side, and the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus thought it no shame to throw stones at a woman: here, their victim being weaker, their courage was accordingly greater and their aim straighter. But if the people acted so merely from ignorance and narrowness, it is not so easy to explain the malevolent attitude of certain local journals to my father. Week after week, the Wigan Examiner persisted in the attack, being especially virulent in its onslaught upon his personal character. It reprinted Mr. Packer's mendacious letter to Brewin Grant, and the following extract prefacing the letter will serve to show how great was the desire of the editor to keep the commandments of his Deity, and not to bear false witness:—
"Born in the classic region of Bethnal Green, he [Mr. Bradlaugh] devoted his juvenile faculties to the advocacy of teetotalism, but finding that this theme did not afford sufficient scope for his genius, he formed (sic) himself to a select band of reformers who met in an upper room or garret in the neighbourhood. Being a fluent speaker, he was soon exalted to the dignity of an apostle in his new vocation, and finding the work in every respect much more congenial to his mind than weaving, he broke loose from all restraint, and went into the new business with energy."
The debate between Mr. Hutchings and Mr. Bradlaugh was finally arranged for the 4th and 5th February (1861). On his way to the hall on the first evening, my father received "one evidence of Christianity in the shape of a bag of flour;" this was, of course, intended to soil his clothes, but "fortunately it was flung with too great violence, and after crushing the side of another new hat from Mr. Hipwell,[54] covered the pavement instead of myself. I shall need a special fund for hats," wrote Mr. Bradlaugh, "if I visit Wigan often." On his return from the debate, although he was followed by a large crowd of men and boys, all hooting was quickly suppressed, and was, in fact, attempted only by a very few. On his first visit to Wigan he had "retired to rest, not only without friends to bid me good-night, but with many a score of loud-tongued, rough lads and men bidding me, in phraseology startling and effective, everything but so kindly a farewell;"[55] but during the three months which had elapsed since Mr. Bradlaugh's earliest visit to this Lancashire mining town public feeling had considerably changed and modified; and in the evening, the house where he was staying "was crowded out," he tells us, "with rough but honest earnest men and women, who insisted, one and all, in gripping my hand in friendliness, and wishing me good speed in my work. The change was so great that a tear mounted to my eye despite myself." His was always the same sensitive nature; he was ever moved to the heart by a sign of true sympathy or real affection. Persecution found him stern and unflinching, hypocrisy found him severe and unforgiving, but kindness or affection, instantly touched the fountain of his gratitude and his tenderness.
Out of this debate, which contains nothing particularly noteworthy,[56] arose a lawsuit. The reporter, a person named Stephenson M. Struthers, after having sold "the transcript" to Mr. Bradlaugh at 8d. per folio, sold a second copy of his notes to Mr. William Heaton, on behalf of Mr. Hutchings' Committee, for 3 guineas. This my father did not discover until he had used some of the copy, and paid Struthers £5 on account. He then refused to pay the balance (£11, 16s.), and for this the shorthand-writer sued him. Mr. Bradlaugh expressed his willingness to pay for the labour involved in making a copy; but he objected to pay for the sole copy when he had not received that for which he had contracted. The suit came on in the Wigan County Court, before J. S. T. Greene, Esq., on April 11th (1861). After the case for the plaintiff was closed, Mr. Bradlaugh entered the witness-box to be sworn—at that time the only form under which he could give evidence. Mr. Mayhew (for the plaintiff), after some preamble as to not desiring to be offensive, asked "with regret" if Mr. Bradlaugh believed "in the religious obligations of an oath?" Mr. Bradlaugh objected to answer any question until he was sworn. The Judge would not allow the objection; and after a considerable interchange of opinion and question and answer between the Judge and Mr. Bradlaugh, in which the latter explicitly stated his readiness to be sworn, he asked to be allowed to affirm. This the Judge refused to permit. And this is how the episode ended:—
The Judge: Only give me a direct answer.
Mr. Bradlaugh: I am not answering your question at all. I have objected on two grounds, both of which your Honour has overruled, that I am not bound to answer the question.
The Judge: If you put it in that way, I should be sorry to exercise any power that I believe I possess according to law. You won't answer the question?
Mr. Bradlaugh: I object that I am not bound to answer any question that will criminate myself.
The Judge: You will not answer my question. Do you believe in the existence of a supreme God?
Mr. Bradlaugh: I object that the answer, if in the negative, would subject me to a criminal prosecution.
The Judge: Do you believe in a state of future rewards and punishments?
Mr. Bradlaugh: I object that—
The Judge: Then I shall not permit you to give evidence at all; and I think you escape very well in not being sent to gaol.
The Judge, having thus taken advantage of his magisterial position to insult a defenceless man as well as to refuse his evidence, proceeded with consummate injustice to sum it up as an "undefended case," and gave a verdict for the plaintiff for the full amount. After the Case was over, Mr. William Heaton wrote to Mr. Bradlaugh denying a material point in Mr. Struthers' sworn evidence as to what had occurred between them. Thus did the laws of Christian England treat an Atheist as outlaw, and in the name of justice deal out injustice in favour of a man who, as his fellow Christian stated, had spoken falsely under his oath in the witness-box.
Mr. Hutchings himself felt the disgrace of this so keenly that he wrote expressing his desire to co-operate in a public movement in Wigan in favour of Sir John Trelawny's Affirmation Bill. "I do feel strongly," he said, "that you were most wrongfully and iniquitously deprived of the opportunity of defending your cause, and this I feel the more strongly that it was done in strict conformity with English law."
Two other polemical encounters arose directly out of the Wigan lectures; these were both held with the Rev. Woodville Woodman, a Swedenborgian divine. The first, at Wigan, upon the "Existence of God," continued over four nights; the second, upon the "Divine Revelation of the Bible," also a four nights' debate, was held at Ashton in the autumn of the same year.
Mr. Bradlaugh held quite a number of theological discussions about this time. In addition to those I have already mentioned with the Rev. Brewin Grant, Dr. Brindley, Dr. Baylee, Mr. Hutchings, and the Rev. Woodville Woodman, a controversial correspondence between himself and the Rev. Thomas Lawson, a Baptist minister of Bacup, arose out of some lectures delivered by Mr. Bradlaugh in Newchurch in October 1860. It was originally intended to hold a set debate upon the subject "Has Man a Soul?" but no hall could be obtained in Bacup for the purposes of the discussion. The correspondence was therefore published in the National Reformer during the spring of the following year. Then a debate upon the credibility of the Gospels was arranged between Mr. Bradlaugh and the Rev. J. H. Rutherford, and was held in Liverpool in October 1860; another upon "What does the Bible teach about God?" was held with Mr. Mackie in Warrington in April 1861; and a few months later my father also debated for two nights at Birmingham with Mr. Robert Mahalm, a representative of the Irish Church Mission in that town.
In the middle of July (1860) he was lecturing for the first time in Norwich. St. Andrew's Hall was taken, and the proceeds of the lecture were to go to Garibaldi; but this was one of the places where religious prejudice was strong, and where therefore the receipts did not equal the expenditure. On the second evening Mr. Bradlaugh delivered an open-air address at Chapel Field, when "yells, hisses, abuse, a little mud, and a few stones formed the chorus and finale of the entertainment." Nothing daunted, in September he went to Norwich again, and the orderly behaviour of his audience formed a marked contrast to their previous conduct. By November, when he once more visited Norwich, the Freethinkers there had found themselves strong enough to hire a commodious chapel
