But such protests as those of Wolff were perfectly fitted to serve the turn of the Tory party in a campaign of faction. The cue of shocked piety and the cue of "loyalty" came alike easily to the representatives of the feudal and the capitalistic interests; and the "bag-baron" and the "crag-baron" vied with each other in the display of sham godliness and sincere zeal for the Throne. Never was there such a reek of cant in St. Stephen's before. All the English gift for hypocrisy, unrivalled in Europe, was brought to bear on the task. Alderman Fowler, a fitting exponent of the cult of Mammon in His sacred city, followed up Wolff with a petition emanating from bankers and merchants, all praying with one consent that an unbeliever in their gods should not be allowed to sit at Westminster. The honour of God was avowedly the one concern of the Alderman and of the men, so many of them gross with fortuitous gain, who made him their mouthpiece. And those strategists who knew the imperfect efficacy of bogus religion as a means of keeping an Atheist member out of his seat, took care to supply the additional weapons needed.
Mr Gladstone met Sir Henry Wolff's motion with a counter motion for the appointment of a fresh select committee to consider Bradlaugh's competence to take the oath—a sufficiently unwise course, in view of the action of the previous committee. At once, however, the official Tories gave their full support to Wolff's motion, declaring that the matter should not even go to a committee. Mr Gibson, formerly Attorney-General for Ireland, argued that Bradlaugh had deserved all that befell him for raising the question. "The hon. member might have taken his seat without opposition, but he had chosen to obtrude himself on the House and the country. He must therefore accept the grave responsibility of thus thrusting his opinions on the House." Observe the situation. Bradlaugh had acted not only as a scrupulous man in his place was bound to do, but as a man careful of other men's susceptibilities would do. Had he simply taken the oath, he would certainly have been yelled at as a hypocrite, and further as a blasphemer. The point had been publicly discussed in the press beforehand, and his enemies were prepared. Trying to avoid at once inconsistency and scandal, he quietly and circumspectly sought to make affirmation. The right to affirm was denied him in committee by the champions of the oath, joined by one conscientious Liberal. When he then came to take the compelled oath, these men and their fellows assailed him as one who "obtruded his opinions"; and Mr Gibson, their spokesman, proceeded to allege in so many words that the member for Northampton had "walked up the floor of the House with that oath and Book before him and declined to take the oath." It was a falsehood; and Mr Gibson himself had just before, in the same speech, admitted that Bradlaugh had "claimed for himself, in careful and guarded language, the right to make an affirmation."
There are many points in the story of this struggle at which it is hardly possible to abstain from imputing wilful falsehood to some of the actors. But on this point it seems right to conclude that one or other form of prejudice or passion made men all round incapable of realising when and how they grossly perverted a simple fact. It was not merely the factious Tories who repeated the mis-statement, though they naturally used it most industriously. Mr Chaplin, M.P., was reported in two newspapers as having asserted that at a public meeting on 1st June "Mr Bradlaugh announced his intention of refusing the oath, and asked that he might affirm instead." Mr Chaplin, at the time of speaking, was a member of the second select committee appointed to sit on the oath question, and Bradlaugh indignantly protested to the Chairman, who was again Mr Spencer Walpole. Mr Chaplin, after some fencing, declared that the report was inaccurate. Baron Henry de Worms, another of the champions of Omnipotence, publicly averred[132] that "he was in the House when Mr Bradlaugh came to the Speaker and said he could not and would not take an oath which in no way bound him, as he did not acknowledge any God." Challenged as to this statement, Baron Henry de Worms avowed that the words from "which" onwards were his own comment, but could not see anything unwarrantable in the previous statement as to the facts. Such were the notions of truth and honour among English—and other—oath-taking gentlemen and noblemen with which Bradlaugh had to contend. And he was only in part supported by the remarks of Mr John Morley in the Fortnightly Review for July 1880:—
"There is no precedent for Mr Bradlaugh's case, for the simple reason that there is no precedent for the frank courage with which he has considered it desirable to publish his views as to the nature of an oath. That the oath is just as meaningless, so far as its divine appeal is concerned, to many past and present members of the House of Commons as Mr Bradlaugh protested it would be to him, no one doubts. Whether and how far he was justified in asking to be sworn, after he had declined to be sworn, is a different question. Whatever the answer to that may be, it cannot at least be said that the course adopted by Mr Bradlaugh involved the surrender of any principle."
The last clause is so candid that it is a pity Mr Morley should have "considered it desirable" to fortify his own position by penning that above italicised. He had previously spoken of Bradlaugh's "pertinacity" in "parading" his views—a statement which obtrudes its inspiration. When a leading Liberal publicist wrote so, the godly multitude naturally asserted in chorus that Bradlaugh had first ostentatiously refused to take the oath, and then insisted on taking it. Dean Boyd, of Exeter, capped the record by asserting that when Bradlaugh first "advanced to the table of the House," he "openly, boldly, and defiantly affirmed that he believed there was no such being as a Deity."
In the frame of mind represented by a variety of such utterances as these, the House of Commons deliberated on Mr Gladstone's motion that the question of Bradlaugh's competence to swear should be referred to a second special committee. On the second day of the debate, Sir Stafford Northcote, the nominal leader of the Conservative party in the House, accepted the position into which he had been ignominiously forced by irresponsible and even semi-defiant adherents, and opposed the appointment of the Committee. He is reported as saying:—
"Without raising any question as to whether there is anything irreverent in the course which the hon. member proposes to take, it seems to me that we, in allowing him to take it, should be incurring a responsibility from which our better judgment ought to make us shrink"
—a fair sample of the hon. baronet's forcible-feeble oratory. Some Tory speakers, as Earl Percy, admitted that "the hon. member, to do him justice, had sought to avoid taking an oath to which he attached no sacred character"; but these ingenuous combatants were concerned only to prevent the House from "incurring the guilt of an act of hypocrisy," and had no anxiety about avoiding an act of iniquity. When John Bright met the subterfuges of the Opposition with the retaliatory criticism of which he was a master, the temperature naturally rose. If, he asked, they set up the principle of a creed test, where were they going to end? Would they next question members known to be unbelievers, though not publicly professed ones? As certain Conservative members were actually known by their comrades to be Gallios in these matters, Bright's challenge created the appropriate resentment, as did his emphatic avowal, "One thing I believe most profoundly, that there is nothing amongst mankind that has done more to destroy truthfulness than the forcing of men to take an oath." But the memorable part of his speech was this:—
"I have no right to speak of the member for Northampton. I think it never happened to me more than once to address to him a single sentence, or to hear any expression from him. I never saw him to my knowledge but once, before he appeared in this House; but he is returned here by a large constituency, to whom his religious opinions were as well known as they are now to us.... Now, I have no doubt whatever, though I have no authority to say so, that the oath as it stands is binding on the conscience of the member for Northampton, in the sense that an affirmation would be binding on his conscience—that the words of the oath, so far as they are a promise, are words which would be binding upon him, but that their binding character is not increased by the reference to the Supreme Being, of whose existence, unhappily as we all think—such is the constitution of his mind, and such has been the constitution of many eminent minds of whom we have all heard—he is not able to form that distinct opinion and belief which we, who I think are more happy, have been able to do. Therefore if he were to come to the table and to take the oath as it is, and as he proposes to take it, I have no doubt that it would be binding on his conscience as my simple affirmation is binding on mine; because in my affirmation there is no reference to the Deity. I make a promise. My word is as good, and is taken to be as good, as your oath. (Loud Ministerial cheers.) And that is declared by an irrevocable Act of Parliament. And if Mr Bradlaugh takes this oath, as he proposes to take it, I have no doubt that, though the last words of the oath have no binding effect upon him, yet his sense of honour and his conscience—(Opposition laughter, and cries of 'Hear, hear' from some Ministerialists)—his sense of honour and his conscience would make that declaration as binding on him as my affirmation is on me, and as your oath is on you."
Among those who joined in the brutal laughter of the gentlemen of the Conservative party at these passages were men who had committed bribery, unscrupulous stock-jobbers and company promoters, men about town, topers, libellers, and liars. But some who thought it fitting to laugh with these would be normally classed as chivalrous and well-bred gentlemen.