The Bradlaugh Committee now consists of twenty-three Mem- bers, namely,
Mr. Whitbread, Sir J. biker, Mr. Bright, Lord H. Lennox, Mr. Massey, Mr. Staveley Hill, Sir H. Jackson, the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, Sir G. Goldney, Mr. Grantham, Mr. Pemberton, Mr. Watkiu Williams, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Hopwood, Mr. Beresford Hope, Major Nolan, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Serjeant Simon, Mr. Childers, Mr. Trevelyan, Sir R. Cross, and Mr. Gibson ; and Sir Walter Barttelot's proposal to increase it by four more Members was on Monday rejected, by 267 against 148 (majority, 119). Mr. Walpole has been chosen Chairman of the Committee, in which Mr. Bradlaugh is arguing his own case, and taking the lino that was expected. He denies the right of the House to refuse the oath to a Member professing his willingness to take it; insists that a claim to make an affirmation instead, is not in any sense an allegation of conscientious objec- tion to the oath ; declares that so far from having said the oath was not binding on him, he had said precisely the reverse, though he had pointed to certain words in the oath which were to him unmeaning ; and denies the sight of the House to re- solve the oath into its constituent elements, or assert that because some of these are without significance to a particular Member, the oath, as a whole, is not as valid for that Alember as for any other. The Committee has found out by this time that the issues raised are of a kind quite unsuited to the deliberations of the House as a whole.
