He continued to incur a fair share of the personal abuse of which he had had such ample experience. The Observer told him that he was an object of "loathing" to Hindoos on account of his religious and Malthusian views; Mr Hyndman described him and Mr Burt as "friends of the plundering classes;" Mr William Morris's Commonweal dubbed him a "renegade;" and Mr Cunninghame Graham, by way of retaliation for punishment, declared his work to have consisted mainly in fighting about the oath and the existence of a Deity. The Lady's Pictorial Journal more subtly described him as "no longer the rough, rugged, carelessly-dressed man of the people, who once vainly sought admission to the popular Chamber, but a grave, dignified, and well-groomed senator;" and this legend of his "transformation" did duty with many as an exculpation of their own past brutalities. It almost seems heartless, as against such self-absolved penitents, to record the fact that in his costume he had always been the most conservative of men, and that he dressed in 1890 exactly as he had dressed in 1880 and 1870. The clerical stories of "awful examples" of ruined infidels, tacked on somehow to his name, and the more obviously knavish stories of his having been "shown up" or "confounded" on the platform, continued to have their customary circulation; and during his illness and his absence the libellous "Life," of which the surplus copies had not been destroyed, was more actively circulated.
Accustomed as he was to the steadfast repetition of religious fictions against him after all manner of refutation and contradiction, he was somewhat astonished at the length to which some of the labour leaders had contrived to mislead their followers as to his action in the House. At a Labour Electoral Congress at Hanley, in April, one speaker, who declared himself otherwise friendly, actually moved a resolution "That this Congress regrets the determined opposition of Mr Charles Bradlaugh to the Employers' Liability Bill, as the working men of this country desire it to be passed, and refuses to recognise him as a labour representative." As has been above told, he had been the strongest supporter of the Bill, whereas its rejection had been moved by Mr Broadhurst. The mover may have been under a hallucination in which the roles of Mr Broadhurst and Bradlaugh were reversed; but the extent to which working men can go astray under such hallucinations was shown by the fact that the resolution was actually carried. The irrational hostility thus shown was of course not lessened when, in the debate on Mr Bartley's motion for an inquiry into profit-sharing, Bradlaugh administered another unsparing correction to Mr Cuninghame Graham, who in his excitement became so "interruptious" as nearly to get himself suspended. "The hon. member," said Bradlaugh among other things, "charged Liberals and Nationalists with having done nothing to prevent the starvation of one man whose terrible death he had brought before the House; but what did he do himself except promote a strike in the district, one result of which was that many men were now without employment who had theretofore at least been kept from starving?" Mr Graham, with his youth and health, was no match for Bradlaugh, out of health.
While politics were thus growing increasingly contentious for him, he paradoxically found calm in new resorts to the theological controversy. A series of serenely trenchant papers on the question "Are the Hebrew Scriptures Impregnable?" in criticism of the treatise of Mr Gladstone—a criticism to which the right hon. gentleman offered no reply—were among his writings during the session. He had increasing satisfaction, too, in his work for India; and on the occasion of a reception at Northampton to the delegates of the Indian Congress, he delivered a most eloquent speech, full of his old fire, though towards the end he was fain to express the wish that he had the force and fire of the old years. In the House, in the course of the session, besides constantly pressing Indian needs on the Secretary of State, he made an important speech on the case of the Maharaja of Kashmir, whose high-handed deposition by the Indian Government, on the scantiest justification, had seemed to him as worthy of reprobation as wrongs to common folk. Republican as he was, he would never admit that an Imperial Government, which itself professed to rest on hereditary monarchy, had the right to tread underfoot at pleasure the titles of Indian princes; and he saw at once what the Imperialists are so slow to see, that a brutal disregard of the established titles of such princes is the surest way to breed disaffection to British rule, which has the least satisfactory title of all. The official Liberal press, of course, lectured him for his failure to see that the official course was the right one, and charged him with championing a corrupt native despot. The sufficient answer to such deliverances was and is that within three years the Maharaja of Kashmir was restored, just as the famine fund was restored on Bradlaugh's previous pressure. From such eloquent facts we may infer what he might have done for the reform of Indian administration had he lived, and what a loss to the cause was his death, just as his most important plans were coming within sight of effective discussion. In his last enfeebled years he did for India what some men might have reckoned good work for a lifetime.
Weakened as he was, he entered on one undertaking during the summer, which, in the state of his health, was anything but prudent. Mr John Burns, in a public speech, spoke vaguely of challenging him to a debate in some very large hall on the Eight Hours question; but on being asked to come to business, declared that nothing would meet his wishes short of an open-air debate which could be "heard" by 200,000 persons, who were to vote on the issue—a farcical proposition which made an end of the matter so far as Mr Burns was concerned. Mr Hyndman, however, who from endorsing Mr Burns' denunciations of Mr Bradlaugh had in due course passed to denouncing Mr Burns, wrote to Bradlaugh challenging him in Mr Burns' place. "I observe," he put it, "that John Burns imposes such terms in relation to his debate with you, that he obviously does not wish it to come off." After some contentious preliminaries, a debate on the Eight Hours question came off between Mr Hyndman and Bradlaugh in St James's Hall on the evening of 23rd July. It was, like most of the debates on Socialism held in London, a noisy scene, many of the Socialists present being disorderly in the extreme; and it was grievous to some of us to think that Bradlaugh, with his failing health and slackening nerves, should have the strain of such a meeting for such a grossly inconsiderate audience as made up the following of his opponent. The published report will serve to show whether the advocacy on the other side made the debate worth holding.
Twice in this year did Bradlaugh seek fresh strength on his fishing ground of Loch Long, far from the madding crowd. Failing still to build himself up to anything like his old standard of health, he grew more and more anxious about his money matters, the successful management of which depended so much on his keeping up his personal earnings. Physically unable to lecture so much as formerly, he sought by writing review articles to keep up a sufficient income to meet all his obligations. But on the other hand, he found himself at length obliged to close the Freethought Publishing Company's shop in Fleet Street, which meant too burdensome a cost for a bookselling business, even were that business not one-half boycotted by "the trade," and catering for only a section of the reading public. Appealing to that section to help him in the way of clearance sales, he wrote: "There are some folk who repeatedly say that I am rich. I should be a very happy man if to-morrow I could assign all my assets, except my library, which I should not like to lose, to any one who would discharge my liabilities." The closing of the shop was made the occasion of another painful step—the dissolution (December 1890) of the partnership which had for so many years subsisted between him and Mrs Besant. They had diverged too far in thought to permit of the old community of interest, though to the last Mrs Besant continued to write for the National Reformer, and there was no cessation of friendly intercourse.
Hardly was the dissolution accomplished when once more the overwrought man was struck down by the malady which had barely let him go a year before, and which this time was not to be fought off. On the 10th of January 1891 he came home very ill indeed, hypertrophy of the heart having followed on the old Bright's disease. After the first seizure was over, he went to see his physician, who diagnosed the trouble. Still he did not take to bed, and about midnight on the 13th an attack of spasm of the heart, as he wrote in the last notes he penned or dictated, "nearly finished my chequered life." It was soon to end indeed. He rose to work as usual the next morning, and was unwilling even to have the doctor called in again; but on the day after he was persuaded to take to bed, though he went reluctantly, not dreaming at first that the end was so near. He had the best of doctoring and nursing; being attended by his old friend, Dr Ramskill, and by his near neighbour, Dr Bell; while he had in his daughter a nurse for whom the doctors had nothing but praise; but the case was past cure. He faced the end, as he had done twice before, with perfect tranquillity, sorry to close his work, but calm with the calmness of a perfectly brave and sane man. Coming from Scotland to see him a little before the end, I found him in the perfect possession of his judgment, occupying himself among other things by auditing the peculiar accounts of the Salvation Army, which he had mastered much more thoroughly than their framers liked; and at that time, though they had no hope, the doctors thought his illness would be a long one. He himself, I saw, was prepared for the worst. The one regret he expressed was that he probably should not be able to move once more the motion he had put down yet again at the beginning of the winter session, for the expunging from the journals of the House of the old resolutions excluding him. He had set his heart on carrying that motion, even as a similar one had been carried after the lapse of years in the case of Wilkes. And, happily, across the very shades of death there came for him a light of comfort on this his last desire. Dr W. A. Hunter, M.P., on being appealed to without the dying man's knowledge, instantly and kindly consented to move the resolution on his behalf on 27th January, when its turn came; and Bradlaugh, when told of what had been arranged, declared that that was the very choice he should have made, and turned contentedly to his rest, though he did not suppose the motion would even now be carried.
Dr Hunter's success, however, was complete. The motion was opposed at great length by the Solicitor-General, Sir Edward Clarke; but after Gladstone had delivered a conciliatory speech, the front bench agreed to accept the motion on condition that the words characterising the resolutions to be expunged "as subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of the kingdom" should be dropped. These words had been copied from the motion in the Wilkes case, so as to follow precedent; but of course the essential thing was the consent to the expunging of the resolutions, which very sufficiently implied all that was said in the withdrawn words. So, after Sir Edward Clarke had protested against a deletion, which he admitted to be "a mark of ignominy," Mr W. H. Smith agreed to the motion; and although Mr De Lisle made a foolish speech in opposition, even he expressed his "deep regret at the illness of Mr Bradlaugh," while Sir Walter Barttelot not only deplored that there should be any lack of unanimity, but expressed his admiration of the straightforwardness Mr Bradlaugh had shown in the discharge of his duties as a member. "God grant that the junior member for Northampton might recover; but whatever happened, hon. members would feel that, by accepting this motion, they had done a generous act towards a man who had endeavoured to do his duty." So the motion was finally carried without dissent, amid cheers, and the wrongful resolutions were formally expunged.
Alas, when the news of the triumph was telegraphed by Dr Hunter, it was too late to tell the dying man. Day by day he had grown weaker, albeit cheerful and even sanguine when he drowsily talked of himself; and now he had sunk so low that his daughter dared not rouse him with so exciting a message. He never fully regained consciousness; and those about him learned how bitter a thing it could be
"To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man."
The end came on the morning of 30th January 1891. He was fifty-seven years and four months old.