THE BRADLAUGH DIFFICULTY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
S111,—I did not vote that Mr. Bradlaugh should be refused per- mission to take the oath, but I did vote that he should not be permitted to do an act which, on his own showing, was an evasion of, and in my opinion was a desecration of, the oath. The cere- mony of taking the oath is but the outward expression of an inward intention,—viz., a pledge to the unseen Almighty.
Mr. Bradlaugh repudiated the intention. It was not his conscience, but my own, that I felt bound to protect. When his friends complain that, by our coercion, he is excluded from a privilege that he is entitled to enjoy, I answer, it is they who seek to tyrannise over our conscientious and just scruples. Why should we be placed in this difficulty, when it is so easy [Would "N. M. P." have felt his own conscience injured when the anti-Catholic oath was tendered to Mr. O'Connell, and the oath on the faith of a Christian to Baron Rothschild ? In both cases, it was perfectly well known that they were invited to do what, if they had done, it would have been a much more sacrilegious act than Mr. Bradlaugh's.—En. Spectator.]
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