The last clause is so candid that it is a pity Mr Morley should have "considered it desirable" to fortify his own position by penning that above italicised. He had previously spoken of Bradlaugh's "pertinacity" in "parading" his views--a statement which obtrudes its inspiration. When a leading Liberal publicist wrote so, the godly multitude naturally asserted in chorus that Bradlaugh had first ostentatiously refused to take the oath, and then insisted on taking it. Dean Boyd, of Exeter, capped the record by asserting that when Bradlaugh first "advanced to the table of the House," he "openly, boldly, and defiantly affirmed that he believed there was no such being as a Deity." In the frame of mind represented by a variety of such utterances as these, the House of Commons deliberated on Mr Gladstone's motion that the question of Bradlaugh's competence to swear should be referred to a second special committee. On the second day of the debate, Sir Stafford Northcote, the nominal leader of the Conservative party in the House, accepted the position into which he had been ignominiously forced by irresponsible and even semi-defiant adherents, and opposed the appointment of the Committee. He is reported as saying:-- "Without raising any question as to whether there is anything irreverent in the course which the hon. member proposes to take, it seems to me that we, in allowing him to take it, should be incurring a responsibility from which our better judgment ought to make us shrink" --a fair sample of the hon. baronet's forcible-feeble oratory. Some Tory speakers, as Earl Percy, admitted that "the hon. member, to do him justice, had sought to avoid taking an oath to which he attached no sacred character"; but these ingenuous combatants were concerned only to prevent the House from "incurring the guilt of an act of hypocrisy," and had no anxiety about avoiding an act of iniquity. When John Bright met the subterfuges of the Opposition with the retaliatory criticism of which he was a master, the temperature naturally rose. If, he asked, they set up the principle of a creed test, where were they going to end? Would they next question members known to be unbelievers, though not publicly professed ones? As certain Conservative members were actually known by their comrades to be Gallios in these matters, Bright's challenge created the appropriate resentment, as did his emphatic avowal, "One thing I believe most profoundly, that there is nothing amongst mankind that has done more to destroy truthfulness than the forcing of men to take an oath." But the memorable part of his speech was this:--