Читать книгу Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2) - Bonner Hypatia Bradlaugh - Страница 11

I am now closely approaching the end of my task, and as yet I have only mentioned the National Secular Society incidentally. To leave it without further notice would be doing scant justice both to my father and to the association with which he worked so actively, and with which his name must ever remain connected, whatever its future history may be.

The National Secular Society has sometimes been confounded with the London Secular Society, of which Mr George Jacob Holyoake and Mr Bradlaugh were successively presidents; but that was merely a London Society, and not a general association. Indeed, I believe there had never been any general association of the Freethinkers of Great Britain until 1866, when it was felt that some endeavour should be made to organise them. There were local secular Societies all over the kingdom, there were isolated Freethinkers to be found everywhere, but hitherto there had been no attempt to unite them into one general federation. Without organisation much propagandist work had been done: in a single year, for instance, 250,000 tracts were distributed; with organisation it was believed that much more might be accomplished. But propaganda was by no means the only object to be gained by uniting Freethinkers in one general society. In September a provisional programme for the proposed National Secular Society was put forward. Mr Bradlaugh by consent assumed the office of President of the Society until the first Conference. In the programme it was stated that the objects of the Society would be: —

To form an Association for mutual help for all the Freethinkers of Great Britain.

To conduct in the United Kingdom a more vigorous Freethought propaganda, especially in districts where Freethinkers are few, and Freethought lectures rare.

To establish a fund for the assistance of aged or distressed Freethinkers.

To promote Parliamentary and other action in order to remove all disabilities on account of religious opinions.

To establish secular schools and adult instruction classes in connection with every local society having members enough to support such schools or classes.

The idea of a National Society was well taken up, and members were enrolled in all directions. It was intended to hold a Conference early in the following year, but this was postponed, partly on account of Mr Bradlaugh's ill-health, and did not actually take place until the end of November, when it was found that the Society had made a very successful start in life – a success which was fully confirmed by the time the Conference met again a year later. A special Lecturing Fund was established in 1867, and by the aid of this the accredited lecturers of the Society went into places where the Freethinkers were too poor and too few to themselves bear the whole expenses of a meeting; and in this way towns and villages were visited by a Freethought lecturer where before Freethought was almost unheard of. The provisional statement of the principles and objects of the Society was very soon amended in some minor details, and ten or twelve years later a Revision Committee was appointed and the rules newly stated.

In 1869 the Society brought out the first Secular almanack ever published. It was edited by "Charles Bradlaugh and Austin Holyoake," and met with an immediate and complete success, transcending even the hopes of its promoters, the first edition being sold out in one day. This almanack has been continued without intermission until the present time. At Mr Austin Holyoake's death, Mr Charles Watts became co-editor with Mr Bradlaugh, and in 1878 he was superseded by Mrs Annie Besant. When Mr Bradlaugh resigned his office as President of the National Secular Society – in 1890, after his serious illness of the previous winter – the new President, Mr G. W. Foote, became editor of the almanack in conjunction with Mr J. M. Wheeler.

With the exception of the year 1872, when Mr Arthur Trevelyan, J.P., was elected President, Mr Bradlaugh held the chief office of the Society from the time of its foundation until his resignation, and it was always a source of immense pride to him that he was chosen representative of the Freethinkers of Great Britain and Ireland. He laboured untiringly for the Society; not merely for the organisation as a whole, but for the separate branches and for the individuals which comprised it. "During thirty years," he said on the day he resigned, "I think I may say I have never refused any help to any branch that I thought was justified in asking for help."

He never held any paid office, but on the contrary often paid money out of his own pocket for the purposes of the Association. He estimated that the sum he had earned and given in actual cash to the Society and its branches during the time he was connected with it amounted to £3000. The Society, on its side, released him and Mrs Besant from a payment of £42042 due to it at the time of his resignation.

His yearly Conference reports, although they make no pretence at being detailed records, are yet landmarks, as it were, of the work accomplished by the Society; his yearly Conference speeches43 often give the most vivid glimpses of himself, of his pride in work accomplished, and his aspirations for work yet undone. Often, too, their terse and moving language reveals the truest, most unstudied eloquence.

The National Secular Society proved itself an organisation of the utmost value, not merely as a propagandist association, but in all cases in any degree connected with the Freethought movement where combined action was required. When Mrs Besant was deprived of her child; at the time of Mr Bradlaugh's Parliamentary struggle, with its countless phases; during the prosecutions for blasphemy, and on many other occasions, meetings were held or petitions were got up simultaneously all over the country. The members of the Society were and are nearly all poor men and women; but what they have lacked in riches they have made up in energy; what they could not contribute in money, they have given eagerly and cheerfully in work.

Many people misconstrued Mr Bradlaugh's reason for resigning his office as President of the National Secular Society. Some said he made a choice between his Freethought and his Parliamentary work, and selected the latter; others said he had long been gradually subordinating his anti-theological work to his political work, with a view to dropping the former; others, that his action was entirely due to a modification in his heretical opinions; and others again said that he was not in harmony with the members of the Society. The truth was so obvious and so simple that all seemed loth to accept it, and searched for complicated motives under the plain facts. At the special Conference summoned to receive his resignation, Mr Bradlaugh gave his reasons in a voice which was low and faltering, as much from the feelings which overcame him as from his recent illness.

"With very slight break," he said, "I have led in this movement for over thirty years – a fairly long period in any life. I have been President of the Society, with the same slight break, since the Society began, and I am very sorry, very sorry, to resign office this morning. Unfortunately, while the work was never easy, it has become much harder since 1880, with the Parliamentary struggle and the litigation in which the struggle involved me. I have felt for the past three or four years – and I think I have conveyed that feeling to you in my annual speeches – that the pressure must sooner or later bring a breakdown. Last October that breakdown came, and the wonder is that I am here to tender you my resignation at all. I was then brought face to face with the difficulty that I could no longer do all the work I had done… No resource is then open to me but to resign. Some kind friends have suggested that I might hold the office nominally… But I could not do that; I must be a real President or none. My fault has been that I have sometimes been too real a one, but it is no easy matter to lead such a voluntary movement as ours… I don't want to leave you. I could not take any other office in the Society after having been so long your President; but if you thought it right to elect me a member for life, I should be grateful to you for doing it."

In this statement from Mr Bradlaugh's own lips is contained the whole and sole reason for his resignation. To be a "real" President of the National Secular Society involved the performance of a vast amount of labour, the greater part of which was unrecognised and unseen. This he felt had become beyond his powers; it was not in him to bear the name and let others do the work; in giving up the duties of his position he must also give up its honours. Only those who knew the pride he had always felt in holding this office of President of the associated Freethinkers of the nation knew the pain it cost him to lay that office down.