Kitabı oku: «Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)», sayfa 23
On the tenth of November, a week before the polling day, my mother, my grandfather (Mr A. Hooper), and we three children went to Northampton to attend a special tea-party given in the Corn Exchange, and I have a most vivid recollection of the enthusiasm then displayed. The time of our expected arrival having become known, hundreds of people, with bands and banners, came to meet us quite of their own accord, and when we returned to take the train back to London it seemed to my childish imagination as though the whole town must have turned out, for the streets were thronged from end to end with men and women cheering, singing the new song, "Bradlaugh for Northampton,"121 laughing and crying in a veritable intoxication of excitement, until the moisture stood in my father's own eyes.
On the Monday after, ten thousand people were gathered in the market square to witness the nomination of the six candidates. The hustings, or, as I find it was sometimes called, the "booby hutch," was unusually large. It was built seventy feet long, in order to allow ten feet to each candidate and his supporters, and ten feet for the Mayor and the Corporation officials. The Mayor, Mr J. M. Vernon, opened the proceedings with a speech, and he was followed by the proposer and seconder of each candidate. Mr Bradlaugh was proposed by Mr Councillor Gurney, and seconded by Mr Dunkley. When these twelve speeches had come to an end, it fell to the candidates to address the electors. In the course of his speech Mr Gilpin alluded to the complaints that had been made against him for standing by Lord Henley. "Now," said he, "I want to do justice to a gentleman who stands on this platform. Mr Bradlaugh never made that complaint. He could honour the 'chivalry,' as he was pleased to call it, because he knew I could not have a selfish motive to serve in doing as I did." The Mayor, in calling upon Mr Bradlaugh to address the eagerly waiting crowd, said: "Let me say that I have had the opportunity of witnessing the conduct of Mr Bradlaugh in presenting himself to this constituency. He has acted in the most gentlemanly way towards me, and I hope he can say in return that I have acted in the same manner towards him."
When all the speaking was over, and every one had had his "say," the Mayor took a show of hands for the various candidates, and declared the result to be in favour of Mr Gilpin and Mr Bradlaugh, a statement which was received with the utmost enthusiasm.
And yet my father was beaten: crowds did not always mean voters; and so, in spite of grand meetings, in spite of popular enthusiasm, he was beaten. His partial canvass resulted in promises of 1600 votes, whereas only 1086 were recorded for him, so that at the last moment 500 at least failed to give their votes as they had promised. In his Autobiography122 he himself says: "I was beaten; but this is scarcely wonderful. I had all the journals in England except three against me. Every idle or virulent tale which folly could distort or calumny invent was used against me."
The poll took place on Tuesday the 17th of November, and was officially declared by the Mayor from the hustings in the market square on Wednesday at eleven o'clock.
The figures were: —
Примечание 1123
After the public declaration of the poll the various candidates were supposed to "return thanks" for the support given them, but three only – Mr Gilpin, Lord Henley, and Mr Bradlaugh – appeared on the hustings. Mr Gilpin in a short speech said: "I turn to Mr Bradlaugh, and I say to him that since I met him in Northampton I have had prejudices removed in reference to himself, and I say unreservedly, when I observed the peace of this town, after the exciting scenes that we have had, I feel, and I should not be an honest man if I did not acknowledge it, it is owing to Mr Bradlaugh having used his influence to obtain it." These generous words of Mr Gilpin's were received with much cheering, and when it came to the Mayor's turn to speak he too said: "I feel it my duty to acknowledge my obligations to Mr Bradlaugh, because he not merely endorsed the sentiments I uttered,124 but from the balcony of his hotel he backed them up by all the power of argument he possesses in urging you to comply with my wishes. I knew the appeal that was being made to you was made under the most exciting circumstances, and I felt the way in which it was conducted might leave an impression on the people of this country for a long time to come."
Charles Gilpin did more than speak favourably of Mr Bradlaugh from Northampton platforms. A day or two after the election he wrote to the Morning Star: —
"Sir, – I observe that several papers continue to reflect in strong terms on the candidature of Mr Bradlaugh at Northampton, and it is not of course for me to defend him; but I think it should be known that at the declaration of the poll, the Mayor publicly thanked him for his successful efforts to preserve peace and good order in the borough during an unusually exciting contest, and from my own observation I can fully endorse the observations of the Mayor. – I am, sir, yours truly,
Charles Gilpin.
November 20."
Mr Gilpin, moreover, undeterred by the furious onslaught made upon John Stuart Mill, sent a donation of £10 towards Mr Bradlaugh's election expenses, and in the March before he died he recommended Mr Pickering Perry, his own agent, to vote for him.
The extracts from Mr Gilpin's and the Mayor's speeches I have taken from the Northampton Mercury, a paper then thoroughly hostile to Mr Bradlaugh, and I confess to a feeling of shame that it should be necessary at this time of day to thus bring forward "witnesses to character"; yet, while there are many now willing to concede that my father was in his later years an honourable, temperate, law-abiding, and even "distinguished" man, they add that he was not all this in his early years: then he "was coarse, violent, and vulgar." If the word of the Mayor of Northampton in 1868 counts for anything, and if the manly testimony of one of Northampton's most honoured members, the Quaker Charles Gilpin, has any weight, men will find that they must still further revise their opinion of Charles Bradlaugh, and admit that the change has been in themselves and not in him, that the qualities they grant for him in 1890 were his in 1868, and from the very outset of his career. There was no greater change in him than comes to us all through the mellowing touch of time; in truth, he changed less than would most men, and in spite of being a Radical and Reformer of a very advanced type, he was in many ways extremely conservative. He clung to old friends, to old habits, and to precedent. He formed his opinions not hastily but yet rapidly, and after due deliberation, deliberation which included a really marvellous power of putting both sides of the question before himself and others. His judgment once formed, he was extremely slow to alter it, and a course of action once entered upon, he was rarely if ever diverted from it.
My father left Northampton, followed to the station by such an enormous crowd of sorrowing men and women that his defeat was grander than many a victory; he could never, he said, forget those whose hot tears dropped on his hands on the day he left the borough, and as he wrote those words we may be sure that his own tears dimmed his eyes and blurred the page. Hard as iron to opposition, he was acutely sensitive to every token of affection or kindly feeling.
But there were more to rejoice over his defeat than to sorrow for it. The Rev. Thomas Arnold, addressing an audience of Northampton men, said, regardless of his own blasphemy, that they had shown that "they would not be servants of the man who trampled on their God and their Saviour;" and the Rev. A. Mursell, who a few years later found more kindly things to say of my father, speaking at Dundee, "thanked God that Mr Bradlaugh had been so signally defeated."
CHAPTER XXVII
SOUTHWARK ELECTION, 1869
About a year after the General Election the appointment of Mr Layard as ambassador at Madrid created a vacancy at Southwark, and a number of working men electors immediately asked Mr Bradlaugh to become a candidate for that borough. Meetings were summoned for the purpose of proposing his name, and a committee was formed with a view of promoting his election, and a very active committee it proved to be. At a crowded meeting, convened by forty of the "chiefs of the Liberal Party," held in the middle of November, six names of possible representatives were brought forward – Mr Milner Gibson, Sir Francis Lycett, Sir Sydney Waterlow, Sir John Thwaites, and Mr Odger. The "forty chiefs" did not propose Mr Bradlaugh, whose name was however received with great cheering, when it was proposed by way of amendment by Mr Hearn, a Southwark Radical. A week later a meeting was held to decide upon a candidate to be supported by the working-class electors of the borough, and this meeting both Mr Odger and Mr Bradlaugh were invited to attend. The room engaged for the purpose was soon full to overflowing, and at length the speakers adjourned to the balcony in front of the house and addressed the crowd of three thousand people congregated in the road below. Mr Odger was unable to come, and after Mr Bradlaugh had addressed the meeting a resolution in his favour was passed by "an overwhelming majority."125 He said that although he was there at the earnest invitation of several working men, he was not to be regarded as a candidate until he had issued his address. If Mr Odger came definitely before the constituency and was pledged to go to the poll, he should not contest the borough himself. He wished to see Mr George Odger in Parliament, and he believed that he would be an admirable representative.
Apart from any question of Mr Odger's possible candidature, my father had another reason for hesitating before incurring such heavy expenses as the contest of Southwark would entail: the Northampton election, in spite of the long subscription lists made up from slender purses, had left him heavily burdened with debt. In August (1869) he wrote that he had still £250 of borrowed money to repay; by November this had become reduced, though even then there was still £100 "due to a friend at Norwich, and £20 to another friend in Huddersfield." A debt of £120 will seem a mere bagatelle to a rich man, who will pay more for a handsome dog that takes his fancy, and ten times as much for a thoroughbred horse; to a poor man, however, a debt of £120 is a millstone. And for that matter, if this debt had been the only one, my father would soon have repaid it, but he was hampered on all sides. Being so encumbered, he naturally felt bound "to exercise extra caution in contracting further liabilities for election purposes, especially as the large portion of the funds for such a struggle would probably be provided by my working friends throughout the United Kingdom, whose subscriptions I have no right to take except with the certainty of fighting a creditable if not a successful fight."
However, at the end of November all hesitation on my father's part was brought to an end by the receipt of the following letter from Mr Odger: —
"Dear Mr Bradlaugh, – I have decided on going to the poll. I shall see the Southwark Committee this evening (November 29th), and make the declaration to-morrow.
"Thanking you for your manly and straightforward conduct, – I remain, yours truly,
Geo. Odger.
"18 High Street, Bloomsbury."
Under these circumstances my father at once announced that he should not seek the suffrages of the Southwark electors. He believed Mr Odger had a better chance of being supported by voters "who would be afraid of returning one whom the Daily Telegraph had described as an English 'irreconcilable,'" although, as he frankly said, he made no disguise of his wish to be in Parliament, and of his intention to be there as soon as possible. He earnestly entreated all his friends in the borough to give their unreserved support to George Odger, who was a real representative man.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LITIGATION, 1867-1871
Mr Bradlaugh took part in so many law-suits during his life that people have hurriedly jumped at conclusions, and condemned him as a "litigious" man. They have not troubled to consider the circumstances of the different suits; it was sufficient that Mr Bradlaugh took part in them, and that at once stamped him as litigious. Now, as a matter of fact, it will be found that in a large number of cases he figured as defendant in the action, and where he was plaintiff I think it must be admitted that it was rarely without sufficient cause. Although many years constantly libelled, he seldom brought an action for libel; there were indeed such actions, all of which will be found mentioned in this book. After he had engaged a hall for lectures, it was no uncommon thing for the proprietor to break his contract; and if it was a very gross case this occasionally resulted in a suit, but much more frequently he accepted the situation, trusting to time to wear away prejudices against him.
In each of the four cases I am now about to speak of Mr Bradlaugh was the plaintiff. The first was an action arising purely out of his business as a financial agent, and would have little interest now were it not for the terms of the Vice-Chancellor's judgment. The second also arose in the course of business, but was greatly complicated by the oath question. The third was a libel case; while the fourth was against the Mirfield Town Hall Company for breach of contract.
In January 1867 the case of the English Joint Stock Bank (Limited) and Charles Bradlaugh was heard in the Court of Chancery before Vice-Chancellor Wood. Mr Bradlaugh claimed to be admitted as a creditor against the Bank, then in course of winding up, for £12,350, or for such less sum as the Court might think just and reasonable, in consideration of his having negotiated a purchase for the Bank of the banking business of Messrs Harvey & Hudson of Norwich for the sum of £210,000. The sum thus claimed was the one agreed to be paid him by the general manager of the Bank. The Court decided against him for reasons not necessary to enter fully upon here, and the Vice-Chancellor's judgment was reported at considerable length in the Times of the following day. The extracts given here are based upon the shorthand notes of the case. Vice-Chancellor Wood commenced his judgment by referring to "the great ability with which Mr Bradlaugh had argued his case;" and after dealing with the arguments at some length, said that he regretted to come to the conclusion that there was no completed agreement which could be enforced, "as Mr Bradlaugh – to whom he gave implicit credit as to everything stated by him on his own recollection – had no doubt been put to very great trouble and anxiety, but in deciding against his present claim he would not be shut out from obtaining what he could for his services on a quantum meruit. The costs of the summons would be reserved until the result of such an application should have been ascertained. The question had been argued with extreme ability by Mr Bradlaugh, and he could not possibly have been assisted better by whatever counsel he could have retained than he had been by his own advocacy. He had put it in the clearest and most concise manner possible, and the Court had been much assisted by the whole of his argument. He had very fairly produced every document that he knew anything about, or which he thought could throw any light upon the transaction. "The Vice-Chancellor repeated that he gave unfeigned credit to everything that Mr Bradlaugh had said; he did not try to exaggerate or to improve upon his case; and he was sorry – because he had no doubt that Mr Bradlaugh had had great trouble and anxiety in the matter – he was sorry that he must decide against him on his claim.
These words of Vice-Chancellor Wood's are specially valuable; first, as showing a judge's appreciation of Mr Bradlaugh's legal ability even when he was arguing a case which concerned an ordinary business matter only, and was neither directly or indirectly a defence of those principles of liberty of speech, of press, or of conscience which were so close to his heart; and next, as a tribute to that calm and well-balanced temperament which even as a young man of thirty-three enabled him to state his case so manifestly without gloss or exaggeration.
Later in the same year (1867) my father commenced a suit against a gentleman named De Rin. This case went through various Courts, and although the subject in dispute was really a private matter, the peculiar course taken by the defendant resulted in a public benefit, viz. the extension of the Evidence Amendment Act of 1869. The suit, begun in 1867, was not finally disposed of until 1870, but during these years the side issue of the competency of an Atheist to give evidence involved so much fighting that my father actually lost about fifteen hundred pounds before it was decided in his favour.
As endorser of three bills of exchange, Mr Bradlaugh brought an action against Mr De Rin as acceptor of the same. The bills were drawn in Brussels, and sent for acceptance to the defendant in England; he accepted, and afterwards endorsed them to a legal gentleman named Gallet, who in turn endorsed them in France to Mr Bradlaugh. The action was brought by the latter to enable him to realise the bills in this country, and was heard before Mr Justice Montague Smith and a common jury, in the Court of Common Pleas, in December 1867. Mr Lumley Smith was counsel for the plaintiff; Mr D. Keane, Q.C., and Mr Wood were for the defendant.
When Mr Bradlaugh entered the witness-box Mr Keane interposed, saying: "I have a most painful duty to perform, and that is to object to the witness being sworn on account of his being an Atheist and holding notoriously Atheistic opinions." Mr Keane repeated that he felt it an extremely painful duty, but that he had no discretion in the matter; he had instructions to take this objection, and therefore he must take it. He added: "At the same time I must say that I have met Mr Bradlaugh several times on business, and have never seen any conduct on his part unbecoming a gentleman."
Mr Justice Smith: "You have power, Mr Keane, to waive the objection. Sometimes it is material to make the objection considering the matters in issue. But in the present case is it so? I consider this a case in which the objection had better be waived."
As counsel against Mr Bradlaugh in the Devonport case, Mr Montague Smith, Q.C., had himself examined Mr Bradlaugh upon his opinions, but this he considered altogether a different matter; this was purely a commercial transaction.
Mr Bradlaugh stated that he was ready to affirm or to give evidence upon oath, and after a short discussion Mr Justice Smith said that he should take it upon himself to allow him to affirm; but Mr Keane again interposed, urging that he would not be competent to do so. Mr Bradlaugh then made his counsel formally tender him as a witness, but after some conversation Mr Keane agreed to admit the facts which Mr Bradlaugh was to prove. It was then contended that the endorsement was not valid according to the law of France, but ultimately the verdict was given for the plaintiff, with leave to the defendant to move the verdict for him on the objections he had raised.
Mr De Rin accordingly moved the Court of Common Pleas, and in July 1868 the Court granted a rule absolute to enter the verdict for the defendant, on the ground that the endorsement did not confer on the plaintiff the right of suing on the bills in this country. Mr Bradlaugh appealed against this decision to the Court of Exchequer, and the Court of Appeal suggested an inquiry as to the fact whether the endorsed bills came into Mr Bradlaugh's possession by post in England or whether they were handed to him in France, and Mr S. Prentice, Q.C., was nominated as a referee to ascertain the fact. When the case came on appeal before Mr Justice Lush in October 1868, in the Exchequer Chamber, bail had to be given for costs, and Mr Austin Holyoake was tendered as such bail, but Mr Wood, counsel for the defendant De Rin, objected to Mr Holyoake as not competent to take the oath. "I am known to be a Freethinker," wrote Austin Holyoake, with just indignation, "and it is therefore competent for any solicitor or barrister to openly insult me by calling in question my ability to speak the truth."
After a very long delay, in December 1869 the case came before Mr Prentice to ascertain, as I have said, whether the bills were delivered to Mr Bradlaugh in England or in France. Once more Mr Bradlaugh presented himself as a witness, to prove their delivery to him in England, and once more, despite the passing of the Evidence Amendment Act in the previous August, his evidence was objected to. Mr Bradlaugh appeared in person, and Mr Wood, who had been counsel for the defendant at the hearing before Mr Justice Lush, again appeared for him. On Mr Bradlaugh tendering himself as witness, Mr Wood – who, like his predecessor Mr Keane, said that, acting under special instructions, he took a course which gave him considerable pain – asked him: "Do you believe in God?"
Mr Bradlaugh's objection to answer this question was followed by a long discussion, at the end of which Mr Prentice held that he was bound to answer. Again Mr Wood put the question: "Do you believe in God?"
Mr Bradlaugh: "I do not; that is, I do not believe in any being independent of the universe, governing or ruling it."
Mr Prentice: "Do you believe in a future state of rewards and punishments?"
Mr Bradlaugh: "After death, certainly not."
"Then," said Mr Prentice, "I must refuse your evidence."
A day or so later my father, undaunted, carried his case before Mr Justice Brett at Judges' Chambers, and asked for an order to compel Mr Prentice to take his evidence; but Mr Justice Brett held, although with some doubt, that Mr Prentice was not authorised by the Act of Parliament to administer the alternative declaration.126 The Judge added that Mr Bradlaugh ought to have liberty to apply to the Court against the decision, and endorsed his judgment with the opinion that it was "a fit case to go before the full court."
A few days after this refusal of Mr Prentice to hear his evidence, and Mr Justice Brett's confirmation of this refusal, Mr Bradlaugh was called as a witness in the Central Criminal Court to prove the signature of Dr Shorthouse of the Sporting Times in an action for libel brought by Sir Joseph Hawley. On his objecting to take the oath he was readily permitted to give his evidence upon affirmation. Such was the confusion in which the law of evidence was left after the passing of the Evidence Amendment Act of 1869. A witness perfectly competent to give evidence in one Court was incompetent in another, or else it was a matter of doubt whether he was competent or not.
In January 1870 Mr Bradlaugh carried his case before Lord Chief Justice Bovill and Justices Keating, Brett, and Montague Smith, in the Court of Common Pleas; but after half-an-hour's argument the Judges refused to hear him on the ground that he was not moving on affidavit. "That is," said Mr Bradlaugh, "I was sent back to be sworn as to the refusal of my testimony before I could be allowed to argue that I was not liable to take the oath, and before I could be allowed to claim that I had, notwithstanding, the right to give evidence." A very pretty tangle of contradiction!
He then proceeded to satisfy all conventions by swearing (affidavits could not then be affirmed) that Mr Prentice did not consider him competent to give evidence on oath, nor himself competent to receive the evidence on affirmation. Mr Bradlaugh returned two days later to the Court of Common Pleas and asked that "Mr Prentice be directed to take the evidence of Mr Charles Bradlaugh on the fact to be stated in a special case." After a very long argument the Court decided that it had no power to give directions to an arbitrator.
Although no more advanced than when he first brought his action in the winter of 1867, Mr Bradlaugh did not even yet despair, but determined to carry his case to the highest possible legal tribunal. Pending the final decision of the law, petitions were got up all over the country and sent into Parliament, praying for a further amendment of the Act.
On the 7th of February the case was mentioned at the Sittings in Error; but although there were seven judges present, Lord Chief Baron Kelly refused to proceed with it in the absence of the Lord Chief Justice. He said that the case was one "of the greatest possible importance, not only in this country, but throughout all Europe; it was therefore of importance that the Court should be so constituted as to insure general satisfaction with its decision. The Lord Chief Justice Cockburn had been present when an argument on part of the case had been heard; it would be advisable, therefore, that the case should stand over until the Sittings in Error after the next term."
In consequence of this, it was not until the 16th of May that the long-drawn-out proceedings in this suit – involving at the outset a simple business transaction, but now including far wider issues – entered upon their final stage. For more than two years justice had been persistently perverted from its course, and used as the tool of fraud, but now at length matters wore a different aspect. The case was heard in the Court of Exchequer Chamber, before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Lord Chief Baron Kelly, Justices Blackburn, Mellor, and Lush, and Barons Channell and Cleasby. The Court was unanimous in its decision that the endorsee was entitled to sue, and that the verdict must be entered for Mr Bradlaugh. The Lord Chief Justice remarked that the defendant had no merits at all in the case; he had relied upon this "somewhat unrighteous" defence, and the judgment now given was "in accordance with the good sense and justice and equity in the case."
So, in the end, my father won his suit, but the victory was very costly. The judgment of the Court of Exchequer did not entitle him to recover any of the expenses he had incurred in fighting the oath question. Upon that point the decision of the Court of Common Pleas was final. In a public statement made at the end of the year at Bristol, in reply to some observations which had fallen from Professor Newman, Mr Bradlaugh remarked that in contesting the oath question in the law courts he had himself lost £1500. This was an allusion to his losses in the De Rin case, the costs in which alone reached to more than £1100; in addition to these enormous costs, he lost his debt of £360 because the Christian De Rin, who objected to the evidence of an Atheist, became bankrupt when the case was finally decided.
Before the passing of the Evidence Amendment Act in 1869 all persons who disbelieved in God or in a future state of rewards and punishments were held to be incompetent to give evidence in a Court of Law. Freethinkers had long and bitterly felt the injustice and hardship of their position; and in 1868 and 1869, after the first action in the case of Bradlaugh and De Rin, a most determined effort was made to move Parliament to amend the law of evidence. The National Secular Society sent in petitions to the House of Commons, and the Executive of that Society put itself in communication with members of both Houses. Mr Bradlaugh said in 1870 that they tried "to pass a much more distinct clause in favour of Freethinkers than the one as it now stands, which is in its legal effect entirely different from the clause as originally drawn by the Hon. Mr Denman, and printed in the Bill first read before the Commons. It is Lord Cairns to whom we were ultimately indebted for the main words which really serve us in the Act of 1869."
In 1870 another Bill, prepared by the Hon. G. Denman and Mr Locke King, was passed through Parliament to further amend the law of evidence, but it only met such difficulties as had arisen in the case of Bradlaugh and De Rin, and did not touch the law as it related to jurymen, affidavits, or Scotland. Mr Bradlaugh was continually urging members of the House to get these points amended, but nothing further was done until he himself carried his Oaths Act of 1888, by which the whole law relating to oaths was radically altered.
Until the passing of this Act, jurors without religious belief were liable to be committed to prison if they refused to be sworn, and the law did not permit them to affirm. Affidavits on interlocutory proceedings could only be made upon oath. In Scotland all Atheists and disbelievers in eternal torment were, in addition, incompetent as witnesses.
In any case, too much discretion was left to the Judge, who was supposed to satisfy himself, according to the monstrous formula laid down by the Act, that the oath would have "no binding effect" upon the conscience of a heretical witness. A promise is binding upon the conscience of an honest man in whatever form it may be made, and it put Freethinkers in an entirely false position to be obliged to assent to the statement that some particular form was not binding upon them. Conscientious witnesses who wished to affirm hardly knew what to answer when the Judge put the question to them, and he would not always be satisfied with the mere statement that the oath gave no additionally binding effect to the promise. And sometimes his assent to the formula would be used to the discredit of a witness. I myself once heard Baron Huddleston tell the jury that it was for them to consider what was the value of the evidence of a witness whom an oath would not bind.
Amongst the multitude of papers hostile to Mr Bradlaugh's candidature for Parliamentary honours in 1868 was one called the Razor. This journal went so far in its condemnatory strictures that Mr Bradlaugh felt – as his counsel, Mr Digby Seymour, put it – that he had no option but to bring an action against the proprietor. The Razor must have been in a general way a tolerably obscure publication, for when I went to look it up in the British Museum, no trace of it could be discovered, although the officials there took considerable pains to find it for me. But the article against Mr Bradlaugh had been recopied from its columns and widely circulated in Northampton, where it was calculated to produce serious mischief. Later on Northampton grew accustomed to hearing my father accused of every possible crime, and, knowing their absolute falsity, became hardened to such slanders; still, at that time the acquaintance was comparatively young between Northampton and the man whose statue it has this year placed in one of its most public thoroughfares.
