I was ashamed of giving you the cash:
You were ashamed of getting it from me
Three hundred is the value of that splash
On our fair fame, unspotted previouslee.
Remember, sonny, when your freethought flesher
Showed Charles your name and mine upon that cheque,
Had I owned up, I think you must confess your
Foot would not now have been on Charles's neck.
So halves, my Peters:—nay, I crave not coin:
To touch the brass would not befit my station:
I only ask that Kelly you'll rejoin,
And pay your debt in Tory agitation."
This, unfortunately, was not the only libel suit forced upon Bradlaugh during the year. He had himself to raise another, against a gang of enemies who had laid their heads together to produce a so-called "Life" of him, which was but a tissue of the most malignant libel from beginning to end. It attacked his daughters as well as himself, and was so flagrantly malicious that no legal defence was possible. The nominal author was one Charles R. Mackay, and the nominal publisher was one Gunn—a name which was afterwards admitted by Mackay to be fictitious. Believing that the real author or promoter of the work was Mr Stewart Ross, editor of the Agnostic Journal (then the Secular Review), one of his most persistent and scurrilous assailants, Bradlaugh set about bringing him to account, and soon procured adequate evidence of his complicity. A friend had accidentally discovered for him that the book was printed by the Edinburgh house of Colston & Co.; and on proceeding against that firm in the Court of Session, he obtained from them an apology, costs, and payment of £25 to his usual beneficiary, the Masonic Boys' School. But the most effective assistance was supplied by those concerned in issuing the book, who were soon flying at each other's throats. In August 1888 Mr Stewart Ross prosecuted Mackay, with a solicitor named Harvey and his clerk named Major, for conspiracy "to obtain from him £225 with intent to defraud." Mackay had previously brought two actions against Ross, one for slander, and one to recover £500, which actions were settled on the basis that Mackay withdrew "all claim against the defendant for writing the 'Life of Charles Bradlaugh, M.P.,'" the plaintiff admitting the claim to be "based on an erroneous conception," while Mr Ross was to pay Mackay "in respect of the other claims" the sum of £225, besides writing Mackay a letter "denying the slanders alleged," and opening his columns for subscriptions to a Defence Fund on Mackay's behalf. Mr Ross now alleged, in his prosecution for "conspiracy," that Major (whose employer was Mackay's solicitor) had called on him and alleged that he had seen some pages in Ross's handwriting in the MS. of the Mackay "Life," and "that he (Ross) who had denied all share in the authorship of that work, would be prosecuted for perjury unless he recovered possession of those pages." Ross admittedly agreed to pay £250 (afterwards reduced to £225) to recover the pages. In Court he would not admit that he had written any part of the "Life," but explained that he thought some unpublished MS. of his might have been got hold of for it. The promised MS., he stated, was not returned, and he stopped the cheques he had given towards the promised payment. In cross-examination he confessed to having supplied Mackay with books and "materials" to help him in writing the "Life," and had seen the proofs of it. Another of Ross's coadjutors fiercely quarrelled with him, and handed over to Bradlaugh's solicitor further evidence of his concern in the publication. Mackay, who became bankrupt, did likewise, expressing to Bradlaugh his regret for having been led into the publication by Ross. Bradlaugh was advised, however, that he had evidence enough without their testimony; and at length, after various delays, Mr Ross, through his solicitor, begged Bradlaugh's solicitors to intercede with their client to let him make a voluntary settlement. This being acceded to by Bradlaugh, Mr Ross agreed in Court (15th February 1889, before the Hon. Robert Butler, Master in Chambers) to account for and destroy within four days all copies of the book which had "come into his possession or control," to pay £50 to the Masonic Boys' School, and to pay all Bradlaugh's costs as between solicitor and client. Soon afterwards Mr Ross wrote to the Star: "I am not and never was the publisher of the 'Life,' and I cannot 'destroy all the copies of the work' for the reason that I never possessed more than one copy." Bradlaugh commented that he was still willing to have the case tried in court; and that he had evidence of Ross's sending out a large number of copies of the book for review, and once having close on 200 bound copies on his premises. Mr Ross is understood since to protest that he had been victimized in the matter, and at Bradlaugh's death he penned a remorseful and eulogistic article. Copies of the book are still believed to be on sale in underhand ways; and Mrs Bonner has recently had to take legal proceedings against one London bookseller who announced it in his catalogue, knowing it to be a libel, and not legally saleable.
In connection with the same matter Bradlaugh in 1888-89 brought an action against the Warrington Observer for a libellous article founded on the "Life;" and the proprietors, after undertaking to justify, finally withdrew the plea, apologised, and paid the costs and a sum of £25 to the Masonic Boys' School. A Scotch journal, the Dumfries Standard, had previously apologised with promptitude, paying costs and £10 to the Masonic Boys' School, which institution thus netted £110 in all from the proceedings in this one matter. Yet further, Bradlaugh sued the Warrington Observer for another libel, consisting in the publication of a malicious report of a silly proceeding in which a man who had been subpoenaed by him in the Peters' case applied to a London police magistrate to know whether he could recover "costs" for a day's attendance at the court. The man had actually been paid 10s., and Bradlaugh had refused to pay more. This case was tried (April 1889) before Justice Manisty and a special jury, who awarded Bradlaugh £25 damages—another windfall for the Masonic Boys' School.
As against the manifold annoyance of libels, Bradlaugh had in 1888 one great and solacing relief from a strain which had sorely tried him. His various lawsuits over the Oath question, despite the success of those against Newdegate, and the saving of outlay through his pleading his own cases, had left him saddled with a special debt of between £2000 and £3000, on which interest was always running. And, even as the lawsuits themselves helped to cripple his power of earning while they were going on, his intense application to his Parliamentary work had limited his earnings in the years following on his admission. His whole sources of income were his lectures, his journal, and his publishing business. But he could no longer give proper personal attention to the pushing of the business; the lecturing was curtailed; and the journal fell off in circulation just when it might have helped him most. Thousands of miners had been among its subscribers, despite its non-democratic price of twopence; but prolonged distress among the miners caused many of these subscribers to emigrate, while many more could no longer buy it. In villages where forty or fifty copies had been bought, one or two had to do duty for all the remaining readers. All the while the borrowed capital on which the Freethought Publishing Company had opened business in Fleet Street had to bear interest, whereas, in the ordinary course of things, it had been hoped that the principal would have been repaid in the years that, as the event came about, had to be devoted to a desperate struggle against political injustice. Freethinking friends, who knew how he was worried by the fresh debts incurred in the struggle, started a fund in 1886 to meet the more pressing burden of £750, which then had to be repaid, and over £500 was then collected. But in August of 1888 his embarrassments became so serious that, answering correspondents who urged a holiday on him, he wrote: "My great trouble now is lest I should be unable to earn enough to meet my many heavy obligations, in which case I should be most reluctantly obliged to relinquish my Parliamentary career." He was then addressing seven and eight meetings a week, while other members were recruiting on the moors and on the Continent. The avowal, through no action of his, got into the newspapers, and was the means of setting agoing a general public subscription, the credit for starting which is due to Mr W. T. Stead, then the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, whose action in the matter was chivalrous and generous in the highest degree. Another fund was opened in the columns of the Star, another at Northampton, another in the Halifax Courier, and the upshot was that in a month's time there had been subscribed close upon £2500. There were over 6000 separate donations, and the subscribers' names indicated a remarkable range of recognition. In addition to Freethinkers and Northampton friends who had helped nobly before and now helped again, there were remittances from sympathisers whose goodwill had not before been known to the subject. Sir T. H. Farrer, Lady Ripon, Mr D. F. Schloss, Lord Hobhouse (in "acknowledgment of gallant service done for mankind"), Mr Stansfeld, Mr T. B. Potter, Mr M'Ewan, M.P., Admiral Maxse, W. M. Rossetti, Auberon Herbert, Mrs Ernestine Rose, Mr Labouchere, Lord Rosebery, Mr Newnes, Lord J. Hervey, Mr Munro Ferguson, are a few of the best-known names that catch the eye in the long lists, which include thousands of signatures. A number of Churchmen and Conservatives subscribed as such, some of them largely; £200 was given by one Freethinker over an initial, and £100 "from Melbourne;" groups of workers and clerks made up sums among them; clubs collected goodly totals; widows gave their mites; and hundreds of scattered toilers gave yet again of their scanty pence to the man they believed in. At his wish, the funds were closed, as far as possible, on his birthday, 26th September, when he counted fifty-six years, bien sonnés. Had he allowed the subscription to continue, the amount would probably have been doubled. As it was, he paid off all his outstanding law debts, and had a clear £1000 to put towards the others; and he turned with new cheerfulness and courage to his tasks, his holiday, as usual, being of the shortest. But hard upon the great relief came a great blow, of the kind that turns good fortune to ashes. On 2nd December his daughter Alice died of typhoid fever, after sixteen days' illness, aged thirty-two. She was her father's daughter in her high spirit, in her generosity, in her energy, and in the thoroughness of her work as a student and teacher of biology, though for all her years of ungrudging service in the latter capacity there is only left to show, apart from the gain and the gratitude of those she taught, her little tract on "Mind considered as a Bodily Function." It had been her wish that her body should be cremated; but the crematorium just then chanced to be out of order, and she had to be buried. Briefly acknowledging condolences, and replying to the request of many friends to be permitted to attend the funeral, her father wrote, to appear after it was over, the lines: "Any public funeral would have been painful to me; and I trust I offend none in not acceding. The funeral, private and silent, will have taken place at Woking Cemetery. The funeral wreaths and flowers sent are reverently laid on the grave."
The year thus grievously closed had been for Bradlaugh as full as the preceding ones of political work, which involved strife over and above that of the lawsuits, and over the Oaths Bill. On two issues he came in conflict with sections of the democracy. The first was Sir John Lubbock's Early Closing Bill, one of those measures in which legislatures go about to remove, as it were, tumours and swellings by applying a vice to them. Declaring himself strongly in favour of the shortening of hours by voluntary effort, Bradlaugh vigorously attacked the Bill as an arbitrary and capricious application of force on wrong principles, pointing out that it would close shops irrespectively of the length of the shifts worked in them by the assistants, and that it left untouched public-houses and tobacco-shops, which were kept open latest. It had the further demerit of renewing the old Sunday Trading Act of Charles II. and increasing the penalties. On a vote (May) it was rejected by 278 to 95. This was one of several points at which Bradlaugh came in conflict with the policy of empirical regulation in which some Socialists go hand in hand with some Conservatives. He was blamed, as before mentioned, for rejecting State interference in some cases, while urging it in others, as that of truck. The criticism failed to note that he opposed truck as a form of fraud, not at all necessarily arising out of the economic situation, whereas hours of labour are determined by the whole economic situation. While offending some Radicals as well as Socialists by opposing time-laws, he offended the extreme Individualists by supporting Public Libraries, which he justified as he had justified State education, and as being a rather more defensible form of public expenditure than much of the outlay on armaments, to which so few individualists strongly demur, on principle or in practice.
But his sharpest conflict with men usually on his own side was over the Employers' Liability Bill, to which he had given constant and laborious attention as a member of the Committee appointed to consider the subject in 1886. He had then and afterwards taken every possible pains to get at the views of the workers, had spoken on the subject before many thousands of them, and had done all he could to make the Bill as strong a measure as could be carried. He did not like it in every respect; he objected to the retention in any form of the doctrine of common employment, and of the principle of contracting-out, both of which he had sought to restrict by his action as far as possible; but the measure was in several respects an improvement on the Trade Unions Bill of 1886, then introduced by Mr Broadhurst, Mr Burt, and others, to amend the Liberal Act of 1880. That Bill had been referred to a Select Committee under the Gladstone Government, which Committee duly reported. The Bill now (1888) under discussion was, save for one or two points, either the re-enactment of the Act of 1880, or the formulation of the suggestions of the Select Committee of 1886. It was, however, strongly opposed by the labour leaders, especially by Mr Broadhurst, who denounced it as "a sham, misleading, mischievous—the worst Bill ever introduced to the House," and moved its rejection on the second reading (December), after it had been amended by the Standing Committee on Law. On this, Bradlaugh had a sharp brush with him, pointing out that with two exceptions all the complaints urged against the 1888 Bill struck equally at Mr Broadhurst's own Bill of 1886. The hon. gentleman denounced the new Bill as protecting the London and North Western Railway Company, whereas it did exactly, in that regard, what his own Bill had done; and an amendment which he had moved, as expressing his latest wishes, would equally have legalised that Company's arrangement with its employees. Bradlaugh's criticism was perhaps the sharper, inasmuch as he believed that the Liberal labour leaders were mainly concerned to throw out the Bill because it was introduced by a Conservative Government, who would in due course have claimed the credit if it had passed. Bradlaugh knew well enough that the Conservative party systematically facilitated certain popular measures which the same party would have strongly resisted when introduced by Liberals; but that was for him no reason for refusing to pass the measures so facilitated. He took all he could get, and fought for the return of a Liberal Government all the same. Mr Broadhurst, it is believed, afterwards regretted in some respects the attitude he took up, as did Sir William Harcourt, who hastily supported Mr Broadhurst by accusing Bradlaugh of attacking the trade unions in general—a charge which Bradlaugh instantly and warmly repudiated. However that may be, Bradlaugh's case may be read by those who care in his letter to his friend, Thomas Burt, M.P., published as a pamphlet. Mr Burt sent a reply, to which Bradlaugh gave prominence in his journal, in which one of his phrases, as to "setting the employed against the employer," was objected to; and on this point Bradlaugh explained the precise limit within which he applied it. He always opposed those workers who sought to make it illegal for masters to insure themselves against loss through accidents to their men; and on that point Mr Burt fully agreed with him.
A less prominent but important part of his dealings with labour problems was his service on the Committee which investigated the subject of the immigration of destitute aliens, and on that which investigated the working of Friendly Societies and Industrial Assurance Societies. As to the destitute immigrants, he was satisfied that they were not then numerous enough to justify any legislative action.