r National Secular
Society, and of its thousands of members, I speak to you now:--

"'ADDRESS.

"'_We seek for Truth_.'

"'To D.M. Bennett.

"'In asking you to accept at the hands of the National Secular Society
of England this symbol of cordial sympathy and brotherly welcome, we
are but putting into act the motto of our Society. "We seek for Truth"
is our badge, and it is as Truthseeker that we do you homage to-night.
Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free
speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress
is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler
life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of
free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; the
denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.

"'In your own country you have pleaded for free speech, and when,
under a wicked and an odious law, one of your fellow-citizens was
imprisoned for the publication of his opinions, you, not sharing the
opinions but faithful to liberty, sprang forward to defend in him the
principle of free speech which you claimed for yourself, and sold his
book while he lay in prison. For this act you were in turn arrested
and sent to jail, and the country which won its freedom by the aid of
Paine in the eighteenth century disgraced itself in the nineteenth by
the imprisonment of a heretic. The Republic of the United States
dishonoured herself, and not you, in Albany penitentiary. Two hundred
thousand of your countrymen pleaded for your release, but bigotry was
too strong. We sent you greeting in your captivity; we rejoiced when
the time came for your release. We offer you to-night our thanks and
our hope--thanks for the heroism which never flinched in the hour of
battle, hope for a more peaceful future, in which the memory of a past
pain may be a sacred heritage and not a regret.

"'Charles Bradlaugh, _President_.'

"Soldier of liberty, we give you this. Do in the future the same good
service that you have done in the past, and your reward shall be in
the love that true men shall bear to you."

That, however, which no force could compel me to do, which I refused
to threats of fine and prison, to separation from my children, to
social ostracism, and to insults and ignominy worse to bear than
death, I surrendered freely when all the struggle was over, and a
great part of society and of public opinion had ado