Notwithstanding all his lecturing, the great quantity of literary work he was then engaged upon, the Reform Demonstrations, and harassing private business, Mr Bradlaugh yet found time in the spring of 1867 to engage in a six nights' debate with the Rev. J. M'Cann, M.A., curate of St Paul's, Huddersfield. The discussion was arranged to take place in the theatre, or Philosophical Hall, which had been forcibly closed against the Freethinkers only a few months before. The preliminaries to the debate were a little ominous: in the first place Mr Bradlaugh was obliged to agree to the terms dictated by his religious antagonist (or his committee), otherwise there would have been no discussion; and above and beyond this the Rev. Mr M'Cann "refused to debate if the name Iconoclast be used, and therefore it will be Charles Bradlaugh who answers for the shortcomings of Iconoclast, despite the injury in business caused by the wide publicity recently given to the name and thus repeated."[100] [Footnote 100: C. Bradlaugh in _National Reformer_, March 1867.] The debate arose out of some "Anti-Secularist lectures" which Mr M'Cann had been delivering in Huddersfield, presumably inspired thereto by the sensation caused by the theatre episode of the previous November. The subjects of these lectures were to be discussed for six nights, three hours each night, Mr Bradlaugh attacking and Mr M'Cann defending. Mr M'Cann, who was an Irishman, and who from the active part he was taking in the Literary and Scientific Society and other institutions of the town, was regarded as a "rising young man," rather disappointed many of the Freethinkers after the first two nights' discussion. Immovably confident in the ability of their own representative, they were anxious to see him meet someone worthy of his steel. Mr Bradlaugh's opinion, expressed at the conclusion of the six nights, was that Mr M'Cann was a fluent, ready speaker, honest and earnest, although no great debater.[101] [Footnote 101: No verbatim report of this discussion was ever published.] The year 1868 was a terribly busy one: the Irish question (of which I will speak later), the first Government prosecution of the _National Reformer_, and his first Parliamentary candidature for Northampton, kept my father constantly hard at work. During the year he lectured frequently in London, besides visiting Grimsby, Bedlington, Newcastle, Hull, West Bromwich, Birmingham, Kettering, Northampton, Huddersfield, Bradford, Sheffield, Ashton, Manchester, Bury, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Keighley, Sunderland, Plymouth, and other towns.