John Robertson - Charles Bradlaugh - a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)

"The Lord Mayor acknowledged the compliment, at the same time expressing his deep regret that persons should have come to the hall bent on creating a disturbance. At this juncture a young man, with fair hair and thin but intelligent features, was seen gesticulating vehemently at the extreme end of the platform, to which he had worked his way unobserved amid the general confusion. His name, it appeared, is Bradlaugh, and his object evidently was to gratify his admirers by delivering an harangue. His words were, however, drowned by the conflicting clamour from the body of the hall. The Lord Mayor seemed to beckon him to the rostrum, as though his claim to speak were to be allowed; but a minute or two of indescribable confusion intervening, his Lordship came forward and then declared the meeting to be dissolved. This announcement had hardly been made when Mr Bradlaugh reached the part of the platform for which he had been struggling. His triumph was, however, very short lived. In an instant the Lord Mayor, though having one of his arms in a sling, was upon the refractory Chartist leader, and collared him with the energy and resolution of a Sir William Walworth. Two of the city officers promptly seconding his Lordship's assertion of his authority, Mr Bradlaugh was dragged forcibly to the back of the platform, and fell in the scuffle. All this was but the work of a moment, yet the uproar which it provoked continued after every occupant of the platform had retired. The undaunted orator found his way to the body of the hall unhurt, where he addressed such portions of the crowd as had not dispersed in frantic and excited eloquence. A considerable time elapsed before the building was cleared, during which Anarchy and Bradlaugh had undisputed possession of the scene."

How much of fact and how much of fiction there is in this lively account the Times only knoweth. The idea that a "Sir William Walworth" with one arm in a sling could "collar" a man of my father's herculean strength is sufficiently ridiculous. I myself saw him as late as 1877 at a stormy meeting take two unruly medical students in one hand and one in the other, and force them down the hall to the door, where he cast them out. His resistance to his fourteen assailants on August 3rd, 1881, is historic. It is hardly probable that a man who could do these things when he had passed the fulness of his strength would, when in the height of his vigour, have tamely submitted to be "collared" by a one-armed man and then dragged back and thrown to the ground by two "city officers;" and all "the work of a moment!"

Gatherings opposing the Government Reform Bill were held in different parts of London and the country; and Mr Joseph Cowen, himself President of the Northern Reform Union, writing to a friend in reference to them, on the 16th March, says incidentally: "Bradlaugh is a clever young fellow – full of vigour and daring – and is altogether a likely man to go ahead if he has any backing."

Considering the limited time at his disposal, there is really a tremendous record of public work for these two years, 1858 and 1859; for in addition to that which I have already mentioned, my father held several debates, some of them continuing for three or four nights in succession. He had his first formal encounter in June 1858. Prior to this, he had gained a little practice in discussing with the numerous opponents who used to rise after his lectures; then there was the more extended, but apparently informal, debate with Mr Douglas, to which I referred some time ago; and also, in the early part of 1858, Mr Bradlaugh seems to have arranged to speak at considerable length in opposition to the lectures given by Thomas Cooper in the Hall of Science, City Road; but the brief notices of these which appeared do not enable one to form any opinion, beyond remarking a decided irritability on the part of Mr Cooper, who permitted himself to use distinctly unparliamentary language. The first formally arranged debate in which he took part was a four nights' discussion with the Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A., then a dissenting minister at Sheffield, and was held in that town on the 7th, 8th, 14th, and 15th June. In 1873 my father, writing of this occasion, said: "Mr Grant was then a man of some ability, and, if he could have forgotten his aptitudes as a circus jester, would have been a redoubtable antagonist." The audiences were very large; the numbers of persons present on the different nights ranged from eleven to sixteen hundred; and, considering the heat of the weather and the still greater heat of the discussion, my father's testimony is that they "behaved bravely." Writing shortly afterwards, he says: "The chairmen (both chosen by Mr Grant) behaved most courteously to me, and, in fact, the only disputed point of order was decided in my favour." He seems to have been particularly impressed by Alderman H. Hoole, the Chairman for the first two nights, who by an act of kindly courtesy quite outside the debate, showed that the gibes and sneers in which Mr Grant so freely indulged had little weight even with his own friends.

A friend in Sheffield has lent me the report of the discussion, printed at the time by Mr Leader of the Sheffield Independent , and which both disputants agreed was a very fair representation of what was said. According to the arranged terms, Mr Bradlaugh led the first night, and the Rev. Brewin Grant on each succeeding evening. The proposition to be affirmed by "Iconoclast" on the first evening was: "The God of the Bible, revengeful, inconstant, unmerciful, and unjust. His attributes proven to be contradicted by the book which is professed to reveal them." His opening speech was made in clear, concise language, was directly to the point, and was listened to with the utmost attention. He drew the picture of the Deity who, reviewing his creation, pronounced everything that he had made "very good" (Gen. i. 31); "yet in a short period the same Deity looks round and declares that man is so bad that he repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart [Gen. vi. 6]; and in consequence God, to relieve himself from this source of grief, determined to destroy every living thing, and he did destroy them by deluge, for it repented him that he had made them, because man was so very wicked." He dwelt upon this at some length; then passed on to the selection of Noah and his family, "part of the old stock of mankind having personal acquaintance with all pre-existing evil," to re-people the earth; and concluded his first half-hour by asking where was the love, where the justice towards the Amalek, against whom "the Lord hath sworn" to have war "from generation to generation"? It was now the turn of the Rev. Brewin Grant to reply to this terrible indictment against the Deity whose professed servant he was; and it is interesting to mark the manner in which he set about his task. He commenced by unburdening himself of a few minor personalities against my father, and when a few of these petty sneers – the only possible object of which could be to provoke ill feeling – were off his mind, he indulged his overwhelming passion for raising a laugh. For this he made an opportunity in dealing with the causes which led to "the Flood," asking whether "Iconoclast imagines that, because God knew of these sins before they were committed, he should have drowned men before they were created." This, of course, provoked the desired merriment, and, temporarily satisfied, Mr Grant proceeded to his argument with acuteness and ability. Unfortunately, his peculiar temperament would not allow him to keep this up for very long; and while still in his first half-hour speech he drew a comparison of God's repentance with that of a merchant who repents him of engaging a certain clerk, and made the merchant say, "Wherein can you find fault? Am I a Secularist that I should lie, or an infidel committee-man that I should violate a ratified agreement?" "Iconoclast" is once more taunted with blindness and ignorance; and "infidels" with amusing "auditors in holes of progress;" and so the reverend (never was a title more meaningless) gentleman's speech came to a conclusion. It would have been small wonder if a young, hotly enthusiastic man as my father then was, had been roused to angry retaliation, and so turned aside from the real points in dispute; but he did not so soon lose the coolness with which he had started. He made a few short answers to the personalities, and proceeded at once to deal with the arguments urged by Mr Grant; and, these disposed of, continued to build up his own position. The greater part of Brewin Grant's next speech was argumentative, but not all; he made an opportunity to tell his antagonist that his strength lay "not in his logic, but in his lungs;" that one of his objections was "too foolish," but he (Grant) "condescended to notice it;" and further, that "no class of men with which I am acquainted has had all honesty so thoroughly eaten out by trickery and falsehood as the infidel class." The next quarter of an hour fell to my father, who hardly noticed Mr Grant's gibes; but when the latter made his speech, the final one of the evening, he still interlarded it with innuendoes against the "infidel." The propositions affirmed by Mr Grant on the succeeding nights were shortly as follows: The Creation story consistent with itself and with science; the Deluge story consistent with itself and physically possible; and finally, "Iconoclast" as a commentator on the Bible, "deficient in learning, logic, and fairness." But the story of the first night was merely repeated on the later evenings; as feeling grew a little warmer, or there was something more than usually offensive in Mr Grant's personalities, Mr Bradlaugh was once or twice evidently roused to anger; but after reading the debate I only wonder that he had the patience to carry it through to the end.