[Footnote 126: Northcote's diary, so far as published, naturally offers no confession or explanation as to the change in his attitude. Under date May 24, he simply records that "we agreed to stand firm for Wolff's motion" (Mr Lang's "Life," ii. 159).] Already, too, there began to be apparent what can now no longer be disputed--the mismanagement of the Speaker. Only bad judgment or partiality could account for his permission of such gross irrelevance as filled the speeches of Mr Leighton and Mr F. H. O'Donnel, _alias_ Macdonald. On the language of the latter now forgotten personage Mr Bradlaugh thus commented in the _National Reformer_:-- "I remember, fourteen or fifteen years ago, when the countrymen of that member's constituents came to me for help and counsel. The honourable member professes to now represent those Irishmen who then sought and had my aid; and on Tuesday he in effect told the House that it ought to exclude from it one who did not believe in God, and had no standard of morality. But I see from the division list that the 'third party,' of which he pretended to be the spokesman at the election of the Speaker, went into the lobby opposed to that into which their leader went, so that the really Irish members did not forget old ties." Unfortunately the latter tribute was not long to be deserved. On 20th May the Select Committee presented its report. There had been eight members in favour of the view that Bradlaugh was legally entitled to affirm, and eight against; and the casting vote of the chairman, Mr Spencer H. Walpole, was given for the Noes. It was said, and it was believed by Mr Bradlaugh, that Sir John Holker had avowed a belief that his claim was valid, but Sir John Holker on the Committee voted with his party. Save for the fact that the Noes included Mr Hopwood, the vote would stand as a purely party one, the rest of the Noes being Conservatives, while the rest of the Liberals took the affirmative side. And so general was the attitude of reckless prejudice that we still find the Chairman's son giving a flatly misleading account of the situation. Mr Spencer Walpole, in his work on "The Electorate and the Legislature"[127] published in 1881, and re-issued in 1892, has made (p. 75) this statement (italics ours):-- [Footnote 127: Macmillan & Co., "The English Citizen" series.] "In 1880 ... the legislature was suddenly confronted with a new dilemma. The borough of Northampton sent a representative to Parliament who _refused to take an oath_--not because he had any conscientious objection to be sworn, but because an appeal to a God--in whom he had no belief--seemed to him an idle formula which was not binding on his conscience."