In course of the arguments on the plaintiff's appeal it was noticeable that Justice Grove pointed to the possibility of an action against Newdegate for maintenance, and, on Bradlaugh mentioning that the magistrate had dismissed the summonses against Newdegate and his solicitor on the ground that the law was obsolete, observed, "But it is by no means obsolete. I set aside an agreement for maintenance only a little while ago."
Another item was added to the imbroglio of litigation by the friendly action of Alderman Gurney of Northampton, on behalf of the Liberal and Radical Union there, against Bradlaugh for not taking his seat—a step taken by way of getting a legal deliverance. Bradlaugh formally demurred that he had been illegally hindered by the House of Commons. When the case came on before Justices Manisty and Watkin Williams on 15th May 1882, the judges warily declined to give any judgment, on the score that the action was friendly, that the pleadings had been drawn so as to compel a decision in Bradlaugh's favour, and did not disclose all the facts of the case. Yet they excluded no material fact; and a friendly action for a precisely similar penalty had been heard and decided before in the historic case of Miller v. Salomons, while, as a solicitor wrote to Bradlaugh, "it is a matter of everyday occurrence in the Chancery Division for friendly actions to be brought to get a judicial decision on questions arising out of settlements, etc." In the present case it seemed pretty clear that the judges were simply very much concerned not to come in conflict with the legislature. The pleadings were however readjusted, and the case stood for re-hearing before a jury.
Still another complication was perforce set up by an action brought by Bradlaugh in April against Mr Erskine, the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons, for the assault of 3rd August—a step made necessary by the police magistrate's refusal of a summons against Inspector Denning for his formal assault; and by the risk, which was soon realised, that the Gurney action would be denied a hearing. The matter being brought before the House on 8th and 9th May, the Attorney-General was directed to defend Mr Erskine, Sir Hardinge Giffard suggesting that those who assisted in bringing such an action should be prosecuted according to old precedents for breach of privilege. Such a prosecution, if laid, would have struck at Messrs Lewis & Lewis, Bradlaugh's solicitors in the matter, and at the committee of the Constitutional Rights League, who had also instructed them.
And yet one more step in this bewildering litigation was taken on 9th May, when Bradlaugh moved before Lords Justices Brett and Cotton for leave to appeal against so much of the three orders of the Court of Appeal, dated 31st March 1881, 14th November 1881, and 23rd February 1882, as awarded costs. The application was of a highly technical character, and was dismissed, everything being now left to the House of Lords when it should hear the appeal.
§17.
The agitation in the constituencies was carried on throughout the spring and summer with an energy worthy of the cause. In addition to the crowded meetings which he held in dozens of the larger provincial towns, the Constitutional Rights League arranged for three more great demonstrations in London—two on 10th May, and one on Sunday, 14th May. On the 10th was held, first, an immense mass meeting in Trafalgar Square, attended by delegates from over a hundred towns, and addressed by, among other speakers, the Rev. Mr Freeston of Stalybridge, Mr Ashton Dilke, Mr Labouchere, and Mr Broadhurst; and in the evening a second audience packed St James's Hall to the doors. On the Sunday an enormous mass meeting took place in Hyde Park, the attendance being estimated at 70,000 or 80,000. At all of these meetings Bradlaugh's claim was affirmed with the greatest enthusiasm. The attitude of the Tory press may be gathered from a reference in the Evening Standard to
"that section of the people which holds Mr Bradlaugh's coat-tails in veneration. They would get to Westminster, see the fun, shout out encouragement, and possibly pick up something to pay the expenses of the expedition."
An earlier demonstration, held in the Shoreditch Town Hall on 8th May, presided over by Mr Broadhurst and addressed by Bradlaugh and Labouchere, received no notice in the leading morning papers, though the crowd which sought admittance would have sufficed to fill the hall thrice over. It was necessary for such journals to ignore such matters as much as possible, since the main plea on the Tory side had now come to be that the public feeling was "universally" against Bradlaugh. To suppress the facts, and then to deny that the facts existed, was a natural tactic.
Naturally the Tories on their own part were not idle, either in the House or out of it. In the House they were safe from answer by Bradlaugh; and accordingly Sir Henry Tyler, who had already distinguished himself by a dastardly attack on the ladies of "the Bradlaugh family" and Mrs Besant as being unfit teachers of Science,[163] was foolish enough to call upon the Home Secretary, during May, to prosecute the National Reformer for blasphemy, on the score, not of any editorial utterances, but of certain articles by an outside contributor, controverting, as too favourable, an estimate of the Gospel Jesus by a member of the staff. Sir Henry was no less zealous for Jesus than he had been for "God;" and he was backed by Mr Healy, who asked whether the paper could not be seized. The Home Secretary deprecated the attempt in the name of the interests of orthodoxy, as he had previously done an attempt to secure a prosecution of the Freethinker. But Tyler and those of his kidney, baffled here, only looked about for another means of gaining their point.
Among the most prominent of the attacks made on Bradlaugh about this time were the (second and third) articles contributed by Cardinal Manning to the Nineteenth Century, one under the title "An Englishman's Protest." The second was in time for the election in March, and much was hoped from it. Later, after illegally visiting Northampton in prelatic state, to turn the Irish voters against the Atheist, he contributed yet a third article to the Nineteenth Century of September 1882; and still the editor denied Bradlaugh all right of reply. It is probable that at no time in the long strife were Freethinkers more roused to wrath, more moved to smite arrogant insolence upon its blatant mouth, than by this manifesto from a prince of the Church of Rome, the murderous organism which had eaten out the mind of Spain and barely missed destroying Italy. Certain it is that from these malevolent outbreaks of the unsleeping Romish spirit of persecution may be dated a new birth of enmity towards Rome on the part of English rationalists, who had before been disposed to class the bloody-mindedness of Catholicism with the kindred rancours of Protestantism. It was left to Manning to put his Church in the worst light of all; to show once for all that the fundamental mission of priestly Rome is not parcere subjectis et debellare superbos, but to fight the ignoble battle of the million against one. And it is to his action that his co-religionists owe most of the measure of acceptation found among Freethinkers by the fierce verse in which Mr Swinburne has named the Church of Rome "Grey spouse of Satan, church of name abhorred," and taunted the "withered harlot" with the shame of her defeat on the Field of Flowers.