"Well, hon. gentlemen who know nothing about it laugh at that. I think it very possible that, finding that Mr Bradlaugh in his political opinions was in sympathy with them, those electors so little liked the political opinions of hon. gentlemen opposite that they preferred Mr Bradlaugh, with his political opinions, to some opposing candidates who have represented them, and whose religious views might have been entirely orthodox. (Hear, hear.) ... _To a large extent the working people of this country do not care any more for the dogmas of Christianity than the upper classes care for the practice of that religion._ (Cheers, and loud cries of 'Oh,' and 'Withdraw.') I wish from my heart that it were otherwise. (Cheers, and renewed cries of 'Withdraw.')" Despite the Tory wrath, there was no withdrawal. This great speech was followed, after the adjournment, by one from Gladstone, less powerful because less fired with moral feeling, but eloquent, cogent, and unanswerable, save for the slip of the statement that Bolingbroke, the Theist, was "without any religious belief at all."[135] Yet the end of the debate--after a series of speeches, including one by Sir Henry Tyler in which he brutally dragged the name of Mrs Besant into his attack on Bradlaugh--was that only 230 voted for Mr Labouchere's motion, and 275 against. This was on 22nd June. What Bright had thought could not be had taken place, though the Nonconformists were not the bulk of the Liberals who enabled the Tories to trample underfoot the first principles of Liberalism. Thirty-six Liberals and thirty-one Home Rulers voted in the majority, and doubtless joined in its exultant cheers. [Footnote 135: On the other hand, Tory journalists went much further astray in asserting that Bolingbroke believed in future rewards and punishments.] A number of Liberals, further, were absent without pairs. There were found among the allies of tyranny representatives of nearly all of the sects which had themselves suffered persecution, Catholics, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Jews, as well as members of the Established Church. When, therefore, Mr John Tenniel in _Punch_ caused his weekly contribution to the gaiety of his nation to take the shape of a cartoon joyfully representing Bradlaugh as "kicked out," with a crumpled paper in his hand bearing the legend "Atheism," he was more than usually in touch with the social sentiment of which he is the leading artistic exponent. Our "English love of fair play" was never more neatly illustrated, even by that "primitive pencil."[136] [Footnote 136: It should be noted that the "kicked-out" idea is a favourite one with the cartoonist. He used it lately in the case of the Irish Evicted Tenants Bill.]