"I, the undersigned Charles Bradlaugh, beg respectfully to claim to be allowed to affirm as a person for the time being by law permitted to make a solemn affirmation or declaration, instead of taking an oath." He had already explained, in answer to the questions of the Clerk, that he made his claim in virtue of the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, the Evidence Amendment Act, 1869, and the Evidence Amendment Act, 1870, which "explains and amends" the Act of 1869. The Clerk formally communicated these matters to the Speaker (Sir Henry Brand), who then invited Bradlaugh to make a statement to the House with regard to his claim. Bradlaugh replied: "Mr Speaker,--I have only now to submit that the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, gives the right to affirm to every person for the time being permitted by law to make affirmation. I am such a person; and under the Evidence Amendment Act, 1869, and the Evidence Amendment Act 1870, I have repeatedly for nine years past affirmed in the highest Courts of Jurisdiction in this realm. I am ready to make the declaration or affirmation of allegiance." The Speaker thereupon requested him to withdraw, and formally restated the claim to the House, remarking that he had "grave doubts" on the matter, and desired to refer it to the House's judgment. On behalf of the Treasury bench, Lord Frederick Cavendish, remarking that the advice of the new law officers of the Crown was not yet available, moved that the point be referred to a Select Committee. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Tory leader in the Commons, was at this stage not actively hostile. A man of well-meaning and temperate though meagre quality, made up of small doses of virtues and capacities, well fitted to be a country gentleman, but of too thin stuff and too narrow calibre to be either a very good or a very bad statesman, he was a Conservative by force of tradition and mental limitation, and a partisan leader in respect of his pliability to his associates. As his biographer puts it, he was "not recalcitrant to compromise" in matters of party strategy and leadership. Being personally willing to substitute affirmation for oath,[124] he seconded the Liberal motion without any show of animus, and only some of his minor followers, as Earl Percy and Mr Daniel Onslow, sought to effect the adjournment of the debate. This attempt, however, was not pressed to a division, and the Select Committee was agreed to. [Footnote 124: He wrote in his diary at the time: "It seems strange to require an oath from a Christian, and _to dispense with it from an Atheist_. Would it not be better to do away with the member's oath altogether, and make the affirmation general?" (Mr Lang's "Life of Northcote," ii. 154.)]