TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BRADLAUGH IMBROGLIO.
TT is difficult to find any one connected with this Bradlaugh
business who is not to blame. Mr. Bradlaugh himself is certainly to blame in ever, making a difficulty about taking the oath, when that difficulty appears to have been so trivial that he has since ignored it, and demands as his legal right to have the oath administered to him, By himself originating ponents. By since waiving the difficulty, he has further given a good deal of plausibility to the view that whatever his conscience on these matters may be, it is, at all events, easy and flexible ; and, moreover, he has thereby very much diminished the force of the argument for doing away with the oath, since it is apparent that his own objection to it was at best rather of the nature of pure fastidiousness than of genuine moral difficulty.
And not only is Mr. Bradlaugh to blame for making capital out of a supposed moral difficulty which clearly had very little, if any, real existence for him, as his subsequent conduct sufficiently proved, but, in our opinion at least, the Speaker is seriously to blame, at all events in this last instance, for not taking the question out of the domain of discussion, by declaring that he had no constitutional power to refuse the oath to any duly elected Member who offered to take it. The view of the case taken by some of the best lawyers, Conservative as well as Liberal,—by Sir J. Boles, no less than by Sir George Grey and Sir Henry James,— at least amounts to this,—that any duly elected Member who offers himself for the oath has a legal right to have it administered to him ; and if that view is well founded, it seems to us clear that the Speaker had ample authority to act upon it, and to decline to permit a discussion which might result— and probably has resulted—in betraying him into an illegal
course of action. We have given Mr. Brand full credit for the great strength with which he met the difficulties of Obstruction this Session, but we cannot give him any credit for his vacillation in this Bradlaugh business, Last year, no doubt, he lied a fair excuse for permitting debate, on the ground that Mr. Bradlaugh had himself raised the difficulty concerning the taking of the oath, and having so raised it since his election, the House had a prima .facie right to discuss whether he should be allowed to leap the obatacle to taking the oath whieh he hail himself interposed, se soon as he found that it was likely to prove a serious ono. But on the present occasion there was no excuse for vacillation. Mr. Brad- hugh, freshly elected by Northampton, came to the table and presented himself for the administration of the oath in the usual manner. The Speaker, by permitting Sir Stafford Northcote's intervention, has virtually precluded himself from objecting to similar intervention in any future case. If any one on a future occasion should claim to have adducible evid- ence that any Agnostic Member of the House has expressed views striking at the root of the special obligation of oaths, we do not sea how the Speaker could overrule his interference, and peremptorily decline to listen to inquisitorial investigations.
And if the Speaker himself is not free from blame for not taking into his own hands the right to stop a discussion which has probably landed him in an illegal course,—not the less illegal, that one does not see how it can be authoritatively condemned or any penalty exacted for the blunder,—the Government assuredly are not free from blame in the
be matter. If anything can be clear, it is that the Govern-
merit should have made the division of Tuesday night an official affair, and should have summoned their supporters to strengthen their hands in upholding their view of the issue. ;We pladstone's speech was most convincing ; Mr. Bright's
• ePecel'i was most moving ; but why were speeches such as those made by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, followed up by so lame ans'l impotent a conclusion as a division from which more than half the Liberal majority stayed away ? It was per- fectly evr.dent on Wednesday that the leaders felt how great a blunder ithey had made on Tuesday ; but then it was too late to respair it, except by the cumbrous and time-wasting
, machinery of a new Bill. Yet this was a question of the utmost moment to the Liberal party,—one in- volving, to a certain extent, freedom of conscience, for
it was undoubtedly a question of foisting into the oath, of allegiance a new and wholly, unintended theological test,—besides being a question of even greater importance irr its effect on the procedure and business Of the Session. Yet the Government treated the question as if it were one of indifference to them as a Government, though the Prime Minister and Mr. Bright gave their whole personal weight
to the defeated side. This is a shilly-shally mode of treating the matter, which the country will not understand. Is it conceivable that there were members of the Cabinet who refused to allow the question to be treated in the usual way as a Government question ? That is the only solution we can imagine of this extraordinary proceeding, but it is one we can hardly credit. A member of the Cabinet who was determined that the Oath of the House of Commons should be erected into an abstract test of the Theism of its. Members, would hardly deserve the confidence of the Liberal party. For our own parts, we dread, and oppose with all our hearts, the Atheism of the day, and the relaxation of practical morality to which that Atheism, no doubt, tends ; but it is not by this contemptible endeavour after the restoration of a dogmatic test, that any manly Liberal will try to fight that Atheism or that relaxed morality to which it tends.
And if the Government have been remiss, the Liberal party. have been still more remiss. Those of them who absented them- selves or voted with the Opposition, should seriously question their own principles, and ask themselves whether they have or have not been in earnest in their former votes for the removal of theological tests on our political and intellectual life. What the triumph of Sir Stafford Northcote's resolution on Tuesday• means, if it means anything real at all, is clearly this,—that the House ought to appoint a Committee of scrutiny into the sense in which honourable Members are prepared to take the oath, and to refuse it to all who cannot answer their questions as to the obligation and significance of the oath in a satisfac- tory manner. Why is Mr. Bradlaugh to be refused the oath, when other Agnostics, who hardly know themselves, what they mean, or whether they mean anything, by a solemn appeal to the divine help, are permitted to take it in. silence ? If this reaction is to continue, let it, at least, mean. something more than a dead-set against a particular man. It seems to us perfectly humiliating that the House of Commons should refuse the oath to Mr. Bradlaugh, because they happen, to know that he regards it just as he would regard a solemn, affirmation, and yet permit it to be administered to scores. of others who certainly think of it just as Mr. Bradlaugh does, though their views are not so well known to the. world. Let a Committee be appointed to draw up a little• catechism through which every Member shall be put before he takes the oath, with the understanding that any one who, does not give the approved answer to all the questions con- tained in it, shall be refused the right to take the oath at all. In that ease, the action of the House of Commons would have some meaning in it, and not be the contemptible set against ft particular atheist which it at present is. But does a single. Member of the Liberal party suppose that if he voted for a. Committee to draw up such a catechism, he would ever be returned again as a Liberal by his constituency ? If he does he grossly deceives himself. And if he does not, he was hardly acting honourably in not giving his support to those Liberals who resisted Sir Stafford Northcote's reactionary proposal of Tuesday last.
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