It would be superfluous to load this already over-burdened narrative with any detailed account of the stream of insults, imbecilities, brutalities, and falsehoods which was cast forth continuously at this period against Bradlaugh in the press and on the platform. From the fatuity of Viscount Folkestone--who argued that an Atheist, being guilty of treason to God, who gave the Queen her power, should be treated like one guilty of treason to the Queen--to the brutish licence of the Tory journals who likened Bradlaugh's sympathisers to thieves and assassins, there was, as Mr Moncure Conway wrote at the time, "no circumstance of heartlessness, injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood[165] wanting to this last carnival of theological[166] hatred and ferocity." It was not, of course, theological hate alone. Bradlaugh had just been leading a popular movement for land law reform; and he had set in motion a second movement for the abolition of perpetual pensions, which went on wheels, and the petitions in support of which were signed by the hundred thousand.[167] There are few resentments more bitter than that of a menaced interest. But malice once aroused in men of a low type stops at nothing; and as we have seen, everybody associated with Bradlaugh was included in the hatred bestowed on him. One Tory journal, the _Manchester Courier_, went the length of saying that Bradlaugh's success in Northampton was due to an exceptionally bad state of education there; the pretext being that one Northamptonshire village was in such a state. The Government inspector testified that as regarded the town he had often paid tribute to the heartiness of the people of Northampton, and especially of the working-classes, in carrying out the Education Act, and that it would be hard to find anywhere a more active School Board, a higher average of regular attendance, or a higher general standard of proficiency.