clergymen, one belonging to the Church of England, Admiral Maxse, and Mr Labouchere; and no dissentient vote was given on the resolutions in Bradlaugh's favour. One of the Nonconformist ministers who spoke, the Rev. Mr Sharman, told how Plymouth Liberals had sent to Northcote the telegram: "We protest against your effort to deprive Northampton of one-half of its representation as being revolution in the name of Conservatism and robbery in the name of religion." The Rev. Stewart Headlam said of Bradlaugh:-- [Footnote 151: In the House of Commons on 7th February 1882 Earl Percy asserted that Bradlaugh's friends had fabricated tickets for the meeting. The statement was absolutely false.] "I know the great work he has done in the east of London for the moral condition of the people. I know how he has got hold of hundreds of people whom we clergy have been utterly unable to reach; and ... I am certain that the work he has done in the east of London has been of the greatest moral use for the elevation of the people." Bradlaugh, on his own part, paid one of his many tributes to Gladstone. Of this meeting no report appeared in the leading Liberal paper, the _Daily News_, then understood to be mainly owned by Mr Samuel Morley, before mentioned. This was unhappily not the only instance of a Liberal journal perverted by private motives to the side of bigotry in Bradlaugh's case. Mr Joseph Cowen, M.P., owner of the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_, who had long been on friendly terms with him, and who had volunteered the expression of approval of Bradlaugh's action when he was imprisoned in the Clock Tower, now took the line of charging him with inconsistency in proposing to take the oath, though it was for trying to take the oath in the previous session that he had been imprisoned. And Mr John Morley, then editing the _Pall Mall Gazette_, not only gave prominence in that journal to utterances hostile to Bradlaugh, such as that of Mr Holyoake, but suppressed letters in his favour, even when sent by a literary man of good standing like Mr Moncure Conway. Mr Morley, while of course condemning the Tory tactics, now blamed Bradlaugh for proposing to take the oath at all, though he had before spoken of him as "parading his views," and though, when he previously accused him of first "declining" the oath and then asking to take it, he had _not_ condemned oath-taking by an unbeliever. Bradlaugh pointed out that voluntary abstention from taking the oath would have made his seat void in law, to which the _Gazette_ editorially answered by expressing its confidence that if Bradlangh had simply refused to take the oath, the House would not have dreamt of unseating him on that score. On the strength of that conviction the _Gazette_ editor wrote:[152]-- [Footnote 152: April 27, 1881.]