"We have not concealed our opinion that Mr Bradlaugh would have consulted his own dignity by refusing to take the oath, and fighting out an issue which could only have one end." And again:[153] "The national belief in the existence of a Deity will not be lessened by the fact that Mr Bradlaugh and men like him are no longer called upon to use a form which in their lips is an indecent piece of mockery." [Footnote 153: May 6, 1881.] When later elected himself, Mr Morley made no attempt to act on the rule he had thus laid down or caused to be laid down for another man. It is a curious and a melancholy illustration of the instability of human character that while Mr Morley was partly playing into the hands of the spirit of injustice, Mr Goldwin Smith, who now wears its livery, was emphatic on the other side. He thus wrote in his Toronto journal, the _Bystander_, in April 1881:-- "To the shame of British civilisation and religion, the attack upon Mr Bradlaugh and upon the civil rights of his constituents goes on, and has been technically successful in a court of law. _The ringleaders are scamps_, putting forward religion as a pretext for political persecution. It is Sandwich over again denouncing Wilkes for impiety. Set a coronet on Mr Bradlaugh's head, give him a large fortune, make him a Tory in politics, and though he were the most offensive of Atheists, and the most profligate of debauchees to boot, he would have these crusaders at his feet.... If Parliament allows a fine to be levied on Mr Bradlaugh for taking the seat to which he had been duly elected it will undergo a far greater disgrace than any that can be inflicted upon it by obstruction." Doubtless Mr Goldwin Smith, writing in Canada, did not feel the burden which weighed on Liberal respectability at home, the more so as he had never professed himself a rationalist. § 11.