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Bradlaugh's and my books and pamphlets had taken over a stock of Knowlton's pamphlets among other literature he bought, and he was prosecuted and, to our great dismay, pleaded guilty.
He predicted that if women did get the franchise, Mr. Bradlaugh's "Temple" would be shut up in six months, as well as those of Messrs. Voysey and Conway and Dr. Perfitt. The ladies, he said, were swayed by Conventionalism and Priestcraft, and until you educated them, you could not safely give them the franchise.
The managers, however, still continued to sell tickets to soldiers, yet to keep the enterprise from being wiped out of existence, only sixteen soldiers from each regiment were allowed to attend on any single day. Bradlaugh's reach and height saved him, and the motto, "Wherever you see a head, hit it," did not disturb him, since his headpiece was well above high-water mark.
Bradlaugh's daughters could not be deprived of their hard-earned grants for their pupils who successfully passed the South Kensington examinations! This is the man who posed as the amateur champion of omnipotence! Surely if deity wanted a champion, Sir Henry Tyler is about the last person who would receive an application.
Rees must have been very ignorant of Mr Bradlaugh's writings and intellectual character, or else he was deliberately inventing or trusting to mere hearsay, when he stated that Mr. Bradlaugh was made an Atheist by the bigotry or selfishness of certain Christians. "I think I may almost say" is a strange expression. What is it to "almost say" a thing? Is it almost said when you have said it?
Bradlaugh's National Reformer with the signature "B. V.," the initials of "Bysshe Vanolis," a rather characteristic nom de guerre which Thomson had taken to express his admiration for Shelley directly, and for Novalis by anagram. Some of it, however, emerged into a wider hearing, and attracted the favourable attention of men like Kingsley and Froude.
Bradlaugh's most devoted disciples, who became one of the leading speakers of the National Secular Society; like her well-loved chief, she was ever a good friend and a good fighter, and to me the most loyal and loving of colleagues, one of the few the very few Freethinkers who were large-hearted and generous enough not to turn against me when I became a Theosophist. A second of these alas!
Unless Sir Hardinge Giffard is a splendid actor, he was not aware of the infamous proceeding, for he looked as startled as the rest of his legal brethren. Another queer incident occurred, showing, perhaps more than aught else, Mr. Bradlaugh's swift perception of the situation and adaptation to the environment.
Bradlaugh's shaken strength received its death-blow, though he was to live yet another fifteen months. He collapsed suddenly under a most severe attack of congestion and lay in imminent peril, devotedly nursed by his only remaining child, Mrs. Bonner, his elder daughter having died the preceding autumn.
I would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and freethinkers to turn high Anglicans, or better still, downright Catholics for a week in every year, and I would send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr. Bradlaugh's lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the evening, two or three times every winter.
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