Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh EditionRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh Edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833-1891
He had fit though few compensations. He lived to see the rightness of
his course more and more widely and openly admitted; and to see some
Freethinkers and others who had unworthily attacked him for it come
round and follow in his steps. And at his trial with Mrs Besant for
selling the Knowlton pamphlet in 1877 he was able to tell the jury of
higher sanctions than these. Mill in his "Autobiography," telling how
he was attacked for subscribing to Bradlaugh's election fund in 1868,
says of him:--
"He had the support of the working-classes; having heard him speak, I
knew him to be a man of ability, and he had proved that he was the
reverse of a demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to
the prevailing opinion of the democratic party on two such important
subjects as Malthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this
sort, who, while sharing the democratic feelings of the working
classes, judged political questions for themselves, and had courage to
assert their individual convictions against popular opposition, were
needed, as it seemed to me, in Parliament."
It may here be added that Grote, who was a regular reader of the
_National Reformer_ and a Neo-Malthusian also, approved even more
strongly. The further fact, now established, that Mill was in his youth
actually prosecuted for distributing Neo-Malthusian literature, should
serve to check the malice of those persons, clerical and other, who
still divide Freethinkers into two classes--one of "irreproachable
morals," following Mill, the other of "loose and dissolute character,"
following Bradlaugh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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