This book is not a life of Bradlaugh, and it is enough to have noted here the first phase of the ignoble struggle. As is well known, Bradlaugh returned to the House, and following Mr. Labouchere's suggestion, administered the oath to himself. A sordid fight ensued on the attempt to remove him forcibly, in which no merely formal violence was offered. His clothes were torn off his back and, although a man of unusual physical strength, he fainted in the _mêlée_. Bradlaugh, in that Parliament, was never allowed to discharge his duty as a member. Once more re-elected by the constituency in the General Election of 1885, the Speaker would suffer no intervention, and he took the oath and his seat, and in 1888, in spite of a Conservative majority, secured the passing of an Affirmation Bill. Finally, in 1891, when Mr. Bradlaugh was lying on his death-bed, after a brief parliamentary career that had won for him the respect of all parties, the resolution of January 22, 1881, that had been passed amid "such ecstatic transports," was expunged from the records of the House. I cannot refrain from quoting the fine tribute paid to his memory and excellent summing up of the case as bearing on the real crux of the situation, made by Mr. Gladstone, a few days later, in the course of introducing his Religious Disabilities Removal Bill on February 4: A distinguished man and an admirable member of this House was laid yesterday in his mother earth. He was the subject of a long controversy in this House, the beginning of which we recollect and the ending of which we recollect. We remember with what zeal it was prosecuted; we remember how summarily {161} it was dropped; we remember also what reparation has been done within the last few days to the distinguished man who was the immediate object of that controversy. But does anybody who hears me believe that the controversy so prosecuted and so abandoned was beneficial to the Christian Religion? Throughout that controversy, his fellow-member for Northampton was his loyal colleague both in the country and the House. In season and out of season Mr. Labouchere spoke, moved, and agitated until the victory, to which his advocacy was so important a contribution, was won, and, after Bradlaugh's death in 1891, he published the following paragraphs in the pages of _Truth_, bearing witness to the nobility of Bradlaugh's character: Mr. Bradlaugh was a man of herculean physical strength, but of great nervous susceptibility. I believe that he never entirely recovered from the rough usage which he met with when he sought to force his way into the House of Commons. Last year he had a serious illness. He recovered, but he came out of it a broken man. He would not, however, admit this, and he struggled on in the House of Commons, at public meetings, and at his desk, with the sad result that we all know.