Outmatched in debate, outnumbered in division, the party was pervaded by a profound feeling of gloom. They had nothing to give to their followers, nothing to promise to the people: no Garters for Dukes, no peerages for wealth, no baronetcies or knighthoods or trinkets for stalwarts. Although the new spirit created by Disraeli—Imperium abroad, Libertas at home—still lived in the Tory party, it had been profoundly discouraged by the results of the election; and many of those who swayed Conservative counsels could think of no plan of action except an obstinate but apathetic resistance to change. Jeered at as ‘the stupid party,’ haunted by profound distrust of an ever-growing democracy, conscious that the march of ideas was leaving them behind, these desponding counsellors could discern in the future no sign of returning fortune and seemed to find the sole function of the Conservative minority in delaying and restricting the movements of the age by means of electoral inequalities, by Parliamentary procedure, and through the prejudices of interest and of class.
What political prophet or philosopher, surveying the triumphant Liberal array, would have predicted that this Parliament, from which so much was hoped, would be indeed the most disastrous and even fatal period in their party history? Or who could have foreseen that these dejected Conservatives in scarcely five years, with the growing assent of an immense electorate, would advance to the enjoyment of twenty years of power? It needed a penetrating eye to discover the method, and a bold heart first to stem and finally to turn the tide. Who would have thought of breaking up the solid phalanx of Liberalism by driving in a wedge between the Radicals and the Whigs; or dreamt of using the Irish to overthrow the great apostle of reconciliation between peoples; and who without the audacity of genius would have dared to force the Conservative party to base the foundations of their authority with confidence upon the very masses they dreaded and to teach those masses to venerate and guard the institutions they had formerly despised?
The Liberal majority, who had arrived at Westminster in such excellent spirits after their victory at the polls, were enabled quite early in the session to take part in a Government defeat. The electors of Northampton, which was in those days reputed the most Radical town in England, had returned Mr. Bradlaugh as one of their representatives. Charles Bradlaugh came to the House of Commons by strange paths of thought and action. Forty-seven years before he had been born in a religious family, the son of a very poor solicitor’s clerk. For a time he was a teacher in an Evangelical Sunday-school; but he began to ask many questions about his faith and its foundations, which appear to have been indifferently answered by a clergyman to whom he applied. Later he was a Chartist, and spoke often at open-air meetings, at first on the Christian side; but after a public disputation with an anti-Christian opponent he became a declared atheist and found shelter for a while in an anti-Christian family. Harassed by poverty he enlisted in the East India Company’s army, was exchanged into the British Service, served with credit several years in the 7th Dragoon Guards, and bought his discharge with a legacy that had come to him from an aunt. Next he was an office-boy to a solicitor, whence he rose soon to manage the common law department of the firm. These harsh and varied experiences had inflamed his mind against many established institutions, human and divine. As a bold and effective platform speaker, or under the pseudonym of ‘Iconoclast,’ he was accustomed to set forth what occurred to him against Christianity, the Bible, and the House of Brunswick, to the severe displeasure of the more prosperous or more contented classes in the nation. In the year 1877 he intruded upon still more dangerous ground and made himself responsible for the republication of a pamphlet about over-population, its evils and its remedies and other Malthusian topics, which, being among the most tremendous of natural problems, have long been judged unfit for public discussion. The pamphlet is said to have attained a sale of 180,000 copies, and the publisher was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, from which he only escaped through the timely discovery of some legal flaw. Mr. Bradlaugh’s struggles against authority, penury, and obloquy were now to be transferred to a more brightly-lighted stage.
On May 3, 1880, Charles Bradlaugh presented himself at the table of the House of Commons and claimed to affirm instead of taking the oath. The Speaker, whom he had acquainted with his intention some days earlier, decided on his own responsibility to leave the question to the decision of the House, and Lord Frederick Cavendish, representing the Government in the absence of Ministers—whose seats had been vacated by taking office—moved accordingly for a Select Committee of Inquiry. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Leader of the Opposition, being as it appears personally willing to substitute an affirmation for the oath, seconded the motion. When the House met again (May 5) Sir Henry Wolff gave notice that he would oppose the reference to a committee; and when it was nominated he moved (May 11) ‘the previous question,’ on the ground that to proceed to general business before the Queen’s Speech had announced to members the reasons for which Parliament was summoned would be to invade the Royal Prerogative. He was supported by Mr. Gorst, the member for Chatham. A debate ensued, in the course of which some prominent Conservatives deprecated Sir Henry Wolff’s motion, and several of the Conservative leaders abstained from the division in which it was defeated by 171 to 74. But the question had already begun to excite attention. The delay was fatal to its settlement. If Mr. Bradlaugh had been content to take the oath unostentatiously among a crowd of members at the beginning of the session, it is almost certain that no question would have been raised. He chose instead in the most public manner to cast down a challenge. It was eagerly accepted. From the caprice that prompted one private member to stir a smouldering fire and the chance interposition of another who happened to observe him arose a protracted and ferocious controversy, which, in Mr. Morley’s words, ‘went on as long as the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the party triumph, threw the new Government at once into a minority and dimmed the ascendency of the great Minister.’
By a majority of one the committee decided against Mr. Bradlaugh’s claim to affirm. He thereupon wrote to the newspapers that he considered it his duty to accept the mandate of his constituents and that if to do so he had to submit to a form less solemn than the affirmation, so much the worse for those who forced him to repeat words which were to him sounds conveying no clear and definite meaning. Having by this, as he no doubt supposed, settled the matter to the extreme discomfiture of his opponents, he repaired to the House on May 21—the third day of its meeting for regular business—resolved to take the oath in the usual form. But in the meantime Sir Henry Wolff had not been idle. With the assistance of Mr. Grantham—now one of His Majesty’s Judges—he had studied the legal aspect of the question and had drafted a resolution. He had consulted with his friends and in particular with the young member for Woodstock, with whom he had struck up a friendly acquaintance in the last Parliament and of whose talents he had formed a high opinion. Mr. Bradlaugh’s letter had, moreover, produced an astonishing effect. The House—almost irrespective of party—was profoundly offended and even outraged by his words and by the action he intended. Anger flamed in the Lobbies. Ministers were justly apprehensive of the difficulties that might arise if the question of Mr. Bradlaugh’s right to take the oath was held to be one for the determination of the House. They held a council in the Speaker’s Library, and proposed to meet the hostile motion, which was now certain when Mr. Bradlaugh should present himself, by moving ‘the previous question.’ But the Whips reported that the feeling in the House was ‘uncontrollable.’ The Liberal majority could not be relied on to support ‘the previous question’ and the Prime Minister was forced to content himself with proposing a new committee to search for precedents.
When the hour came, Mr. Bradlaugh advanced to the table to take the oath. Thereupon Sir Henry Wolff sprang up and objected to its being administered to him. Mr. Dillwyn, a Liberal member, intervened, submitting that it was out of order to question the right of any member to take the oath; but the Speaker, adhering to the intention he had expressed in private, ruled—although in very doubting language—in favour of Sir Henry Wolff. The Speaker directed the member for Northampton to withdraw while Sir Henry Wolff explained his reasons. These were, in short, that Mr. Bradlaugh’s declared opinions upon religion and Royalty necessarily rendered any oath of allegiance that he might take meaningless in form and valueless in fact.
The Prime Minister made an effort to narrow the issue to the simple judicial question of whether a duly elected member could be prevented by the House from fulfilling his statutory obligations and he proposed his Select Committee. The debate which followed was long, serious, and savage. Two views, both held with intensity, prevailed about the man: first, that he was a blatant contumacious atheist who made a living by blasphemy, republicanism, and indecent literature, and sought in Parliamentary honours a fresh advertisement for his hateful trade; and, secondly, that he was a martyr gone wrong, whose zeal and convictions—honest, albeit pernicious—had caused him to suffer in private prospects and public life. The unfavourable view predominated in the House and was adopted with vehemence by the Conservative party. There was a third view—that the House of Commons was no judge of such matters, that it had received no evidence but common report, and even so had no business to exclude members because of their opinions. But such arguments, although urged by orators like Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, found little acceptance. Extracts were read from ‘The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick’ and ‘The Fruits of Philosophy.’ Mr. Bradlaugh’s declaration that an oath was to him an idle and meaningless ceremony was repeated over and over again. Was the House to connive at an act of blasphemy? Mr. Gibson from the Front Opposition Bench, taking the Bible in his hands from the table on which it lay, read out impressively the solemn words which were to be mockingly invoked. Mr. F. H. O’Donnell, a militant Irish Catholic, spoke in unmeasured abhorrence of the Bradlaugh doctrines, which he said would degrade human love and human wedlock to something lower than union of beast with beast. The speech of Mr. Walter of the Times, which, although favouring the appointment of a Select Committee, declared that Mr. Bradlaugh could not be permitted to go through the form of taking the oath, was regarded as representing an important element of moderate Liberal opinion.
Partisanship was not slow to perceive its opportunity. Sir Stafford Northcote and the whole Conservative party made haste to support Sir Henry Wolff. Opposition speakers sought to identify the Liberal party and Mr. Gladstone himself with the member for Northampton. He had been their candidate, he was now their comrade. The division, according to one gentleman, would be between those who were on the side of atheism, disloyalty, and immorality and those who were not. Amid such fury many very wise and worthy exhortations to preserve a judicial spirit were overwhelmed. Lord Randolph Churchill resumed the debate on May 24. For the first time he addressed a crowded House and was supported by the cheers of a great party. There was in his character a strong element of religious feeling. He spoke with a kind of half-restrained passion which commanded attention. He opposed the appointment of a committee. The matter was simple. Let it be decided by what Lord Beaconsfield had called ‘the unerring instinct of the House of Commons.’ Like others who had spoken, he quoted from the Bradlaugh writings. He stood at the corner seat of the third bench below the gangway and when he had finished reading the extract beginning ‘I loathe these small German breast-bestarred wanderers,’ he cast ‘The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick’ upon the floor and stamped upon it, to the surprise of the assembly. Although this was his first entry into the dispute, he seems at once to have been accepted as a principal. Henceforward, upon the Bradlaugh question, he took his natural place as a leader and before two years had passed he was credited by the public with having begun the whole controversy.
Sir Henry Wolff’s motion was rejected in favour of the Ministerial amendment proposing a committee by 214-289. There was another dispute on May 28 over the names of the committee, Lord Randolph being ironically or mischievously anxious that Nonconformists should be more numerous on it. Mr. Gladstone, in reply, concerned himself almost entirely with the arguments of Lord Randolph and Sir Henry Wolff. The committee was appointed. Its search for precedents was barren. It reported that Mr. Bradlaugh could not take the oath, but recommended that he should be allowed to affirm at his own risk, in order that the matter might be settled in the Courts. The Government accepted the view of the committee. On June 21, therefore, Mr. Labouchere moved that his colleague be permitted to affirm. Sir Hardinge Giffard, in the name of the Conservative party, met this by an amendment which declared that Mr. Bradlaugh should not be permitted either to affirm or swear. After two days’ debate (June 21 and 22) the first great division of the new Parliament was taken. Mr. Labouchere’s motion, although supported by the whole Ministry, was rejected by 275 votes to 230 and Sir Hardinge Giffard’s amendment was adopted in its stead. In the clamorous excitement which followed the declaration of the numbers some have discovered the joy of the Tory party at their first revenge for Midlothian.
The account of this episode need not be pursued in detail. How Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself the next day and claimed to swear; how the Prime Minister, his solution having been rejected, refused his guidance to the House; how the Speaker called upon Mr. Bradlaugh to withdraw; how he resisted; how he was heard at the Bar; how he was expelled; how he was committed to the Clock Tower upon the motion of the Leader of the Opposition; how action was taken against him in the Courts for sitting and voting without statutory qualification, are upon record. How he was unseated and re-elected, and in what manner he finally took the oath, must presently be described. The Bradlaugh case was inexhaustible in scenes and sensations. It recurred almost month after month throughout the Parliament, and whenever it occupied the stage the Government was powerless; the leadership of the House was abandoned by its first and greatest member; the overwhelming majority of the Midlothian campaign became divided and untrustworthy. The credit of the Ministry was injured in Parliament and in the country the Liberal party and its leaders were, not unsuccessfully, represented as the champions of Bradlaugh and his abominated doctrines.