In 1870 another Bill, prepared by the Hon. G. Denman and Mr Locke King, was passed through Parliament to further amend the law of evidence, but it only met such difficulties as had arisen in the case of Bradlaugh and De Rin, and did not touch the law as it related to jurymen, affidavits, or Scotland. Mr Bradlaugh was continually urging members of the House to get these points amended, but nothing further was done until he himself carried his Oaths Act of 1888, by which the whole law relating to oaths was radically altered. Until the passing of this Act, jurors without religious belief were liable to be committed to prison if they refused to be sworn, and the law did not permit them to affirm. Affidavits on interlocutory proceedings could only be made upon oath. In Scotland all Atheists and disbelievers in eternal torment were, in addition, incompetent as witnesses. In any case, too much discretion was left to the Judge, who was supposed to satisfy himself, according to the monstrous formula laid down by the Act, that the oath would have "no binding effect" upon the conscience of a heretical witness. A promise is binding upon the conscience of an honest man in whatever form it may be made, and it put Freethinkers in an entirely false position to be obliged to assent to the statement that some particular form was not binding upon them. Conscientious witnesses who wished to affirm hardly knew what to answer when the Judge put the question to them, and he would not always be satisfied with the mere statement that the oath gave no additionally binding effect to the promise. And sometimes his assent to the formula would be used to the discredit of a witness. I myself once heard Baron Huddleston tell the jury that it was for them to consider what was the value of the evidence of a witness whom an oath would not bind. * * * * * Amongst the multitude of papers hostile to Mr Bradlaugh's candidature for Parliamentary honours in 1868 was one called the _Razor_. This journal went so far in its condemnatory strictures that Mr Bradlaugh felt--as his counsel, Mr Digby Seymour, put it--that he had no option but to bring an action against the proprietor. The _Razor_ must have been in a general way a tolerably obscure publication, for when I went to look it up in the British Museum, no trace of it could be discovered, although the officials there took considerable pains to find it for me. But the article against Mr Bradlaugh had been recopied from its columns and widely circulated in Northampton, where it was calculated to produce serious mischief. Later on Northampton grew accustomed to hearing my father accused of every possible crime, and, knowing their absolute falsity, became hardened to such slanders; still, at that time the acquaintance was comparatively young between Northampton and the man whose statue it has this year placed in one of its most public thoroughfares.