to quash once for all his own case by justifying quite gratuitous acts of conformity and co-operation with churches whose teaching he held to be false. The common sense of nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand Freethinkers, including attached friends of Mr Holyoake, decided that such an act of enforced ceremonial as official oath-taking by an avowed Atheist surrenders no jot of principle or self-respect, particularly when the Atheist is openly striving for the abolition of all such compulsions. Of all Freethinkers who have taken oaths in England, Bradlaugh was the very least open to the charge of temporising; and the expressions used by Mr Holyoake at different times in this connection as to "apostolic" conduct have been, to say the least, unfortunate as coming from a professed Freethinker, not usually acquiescent in orthodox phraseology. § 4. The document above quoted, announcing Bradlaugh's intentions, was dated 20th May, the date of the Committee's report. On the following day Bradlaugh went to the House to take the oath and his seat. Immediately on his presenting himself, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff rose and objected to the oath being administered, whereupon Mr Dillwyn protested against the interruption. The Speaker now made the fatal mistake of allowing the interruption to be carried out. It is established by the highest possible authority--that of the present Speaker--that the holder of the Chair as such had and has no right to permit any such intervention between an elected member and the statutory oath. Sir Henry Brand, intimidated by the action of men like Wolff, weakly stated that he "was bound to say he knew of no instance" in which such an intervention had taken place; but "at the same time" he would allow Wolff so to intervene. That personage then made a speech, resting on the two arguments that Atheists who had made affirmation in the law courts thereby admitted that an oath "would not be binding on their conscience," and that Bradlaugh had further, in his "Impeachment of the House of Brunswick," affirmed that Parliament "has the undoubted right to withhold the Crown from Albert Edward Prince of Wales." The hon. baronet "could not see how a gentleman professing the views set forth in that work could take the oath of allegiance." It was in the course of this speech that the hon. baronet was understood by all his auditors to say, of the sects permitted by law to affirm, that they "had a common standard of morality, a conscience, and a general belief in some divinity or other."[130] [Footnote 130: Some years afterwards he stated in the House that what he had really said was "one Deity or the other," meaning either the Unitarian or the Trinitarian God. The explanation did not seem to be credited.]