There are many points in the story of this struggle at which it is hardly possible to abstain from imputing wilful falsehood to some of the actors. But on this point it seems right to conclude that one or other form of prejudice or passion made men all round incapable of realising when and how they grossly perverted a simple fact. It was not merely the factious Tories who repeated the mis-statement, though they naturally used it most industriously. Mr Chaplin, M.P., was reported in two newspapers as having asserted that at a public meeting on 1st June "Mr Bradlaugh announced his intention of refusing the oath, and asked that he might affirm instead." Mr Chaplin, at the time of speaking, was a member of the second select committee appointed to sit on the oath question, and Bradlaugh indignantly protested to the Chairman, who was again Mr Spencer Walpole. Mr Chaplin, after some fencing, declared that the report was inaccurate. Baron Henry de Worms, another of the champions of Omnipotence, publicly averred[132] that "he was in the House when Mr Bradlaugh came to the Speaker and said he could not and would not take an oath which in no way bound him, as he did not acknowledge any God." Challenged as to this statement, Baron Henry de Worms avowed that the words from "which" onwards were his own comment, but could not see anything unwarrantable in the previous statement as to the facts. Such were the notions of truth and honour among English--and other--oath-taking gentlemen and noblemen with which Bradlaugh had to contend. And he was only in part supported by the remarks of Mr John Morley in the _Fortnightly Review_ for July 1880:-- [Footnote 132: Report in _Standard_ of 11th June 1880.] "There is no precedent for Mr Bradlaugh's case, for the simple reason that there is no precedent for the frank courage with which he has considered it desirable to publish his views as to the nature of an oath. That the oath is just as meaningless, so far as its divine appeal is concerned, to many past and present members of the House of Commons as Mr Bradlaugh protested it would be to him, no one doubts. Whether and how far he was justified in asking to be sworn, _after he had declined to be sworn_, is a different question. Whatever the answer to that may be, it cannot at least be said that the course adopted by Mr Bradlaugh involved the surrender of any principle."