Charles Bradlaugh

“ None either in the rash taking or the wilful breaking? Have you no personal shame that you have broken your oath? Or do the pride and pomp of your ecclesiastical position outbribe your conscience? You talk of the people understanding the words “so help me, God.” How do you understand them of your broken oath? Do they mean to you: “May God desert and forsake me as I deserted and forsook the Queen’s supremacy, to which I so solemnly swore allegiance”? You speak of men being kept to their allegiance by the oath “which binds them to their sovereign.” ”

“ How is the dignity of this House to be hurt? If what happened before the 9th of April is less than a legal disqualification, it is a matter for the judgment of the constituency and not for you. The constituency has judged me; it has elected me. I stand here with no legal disqualification upon me. The right of the constituency to return me is an unimpeachable right. I know some gentlemen make light of constituencies; yet without the constituencies you are nothing. It is from them you derive your whole and sole authority. ”

“ Perhaps the frequenting Philip Callan has spoiled your manners. It else seems impossible that one who was once a cultured scholar and a refined gentleman could confuse with legitimate argument the abuse of his opponents as “cattle.” But who are you, Henry Edward Manning, that you should throw stones at me, and should so parade your desire to protect the House of Commons from contamination? At least, first take out of it the drunkard and the dissolute of your own Church. You know them well enough. Is it the oath alone which stirs you? Your tenderness on swearing comes very late in life. ”

“ I am sorry for the earnest believers who see words sacred to them used as a meaningless addendum to a promise, but I cannot permit their less sincere co-religionists to use an idle form in order to prevent me from doing my duty to those who have chosen me to speak for them in Parliament. I shall, taking the oath, regard myself as bound, not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it. ”

“ I can only be driven into a contest, wearying even to a strong man well supported, ruinous and killing to one man standing by himself—a contest in which if I succeed it will be injurious to you as well as to me. Injurious to me because I can only win by lessening your repute which I desire to maintain. The only court I have the power of appealing to is the court of public opinion, which I have no doubt in the end will do me justice. The hon. member for Plymouth said I had the manliness on a former occasion to make an avowal of opinions to this House. ”

“ It is easy to begin such a strife, but none knows how it would end. I have no court, no tribunal to appeal to; you have the strength of your votes at the moment. You think I am an obnoxious man, and that I have no one on my side. If that be so, then the more reason that this House, grand in the strength of its centuries of liberty, should have now that generosity in dealing with one who to-morrow may be forced into a struggle for public opinion against it (cheers) . [Pg 90]
Mr. Bradlaugh’s Third Speech at the Bar of the House of Commons, delivered February 7th, 1882. ”

“ If it were true that I was kicked downstairs I would ask members of the House of Commons on whom the shame, on whom the disgrace, on whom the stigma? I dare not apply this, but history will when I have mouldered, and you too, and our passions are quite gone. But it is not quite true that I was kicked downstairs, and it is a dangerous thing to say that I was, for it means that hon. members who should rely on law rely on force. It is a dangerous provocation to conflict to throw to the people. ”

“ Justice Brett, said: “Why do you claim, Mr. Bradlaugh?” and I perfectly remember my answer, but I am just thinking whether I am not entitled to say this: that happened seven years ago; I do not intend to imply that there is any change or anything since, but I think I am entitled to say to this Committee that it is hardly within the limits of their reference to inquire into something that happened in a law court between myself and a judge seven years ago. ”

“ Apparently your view is that a member unfortunate enough to have the majority of the House against him need not have even the semblance of fairness shown him—that you, being strong, need not be troubled with scruples, and that the mere fact that the member is, like yourself, the chosen member of a constituency does not entitle him to the smallest courtesy or consideration. ”

“ On the contrary, in the Lords’ protest on the discussion of the Promissory Oaths Municipal Bill, Lord Holland and other Lords put it in the most distinct fashion that no sort of inquisition and no sort of inquiry ought to be tolerated involving any examination of a man’s theological views. Lord Holland added, in words better than I can command: “That there is no tribunal which he knows competent to make that examination, and that the purely secular and political duties called upon to be performed were not such as to entitle that examination to be made.” ”

“ It is not pretended that there has been a single circumstance of illegality connected with the election, the sole point being, Am I qualified to sit? If I am qualified to sit, I have the duty to take the Oath, and the House has neither the right nor the jurisdiction to refuse the Oath to me, nor to interrupt me in the taking of it. ”

“ I would show you how unfair it is to trust to memory of words. The hon. member was good enough to tell the House that I had declared to a Committee of the House that certain words were meaningless. I hold in my hand the report of the Committee and the minutes of evidence, and no such words exist in any declaration of mine. (Hear, hear. Mr. Newdegate shook his head.) The hon. member does not believe me. I cannot make more than facts. I cannot make the comprehension which should distinguish when prejudice has determined that nothing shall be right that is put. ”

“ On the report of the committee as it stands, on the evidence before the House, what is the objection to either my affirming or taking the oath? It is said I have no legal right to affirm. I will suppose that to be so. It is the first time that the House has made itself a court of law from which there may be no appeal, and deprived a citizen of his constitutional right of appeal to a court of law to make out what the statute means in dealing with him. ”

“ Is it for a disqualification or ineligibility existing prior to my election and continuing down to the time of my election—I mean a disqualification or ineligibility created by Statute or existing at common law? No such disqualification is even pretended. Is it for a disqualification or ineligibility of like legal character arising since my election? No such disqualification is pretended. Is it for conduct not amounting to absolute disqualification legally, but conduct for which the House has in its discretion exercised its rights and jurisdictions by expelling a Member? ”

“ The Liberal party has never aided me in any way to this House. (Oh, from the Opposition.) Never. I have fought by myself. I have fought by my own hand. I have been hindered in every way that it was possible to hinder me, and it is only by the help of the people, by the pence of toilers in mine and factory, that I am here to-day, after these five struggles right through thirteen years. ”

“ I hold here, Sir, the evidence of Sir Thomas Erskine May, and I can find no word of any opinion of mine thrust upon the House at all. I have read—it may be that the reports misrepresent—that the cry of “Atheist” has been raised from that side. [The hon. member pointed to the Opposition side.] No word of all mine before the committee put in any terms those theological or anti-theological opinions in evidence before the House. I am no more ashamed of my own opinions, which I did not choose, opinions into which I have grown, than any member of this House is ashamed of his ”

“ One noble lord in a great London gathering convoked against me, a gathering which was not as successful as some that have taken place in my favor, denounced me as a Socialist. I do not happen to be one. I happen to think that Socialists are the most unwise and illogical people you can happen to meet. But the noble lord knew that I ought to be something (laughter) . I am a red rag to a wild Conservative bull, and it must rush at me and call me Socialist. I ask this House to be more fair and just. ”

“ You have the right, but it is the right of force, and not of law. When I am once seated on these benches, then I am under your jurisdiction. At present I am under the protection of the writ from those who sent me here. I do not want to quote what has happened before, but if there be one lesson which the House has recorded more solemnly than another, it is that there should be no interference with the judgment of a constituency in sending a man to this House against whom there is no statutory disqualification. Let me appeal to the generosity of the House as well as to its strength. ”

“ At a meeting of the Dumfries Town Council, a member said: “If the law courts should decide that it was legal for an Atheist to sit in the House of Commons, he should feel it is duty to give notice of petition to Parliament to have the law altered; he would not allow Mr. Bradlaugh to go into a hundred acre field beside cattle, let alone the House of Commons.” ”

“ I submit that while the House has the right to annul the election of a person absolutely disqualified by law, it has never, except in one case, that of John Wilkes, claimed the right to interfere, and in that case it ultimately expunged from its proceedings the whole of its hostile resolutions, as being subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of this kingdom. I quote on that the Commons Journal, Vol. 38, 3rd of May 1782. I do not think that I should be right in troubling the Committee with the very strong arguments used time after time by Edmund Burke, Thomas Pitt, and others ”

“ I am now upon what contains a promise that an oath is being taken when a man uses the word “swear”; do you object to the definition which I have read?—I object to that definition as overruled by the Court of Error in its final decision in error, confirmed by a subsequent decision of Lord Campbell in the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway Company v. Heaton, when it was held that the appeal was not a part of the oath. ”

“ I say here, Sir, before you, with all the solemnity man can command, that I know the words of the oath the statute requires me to take, that I am ready to take that oath according to law, and that I will not take an oath without intending it to be binding upon me, and that if I do take the oath it will be binding upon my honor and conscience. (Conservative cries of “Oh! oh!”) Members of the House who are ignorant of what is honor and conscience—— (Loud cries of “Order,” “Oh, oh,” and “Withdraw,” from the Opposition.) ”

“ The hon. and learned member for Plymouth treats lightly the legal question. It is dangerous to make light of the law—dangerous because if you are only going to rely on your strength of force to override the law, you give a bad lesson to men whose morality you impeach as to what should be their duty if emergence ever came (hear, hear) . Always outside the House I have advocated strenuous obedience to the law, and it is under that law that I claim my right. It is said by the right hon. baronet who interposes between me and my duty that this House has passed some resolution. ”

“ Your personal position is that of a law-breaker, one who has deserted his sworn allegiance and thus forfeited his citizenship, one who is tolerated by English forbearance, but is liable to indictment for misdemeanor as “member of a society of the Church of Rome.” More than once, when the question of my admission to the House of Commons has been under discussion in that House, have I seen you busy in the lobby closely attended by the devout and sober Philip Callan, or some other equally appropriate Parliamentary henchman. ”

“ I submit that it is no part of my duty to draw any distinction, if distinction exists, between the value of that and the value of an affirmation, because the Statute has declared that they both have the same value.
151. Do you consider that the taking of an oath implies in the person taking it the existence of a belief in God, and that he will reward and punish us according to our deserts?—That depends upon the form of the oath; and since the decision you quoted very many forms of oath have been entirely changed by the Legislature. ”

“ You cannot now pretend with any hope that sane men will believe you, that you desire “to prevent the profanation of the oath.” In 1880 you prevented the second reading of the Affirmation Bill, introduced by my colleague, Mr. Labouchere, under the pretext that such a measure ought to be introduced by the Government. In 1881, after you yourself had said the matter should be dealt with by legislation, you prevented the Government from introducing it. ”