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terbury's cook, groom, footman, butler, and
 all other his men servants and maid servants do not each of them
 attend church every Sunday, they may be prosecuted and fined.

 "If the Archbishop of Canterbury's coachman drive his master to church
 on Sunday, if his footmen stand behind his carriage, these being their
 ordinary callings and not works of charity or necessity, they may be
 prosecuted and fined 5s. each.

 "Tobacconists may be prosecuted for selling tobacco and cigars on a
 Sunday.

 "Railway officials may be punished for working on a Sunday; certainly
 on excursion trains.

 "The stokers and men employed on the steamboats plying to Gravesend,
 etc., are also liable to prosecution, although a few watermen enjoy
 the privilege of Sabbath-breaking by Act of Parliament.

 "Civil contracts made on a Sunday are void with some few exceptions,
 viz. a soldier may be enlisted on a Sunday. A labourer may be hired
 on a Sunday. A guarantee may be given for the faithful services of
 a person about to be employed. A bill of exchange may be drawn on a
 Sunday.

 "Civil process must not be served an a Sunday, but an ecclesiastical
 citation may; therefore the Church reserves to itself the right of
 Sabbath breaking on all occasions.

 "A cookshop may be open on a Sunday for the sale of victuals.

 "Every person who should go to Hyde Park, or any of the other parks,
 to hear the band play, if out of his own parish, is liable to be fined
 3s. 4d.

 "If two or three go from out of their smoky city residences to the
 sea to fish, or to the green fields to play cricket, they may each be
 fined 3s. 4d. if out of the parish in which they reside."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ORSINI ATTEMPT.

The first allusion which I can find to any lecture delivered by my
father after his return from Ireland appears in the _Reasoner_, and
is the briefest possible notice, in which no comment is made, either
upon the speaker or upon his name, although I find the _nom de guerre_
of "Iconoclast" and the subject (Sunday Trading and Sunday Praying)
given. We may, therefore, conclude that by this time[20] he had become
a tolerably familiar figure on the London Freethought platform. The
next reference I come across relates to his first lecture, given on
24th August 1855, on behalf of Mr B. B. Jones, the aged Freethinker
who sheltered him on his first leaving home, and for whose benefit he
afterwards lectured every year during the remainder of the kindly old
veteran's life.

[Footnote 20: July 1855.]

In the latter part of 1856 my father's lectures are referred to in the
reports of meetings with tolerable regularity, and I gather that even
at that time he was lecturing four or five times a month. He lectured
at a little hall in Philpot Street, Commercial Road; Finsbury Hall,
Bunhill Row; at a hall in St George's Road, near the "Elephant and
Castle," afterwards given up by the Freethinkers who were accustomed to
hire it on Sundays, because they did not approve of the uses to which
it was put during the week; at the Hoxton Secular Class Rooms, 101 High
Street; and the John Street Institution, Fitzroy Square.

Amongst his many and varied occupations he yet contrived to make time
for study, for in the same year he was lecturing on Strauss' "Life of
Jesus," and Mahomet and the Koran, in addition to the more general
questions of the Existence of God, Materialism, etc. And here I may
cite a little instance showing that my father's power of repartee was
a very early development. He happened to be lecturing upon "The God of
the Bible," and in the discussion which ensued "a Christian gentleman,
Mr Dunn, ... informed his auditory that it was only by God's mercy
they existed at all, as all men had been tried and condemned before
their birth, and were now prisoners at large." My father in his reply
promptly took "objection to this phrase, as implying that society was
nothing more than a collection of 'divine ticket-of-leave men.'"

In 1856, too, Mr Bradlaugh once more ventured into print. His first
essay in the publishing way, it may be remembered, was the little
pamphlet on the "Christian's Creed," which he dedicated to the Rev.
Mr Packer. This time he issued, in conjunction with John Watts and
"Anthony Collins," a little publication called "Half-hours with
Freethinkers," which came out in fortnightly numbers, and opened on
October 1st with a paper on Descartes from the pen of "Iconoclast."
Two series were ultimately issued, each of twenty-four numbers, but
some time elapsed between the two; in fact, the second did not come
out until 1864, and was edited by my father and Mr John Watts. These
stories "of the lives and doctrines of those who have stood foremost in
the ranks of Freethought in all countries and in all ages" met with a
hearty welcome, and are in demand even to this day; several were at the
time reprinted in America by the _Boston Investigator_.

The new year of 1857 opened with a promise of growing activity by an
address from "Iconoclast" to a party of Secular friends who assembled
in the hall at Philpot Street, to watch the New Year in, and by a
course of ten (or twelve) lectures in criticism of the Bible, which
he commenced on the following day. On the 12th of February, also, was
held his first discussion, or at least the first I can find recorded,
if we except the youthful encounters of Warner Place. The discussion
between "Mr Douglas and Iconoclast" took place at the little Philpot
Street Hall; but who Mr Douglas was I know not, for the report is
limited to a mention of an allusion by the Christian advocate to
Atheists as "monsters, brutes, and fools," which was--as we may well
believe--"severely commented on by 'Iconoclast.'"

Another and more important work, however, was begun in the early spring
of 1857. This was "The Bible: what it is: Being an examination thereof
from Genesis to Revelation." This work, advertised by my father as
"intended to relieve the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
from the labour of retranslating the Bible, by proving that it is
not worth the trouble and expense," it was arranged should be issued
in fortnightly numbers by Holyoake & Co., whose "Fleet Street House,"
situate at 147 Fleet Street, was to a considerable extent maintained
by the Freethought party. After the third number, Mr G. J. Holyoake
declined to publish, on the ground that Mr Bradlaugh would probably
go too far in his mode of criticism, and that by publishing the book
he would be identified with it. This seemed an inadequate reason,
since Mr Holyoake published Spiritualistic works, a "Criminal History
of the Clergy," and other books, with which he was most certainly
not identified. Later Mr Holyoake based his refusal to publish on
the ground that a short passage in the third number referring to
the suggestion that the third chapter of Genesis was intended as an
allegorical representation of the union of the sexes, was obscene.
Mr Bradlaugh was both surprised and indignant, as well he might be,
and wrote 

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