Liberal leaders felt they must show no consideration to blasphemy, though even the Spectator censured them for their timidity.
§19.
While the decisive trials were yet in the future, Bradlaugh had never slackened his energetic action on the political side of the fight. The last move in the House had been taken on 18th July 1882, when Mr Labouchere moved that Bradlaugh be appointed a member of the Committee to consider the Agricultural Tenants' Compensation Bills. The right of a member in Bradlaugh's position to serve on committees had been established by the precedents of Alderman Salomons and Baron Rothschild. The point was a curious one, and could not be got over argumentatively, but of course the House could outvote the motion, which it did by 120 to 35. Not till the next year was the campaign indoors reopened.
On 15th February 1883, the day of the reassembling of Parliament, a great demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square in support of Bradlaugh's and Northampton's claim, about a thousand delegates attending from some four hundred Radical associations of provincial towns. At first some of the railway companies were understood to be willing to run cheap excursion trains, but that concession was of course violently opposed, and at a meeting of representatives of the companies held in the Railway Clearing House on 29th January a resolution was carried by a majority of votes, binding all the companies to give no special facilities whatever. An attempt to get the use of the Floral Hall, Covent Garden, for the meeting was defeated by the veto of the Duke of Bedford's agent, though the Directors were willing to grant it; and no other sufficiently large hall was available for the date. The meeting, which would have been several times larger had the railway companies given the desired special trains, was nevertheless a great success, the square being densely packed, despite bad weather; and despite some attempts at rioting by hired roughs, there was almost perfect order throughout. The Pall Mall Gazette had deprecated the meeting as held in an illegal place, though for a perfectly legal purpose. This was a misconstruction of the Act 57th Geo. III. cap. 19, sec. 23, which prohibited meetings within a mile of Parliament House for the purpose of petitioning the Crown or Parliament "for alteration of matters in Church or State." As there was no petition under consideration, the meeting was perfectly legal. Other papers went further, the Daily Telegraph applauding the railway companies for refusing to "start trains in order to bring up country roughs;" and generally it must be recorded that some of the leading Liberal journals discouraged the whole procedure. The Daily News and Daily Chronicle even suppressed resolutions sent them in support of Bradlaugh's claim from provincial clubs before the demonstration—such resolutions being part of the manifold machinery of preparation for a great public demonstration; and the Tory papers as a rule suppressed all reports tending to show the support given to Bradlaugh in the country. Other forms of boycotting were freely employed. In the cathedral town of Peterborough a debating society set up by the local Young Men's Christian Association was deprived of the use of the Association's rooms because it carried a motion in favour of Bradlaugh's right to sit and vote. This episode typified hundreds. The most skilful device employed, perhaps, was the issue of a forged circular, purporting to come from Bradlaugh, calling on "all Atheists, as well as Socialists," to "assemble in their thousands round the House of Commons," and show that "the Atheists of this country have a right to be represented" in Parliament.[176] Newspapers which had no space for genuine news about Bradlaugh gave prominence to this.
As the meeting of Parliament drew near, expectation naturally rose high on both sides. The sentiment of many Tories may be presumed to have been expressed by Lord Newark, son of Earl Manvers, when at the annual dinner of the Nottinghamshire Agricultural Society he was ruffianly enough to say:
"He supposed that Mr Bradlaugh meant to make himself objectionable as usual. He heard from an honourable member who sat near him[177] that he thought of going with a big stick, and he (Lord Newark) hoped that if he came within reach of Mr Bradlaugh he would make use of it."
The stick, however, was not on exhibition at the House of Commons. Bradlaugh's course was to send to the Speaker a letter stating the then position of matters, in view of the action of the law courts; and stating that he proposed to present himself as before. This letter was read to the House before any other business was taken. On Mr Labouchere asking the Government what course they meant to take, Lord Hartington at once answered that on the following night they would move for leave to bring in an Affirmation Bill. Sir Richard Cross, on the Conservative side, at once announced that he would oppose the Bill, and his statement was loudly cheered. At this stage Inspector Denning asked Bradlaugh to leave the House and reassure the multitude outside, who were beginning to fancy they might be "ill-using him inside."
On 20th February the motion for leave was made, when Sir Henry Drummond Wolff was understood to express himself with ironical approbation, while Mr Chaplin opposed, and Northcote explained that he should vote against the second reading. The motion was carried by 184 votes to 53, most of the Irish party voting in the minority. Not till 23d April did the Bill reach its second reading; and in the meantime a desperate effort was made by the entire Tory party to arouse feeling against the Bill. In the previous session the petitions in Bradlaugh's favour had been signed by 275,000 persons, and those against him by only 65,000, many of these being children. The leeway was now made up. The machinery of the Anglican and Catholic Churches was worked to the utmost to beat up petitions; schools were swept wholesale for signatures, not only in England but abroad;[178] and large employers of labour were got to procure the signatures of employees en masse, reluctant workers being not obscurely threatened with the consequences of refusal. By these means half a million signatures were got up by the 23rd of April, the great majority being those of school-children and coerced employees. Tantum religio——. The Tory press likewise put its best foot foremost. In the St James's Gazette of 22nd February, Mr Greenwood made an abominable attack on Bradlaugh, the foulest of many foul blows, describing him as "a preacher of certain theories of the sexual relation which, in the opinion of the great majority of Englishmen, are not only immoral but filthy," going on to speak of him as having long been known as the publisher of an obscene tract, and representing him as an advocate of "Free Love, and sundry other doctrines and practices which benefit greatly by the impossibility of referring to them distinctly among decent people." The pamphlet formerly put together by Varley, largely consisting of matter Bradlaugh never wrote, falsified even at that, and partly of passages from him, wrested from their context and falsified in application, was circulated more widely than ever. Many members of Parliament repeated the palpable falsehood that Bradlaugh had been "declared by the House of Commons and the courts of law incapable of sitting in Parliament;" and Mr H. S. Northcote, son of Sir Stafford, in addition to making this statement to his constituents at Exeter, told them that "when Mr Bradlaugh led a mob of unwashed ruffians down to Parliament Yard" the Government introduced their Bill.
On the second reading, Sir Richard Cross opened the opposition, and began by making the statement that "it was a former Government whip, Mr Adam, who first invited Mr Bradlaugh to go to Northampton"—the grossest form ever given to that particular untruth. He was seconded by Mr M'Cullagh Torrens, a nominal Liberal, who in his work on "Empire in Asia" had affected a high esteem for the principle of religious toleration—in other countries. The Bill, he said, tended "to begin the abjuring of all responsibilities to heaven." Mr W. E. Baxter, following, declared that "not only had Atheists been members of Parliament, but they had sat on the Treasury Bench"—and a member called out "And sit!" Giffard, seeking his revenge at once on Bradlaugh and Lord Coleridge, "repeated without the smallest fear of contradiction that Christianity was a part of the common law of the kingdom." Mr Illingworth happening to speak of "recreant members of the Jewish community," Baron de Worms rose to order, and the Speaker ruled the term "out of order." None of the epithets directed at the Atheist had struck him in that light.
The debate was thrice adjourned. On 26th April Sir H. D. Wolff took it upon him to accuse Lord Chancellor Selborne of using his position to help his political party; and Lord R. Churchill, in a later speech, said the same thing of Lord Coleridge. On the Liberal side, Gladstone made the greatest speech delivered by him during the whole controversy. At first he was elaborate and deprecatory, but gradually he rose to warmth and cogency. "Do you suppose," he asked—