Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)

Of course, the only effect of this ridiculous insult was to increase the size of the audience, people coming from Huddersfield, Leeds, and other places round.

A curious incident happened at Leeds, where Mr Bradlaugh was lecturing in August 1862. The subject for the evening address was, "Were Adam and Eve our first parents?" and Mr Bradlaugh was opposed by a young man who had already offered some opposition at the afternoon lecture, and had then created a favourable impression by the pleasant ease and fluency with which he spoke. A question arose as to a passage in the works of Eusebius to which Mr Bradlaugh had referred. The passage, which he read at request, the young man, who turned out to be a paid preacher belonging to Kirkstall, near Leeds, said was not from Eusebius, but from some other book. On Mr Bradlaugh asking for the name of the book, the young preacher said he had so many books that he could not remember their names, but if Mr Bradlaugh would go home with him at the conclusion of the lecture he would show him the book. This audacious young man must have been somewhat dismayed when he found himself taken seriously, for after the lecture Mr Bradlaugh hired a cab and went home with him "accompanied by one Christian and one Infidel to see fair play." Arrived at Kirkstall, the preacher's "numerous library subsided into two modest rows of books on a little table, and after about half an hour's search [he] ended by begging my pardon, and admitting that he had made a mistake."72 The Christian who had gone "to see fair play" was so ashamed that he called upon Mr Bradlaugh on the following evening and reimbursed the cab-hire which the latter had paid. But the "mendacious parsonling" (as my father called him) knew no shame, for at Mr Bradlaugh's next lecture he again rose and tried to explain away his former conduct and misstatement; he further said that he had consulted with persons well read, in Eusebius, but none had met with the passage quoted by Mr Bradlaugh, and to satisfy the audience he had procured the volume of Eusebius and brought it with him. "I rather too hastily abbreviated his triumph," said Mr Bradlaugh, "by turning to the book he brought … and by reading from his own volume the paragraph which he had so decidedly said was not there." The young Christian teacher did not seem to mind in the least being a second time exposed, for, quite unabashed, he rose again to speak on another subject.

There is one more story which I must tell before quite leaving the subject of these early provincial lecturing experiences, and I must tell it not merely because it presents what my father called "a rather novel feature," but because with a little addendum specially composed for the purpose it has been made to do duty as a sort of bulwark of the Christian faith.

On the second Sunday of December, in the year 1863, Mr Bradlaugh was giving three lectures in the Philosophical Hall, Huddersfield, and the subject for the evening was "Le Roi Voltaire." A "very voluble lady," said to be an enthusiast of the Weaver school, got up after the lecture to offer some opposition – if what she said could be dignified by that name! This lady told the audience what we may suppose to have been intended as an awe-inspiring story, but which must, in reality, have been provocative of much mirth. Her son, she said, had once purchased half a pound of butter, and brought it home wrapped up in a leaf of some work by Voltaire. "The leaf was thrown upon the fire ere fully read, but the effect was so remarkable," said my father, in recounting this incident at the time, "that the son dreamed he saw Voltaire, who appeared with a ball of fire for a head and another ball of fire for a heart. Voltaire, while thus blazing, informed the lady's son that he, the French infidel, was burning in hell, where all Voltairians were sure to join him and share his fate."

This story, albeit rather trifling, is harmless enough, and even amusing as it stands, but the unauthorised revised version concludes by saying that Mr Bradlaugh was quite discomfited by the old lady's tale, and went away unable to answer her. I have seen this used against my father even since his death. Such are the devices resorted to by the foolish to convince people of the truths of Christianity.

CHAPTER XX

A FREEMASON

As Mr Bradlaugh was very much tied to London after 1862 on account of his business first in a solicitor's office, and then in the city, he was unable for a few years to lecture so frequently in the country. Saturdays and Sundays were almost his only opportunities for provincial speaking, but these he utilised to the fullest extent that the claims of his London friends would permit. Quite a large proportion of his lectures were given for the pecuniary benefit of some person or cause in need of help. Very often, too, during this period his health gave way. City work for his livelihood, writing, lecturing, and debating for his opinions' sake, rushes to France, Italy, or Germany, and night travelling before the days when long railway journeys were made easy – were a heavy tax on even his strength. And in addition to this, which I might call the general routine of his life, he had the occasional duty of defending his rights in the Law Courts against both Government and private individuals, and the anxiety of a Parliamentary candidature.

Amongst those lectures given away was one in August 1862 on "Freemasonry," under the auspices of the Reformed Rite of Memphis, for the benefit of the family of a deceased brother Mason. In November of the same year he, as Orator of the Grand Lodge des Philadelphes, waited upon the Lord Mayor with two others as a deputation from their Lodge to present £14 5s. to the fund of the distressed operatives in Lancashire. Of this sum £9 was a donation made in the name of Garibaldi, and the further £5 5s. by the Lodge of which Garibaldi was a member, as they proudly put it. I have made a special note of these early appearances of Mr Bradlaugh in his Masonic capacity, because his having been a Freemason has often been called in question, although I have before me some documents which ought to convince even the most incredulous. The first informs "all whom it may concern … that our Brother Charles Bradlaugh, born in Hackney (England), who has signed his name in the margin hereof, was regularly received into Freemasonry and admitted to the third degree in the Grand Lodge of the Philadelphs." This certificate is dated from London the 9th of March 1859, and is very much stamped and signed with eleven signatures (exclusive of Mr Bradlaugh's), with a seal attached to it by a blue ribbon. His sponsor for this initiation was his dear and venerated friend Simon Bernard.73 The second document in my possession, also signed with a dozen or more signatures, is a "diplôme de Maître" (diploma of Master) granted by the Grand Orient of France upon the demand of the "R ⁂ L ⁂ La Persévérante Amitié or ⁂ de Paris." This diploma is dated the 15th May 1862. The third is a much later document, and is to the following effect: —

"Sur la demande presentée par la R. L. Union et Persévérance o⁂ Paris l'effet d'obtenir un diplôme de Maître pour le F. Charles Bradlaugh né à Londres le 26 7bre, 1833, demeurant à Londres membre reçu d'honneur. Le Grand Orient a delivré au F. Charles Bradlaugh le présent diplôme de Maître.

"Donné a l'O ⁂ de Paris le 4 Novembre 1884 (E. V.)"

It is signed by M. Cousin, Président du Conseil de l'Ordre, the Secretary, officers of the R. L. Union et Persévérance, and others.

Mr Bradlaugh belonged also to an English lodge affiliated to the Grand Lodge of England. He was received at Tottenham at the special request of the Lodge in the early part of the sixties, I believe, but I possess none of the usual certificates: these he returned to his Lodge when the Prince of Wales was made Past Grand Master. When it was announced that the lodges of England were about to honour the Prince of Wales "with a dignity he had done nothing to earn," Mr Bradlaugh addressed to him "a letter from a French, Italian, and English Freemason." This letter was published in the National Reformer, and afterwards reissued in pamphlet form. It was read by his Mother Lodge, La Loge des Philadelphes, and gave such unqualified satisfaction that an address of approval was sent him from the Lodge. The pamphlet had a very extensive circulation, and went through several editions.

In March 1874 my father made a fine speech at the annual banquet at the Loge des Philadelphes. It fell to him to speak to the toast, the "loyal" toast of the Lodge, "To the Oppressed of all Nations." The oppressed of Italy, of Spain, of France, of England, of Germany, were each separately remembered, and then he carried the toast on "To the oppressed of all nations: to the women everywhere; to the mothers, who with freer brains would nurse less credulous sons; to the wives, who with fuller thoughts would be higher companions through life's journeyings; to the sisters and daughters, who with greater right might work out higher duty, and with fuller training do more useful work; to woman, our teacher as well as nurse; our guide as well as child-bearer; our counsellor as well as drudge. To the oppressed of all nations: to those who are oppressed the most in that they know it least; to the ignorant and contented under wrong, who make oppression possible by the passiveness, the inertness of their endurance. To the memories of the oppressed in the past, whose graves – if faggot and lime have left a body to bury – are without mark save on the monuments of memory, more enduring than marble, erected in such temples by truer toast-givers than myself. To these we drink, sadly and gratefully; to the oppressed of the present – to those that struggle that they may win; to those that yet are still, that they may struggle; to the future, that in it there may be no need to drink this toast."

At this time when English Freemasons chose to cast doubts upon the reality of Mr Bradlaugh's membership, Freemasons on the other side of the Atlantic welcomed him to their Lodges.

While visiting Boston, Mr Bradlaugh was by special invitation of the Columbian and Adelphi Lodges present at their Masonic festivals. The last occasion should almost be looked upon as historic, as far as the annals of Freemasonry are concerned, since it was a special festival in honour of the installation of Joshua B. Smith as Junior Warden of the Adelphi Lodge, South Boston, the first coloured Freemason elected to hold office in any regular Lodge. Eight years before74 the St Andrew's Lodge had made Mr Smith and six other coloured men Freemasons, with the idea that they should establish a coloured men's Lodge, but the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts would not issue the warrant. In the interval Joshua B. Smith, already a Justice of the Peace, was elected to the Senate, and joined the Adelphi Lodge, which now took this opportunity of showing him honour.

Mr Bradlaugh himself always liked to remember that he was a "Free and accepted mason," and the outward and visible sign of that is to be found in the fact that he almost invariably selected the Masonic Boys' School as the charity to be benefited by any money paid as damages for libelling his personal character.

CHAPTER XXI

DEBATES 1862-1866

In September 1862 Mr Bradlaugh held a six nights' discussion with the Rev. W. Barker, a gentleman who had been lecturing against Atheism to a Christian Society in Clerkenwell. The debate was held in the Cowper Street School Rooms, City Road. The report I have by me was published by Ward & Co., and was taken from the notes of a shorthand writer, and approved by both disputants. The first two evenings were controlled by a chairman for each speaker, with Mr James Harvey for umpire; but Mr Harvey's impartial judgments gave so much satisfaction that the last four meetings were left entirely under his charge. The attendance – on some nights so great that people were turned away – averaged twelve hundred persons, and it was estimated that a thousand heard the whole of the debate. Some enthusiastic people journeyed long distances, such as from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Devonshire, and Norfolk, to be present. After all expenses were defrayed the surplus of £20 was sent to the Lord Mayor for the Lancashire Relief Fund. The subjects under discussion were: —

"I. Are the representations of Deity in the Bible irrational and derogatory?

"II. Is Secularism, which inculcates the practical sufficiency of morality, independent of Biblical religion, calculated to lead to the highest development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man?

"III. Is the doctrine of Original Sin, as taught in the Bible, theoretically unjust and practically pernicious?

"IV. Does Secularism, which admits the authority of nature alone, and which appeals to reason as the best means of arriving at truth, offer a surer basis for human conduct than Christianity, which rests its claims on a presumed Divine revelation?

"V. Is the plan of Salvation through the Atonement repulsive in its details, immoral in its tendency, and unworthy of the acceptance of the human race?

"VI. Is the doctrine of personal existence after death, and of eternal happiness or misery for mankind, fraught with error and injurious to humanity?"

My father, writing during the progress of this debate, described Mr Barker as a speaker not calculated, so far as he had yet seen, to excite his audience. "He is," said he, "a robust, happy-looking man, slightly inclined to go to sleep during his speeches, and hardly lively enough in his sallies. He appears to wish to strike occasionally, but fears the result of his own blow. Perhaps as the debate proceeds he will be more vigorous in his replies, and more piquant in his affirmations."

Mr John Watts spoke of the reverend gentleman in much the same terms,75 paying special tribute to Mr Barker's evident desire to fairly represent his opponent's views.

The report of this debate, carried on for six nights, and dealing with six separate questions in eighteen speeches a side, makes quite a formidable volume of more than two hundred pages. It has in it much that is interesting and much that is dull, a little that is witty, and more that is weak. It would weary the reader, and serve no useful purpose, were I to attempt a representation of the arguments used. I will only note that on the sixth and last evening Mr Bradlaugh opened with an impeachment of the morality of the doctrine of a future existence in happiness or in torment, the bribe and the penalty of the Christian religion; and in his final speech, after briefly reviewing the whole debate, he stated his position. Mr Barker, he tells his listening audience, "comes as an exponent of God's will to man. I come as a student of rising thought, of the endeavour to know – as a student of the great problem of life. I have no revelation; I have no bitter excommunications – no anathemas to hurl upon you; but I have this to say: the wide book of humanity lies open before you. Turn its pages over. I can offer you no inducements to come here. I admit that to be a Freethinker is to be an outlaw, according to the laws of England. I admit that to profess your disbelief renders you liable at the present moment to fine and imprisonment and penal servitude. I admit that that is the statute law of England. I admit that if you are free enough to say you are an infidel, your evidence may in a court of justice be rejected, and that so you may be robbed.76 I admit we have not wealth and power on our side – power which the Christian Church, through eighteen centuries of extortion, has managed to get together. But I tell you what we have. We have the pleasant consciousness that we make the public conscience and public opinion step by step with each thought we give out and each good deed we do. Our church is not a narrow church, nor narrow chapel, nor Bible sect, but the wide church of humanity, covered by no steeple, with texts preached from no pulpit, but with each man as his own priest, working out his own salvation, and that of his fellows too – not on his knees, but on his feet, with clenched hand and nervous brain, fighting wrong and asserting right, and striving to make humanity freer."

On Monday and Wednesday, the 1st and 3rd of February 1864, Mr Bradlaugh met Thomas Cooper, the sometime Freethinker, author of the "Purgatory of Suicides," and now "Lecturer on Christianity," in debate. This debate had been talked of for nearly eight years, but although Mr Bradlaugh was eager for the fray Mr Cooper was more reluctant; he affected to despise his junior for his lack of learning, and several times publicly derided his "ignorance"; he himself was reputed a scholar, and boasted a knowledge of fourteen languages. As it was, Mr Cooper himself worded the subjects to be discussed, and refused to meet my father under his nom de guerre of "Iconoclast." On the first evening Mr Cooper was to affirm "the Being of God as the Maker of the Universe," and on the second "the Being of God as the Moral Governor of the Universe." As the affirmer he had the advantage of leading the discussion each night.

The wording of the question put Mr Bradlaugh in a peculiar position: he was "to state the argument on the Negative side," and as any reasonable person will, I think, clearly see, he could only do this by showing the fallacy of the arguments used by the affirmer. He told his audience: "I do not stand here to prove that there is no God. If I should undertake to prove such a proposition I should deserve the ill words of the oft-quoted Psalmist applied to those who say there is no God. I do not say there is no God, but I am an Atheist without God. To me the word 'God' conveys no idea, and it is because the word 'God' to me never expressed a clear and definite conception … that I am Atheist… The word 'God' does not, to my mind, express an eternal, infinite, omnipotent, intelligent, personal conscious being, but is a word without meaning and no effect other than it derives from the passions and prejudices of those who use it."

This debate should have been of more than ordinary interest, both disputants were lecturers and debaters of long standing, and as an exponent of the evidences of Christianity Mr Thomas Cooper's reputation was, I believe, considerable. And since he had himself once spoken from the Freethought standpoint, he, more than another, should have been prepared to grapple with the difficulties which lay between the Atheist and a belief in God the Creator and Moral Governor of the Universe. Having read his speeches, I am surprised at the poorness of his arguments, and am driven to the conclusion that his reputation has been considerably overstated – that is to say, his reputation as an expounder of Christian doctrines: his language was sometimes absolutely childish; of his merits as a poet I know nothing. "B. V." wrote some amusing verses77 descriptive of Mr Cooper's position as laid down by him in his opening speech, and a writer in the Christian Times for February 3rd related the impression produced on him by Mr Bradlaugh on the first night:

"Let me do this gentleman justice. He was neither vulgar nor arrogantly egotistical. He has a loud, harsh voice. He is thoroughly earnest in address. His thoughts come to him with admirable orderliness. His logical faculty is strong, and his speaking faculty is something to be amazed at. He combines precision with volubility. He makes argument rhetorically climacteric. In retort, by-play, and insinuation, he evinces very considerable skill. He is an adept in the use of satire. His style is sharp, clear, incisive. In short, he is evidently a young man of somewhat remarkable abilities, who with his present opinions must do much mischief, but under a holier inspiration would do immense good. In saying this about him, I am but speaking honest truth. I have already said with what a prejudice against him I went to the hall. I am frank enough to confess that I found that prejudice to be to a great extent based on ignorance of the man. It has been the custom of many Christian organs to hold the teachers of Atheism up to scorn for ignorance, conceit, incapacity, and a wanton indulgence in gross and vulgar blasphemies. Often enough the representation has been only too faithful; but it would be simply an absurd and self-refuting falsehood to charge any of these things on Mr Bradlaugh, as far as his behaviour on Monday night would enable one to form an estimate of his character. He used sharp weapons, it is true, but he used them skilfully; he had a most repulsive task, granted, but he came up to it with a manly candour and went through it without resorting to a word, gesture, or glance that was indicative of the desire to be unnecessarily offensive."78

I have taken this somewhat lengthy extract from the article as giving a frank avowal of a prejudgment of my father, unwarranted by the real facts as realised by a Christian auditor. And yet it was in these early years that Mr Bradlaugh is said to have been so "unnecessarily offensive" by those who during the last few years of his life were compelled to own that he was not so bad after all. These persons, lacking the generous candour of the writer in the Christian Times of 1864, endeavour to excuse their earlier injustice by saying that, if not coarse and offensive now, he had been at one time, and his manners had much improved. This quotation may serve, to those who still need it, as a hostile contemporary witness in Mr Bradlaugh's favour.

On September 25th and 26th, 1865, Mr Bradlaugh had yet another debate with his Swedenborgian antagonist, the Rev. Woodville Woodman. The debate was held in the theatre at Northampton, which was crowded, numbers of people being unable to obtain admission on the first night. He had arranged for a three nights' discussion six weeks later at Keighley with the Rev. Mr Porteous of Glasgow. He was to lecture at Liverpool on Sunday, October 29th, and the debate was down for the following Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On the Saturday the express train in which he was travelling to Liverpool ran into some luggage vans between Woodhouse and Sheffield, and he was very severely shaken. How severely he did not at once realise, and with his usual disregard of himself he insisted upon fulfilling his engagement at Liverpool. After the exertion of delivering three lectures he felt so much worse that the journey to Keighley, followed by three nights' discussion, seemed out of the question. He communicated with Mr Porteous and came home; I have a distinct recollection of seeing my father come into the house, looking terribly ill. The Rev. Mr Porteous refused to postpone his engagement; in fact, he never answered Mr Bradlaugh's letter, but insisted on proceeding in his absence. For the first two nights he "debated" in solitary grandeur, but on the third night Mr Bradlaugh was represented by Mr John Watts, who, "at Iconoclast's request," went to Keighley to meet Mr Porteous on one night at least. The committee of the Rev. Mr Porteous paid their champion out of the proceeds, but "he nevertheless afterwards claimed and received from Iconoclast the further sum of £2 10s., not for expenses, but to make up his 'fee.'"79 In June of the following year Mr Bradlaugh was lecturing at Keighley, and when he arrived there he found the walls of the town and neighbourhood placarded with a "Challenge to the Image Breaker" from Mr Porteous. This "challenge" rather prematurely assumed reluctance on Mr Bradlaugh's part; it was at once accepted, and the debate fixed for two or three days later, the 14th and 15th June. The subject for the discussion, which was held in the Temperance Hall, was "Is the Bible a divine revelation?" and people attended from Burnley, Leeds, Bradford, and outlying districts; but judging from a brief report which is all I have to guide me, I doubt whether it was much worth a journey to listen to. Mr Porteous angrily spoke of my father as

"one who, being a lawyer's clerk, had never been trusted with a brief; but who, in swollen rhetoric and with blatant voice, had indulged in misstatements and misrepresentations of the Bible which nothing could justify."80

It is rather curious to note, too, that during the evening the Rev. Mr Porteous, just as the Rev. Brewin Grant had done on a former occasion, strongly complained that Iconoclast looked at him whilst he was speaking.81

CHAPTER XXII

"THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY, TO DO GOOD IS MY RELIGION."