THE BRADLAUGH DEBATE. T HE interest of the Bradlaugh debate did
not lie in the debating. The House of Commons can hardly be said to have debated the subject at all. With the exception of Mr, De Lisle, who did not press his protest to a division, there was a pretty general concurrence of the whole House in the determination arrived at, that the resolution of June 22nd, 1880, refusing permission to Mr. Bradlaugh to take the oath, was a mistake, and had been to some extent admitted to be a mistake,—so far, at least, as it excluded Mr. Bradlaugh from the House,—when the Act was passed which now permits Mr. Bradlaugh to take an affirma- tion as the equivalent of the oath. On Tuesday night, in the absence of Mr. Bradlaugh, whose serious illness was evidently the subject of real concern to all the Members present, a universal feeling prevailed that Mr. Bradlaugh had made himself a most useful Member of the House of Commons, and had gained the respect and good-will even of the most resolute of those who once refused to allow him to enter the House. Perhaps his serious -illness enhanced the indisposition of the House to take up the old objections to his former admission. But, at all events, the spectacle was a very remarkable one, all parties concurring not only to pay a tribute of personal respect to Mr. Bradlaugh, but to agree that the resolution which refused him the right to take the oath, should be expunged from the Journals of the House. The House was certainly not proud of its achievement of eleven years ago, and was not unwilling to let it be known that it was not proud. of it, Yet there had. been then grounds of objection to Mr. Bradlaugh over and above that involved in the hollowness of the words of the oath when repeated by a man who had avowed his unbelief in the Being to whose solemn sanction the oath appeals. There had. been publications for which Mr. Bradlaugh had been responsible which seemed to many people more serious blots upon his name than even his avowed atheism, because they seemed to them to imply practical as well as theoretical atheism, an indifference even to right and righteousness. Yet, in spite of all these grounds of objection, the House of Commons, and not only the House of Commons, but, we think we may say, the political world in general, have come to the conclusion that, 'as a matter of fact, Mr. Brad- laugh is not only net a " practical " atheist, but is, on the contrary, one of those politicians whose minds are more truly influenced by the higher considerations of right and wrong than a great many Christians. No one who has watched his conduct believes that the principles to which he bears his sturdy witness, whether popular, or unpopular, as they often are, and the uniform courtesy and candour with which he treats opponents, are in any sense mere superficial qualities put on to smooth his passage through the world. We do not say that it is always possible to discriminate truly between the plausible and the genuine manner in matters of this kind. On the contrary, the world is often in danger of doing injustice to very good men, because their manner is too smooth and plausible. But in Mr. Bradlaugh's case there really has been no question about the matter. It is im- possible to ignore the ring of sincerity and public spirit and fairness to antagonists in almost all that he says and does. He has satisfied almost all reasonable men that., however little he may imagine himself to recognise any inward moral and spiritual authority, he really does recognise such an authority, in spite of all his blindness and all his misinterpretation of the sanctions under which he forms his conclusions and his practical resolves. His is a, mind which is not insensible to the voice of moral authority, since he is always not only ready to discern, but, we may even say, quick in discerning, the evidence of dutifulness and earnestness in others, and anxious to associate himself chiefly, and by preference, with those who exhibit these higher qualities in actual life.
It seems to us a very remarkable phenomenon that almost all parties should be united in admitting that they had been wrong in excluding Mr. Bradlaugh from the House, either as a theoretical or as a, practical atheist, and that they should be almost eager to recognise that there is something within him which shows itself in a frankness, a fairness, and a public spirit such as con- stitutes the core of civic and patriotic virtue. Does this imply that those who formerly associated these qualities with the conscious recognition of a spiritual authority that is above man, were wrong in so doing ? We do not think in the least that it does. We believe that Mr. Bradlaugh has exhibited in the House of Commons qualities very different from those, and very much nobler than those which he had previously exhibited in the National Reformer, and in the various controversies on religious and moral subjects with which his name was formerly chiefly associated. We should be very curious to know from Mr. Bradlaugh whether he himself was not of the same mind, and we should rather expect to find that he is. He must be conscious of having displayed more candour, more self-command, more judg- ment, more willingness to take into account the thoughts and wishes and experience of others, during his Parliamentary life, than he ever displayed as the leader of a sectarian party which denied, and often ridiculed, the faith of other men, and too often concerned itself with subjects in which he must have been occasionally conscious that he was very far from competent to deal. In this confused and difficult modern world of ours, where men who are really akle to deal with one class of subjects find no way open for them, and are forced by the eager life within them to exercise themselves in quite other fields, it not unfrequently happens that persons like Mr;•Bradlaugh, who would have become modest and candid workers in the sphere for which they were fit, appear as coarse and contemptuous and incompetent thinkers in the only field to which they have access, and that in that field they find occasion to exert only the poorest faculties and the worst characteristics of their minds. And it is not often, we fear, that they are able, as he has been, to find their way from the region in which they only show their arrogance and their blind- ness, to that in which they can display their highest and best nature. For our own parts, we are thankful not only that in his case this has actually been so, but that the House of Commons has had the courage and fairness to acknowledge its own mistake, and to make the only amends in its power. It is said that in several of the Northampton places of worship, Mr. Bradlaugh's restoration to health was prayed for on Sunday. That is in itself a singular testimony to the public impression of improvement in his character which has been generally observed during his Parlia- mentary career. We should be thankful if the prayer were answered in its best sense, and Mr. Bradlaugh were restored not only to political usefulness, but to a recogni- tion of the poorndss of his own work in connection with those higher problems with which in earlier life he dealt in so shallow and arrogant a fashion. What the House of , Commons did on Tuesday night might well contribute to that end, for a public act of rare candour can hardly be thrown away on a nature like his.
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