showing an increase of 359 over the second bye-election—­and the triumph was received in all the great towns of England with wild enthusiasm.  By the small majority of fifteen in a House of 599 members—­and this due to the vacillation of the Government—­he was again refused the right to take his seat.  But now the whole Liberal Press took up his quarrel; the oath question became a test question for every candidate for Parliament, and the Government was warned that it was alienating its best friends.  The Pall Mall Gazette voiced the general feeling.  “What is the evidence that an Oaths Bill would injure the Government in the country?  Of one thing we may be sure, that if they shirk the Bill they will do no good to themselves at the elections.  Nobody doubts that it will be made a test question, and any Liberal who declines to vote for such a Bill will certainly lose the support of the Northampton sort of Radicalism in every constituency.  The Liberal Press throughout the country is absolutely unanimous.  The political Non-conformists are for it.  The local clubs are for it.  All that is wanted is that the Government should pick up a little more moral courage, and recognise that even in practice honesty is the best policy.”  The Government did not think so, and they paid the penalty, for one of the causes that led to their defeat at the polls was the disgust felt at their vacillation and cowardice in regard to the rights of constituencies.  Not untruly did I write, in May, 1882, that Charles Bradlaugh was a man “who by the infliction of a great wrong had become the incarnation of a great principle”; for the agitation in the country grew and grew, until, returned again to Parliament at the General Election, he took the oath and his seat, brought in and carried an Oaths Bill, not only giving Members of Parliament the right to affirm, but making Freethinkers competent as jurymen, and relieving witnesses from the insult hitherto put upon those who objected to swearing; he thus ended an unprecedented struggle by a complete victory, weaving his name for ever into the constitutional history of his country.

In the House of Lords, Lord Redesdale brought in a Bill disqualifying Atheists from sitting in Parliament, but in face of the feeling aroused in the country, the Lords, with many pathetic expressions of regret, declined to pass it.  But, meanwhile, Sir Henry Tyler in the Commons was calling out for prosecutions for blasphemy to be brought against Mr. Bradlaugh and his friends, while he carried on his crusade against Mr. Bradlaugh’s daughters, Dr. Aveling, and myself, as science teachers.  I summed up the position in the spring of 1882 in the following somewhat strong language:  “This short-lived ’Parliamentary Declaration Bill’ is but one of the many clouds which presage a storm of prosecution.  The reiterated attempts in the House of Commons to force the Government into prosecuting heretics for blasphemy; the petty and vicious attacks on the science classes at the Hall;