It is not necessary here to go into Mr Marjoribanks' estimate of the relative greatness of Bradlaugh and Joseph Hume, or of the merits of Bradlaugh's views. It is not such judgments as his that determine a man's standing with his generation, or with posterity. The remark as to "means of subsisting," also, may be left to supply its own commentary. More recently the same speaker has emphasized his objection to some action of some journalists by remarking that it was done for a livelihood; a judgment which strikes at the whole mass of the Christian clergy, and which would seem to imply that a rich man is to be pardoned for saying a false or a base thing where a hireling is to be doubly denounced. A man who has never had occasion to do anything for a livelihood presumably sees such things in a different light from those who lack his pecuniary advantages; and though a professing Christian is supposed to hold that the labourer is worthy of his hire, Lord Tweedmouth doubtless remains satisfied with the ethics of his youth. Mr Chamberlain has indicated similar views. Suffice it here to point to Bradlaugh's whole career for the proof of the utter sincerity of his propaganda. But to praise Mill and Joseph Hume for taking an oath "on the true faith of a Christian," and to blame Bradlaugh for choosing rather to affirm when he believed an affirmation was open to him, is to set up an ethic which one would hardly expect any professed Liberal to avow. As for the "distinct and peremptory refusal," no such thing had taken place. What the House had distinctly refused was to allow the affirmation; and in the division on that point Mr Marjoribanks _had not voted for Mr Labouchere's motion_; whereas he had voted for Mr Gladstone's motion referring the oath question to a select committee. When a politician can thus deal with simple historical facts, his opinion on weightier issues is apt to lose even the significance it would normally have. Other Liberals added their quota. Lord Sherbrooke, writing in the _Nineteenth Century_, spoke of the oath which Mr Bradlaugh "at first refused and afterwards was ready to take." His Lordship had once spoken of Disraeli as possessing a "slatternly and inaccurate mind." No milder epithets could well be applied to himself in the present case. But for all these endless insults and wanton slanders Bradlaugh had seldom anything save a restrained and dignified rebuke. When Mr Grantham, Q.C., M.P. (now Mr Justice Grantham), spoke of him as gaining his livelihood "by the circulation of obscene literature," he remarked in his journal that there was one homely Saxon word that would meet the case. He might reasonably have said that there were several, of varying length.