Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh

Mr. Bradlaugh's legal exploits, if properly recorded, would fill a good-sized volume. When his life is adequately written, as it will be some day, this department will have to be entrusted to a skilled lawyer. No other person could do anything like justice to a most important part of the career of one whom the Tories used to call "that litigious man," when they were trying to ruin him in the law courts and he was only defending himself against their base attacks.

Those who had only known Mr. Bradlaugh as a platform orator had some difficulty in recognising him when they first met him in one of our "halls of justice." His whole manner was changed. He was polite, insinuating, and deferential. His attitude towards the judges was admirably calculated to conciliate their favor. I do not mean that he calculated. He had quite a superstitious veneration for judges. It was perfectly sincere and it never wavered. He would not hear a word against them. When he pleaded before them his personal sentiments ran in a line with his best interests; for although judges are above most temptations, their vanity is often sensitive, and Mr. Bradlaugh's manner was intensely flattering.

Had he followed the legal profession, Mr. Bradlaugh would have easily mounted to the top and earned a tremendous income. I have heard some of the cleverest counsel of our time, but I never heard one to be compared with him in grasp, subtlety and agility. He could examine and cross-examine with consummate dexterity. In arguing points of law he had the tenacity of a bull-dog and the keenness of a sleuth-hound. He always fortified himself with a plethora of "cases." The table in front of him groaned with a weight of law. Here as elsewhere he was "thorough." An eminent jurisprudist once remarked to me, "there is little gleaning to be done after Bradlaugh."

As a pleader before juries, however, I doubt whether he would have achieved a great success. He was too much of a born orator. He began well, but he soon forgot the limited audience of twelve, and spoke to a wider circle. This is not the way to humor juries. They like to feel their own importance, and he succeeds best who plays upon their weakness. "Remember," their looks say, "you are talking to us; the other gentlemen listen accidentally; we make you or damn you."

My first recollection of Mr. Bradlaugh in the law courts is twenty-two years old. How many survivors are there of the friends who filled that dingy old court at Westminster where he argued before a full bench of judges in 1869? He was prosecuted for note giving sureties in the sum of £400 against the appearance of blasphemy or sedition in his paper. The law was resuscitated in his single case to crush him; but he fought, as he said he would, to the bitter end, and the Gladstone Government was glad to repeal the obsolete enactments. The Crown retired from the suit with a stet processus, and Mr. Bradlaugh was left with the laurels--and his costs.

I obtained an hour or two's leave from my employment, and heard a portion of Mr. Bradlaugh's argument It gave me a new conception of his powers. That is the only impression I retain. The details have dropped out of my memory, but there remains as fresh as ever the masterful figure of Charles Bradlaugh.

The best view I ever had of Mr. Bradlaugh in litigation was in the old Court of Queen's Bench on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 19 and 20, 1881, when he cross-examined poor Mr. Newdegate. For a good deal of the time I sat beside him, and could watch him closely as well as the case. By raising the point whether the writ against him for penalties had been issued before or after he gave his vote in the House, he-was able to put all the parties to the prosecution into-the witness-box and make them give an account of themselves. Mr. Newdegate was one of the victims, and the poor man made confessions that furnished Mr. Bradlaugh with ground for a successful action against him under the law of Maintenance. Mr. Newdegate was a hard-mouthed witness, but he-was saddled, bridled, and ridden to the winning-post. His lips opened literally, making his mouth like the slit of a pillar-box. Getting evidence from him was like extracting a rotten cork from the neck of a bottle but it all came out bit by bit, and the poor man must have left the witness-box feeling that he had delivered himself into the hands of that uncircumcised Philistine. His cross-examination lasted three hours. It was like flaying alive. Once or twice I felt qualms of pity for the old man, he was such an abject figure in the hands-of that terrible antagonist. Every card he held had to-be displayed. Finally he had to produce the bond of indemnity he had given the common informer Clarke against all the expenses he might incur in the suit; When this came out Mr. Bradlaugh bent down to me and said, "I have him." And he did have him. Despite the common notion that the old law of Maintenance was obsolete, Mr. Bradlaugh pursued him under it triumphantly, and instead of ruining "Bradlaugh," poor Newdegate was nearly ruined himself.

What a contrast to Mr. Newdegate was Mr. Bradlaugh! He was the very picture of suppressed fire, of rampant energies held in leash: the nerves of the face playing like the ripple on water, the whole frame quivering, and the eyes ablaze. It was wonderful how he managed to keep his intellect alert and his judgment steady. Six hours of such work as he had in court that day were enough to tax the greatest strength. Before it was over I saw bodeful blood-rims under his eyes. It did not surprise me, on meeting him at the Cobden Workmen's Club the next evening, to learn that he had been frightfully ill. "Mr. Bradlaugh," I wrote at the time, "is a wonderfully strong man, but the Tories and the bigots are doing their best to kill him, and if this sort of thing is to continue very much longer they may succeed." Alas, they did succeed. That terrible struggle killed him. No man ever lived who could have passed through it unbroken.

Mr. Bradlaugh was clearly right on the point raised, but the jury went against him, apparently out of sheer prejudice. When he went out into Westminster Hall he was loudly cheered by a crowd of sympathisers, who, as the Times sneered, "applauded as lustily as though their champion had won." Precisely so. Their applause would have greeted him in the worst defeat. He was not a champion on whom they had "put their money." He represented their principles, and the Times forgot, if it ever knew, that men are devoted to leaders in proportion to the depth of the interests they espouse. Conviction "bears it out even to the edge of doom."

Now let me mention something that shows Mr. Bradlaugh's tact and consideration. My work on the Freethinker brought me no return. I had just read the proof of an article for Mr. Bradlaugh's paper. While we were waiting for the jury's verdict he referred to the article, and guessing my need he said, "Shall I give you the guinea now?" My answer was an expressive shrug and a motion of the eye-brows.

Taking the two coins out of his pocket, he wrapt them in a piece of paper under the table, and presently slipped the packet into my hand. The whole proceeding touches me deeply as I recall it. He might well have thought only of himself in that time of suspense; but he thought of me too, and the precautions he took against being seen to pay me money were expressive of his inbred delicacy. Reader do not say the incident is trivial. These little things reveal the man.

Little did I dream, as I watched Mr. Bradlaugh fighting bigotry in the law courts, that the time would come when he and I would be included in a common indictment and stand in a criminal dock together. But as the French say, it is always the unexpected that happens. Early in July, 1882, I was served with a summons from the Lord Mayor of London, ordering me to appear at the Mansion House on the following Tuesday and take my trial on a charge of Blasphemy. Two other gentlemen were included in the summons, and all three of us duly appeared. We were all members of the National Secular Society, and Mr. Bradlaugh attended to render any possible assistance. The case was adjourned to the following Monday, by which time a summons had been served on Mr. Bradlaugh, who took his place beside us in the dock. After an animated day's proceedings we were committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

The object of this prosecution was, of course, to stab Mr. Bradlaugh in the back. He had fought all the bigots face to face, and held them all at bay; so they put a stiletto into Sir Hardinge Giffard's hands, and paid him his blood-money to attack the hero from behind.

Mr. Bradlaugh had to play the fox again. He wanted to gain time, and he wanted to be tried, if at all, in the Court of Queen's Bench. He always told me that being tried at the Old Bailey was going like a lamb to the slaughter, and that a verdict of guilty there would certainly mean twelve months' imprisonment. The obvious resource, therefore, was to obtain a writ of certiorari removing our indictment to the superior court. Happily it was in the long vacation, and application had to be made to a judge in chambers. By another piece of good luck, it was Mr. Justice Stephen who sat behind the table on the fatal morning when the writ had to be finally granted or refused. It was obtained on July 29, 1882. Poor Mr. Maloney, who represented the prosecution, was no match for Mr. Bradlaugh, who treated him like a child, and only let him say a word now and then as a special favor.

Roaming the law courts with Mr. Bradlaugh, I was able to see his intimate knowledge of legal practice. He threaded the labyrinth with consummate ease and dexterity. We went from office to office, where everything seemed designed to baffle suitors conducting their own cases. Our case, too, was somewhat peculiar; obsolete technicalities, only half intelligible even to experts, met us at every turn; and when we got out into the open air I felt that the thing was indeed done, but that it would puzzle omniscience to do it in exactly the same way again. Seven pounds was spent on stamps, documents, and other items, and securities for costs had to be given to the extent of six hundred pounds. As I walked home I pondered the great truth that England is a free country. I had seen with my own eyes that there is one law for rich and poor. But I could not help reflecting that only the rich could afford it, and that the poor might as well have no law at all.

Mr. Bradlaugh next moved to quash the indictment. He argued that the public prosecutor's fiat was bad, as it did not name the persons who were to be proceeded against, and thus resembled a general warrant, which in the famous Wilkes case the judges had held to be invalid. On this point, however, two judges, one of them being Sir James Stephen, gave judgment against him. The case was argued on Mr. Bradlaugh's part, the judges said, with "great power and learning." For my part, I think he showed a greater knowledge of "cases" than both the legal luminaries on the bench, who laid their heads close together over many a knotty point of the argument.