Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

“ All men are born with equal rights, and in associating together to protect one another and share public burdens, justice demands that such associations should rest upon a basis which maintains equality instead of destroying it. We therefore declare that, unable longer to endure the curse of monarchical government, we aim at founding a republic, based on universal suffrage, which shall secure to all the intrinsic value of their labour. The soil of Ireland, at present in the possession of an oligarchy, belongs to us, the Irish people, and to us it must be restored. ”

“ As Mr Bradlaugh himself wrote at a later stage: "The points of difference between myself and Mr Barker are many. He professes now to be a Theist. For eight years, at least, I have been an Atheist. I am for the Manhood Suffrage. Mr Barker is against it. I hold the doctrines of John Stuart Mill on Political Economy. Mr Barker thinks the advocacy of such opinions vile and immoral. Mr Barker thinks Louis Napoleon a good and useful man. I believe the Emperor of the French to be the most clever and unscrupulous rascal in the world." ”

“ If we find a mind bound round with Creeds and Bibles, we will select a sharp knife to cut the bonds; if we find men prostrating themselves, without inquiry, before idols, our policy is iconoclastic—we will destroy those idols. If we find a rock in our path, we will break it; but we will not quarrel with our brother who deems his proper work to be that of polishing the fragments. We believe all the religions of the world are founded on error, in the ignorance of natural causes and material conditions, and we deem it our duty to endeavour to expose their falsity. ”

“ When hostilities were declared between France and Germany in 1870, Mr Bradlaugh did not take sides with either nation; he entirely and unreservedly condemned the war. He and his friends kept clear of the war fever which seemed coursing through the blood of most people. "All the evil passions of Europe are aroused," wrote Austin Holyoake, "and even children gloat over the narratives of slaughter where thousands perish. The soldier, instead of the schoolmaster, has become the foremost man, and Rage, Revenge, and Murder are the gods of public idolatry." ”

“ The speaker said England was full of wealth, and that labour was never so well paid. Everybody was happy, and Bradlaugh was an incendiary, a story-teller, a nuisance, who would make a rumpus and make everybody miserable, even in the Garden of Eden. 'Were you ever in a casual ward?' asked a smudgy fellow in the back of the hall. 'No,' answered the bold Brindley, 'but if you were there now it would save the police trouble.' And so he replied to other impertinent questions, until he made the impression that he was not quite such a fool as he looked. ”

“ I had believed in such men as Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, Victor Hugo, as possible statesmen for France. I was mistaken. They were writers, talkers, and poets; good men to ride on the stream, or to drown in honest protest, but lacking force to swim against, or turn back, the tide by the might of their will. I had believed too in a Republican France, which is yet only in the womb of time, to be born after many pangs and sore travailing."
When Mr Bradlaugh acted as Secretary for the Defence, his duties were performed in no merely formal way, but with the utmost energy and enthusiasm. ”

“ Yes, "the people must win"—in the end; but complete manhood suffrage is not ours yet, and universal suffrage is still far off. "The people must win," but Oh how long the winning; and alas! the cost to the victors.
In October Mr Bradlaugh was speaking for the League in Northampton. I wonder whether there are Northampton men who still remember that Reform demonstration held in their town in the autumn of sixty-six, when they carried out their programme in the pelting, pitiless rain, just as "cheerily and as steadfastly as though it had been sunshine and a clear sky." ”

“ Mr Bradlaugh opened in a very careful speech. Dealing first with the word Scepticism, he went on to say, "Criticism is, I presume, the art of judging upon the merits of any given proposition; and I put it, that you cannot have criticism at all without doubt. Doubt is, in fact, the beginning of knowledge, and I put it expressly, that it is utterly impossible to have Secular Criticism without having scepticism; as to the dogmas of Theology in general, and scepticism as to the Bible and Christianity in particular." ”

“ The captain had not, however, reckoned on the presence of Bradlaugh. The pale, awkward youth, who as yet had only been treated with jeers and contempt, was the only person who dared stand up and face him. To the unutterable surprise of every one, he delivered a fiery, menacing, unanswerable harangue, upbraiding the captain in no measured terms, exposing in lucid language the meanness of his action, and concluding with the appalling threat of a letter to the Times. ”

“ I am frank enough to confess that I found that prejudice to be to a great extent based on ignorance of the man. It has been the custom of many Christian organs to hold the teachers of Atheism up to scorn for ignorance, conceit, incapacity, and a wanton indulgence in gross and vulgar blasphemies. Often enough the representation has been only too faithful; but it would be simply an absurd and self-refuting falsehood to charge any of these things on Mr Bradlaugh, as far as his behaviour on Monday night would enable one to form an estimate of his character. ”

“ The Atheists hold that by teaching men the real road to human happiness, it is possible to keep them from the by-ways of criminality and error. The Atheist would teach men to be moral now, not because God offered as an inducement some reward by-and-by, but because in the virtuous act itself immediate good was ensured to the doer, and to the world surrounding him. The Atheist would prevent men from lying, stealing, murdering, not from fear of the eternal consequences after death, but because crime made this life itself a course of misery. ”

“ Our church is not a narrow church, nor narrow chapel, nor Bible sect, but the wide church of humanity, covered by no steeple, with texts preached from no pulpit, but with each man as his own priest, working out his own salvation, and that of his fellows too—not on his knees, but on his feet, with clenched hand and nervous brain, fighting wrong and asserting right, and striving to make humanity freer. ”

“ It would have been impossible to have brought together two persons more exactly opposite than Victoria Woodhull and Stephen Pearl Andrews—one all fire, the other all quiet thought; the one intent on active out-door war, the other content to work almost isolated in his closet on a huge book, which few can read and fewer still will care to read. Mrs Woodhull is evidently made for sharp strife of tongue and pen. Her face lights up with a beauty which does not belong to it ordinarily, but which gilds it as she speaks. ”

“ Mr Bradlaugh in his speech put it in this way: "The Secularist finds the kingdom of faith impossible, he finds belief in God impossible, he finds belief in religion impossible. What is the difference between finding belief in God impossible and an Atheist?" He said further: "Although at present it may be perfectly true that all men who are Secularists are not Atheists, I put it that in my opinion the logical consequence of the acceptance of Secularism must be that the man gets to Atheism if he has brains enough to comprehend." ”

“ True, it was paid for in years of care and terrific mental anxieties; true, it was heralded with insult and actual personal ill-usage; true, it cost a life impossible to replace; but the "jubilee" came when over the "martyr's" very deathbed the House of Commons itself vindicated his honour; when even a Tory statesman could be found to uphold my father's conduct in the House, and a Tory gentleman to proclaim that he was "a man who had endeavoured to do his duty." It was a jubilee of the triumph of consistent courage and honesty over "blind and senseless bigotry" and unprincipled malice. ”

“ At the declaration of their defeat the Northampton Radicals, for the first and only time, lost their self-control; the vile charges made against the man they had chosen to honour had worked them up to a state of the extremest indignation and anger, which, hitherto restrained, now in the first bitterness of their disappointment broke out in violence. An attack was made upon The Palmerston, Mr Fowler's headquarters; but Mr Bradlaugh was soon in the midst of the rioters, and using his utmost energy of rebuke and persuasion succeeded in dispersing the crowd. ”

“ Just before the trial of the Manchester Martyrs, Mr Bradlaugh wrote a short but most eloquent plea for Ireland. He concluded it by urgently entreating:
"Before it be too late, before more blood shall stain the pages of our present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try and do justice to our sister land. Abolish once and for all the land laws, which in their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry. Sweep away the leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has given her back no word even of comfort in her degradation. ”

“ We declare also in favour of absolute liberty of conscience, and the complete separation of Church and State. We appeal to the Highest Tribunal for evidence of the justice of our cause. History bears testimony to the intensity of our sufferings, and we declare, in the face of our brethren, that we intend no war against the people of England; our war is against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish, who have eaten the verdure of our fields—against the aristocratic leeches who drain alike our blood and theirs. Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause. ”

“ He seemed depressed and preoccupied, and though he made us plenty of gay speeches, we were conscious that his mood was not gay. We left Paris that night, and well do I remember what great care he took of me, the invalid, holding me in his arms a great part of the way. As we drove to Turner Street from the station, in the gloomy dawn of a dull December morning, I could not help noticing, in spite of my own pain and weariness, how grey and haggard his face looked. We passed the day in London, and in the evening he took us to Midhurst, where we were all to spend Christmas. ”

“ Need we go further to express our more than disgust—our horror—at the fact of a young and accomplished man standing forth in crowded halls, and, while the beauteous moon marches aloft in the vast and indefinable firmament, and the myriad of silvery stars shoot their refulgent rays upon the desecrated lecture-room, actually telling the people that no God lives! ”

“ If the Law Officers of the Crown had proposed a stet processus when the new Government came into office, the act would have been graceful; now, after twelve months of harassing litigation, the staying further proceedings, when a rule has been granted in my favour, is a matter for which I owe no thanks.
"If any more formal consent is necessary, I will give it. I never courted the contest, nor have I ever shrunk from it; but I have no inclination to carry it on; fighting the Crown is a luxury only to be indulged in by the rich as a voluntary occupation. ”

“ While Professor Beesly was opening the meeting, a tall man with a remarkably pleasant face, a little spoilt by a self-sufficient look, or, if we are really to describe it, a certain consciousness of power, had entered the room and received a perfect ovation of applause. This was Mr Bradlaugh, alias 'Iconoclast,' for whom the audience kept calling whenever the speaker for the time being grew tedious.... We know more of Mr Bradlaugh than we wish. ”

“ In continuation, the Times remarked that "Mr Bradlaugh, whose voice could be heard at a considerable distance, was listened to with great attention; he spoke throughout in terms of advice to the 'people' to preserve peace, law, and order."
When we find such reluctant witnesses speaking in such terms, one can form some idea of the size of the meeting and the spirit which animated it. It is to be regarded as not the least among my father's triumphs that he could always bring people together in vast numbers, with no other inducement than the justice of the cause which they had at heart. ”

“ The cynical reflection that those who have themselves broken away from the conventional thought of the times always damn those who go a little further than themselves, carries a germ of truth within its bitter shell. The Unitarian body always seem to treat Freethinkers with an acrimony special to themselves and us. Individual Unitarians whom I have known personally have been kind, pleasant, liberal-minded people, but Unitarians as a body or as represented by their organ seldom enough have turned a kindly side towards atheists. ”

“ To the oppressed of all nations: to those who are oppressed the most in that they know it least; to the ignorant and contented under wrong, who make oppression possible by the passiveness, the inertness of their endurance. To the memories of the oppressed in the past, whose graves—if faggot and lime have left a body to bury—are without mark save on the monuments of memory, more enduring than marble, erected in such temples by truer toast-givers than myself. ”

“ There is no middle ground between Theism and Atheism. The genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures are questions relevant to Secularism. It is as necessary for the Secularist to destroy Bible influence as for the farmer to endeavour to eradicate the chickweed from his clover field. We appeal to those who think our work fairly done to aid us in our labours; to those who will not work with us we simply say, do not hinder us. ”

“ While making this atonement to Mr Bradlaugh, the Editor must express his unfeigned sorrow that the name of Mrs Bradlaugh should have been introduced into the article in question, accompanied by a suggestion calculated to wound her in the most vital part, conveying as it does a reflection upon her honour and fair fame as a lady and a wife. Mrs Bradlaugh is too well known and too much respected to suffer by such a calumny; but for the pain so heedlessly given to a sensitive and delicate nature the Editor offers this expression of his profound and sincere regret. ”

“ I would honestly prefer a morality without any religious belief—nay, even without any religious hopes and religious consolations—to the most comforting, satisfying creed without morality.... Inexpressibly sad as it is to us, who rejoice in our Maker, and whose hearts pant for the Living God, yet there are some who cannot believe in him at all. ”

“ His speech produced such an effect, not only upon the audience, but upon Mr Grant, that the latter grew quite uneasy under his words and under his gaze; he asked "Iconoclast" to look at the audience and not at him. Mr Bradlaugh replied: "I will take it that you are, as indeed you ought to be, ashamed to look an earnest man in the face, and I will look at you no more. Mr Grant complains that I have called him 'my friend.' It is true, in debate I have accustomed myself to wish all men my friends, and to greet them as friends if possible. ”

“ They who are married equally moral, will not find fault with mine; but where marriage is merely of the law or for money, and not of the soul, there I look for abuse." [2]
Of course, all this happened long before Mr Bradlaugh became acquainted with Mrs Carlile; when he knew her, sixteen or seventeen years later, she was a broken woman, who had had her ardour and enthusiasm cooled by suffering and poverty, a widow with three children, of whom Hypatia, the eldest, could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old at the most. ”