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THE "NATIONAL REFORMER."

Those who have travelled with me thus far will have noticed that the story of Mr. Bradlaugh's public work is carried down to 1860, just prior to the inauguration of the National Reformer. This I thought would be a good point at which to break off and look at what his private life and home surroundings had been during that time; and the account of this I have brought down to about the year 1870. I will now retrace my steps a little and go back to 1860 to take up again the narrative of my father's public work, and to tell of the starting, carrying on, and vicissitudes of the National Reformer, of the stormy lecturing times when Mr. Bradlaugh delivered twenty-three or more lectures in one month, travelling between Yarmouth and Dumfries to do it and home again with perhaps less money in his pocket than when he started. Italy, Ireland, the Lancashire Cotton Famine, the Reform League, the General Election of 1868, these and other matters of more or less importance will bring us again to the year 1870. That year brought with it such important events touching both the private and public life of Mr. Bradlaugh that it made, as it were, a break in his life, and marked a new era in his career.

The Sheffield Freethinkers, as I said a few pages back, almost adopted the young "Iconoclast" as their own. In him they found a bold, able, and untiring advocate of the opinions they cherished; in them he, in return, found full appreciation of his efforts, kind friends and enthusiastic co-workers. This union had not existed long before it resolved itself into a practical form—the promulgation of the National Reformer. The initiation of the idea came from Mr. Bradlaugh, who naturally sighed after his lost Investigator; but as neither he nor any one of these Yorkshire friends was sufficiently wealthy to take the sole risk of starting and running a newspaper, a committee of Sheffield, Bradford, and Halifax men formed a Company and issued a prospectus, which was inserted in the Reasoner of February 12, 1860.[34] This original Prospectus is very interesting, and a perusal of it will show how closely, except on one or two matters of detail which have necessarily altered with the times, the programme of the latter day National Reformer adhered to that issued thirty-four years ago. A careful comparison of the policy embodied in this Prospectus with the policy of the paper up to January 1891 will entirely disprove the various assertions of modifications airily made by many persons; by some carelessly, these never having troubled to make themselves acquainted with the facts; by others wilfully, regardless of the truth within their knowledge.

The arrangements for the paper were completed, and announcements concerning it made, when Mr. Joseph Barker returned to England from America. His coming was heralded by a flourish of trumpets—literary trumpets, that is—receptions were arranged to welcome him, and there was evidently a widespread notion that Joseph Barker was a very great man indeed. It is difficult for us to-day, having before us his whole public career, with its kaleidoscopic changes of front, to realise the enthusiasm which his name provoked in 1860. But be that as it may, it is quite evident that at that time his reputation stood high amongst English Freethinkers; and, in an evil hour, Mr. Bradlaugh, thinking that the co-operation of such a man would be of great advantage to the cause he had at heart, suggested to the Sheffield committee that Mr. Barker should be invited to become co-editor with himself. The suggestion was readily adopted, and all future announcements concerning the National Reformer contained the two names, Joseph Barker and "Iconoclast," as "editors for the first six months."

The issue of the first number was promised for April 8th (1860), but apparently there was some little difficulty in getting it under way, and it was not until the following Saturday,[35] April 14th, that the new venture was fairly launched. According to the arrangements made between the committee of management and the editors, Mr. Joseph Barker edited the first half (four pages), "Iconoclast" the second; and in this last half were put all the parliamentary, co-operative, and society reports, announcement of lectures, and advertisements. I conclude that after a few numbers, Mr. Bradlaugh found all these reports greatly curtailed the space available for original articles by himself or his contributors, for very soon the Parliamentary reports were abandoned, and criticism of measures before the Legislature, written either by himself or by "Caractacus," were substituted. The "original" poetry, I remark, was mainly confined to Mr. Barker's side (I use the word "original" because it appeared in the Prospectus); and even there the poetic seed seems to have taken some time to germinate, for until the tenth number only two or three stray shoots appeared; with "No. 10," however, it suddenly blossomed into upwards of a column of verses. These verses are from the pens of Charles Mackay, John G. Saxe, Longfellow, and Richard Howitt, and it is a heavy demand upon us to believe that they made their first appearance under the auspices of Mr. Barker in the National Reformer. After this number there was seldom an issue without some verse—"original" or otherwise. There is one small matter which has amused me immensely in connection with the National Reformer (and also with the Reasoner), that is, the enthusiastic advocacy of the Turkish Bath. A casual observer, say a Hindu or a Confucian, coming to these papers with an entirely unbiased mind, might well imagine that the Turkish Bath was a mainstay of Secularism, such is the ardour with which its merits are put forward. At each town visited by the different editors, wherever there was a Turkish Bath, the bath is also visited, reported upon, and if possible, commended in their respective papers. Thus, in the first number of the National Reformer, Mr. Barker winds up an account of "My lecturing tour" by a detailed description of the bath at Keighley, and refers more briefly to those he revelled in at Sheffield, Huddersfield, Rochdale, Stockport, and Bradford. He seems to have been a new convert, and on that ground perhaps may be excused the eagerness which carried him to such flights in his description as to record the momentous fact that the drying sheet was "fringed with red." While Mr. Barker thus describes in his half of the paper, "Iconoclast" in the four pages under his charge devotes two-thirds of a column to an article on "Cleanliness," in which he also extols the Turkish Bath, but with the calmness and matter-of-fact manner of an old frequenter. Mr. Jagger of Rochdale and Mr. Maxfield of Huddersfield are especially and discriminatingly praised for the comfort and cleanliness of their arrangements. We are all tolerably familiar with the proverb "Cleanliness comes next to Godliness," but any one reading the Freethought papers of thirty odd years ago would be compelled to admit that it took a very front place in the principles of Secularism then.

As a matter of course, Mr. Bradlaugh addressed some "First words" to his readers; from this I will detach two sentences, and two only; and these because they embody, in forcible language, truths as sound to-day as at the moment when they were written. Let us unite against the clergy, he urges upon his Freethinking readers, for "the Bible is the great cord with which the people are bound; cut this, and the mass will be more free to appreciate facts instead of faiths." Then in praising the efforts at Co-operation at Rochdale, he adds: "I would say to the men of other towns, do not strike against your masters, ye who are servants, but combine to serve one another in co-operative associations, which will enable you to employ and elevate yourselves, and in time will strike the, words 'master and servant' out of our vocabulary."

The second number of the National Reformer did not appear until a month later, the third came out on June 2nd, and with that commenced the weekly issue. With the exception of a few letters and occasional extracts, the whole of which rarely filled more than two or three columns, Mr. Joseph Barker's half was entirely written by himself, and the initials "J. B." dotted all over the four pages become so monotonous that the sight of another signature gives quite a relief to the eye. The most prominent contributors to Iconoclast's section were "Caractacus," "G. R.," and Mr. John Watts. When the paper was nothing more than a project, Mr. Bradlaugh spoke of it to his friend Mr. W. E. Adams, who was then living at Manchester. He asked the author of the "Tyrannicide" pamphlet to write articles for the new paper, but Mr. Adams had so modest an opinion of his own abilities that he hesitated to consent. But consent he at length did; an article from his pen upon "Reform" appeared in the first number, and once having made the plunge, he became a regular weekly contributor. The first contribution was signed "W. E. A.," but after that Mr. Adams wrote under the signature of "Caractacus," and the eloquence of his articles impeaching the oppressor, or pleading the cause of the oppressed, quicken the blood in one's veins to-day, although the men and causes which inspired his pen are now more than half forgotten. G. R.'s first article on the population doctrines appeared in the fourth number, and after that he wrote fairly frequently for the National Reformer. In number sixteen, the printer transferred nine "make-up" paragraphs—sent by Mr. Bradlaugh to fill up any vacant corners in his section—to Mr. Barker's half. The paragraphs were sufficiently interesting in their way, but, after the manner of such paragraphs, contained no very startling doctrines, nor expressed any very extraordinary sentiment. The first read "Kindness to animals promotes humanity;" the second gave some tonnage statistics; the third was upon persecutions, urging "that he who kills for a faith must be weak, that he who dies for a faith must be strong;" the other paragraphs were quotations from Thackeray, Wendell Phillips, Senior, Mansell's Bampton Lectures, Theodore Parker and Ruskin. Such was the effect of these harmless looking extracts upon Mr. Barker, however, that he thought it necessary to specially address his readers on September 8th (in No. 17), publicly repudiating the sentiments as "foolish or false," and specially selecting for condemnation the maxim on kindness to animals! This is the first intimation the public have of the "rift within the lute," and one is immediately driven to the conclusion that a man who could publicly repudiate, in the brusque language used by Mr. Barker, such a trifling matter as this, must have been very anxious to pick a quarrel with his colleague, no matter how slight the grounds. As a matter of course, Mr. Bradlaugh was obliged in the next number to explain that the paragraphs had been used by the printer to fill up what would otherwise have been a blank space in Mr. Barker's half. "It was done," he said, "without my knowledge, but I can hardly say against my wish," and then, naturally enough, he proceeded to defend or explain the sentiments expressed in them. This matter, small in itself, makes it fairly evident that Mr. Barker was a man exceedingly difficult to deal with; and his entire lack of self-restraint is shown in his eagerness to display to the public the smallest of his grievances, even as against his co-editor, with whom one would have imagined it would have been to his interest to at least appear on friendly terms, since it directly involved the welfare of the paper.

For some time after this, things went on quietly between the two editors, each pursuing the even tenor of his way. But this seeming tranquillity did not extend far below the surface. Mr. Barker expressed to certain persons his regret at having associated himself with Mr. Bradlaugh, and his determination not to continue long as co-editor. Of course, all this was reported to Mr. Bradlaugh, although he allowed it to pass quite unnoticed.

There were for the moment no more outbursts of repudiation in the National Reformer, still the paper was very curious reading, and it grew more and more curious each week. As Mr. Bradlaugh himself wrote at a later stage: "The points of difference between myself and Mr. Barker are many. He professes now to be a Theist. For eight years, at least, I have been an Atheist. I am for the Manhood Suffrage. Mr. Barker is against it. I hold the doctrines of John Stuart Mill on Political Economy. Mr. Barker thinks the advocacy of such opinions vile and immoral. Mr. Barker thinks Louis Napoleon a good and useful man. I believe the Emperor of the French to be the most clever and unscrupulous rascal in the world." These were a few of the more prominent points of difference, and they seemed to increase and magnify week by week, although my father's Malthusian advocacy and his hatred of Louis Napoleon were made the principal grounds of friction. All Mr. Bradlaugh's contributors were apparently obnoxious to Mr. Barker. He fell foul of "Caractacus" on the subjects of the American War, Garibaldi, and the Emperor of the French; "G. R." was attacked for his economical doctrines in the most unreserved language; and Mr. John Watts he opposed on private grounds. These differences of opinion broke out once more into open hostility in Mr. Barker's half. In No. 47, "Caractacus," in an article on the dangers to the rights of free speech, called upon "all honest and liberal men" to stand by Iconoclast and Mr. Barker in their efforts "to maintain the very greatest of our public rights." In the same number, and on the opposite page, Mr. Joseph Barker protested against the reference to himself. He had seen the article before it went to press, and had he mentioned his objection, the words would have been erased; but apparently that was too ordinary a method for Mr. Barker. In No. 48 he inserted a ridiculous statement that Luther made it a rule to translate a verse of the Bible every day, which rapid rate of working "soon brought him to the conclusion of his labours." A few weeks later he wrote of this as though it had appeared in "Iconoclast's" section; in the same issue of the paper he also took occasion to insert a notice disclaiming all responsibility for anything that might appear in the last four pages, and this notice he continued week by week. All this to an infant paper was about as bad as a course of whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever to a child; that the National Reformer survived it proves that it had an exceptionally strong constitution. Mr. Bradlaugh naturally became much alarmed about its future, for it was noticeably falling away and losing strength. Feeling that a little more of such treatment would kill it outright, he addressed himself to those who, with himself, were responsible for its existence.

He sent a short letter to the shareholders of the National Reformer Company, in which he said:—

"Eighteen months since I, with the special aid of my Sheffield friends, initiated the present Company. The paper belonging to the Company was to have been edited by myself, but feeling that two men do more work than one—if such work be done unitedly—I offered to share such editorship with Mr. Joseph Barker. The experience of the past twelve months has taught me that the paper can only be efficiently conducted under one editor."

After recounting the differences and difficulties, he ends by suggesting that both should tender their resignations, and that some one gentleman be elected as the sole conductor. If this course should be adopted, he says, he would offer himself as a candidate for the office.

An extraordinary meeting of the shareholders was called for August 26th (1861), and Mr. Bradlaugh was elected as editor, with a salary of £5 per week, by 41 votes against 18 for Mr. Barker, and with the next number this gentleman's connection with the paper came to an end.

Before dismissing Mr. Barker's name altogether from these pages, I am anxious to record a little discovery that I have made since I have been at work upon this biography. If those who own a copy of the "Biography of Charles Bradlaugh," by A. S. Headingley, which for the most part gives a very fair account of the life of Mr. Bradlaugh up to 1880, will turn to pages 78 to 82, they will find a story given there of rioting at Dumfries and Burnley during Mr. Bradlaugh's visits to those towns. At Dumfries, so the story goes, there was so much violence exhibited that "Bradlaugh," whom the mob had threatened to kill, thought he had better wait until the excitement was over; he waited until midnight, when some one took him down into a cellar and so out into the street; once outside he feared to go to his hotel, but waited in the shadow by the river-side. At length he ventured to move a little, but was recognised by some persons, who rushed off to raise the hue and cry. "Bradlaugh then turned down a dark side street and got back to the friendly river," where after a time he saw a policeman and then took courage "to walk by his side." He was soon met by friends, for the town was being scoured for him, and conducted to his hotel in safety. The story of what happened at Burnley is somewhat similar. I must confess that the account of these riots always annoyed and disappointed me. It was so unlike my father to wait about for fear of the mob, get out through the cellar and loiter by the river-side till he happened to meet a policeman under whose sheltering wing he at last ventured to go towards his lodgings. But Mr. Bradlaugh having seen the book, having caused it to be revised in one or two points, it never occurred to me to doubt the general accuracy of the statements made in it. Lately, in searching for some account of these riots, I find that Mr. Headingley is quite trustworthy, except on one point, and that is the name of the lecturer at Dumfries and Burnley. Those who own copies of this work are requested to substitute "Barker" for "Bradlaugh" wherever the latter name occurs on the pages specified, beginning with the paragraph at the bottom of page 78. No injustice will be done to Mr. Barker's memory, for his own account[36] has been faithfully followed by Mr. Headingley.

From the issue of September 7th (1861), then Mr. Bradlaugh was sole editor of the National Reformer, and in the following number he made a declaration of his policy and objects as advocate of the Secular Body. In concluding this statement of his views he says:—

"Our party is the 'party of action,' youthful, hopeful effort; we recognise no impassable barriers between ourselves and the right; we see no irremovable obstacles in our course to the true. We will strive for it, we will live for it, and, if it be necessary, die for it. And even then, in our death we should not recognise defeat, but rather see another step in the upward path of martyrdom … it is our most enduring hope that … we may find a grave which, in the yet far-off future, better men than ourselves may honour in their memories; forgetting our many faults, alone remembered now, and remembering our few useful deeds, at present by our hostile critics persistently overlooked."

A month later appears one of his earliest letters to the clergy, though not the earliest, for some five or six short letters, scattered over several months, had previously appeared; most of these were brief challenges based upon the public statements of some cleric, or repudiation of certain views attributed to Freethinkers, or condemnation of some intolerant utterance. The letter to the Rev. J. Clarke, of Cleckheaton, is, I think, about the first of those controversial letters of which he subsequently wrote so many, and which were so popular and effective. In November we find notification of another change to take place in the National Reformer. In future Mr. George Jacob Holyoake is to "rank as chief contributor," while Mr. John Watts is definitely charged with the duties of sub-editor. A week later, a letter signed "G. J. Holyoake," and headed "One Paper and One Party," informed "the Secularists of Great Britain" that Mr. Holyoake had arranged to become special contributor. With the beginning of the year 1862 he was to contribute three pages of matter either from his own pen or from the pens of others for whom he was responsible. The Reasoner, edited since 1842 by Mr. Holyoake, came to an end in the June of 1861; after that he was connected with the Counsellor, and was proposing to bring out a new paper called the Secular World. This latter title he liked so well that although he abandoned for the time the bringing out of his new paper in favour of special contributions to the National Reformer, he reserved to himself "a copyright in that idea." It will be remembered that the Company agreed to pay their editor £5 per week in full discharge of his duties. Of this Mr. Holyoake was to receive £2 per week, leaving £3 to my father to pay other contributors, his sub-editor, and himself. An effort was made to sell 10,000 copies of the first issue of the paper under the new arrangement; about 8000 were sold, and the sale would have exceeded the 10,000, if the orders had not arrived too late to supply them.

In consequence of the diversity of opinion which had been expressed in the columns of the National Reformer at various times, a correspondent wrote in February 1862 asking what were the political and religious views really advocated by this journal; and from the answer made to this gentleman by Mr. Bradlaugh, we can judge to what extent he went back upon the position of his earlier years, as it was for the last few years of his life the fashion to assert. He says:—

"Editorially the National Reformer, as to religious questions, is, and always has been, as far as we are concerned, the advocate of Atheism; it teaches that all the religions of the world are based upon error; that humanity is higher than theology; that knowledge is far preferable to faith; that action is more effective than prayer; and that the best worship men can offer is honest work, in order to make one another wiser and happier than heretofore. In politics, we are Radicals of a very extreme kind; we are advocates of manhood[37] suffrage; we desire shorter Parliaments; laws which will be more equal in their application to master and servant; protection from the present state of the laws which make pheasants more valuable than peasants; we desire the repeal of the laws against blasphemy, and the enactment of some measure which will make all persons competent as witnesses whatever may be their opinions on religion; we advocate the separation of Church and State, and join with the financial reformers in their efforts to reduce our enormous and extravagant national expenditure."

Those who have read the literature in connection with the Freethought movement for the five or six years prior to 1862 will be in no way unprepared to find that the journalistic union between Mr. Holyoake and Mr. Bradlaugh was very shortlived. In March my father, feeling unable to continue to work under existing arrangements, sent his resignation into the National Reformer Company; however, at the Special General Meeting held on the 23rd, it was decided not to elect any editor "in the place of Iconoclast." Mr. Bradlaugh therefore continued to act as editor, and Mr. Holyoake ceased to be special contributor to the paper. My father was anxious there should be no quarrel—there had been enough of that with Mr. Barker—and proposed to Mr. Holyoake that he should contribute two columns of original matter each week, for which he should receive the same amount as he had received before for the three pages. The Secular World was re-announced, and it had my father's best wishes. "We believe that its advent will benefit the Freethought party," he writes. However, the matter was not to be so soon or so easily settled. Mr. Holyoake claimed from my father the sum of £81, 18s., urging that the agreement to act as special contributor was for twelve months; although he had only filled the post for three months, he yet claimed his salary for the remaining nine. The matter was placed before legally appointed arbitrators—Mr. W. J. Linton, chosen by my father, and Mr. J. G. Crawford by Mr. Holyoake. These gentlemen did not agree, Mr. Linton being strongly in favour of Mr. Bradlaugh, and Mr. Crawford as strongly, I presume, on the other side. They therefore chose an umpire, Mr. Shaen—who, by the way, had, I gather, previously acted as solicitor to Mr. Holyoake, and who many years later showed a decided personal hostility towards Mr. Bradlaugh. After many delays Mr. Shaen at length made his award in August 1863 in favour of Mr. Holyoake, and my father writing to a friend at the time says rather grimly: "The only good stroke of luck lately is that I am ordered by Shaen to pay G. J. H. £81, 18s. Linton will tell you the particulars."

In May 1862 Messrs W. H. Smith & Son first officially refused to supply their agents with the National Reformer. They then occupied the chief railway station bookstalls in England, but were not quite the monopolists they are to-day, and Mr. Bradlaugh could for a little while at least get his paper sold at all the stations, numbering some sixty or seventy, on the North Eastern and Newcastle and Carlisle railways, at which book agencies were held by a Mr. Franklin. It is wonderful, indeed, how this journal managed to live through more than thirty years in spite of this powerful boycott, extending as it afterwards did to every part of the kingdom. Mr. Bradlaugh called upon his friends to use every effort to keep up the sale. "We will do our part," he wrote, "and we call upon our friends, east, west, north, and south, to do their duty also." During the last year of his life Mr. Bradlaugh was given to understand that the boycott would be raised, and that Messrs W. H. Smith & Son would be willing to take the National Reformer on to the railway bookstalls, but the first expenses would have been so great that he was unwilling to enter into the further financial liabilities which the new departure would have involved.

The National Reformer was not only from its earliest years refused by the most powerful booksellers in England, but it was maligned in a quarter where indeed it might have looked for fair play and a little justice—I mean by the Unitarians.[38] The cynical reflection that those who have themselves broken away from the conventional thought of the times always damn those who go a little further than themselves, carries a germ of truth within its bitter shell. The Unitarian body always seem to treat Freethinkers with an acrimony special to themselves and us. Individual Unitarians whom I have known personally have been kind, pleasant, liberal-minded people, but Unitarians as a body or as represented by their organ seldom enough have turned a kindly side towards atheists.

With every man's hand against it, with financial difficulties to cripple it, both the editor and the company of the unfortunate paper felt compelled to review the situation, and put matters on a somewhat different footing. Hence at a duly convened meeting held in September the company was wound up, and Mr. Bradlaugh "appointed liquidator according to the terms of the Joint Stock Company's Act, 1856." From this time the sole responsibility, financial and otherwise, rested upon my father. Unfortunately, a few months later his health broke down, and at the urgent entreaty of his friends he "most reluctantly resolved to determine his connection as Editor, and to retire entirely from the conduct and responsibilities of the paper."

He begged therefore the support of all friends to Mr. John Watts, who had consented to take up the onerous burden of editorship. Mr. John Watts, in an address published the following week, wished it to be understood that he was taking up the editorship at the "express wish" of Iconoclast. On quitting the editor's chair with the issue of No. 146 (Feb. 28), Mr. Bradlaugh gave expression to his wishes in regard to the conduct of the paper.

"I should wish," he says, "that the National Reformer may continue to advocate the fullest liberty of thought and utterance, conceding to others that which it claims for itself. That it should be plain and honest in its attacks on shams. That it should spare no falsehood merely because uttered by a great man, show no mercy to royal treachery simply from reverence for royalty, and have no pardon for crowned wrong while ragged wrong shall suffer. … "

To Freethinkers and Radicals he says, with a bitter prescience of his own future fate indicated in some of his words: "Your duty lies not in petty personal strife, but in the diffusion of the great and mighty truths for which our predecessors have risked stake and dungeon. Your duty is not to take part in disputes whether John or Thomas is the better leader, but rather so to live as to need no leaders. A public man's life is composed of strange phases. If successful, he wins his success with hard struggling. As he struggles the little great ones before him, who envy his hope, block up his path. His ignorance is exposed, his incapability made manifest; and then when he has won the victory, and made a place for standing, each envious cowardly caviller, who dares not meet him face to face, stabs him with base innuendo in the back. I do not envy any statesman's character in the hands of his political antagonists, still less do I envy when I hear him dissected behind his back by his pseudo-friends."

In concluding his article he gives special praise to Mr. John Watts and Mr. Austin Holyoake for their help on the paper, taking the blame for all its past shortcomings on his own shoulders.

From February 1863 until April 1866 Mr. John Watts edited the National Reformer; but unless my father happened to be abroad, as he frequently was during the early part of the sixties, traces of him were to be found somewhere or other in the paper, either in an article from his pen, a letter, or answers to correspondents on legal points. During these three years he contributed several notable articles, such as "Notes on Genesis and Exodus," "The Oath Question," "Real Representation of the People," "A Plea for Atheism," "Universality of Heresy," "The Atonement," "Antiquity and Unity of the Origin of the Human Race," "The Twelve Apostles," "Why do Men Starve?" and "Labour's Prayer," and many of which have been from time to time revised or rewritten, and published and republished in pamphlet form.

He also gave the paper considerable financial assistance, amounting in the three years to upwards of £250.

On the 22nd of April 1866, a notice appeared in the National Reformer to the effect that Mr. Bradlaugh would resume his editorial duties on the paper, of which he had never relinquished the copyright. The occasion for this announcement was a very sad one. Just as in 1863 Mr. Bradlaugh, overtaken by illness, was obliged to lay aside his burden of editorship, so in 1866 Mr. John Watts also became too ill to continue his work. But the illness of Mr. John Watts was unhappily more serious than Mr. Bradlaugh's; it was the forerunner of his death. In the November of the same year a career of some promise was cut short at its opening, and Mr. John Watts died of consumption at the early age of thirty-two.

When he learned of his friend's illness my father readily consented to resume his former task as editor, and appointed as sub-editor Mr. Charles Watts, who spoke of the satisfaction it had been to his brother to have so willing and able a friend take charge of the paper once more. A little later Mr. Austin Holyoake was associated in the sub-editing with Mr. Charles Watts.

Thus in 1866 the journal was once more under the full control of Mr. Bradlaugh, and although he subsequently, for a time, associated another editor with himself, he thought for it and fought for it, wrote for it and cared for it, from that time until within a fortnight of his death, when from his dying bed he dictated a few words for me to write. He had to fight for it in press and law court.

In 1867 the high-priced and refined Saturday Review started the story, so often repeated since, that Mr. Bradlaugh had compared God with a monkey with three tails; and further declared, with that delicacy of language which one expects to meet in such aristocratic company, that "such filthy ribaldry as we have, from a sense of duty, picked off Bradlaugh's dunghill, is simply revolting, odious, and nauseating to the natural sense of shame possessed by a savage." Needless to say, the "savage" feelings of the Saturday Review were much too delicate to admit any reply from the editor of the journal attacked. Mr. Bradlaugh, of course, replied in his own paper, and "B. V." took up the cudgels also on behalf of his friend. He wrote at some length, and the following quotation truly and amusingly pictures the National Reformer at least:—

"This poor N. R.! Let us freely admit that it has many imperfections, many faults; its poverty secures for it a constant supply of poor writers, while securing for us, the poor writers, an opportunity of publishing what we could hardly get published elsewhere. But I fear not to affirm that, by its essential character, it is quite incomparably superior to such a paper as the S. R. It has clear principles, which it honestly believes will immensely benefit the world; the S. R. is governed by hand-to-mouth expediency for the sole benefit of itself. The former is devoted to certain ideas; the latter has neither devotion nor ideas, but has a cool preference for opinions of good fashion and of loose and easy fit. The former is written throughout honestly, each writer stating with the utmost sincerity and candour what he thinks and feels; the latter—why, the latter would doubtless be ashamed to resemble in anything its poor contemporary. The former, though not always choice and accurate in its language, is generally written in plain clear English (and I really account this of importance, and even of vital importance, in an English publication); the latter is not written in any language at all, for a mixed jargon of the schools, the bar, the pulpit, and the clubs is certainly not a language."

Amongst the papers which copied the Saturday Review article was the Printers' Journal; and this paper, determined not to fall behind its aristocratic colleague, added a little slander on its own account, that the National Reformer was improperly printed by underpaid compositors—although had the editor cared to inquire, he would have found that the men were paid according to the regulations of the Printers' Society.

In January and June of 1867 there appeared in the National Reformer some noteworthy letters from the Rev. Charles Voysey. They are specially remarkable when contrasted with his public utterances of 1880. These letters arose out of a sermon preached at Healaugh on October 21st, 1866, in which Mr. Voysey said that if it were urged

"that a belief in the Articles of the Christian Creed without morality is better than morality without belief,[39] I frankly own that, though I am a Churchman, I would rather see them put aside and torn up as rubbish, than see the cause of morality, which is true religion, for a moment imperilled. I would honestly prefer a morality without any religious belief—nay, even without any religious hopes and religious consolations—to the most comforting, satisfying creed without morality. … Inexpressibly sad as it is to us, who rejoice in our Maker, and whose hearts pant for the Living God, yet there are some who cannot believe in him at all. Some of these are kept steadfast in duty, pure and upright in their lives, models of good fathers and mothers, good husbands and wives, and fulfilling God's own law of love, which in mercy he has not made dependent on Creed, but has engraven on our very hearts. They are living evidences of morality without religion; and if I had to choose between the lot of a righteous man who could not believe in a God, and the man of unlimited credulity, who cared not to be righteous so much as to be a believer, I would infinitely sooner be the righteous Atheist."

Mr. Bradlaugh made a short comment upon this, to which Mr. Voysey replied, and one or two further letters appeared. In a letter dated January 13th he writes:—

"But I leave these minor matters to express my heartfelt sympathy for what you call the 'Infidel party' under the civil disabilities which have hitherto oppressed them. I think with sorrow and shame of the stupid, as well as cruel contempt, with which some of my brother-clergymen have treated you; and I cannot but deplore the want of respect towards you as shown in the attitude of society, and in the continuance of those nearly obsolete laws which our less enlightened forefathers passed in the vain hope of checking the movements of the human mind. … I can do but very little, but that little I will do with all my heart to remove the stigma which attaches to my order through its blind and senseless bigotry."

The italics here are mine, as I wish to draw special attention to the sentiments of the Rev. Charles Voysey in 1867. In June of the same year he wrote other somewhat lengthy letters, in which he expressed his great respect for Mr. Bradlaugh's "candour and honesty," and his thanks for the "invariable courtesy" shown him. That is the Mr. Voysey of 1867. In 1880 the Rev. Charles Voysey proved the value of his unsought promise to work to remove the stigma from his order, by going out of his way to preach a sermon at the Langham Hall upon the "Bradlaugh Case," in which he explained that he felt "ashamed and disgraced by the people of Northampton for electing him [Charles Bradlaugh] to represent them;" he said that "most of the speeches in the Bradlaugh case, in favour of his exclusion, strike me as singularly good, wholesome, and creditable," and he felt thankful to the speakers for not mincing the matter. Mr. Bradlaugh, making an exceedingly brief commentary on Mr. Voysey's sermon, said:—

"We presume that this commendation included the various phrases invented for Mr. Bradlaugh by 'hon.' members, but never used by him. Mr. Voysey's belief in God seems to include approval of the use of lies on God's behalf. Mr. Voysey says: 'It is more than probable that if Mr. Bradlaugh had claimed to affirm without giving reasons for it the Speaker would have at once permitted him to affirm.' Here Mr. Voysey writes in absolute and inexcusable ignorance of what actually took place. For eightpence Mr. Voysey can buy the Report of the Select Parliamentary Committee, which, while unfavourable to me, gives the exact facts, and this at least he ought to do before he preaches another sermon full of inaccuracies as to fact, and replete with unworthy insinuation."

"The whole affair," says Mr. Voysey, "has been a perfect jubilee to the martyr and his friends." And in the end it was—such a jubilee as is never likely to fall to the lot of Mr. Voysey. True, it was paid for in years of care and terrific mental anxieties; true, it was heralded with insult and actual personal ill-usage; true, it cost a life impossible to replace; but the "jubilee" came when over the "martyr's" very deathbed the House of Commons itself vindicated his honour; when even a Tory statesman could be found to uphold my father's conduct in the House, and a Tory gentleman to proclaim that he was "a man who had endeavoured to do his duty." It was a jubilee of the triumph of consistent courage and honesty over "blind and senseless bigotry" and unprincipled malice.