y when
Bradlaugh's case was first mooted, it became apparent that the Liberal
Party contained a good many men who had only the frailest hold on the
primary principles of Liberalism, and who, under the pressure of social
and theological prejudice, were quite ready to join the Tories in a
tyrannical negation of Religious Liberty. Gladstone, though deserted and
defeated by his own followers, maintained the righteous cause with a
signal consistency and courage. There was no one in the world to whom
Bradlaugh's special opinions could have been more abhorrent; but he
felt--and we who followed him felt the same--that the cause of God and
morality can never be served by the insolent refusal of a civil right.

There is no need to recapitulate the story in all its stages, but one
incident deserves commemoration. In April, 1883, Gladstone brought in an
Affirmation Bill, permitting Members of Parliament (as witnesses in
Law-Courts were already permitted) to affirm their allegiance instead of
swearing it. On the 26th of April he moved the Second Reading of the
Bill in the finest speech which I have ever heard. Under the existing
system (which admitted Jews to Parliament, but excluded Atheists), to
deny the existence of God was a fatal bar, but to deny the Christian
Creed was no bar at all. This, as Gladstone contended, was a formal
disparagement of Christianity, which was thereby relegated to a place of
secondary importance. And then, on the general question of attaching
civil penalties to religious misbelief, he uttered a passage which no
one who heard it can forget. "Truth is the expression of the Divine
Mind; and, however little our feeble vision may be able to discern the
means by which God may provide for its preservation, we may leave the
matter in His hands, and we may be sure that a firm and courageous
application of every principle of equity and of justice is the best
method we can adopt for the preservation and influence of Truth."

The Bill was lost by a majority of three, recreant Liberals again
helping to defeat the just claim of a man whom they disliked; and
Bradlaugh did not take his seat until the new Parliament in 1886
admitted, without a division, the right which the old Parliament had
denied. Meanwhile, a few of us, actuated by the desperate hope of
bringing the clergy to a right view of the controversy, printed
Gladstone's speech as a pamphlet, and sent a copy, with a covering
letter, to every beneficed clergyma