The storm of abuse now broke over Mr Bradlaugh's head in full force--always with intent to damage the Reform League, for his enemies had not yet taken the measure of his power and proportions. For the moment he was merely considered as a weapon, to be used unscrupulously, and pointed with lies. In this method of warfare the _Saturday Review_[93] at one bound took a front place. The _Standard_ on the 11th of March reprinted from it the article, "Who are the Leaguers?" from which journals all over the country took their lead. It was in this article of the _Saturday Review_ that Mr Bradlaugh is made responsible for the story of the "Fanatical Monkeys" written by Charles Southwell (who probably derived it from some old fable), and rewritten from memory by J. P. Adams, who sent it to the _National Reformer_, where it was published on February 17, 1867. This story was reproduced in a hundred shapes, and of course my father was said to be the author of all of them, a proof, asserted these veracious ones, of his utter depravity. I have noted a letter of Mr Bradlaugh's, written in 1868, in which he asked to deny the story for at least "the hundredth time;" but denial was of little use; the lie sown by the _Saturday Review_ in March 1867, like most other ill weeds, throve apace, and was even repeated so late as two years ago. Speaking in Trafalgar Square on March 11th, where as usual he was "loudly called for,"[94] he said those who were carrying on the struggle had not entered into it without counting the cost, and, confident in their own strength and manhood, they were determined upon gaining their rights. He compared the people with a "resistless wave," and warned those who should dare "to stem the tide." The _Weekly Dispatch_ jeered at "the figurative Bradlaugh" for this speech, and, trying in its turn to injure the Reform League, suggested that the demonstrations were more welcome to the thieves than to any other class of metropolitan society. Others, like the _Sunday Times_, struck with the determination and confident purpose betokened in such a speech, chose to interpret it to mean physical force, and said-- "The Reform Leaguers throughout the country are beginning to talk treason and must be watched. 'Iconoclast,' who, but for his disposition to violence, would be altogether too vulgar for notice, systematically threatens violation of the law, and defiance of the powers that be." [Footnote 93: March 9th, 1867.] [Footnote 94: _Times_, March 12th, 1867.] The _Sunday Times_ then went on, in the same paragraph, to speak in terms of reprobation of "a person" who, at some meeting at Newcastle, urged that an attempt should be made to win the sympathies of the army, so that in the event of "a collision" the people and the army would be on the same side. The remarks of an unnamed person at some meeting at which Mr Bradlaugh was not even present, were thus used as though he were responsible for them.