Charles Bradlaugh

“ Wars come, and go, and perhaps their greatest evils consist in their aggravation of poverty by the high prices they cause; pestilences last a season and then leave us; but poverty, the grim tyrant of our race, abides with us through all ages and in all circumstances. For each victim that war and pestilence have slain, for each heart that they have racked with suffering, poverty has slain its millions whom it has first condemned to drag out wearily a life of bondage and degradation. ”

“ The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, The genii of the elements, the powers That give a shape to nature's varied works, Had life and place in the corrupt belief Of thy blind heart—yet still thy youthful hands Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain; Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride. Their everlasting and unchanging laws Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood'st Baffled and gloomy; then thou did'st sum up The elements of all that thou did'st know. ”

“ To the landowners in the House of Peers we say:—It is on the land question, my lords, that the people challenge you, at present in sorrow and shame. Take up the matter while you may, and do justice while yet you can. The world is wide for you to seek your pleasure, the poor can only seek life—where death finds them—at home. Give up your battues, your red deer, your black game, your pheasants, your partridges; and when you see each acre of land won by the fierce suasion of hardy toil to give life and hope to the tiller, in this you will find your recompense. ”

“ Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend that it is not certain gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal torment is the probable fate of the great majority of the human family? Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them? ”

“ Fortunately, ignorant men cannot be real heretics, so that education must be the hand-maiden to heresy. Ignorance and superstition are twin sisters. Belief too often means nothing more than prostration of the intellect on the threshold of the unknown. Heresy is the pioneer, erect and manly, striding over the forbidden line in his search for truth. Heterodoxy develops the intellect, orthodoxy smothers it. Heresy is the star twinkle in the night, orthodoxy the cloud which hides this faint gleam of light from the weary travellers on life's encumbered pathway. ”

“ When does the soul come into man? When does it go out of man? If the soul is immortal, why is it that standing here, in the prime of health and strength, if part of that roof should fall fracturing my skull, and pressing upon my brain—how is it, if my soul is not subject to material conditions, that it then ceases to act? Is the plaster roof more powerful than my immortal soul? Or is it that intelligence is the necessary result of a certain condition of existence, and that the moment you destroy that condition—the moment you destroy the organization—the result ceases to be realizable? ”

“ In London, the hive of the world, with its merchant millionaires, even under the shadow of the wealth pile, starvation is as busy as if in the most wretched and impoverished village; busy indeed, not always striking the victim so obtrusively that the coroner's inquest shall preserve a record of the fact, but more often busy quietly, in the wretched court and narrow lane, up in the garret, and down in the cellar, stealing by slow degrees the life of the poor. ”

“ Taxation is a boastful performance for a legislature and ministry who sit without consulting the mass of the people; it is a baneful subject for a people powerless in the State. To tax a man without his concurrence, without listening to his objections, without his having any voice in the nomination of the tax leviers, is clearly robbery, and if you will not be honest, the people must refuse to be robbed. If you will not reform the representation, then the unenfranchised taxpayers will revolt. If they must not have the right to vote, they will not regard it as a duty to pay. ”

“ The race of men, Chosen to my honor, with impunity, May sate the lusts I planted in their heart. Here I command thee hence to lead them on, Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood, And make my name be dreaded through the land. Yet ever burning flame and ceaseless woe Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, With every soul on this ungrateful earth, Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,—even all Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge Which you, to men, call justice, of their God. ”

“ Who has told you, that a divine more happy or more enlightened than you, will not remove the contradiction, which you think you perceive between your religion, and the opinion you resolve to condemn! Who forces you by a precipitate censure to expose, if not religion, at least its ministers, to the hatred excited by persecution? Why, always borrowing the assistance of force and terror, would you impose silence on men of genius, and deprive mankind of the useful knowledge they are capable of dispensing? You obey, you say, the dictates of religion. ”

“ Why is it that human beings are starved to death, in a wealthy country like England, with its palaces, its cathedrals, and its abbeys; with its grand mansions, and luxurious dwellings, with its fine inclosed parks, and strictly guarded preserves; with its mills, mines, and factories; with its enormous profits to the capitalist; and with its broad acres and great rent rolls to the landholder? The feet that men, old, young, and in the prime of life; that women, and that children, do so die, is indisputable. ”

“ For you, lords of Erin's fertile soil—you who have wrought her shame and made her disaffection—you who have driven her children across the broad ocean to seek for life—even for you there is the moment to save yourselves, and do good to your kind. Thoughtful workmen will try to gradually win your land by law, hungry paupers may suddenly wrest it from you in despair; you may yield it now on fair terms, and grow even richer in the yielding. England is growing hungry, empty bellies make angry faster than heads reason, and the Land Question cannot stand still. ”

“ We have repeatedly driven you away through avarice; we have recalled you through avarice and stupidity; we still, in more towns than one, make you pay for liberty to breathe the air; we have, in more kingdoms than one, sacrificed you to God; we have burned you as holocausts—for I will not follow your example, and dissemble that we have offered up sacrifices of human blood; all the difference is, that our priests, content with applying your money to their own use, have had you burned by laymen; while your priests always immolated their human victims with their own sacred hands. ”

“ With deliberate thoughts, with convulsive passion, the love of Charles Blount passed the bounds of that of a brother; longing to make her his wife, he adored her with the passion he had lavished on the dead. It seemed as if the shade of Eleanora was perpetually prompting him to bestow all his affection on the young and beautiful Eliza. She caressed his children with the pride of an aunt, she traced the image of her sister in the laughing eyes of the merry babes—still she was not happy. How could she be happy? She loved him as a man—as a brother. ”

“ Yet all the prayers that labor ever uttered since the first breath of human life, have not availed so much for human happiness as will the earnest examination by one generation of this, the greatest of all social questions, the root of all political problems, the foundation of all civil progress. Poor, man must be wretched. Poor, he must be ignorant. Poor, he must be criminal; and poor he must be till the cause of poverty has been ascertained by the poor man himself and its cure planned by the poor man's brain, and effected by the poor man's hand. ”

“ Or countless partners of his powers divide His tyranny to weakness: or the smoke Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven In honor of his name; or, last and worst, Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of peace, Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth a slaughter-house. ”

“ Why do you call it passive, except it be that you want courage to search for true knowledge as to the vast capabilities of existence, and, therefore, invent such names as God and Soul to account for all difficulties, and to hide your ignorance? What do you mean by passive and inert matter? You tell me of this world—part of a system—that system part of another—that of another—and point out to me the innumerable planets, the countless millions of worlds, in the universe. You, who tell me of the vast forces of the universe, what do you mean by telling me that that is motionless? ”

“ Shelley makes his fairy say:—
"There is no God! Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed. Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, His ceaseless generations, tell their tale; Let every part depending on the chain That links it to the whole, point to the hand That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls In silent eloquence unfold its store Of argument. Infinity within, Infinity without, belie creation; The exterminate spirit it contains Is nature's only God: but human pride Is skilful to invent most serious names To hide its ignorance. ”

“ Ye who are slaves and weep, will never be comforted until ye dry your eyes and nerve your arms, and, in the plenitude of your manliness,
"Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep have fallen on you."
Jesus teaches that the poor, the hungry and the wretched shall be blessed? This is not so. The blessing only comes when they have ceased to be poor, hungry and wretched. Contentment under poverty, hunger and misery is high treason, not to yourself alone, but to your fellows. These three, like foul diseases, spread quickly wherever humanity is stagnant and content with wrong. ”

“ Cause knowledge to extend its salubrious reign, goodness to occupy our souls, serenity to dwell in our bosoms.... Let our eyes, so long either dazzled or blindfolded, be at length fixed upon those objects we ought to seek. Dispel forever those mists of ignorance, those hideous phantoms, together with those seducing chimeras, which only serve to lead us astray. Extricate us from that dark abyss into which we are plunged by superstition, overthrow the fatal empire of delusion, crumble the throne of falsehood, wrest from their polluted hands the power they have usurped. ”

“ You who have been content with the pious frauds and forgeries perpetrated with reference to the deathbeds and dying words of the great, the generous, the witty Voltaire, the manly, the self-denying, the incorruptible Thomas Paine, the humane, simple, child-like man, yet mighty poet, Shelley—you who have turned away from these with horror, unfounded if real, come with me to the death couch of the special favorite of God. ”

“ There is, first, the immense and prodigious, but terrible mathematical skeleton, which his subtle intellect binds up and throws as calmly into space as we drop a pebble into the water, and whose bones, striking against the wreck of all that is sacred in belief, or bold in speculation, rattle a wild response to our wildest phantasies, and drive us almost to think in despair that thinking is madness; and there is, secondly, the divinest vision of the infinite, and the divinest incense which the intuition of the infinite ever yet poured forth at the altar of creation. ”

“ See men forming a pyramid of which the base is a crushed and worn-out people, and the apex a church, a throne, a priest, a king, and the frippery of a creed—have those men souls? Society should not be such a pyramid, it should be one brotherly circle, in which men should be linked together by a consciousness that they are only happy so linked, conscious that when the chain is broken, then the society and her peace is destroyed. ”

“ If that table were only in the hands of some of our spirit friends of the present day, what brilliant anecdotes might it not rap out—the sparkling wit of Diderot, the good humor of out host, the hospitable and generous D'Holbach, the occasional bitterness of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cautious expression of opinion by D'Alembert, the agreeable variety of Montesquieu, and the bold enthusiasm of the youthful but hardworking Naigeon! If ever a table were inclined to turn, this table should have been; but perhaps it may be that tables never turn when reason is the ruler of those who sit around. ”

“ The only bread they get is the bread they take; in their hard struggle for life-sustenance the loaves come but slowly, and heaven adds not a crust, even though the worker be hungry, when he rises from his toil-won meal. Not even the sight of pale-faced wife, and thin forms of half-starved infants can move to generosity the Ruler of the world. The laborer may pray, but, if work be scant and wages low, he pines to death while praying. His prayer gives no relief, and misery's answer is the mocking echo to his demand. ”

“ Look to the walks of life, I beseech ye—look into the public prints—look into your sectarian churches—look into the bosoms of families—look into your own bosoms, and those of your fellow beings, and see how many of our disputes and dissensions, public and private—how many of our unjust actions—how many of our harsh judgments—how many of our uncharitable feelings—spring out of our ignorant ambition to rend the veil which wraps from our human senses the knowledge of things unseen, and from our human faculties the conception of causes unknown? ”

“ While the face of the earth was disfigured by the rotting dead, after God in his infinite mercy had deluged the world, then it was that the ascending smoke from Noah's burnt sacrifice of bird and beast produced pleasure in heaven, and God himself smelled a sweet savor from the roasted meats. To reach atonement for the past by sacrifice is worse than folly—it is crime. The past can never be recalled, and the only reference to it should be that, by marking its events, we may avoid its evil deeds and improve upon its good ones. For Jesus himself—can man believe in him? ”

“ I conclude, that every sensible man, every honest man, ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. 'The great name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere,' is the only name we ought to adopt. The only gospel we should read is the grand book of nature, written with God's own hand, and stamped with his own seal. The only religion we ought to profess is, 'to adore God, and act like honest men.' It would be as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to produce evil, as it would be impossible for Christian fanaticism not to produce it.... ”

“ Why do you come to the conclusion that the forces of the universe are incapable of producing every effect of which I take cognizance? Why do you come to the conclusion that intelligence is not an attribute—why? What is there which enables you to convert it into a separate and distinct existence? Is there anything? Is it spirit? What is spirit? That of which the mortal man can know nothing, you tell me—that it is nothing which his senses can grasp—that is, no man, but one who disregards his senses, can believe in it, and that it is that which no man's senses can take cognizance of. ”

“ On one occasion in the world's history, a people rose searching for upright life, who had previously, for several generations, depressed by poverty and its attendant hand-maidens of misery, prowled hunger-striken and disconsolate, stooping and stumbling through the byways of existence. A mighty revolution resulted in much rough justice and some brutal vengeance, much rude right, and some terrific wrong. ”

“ In the moment when the peaceful soul of Newton was employed by no business, and agitated by no passion, it was also chance that, drawing him under an apple tree, loosened some of the fruit from the branches, and gave that philosopher the first idea of his system on gravitation: it was really this incident that afterwards made him turn his thoughts to inquire whether the moon does not gravitate towards the earth with the same force as that with which bodies fall on its surface? It is then to chance that great geniuses are frequently obliged for their most happy thoughts. ”

“ The very nature of proof is to make a proposition more clear to the mind than it was before, and no amount of evidence can in-crease my conviction of the certainty of my own existence. I do not affirm that I am in existence, but I affirm that there is existence. This existence is either eternal, that is, unlimited in duration, that is, indefinite in duration; or else it had a beginning, that is, it has been created. If created, then such creation must be by some existence the same as itself, or by some existence differing from itself. ”

“ There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and, by a natural propensity, it not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good will to everything that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of the prosopopoia in poetry; where trees, mountains, and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion. ”

“ Duke Despicable is in unholy alliance with King Poverty, who mocks at the poor mother and her wretched, ragged family, when from the garret or cellar in a great Babylon wilderness they set out to find green fields and new life. Work days are sacred to bread, and clothes, and rent; hunger, inclement weather, and pressing landlord forbid the study of nature 'twixt Monday morn and Saturday night, and on Sunday God's ministers require to teach a weary people how to die, as if the lesson were not unceasingly inculcated in their incessant toil. Oh! horrid mockery; men need teaching how to live. ”

“ We hope that those not previously acquainted with the facts of his life, will find in the present sketch sufficient reason to think and speak otherwise of a man who made the world his country, and the doing good his religion.
"As Euclid near his various writings shone, His pen inspired by glorious truth alone, O'er all the earth diffusing light and life, Subduing error, ignorance, and strife; Raised man to just pursuits, to thinking right, And yet will free the world from woe and falsehood's night; To this immortal man, to Paine 'twas given, To metamorphose earth from hell to heaven." ”