The next day, when Mr. Gladstone made his motion, Sir John Gorst opposed it, on the technical ground that it was a breach of the Rule of the House, which laid down that, if a question had been considered by the House and a definite judgment pronounced, the same, or what was substantially the same, question could not be put again to the House during the same session. This contention was, however, overruled by the Speaker, and, on a division being taken, the Prime Minister's resolution was accepted by a majority of 54, the Ayes numbering 303 and the Noes 249. Bradlaugh was now free to affirm at his own legal risk, and he did so the next day, thus bringing to a conclusion the first movement of this ironic symphony. There can be no doubt that Mr. Labouchere's great speech of June 21 contributed powerfully to this result. Apart from the speeches of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, and indeed Mr. Bradlaugh's own fine speech at the Bar of the House on June 23, it was the only attempt made to present the constitutional and legal aspects of Bradlaugh's case in their true light. The subject was one that appealed very strongly to Mr. Labouchere. In personal agreement {156} with the views which it was sought to penalise in the person of Mr. Bradlaugh (although it would have been alien to his temperament to have enrolled himself as a partisan of those views), his attack on Mr. Bradlaugh's enemies acquired weight and energy from the love of individual liberty that was at the bottom of his character, and his detestation, on that, as on every other occasion of his public life, of oppression and prejudice.