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a letter to the _Investigator_,[21] explaining his position
fully. He was obliged henceforward to publish his work himself; Mr
Edward Truelove, who then had a bookseller's business at 240 Strand,
generously rendering every assistance in his power.

[Footnote 21: The _Investigator_. A Journal of Secularism, edited by
Robert Cooper.]

By this time also he had become a regular contributor to the
_Investigator_, and his first articles were upon the "Lives of Bible
Heroes"--Abraham, Moses, David, and Cain, each following in turn.

On the 22nd of February 1858 Mr Truelove was arrested by Government
warrant for the publication of a pamphlet written by Mr W. E. Adams,
"Is Tyrannicide Justifiable?" in which was discussed the attempt made
by Orsini upon the life of the French Emperor.

Referring to this, my father wrote some notable words in his
Autobiography of 1873. "I became," said he, "Honorary Secretary to the
Defence, and was at the same time associated with the conduct of the
defence of Simon Bernard, who was arrested at the instigation of the
French Government for alleged complicity in the Orsini tragedy. It was
at this period I gained the friendship of poor Bernard, which, without
diminution, I retained until he died; and also the valued friendship
of Thomas Allsop, which I still preserve. My associations were
thenceforward such as to encourage in me a strong and bitter feeling
against the late Emperor Napoleon. Whilst he was in power I hated
him, and never lost an opportunity of working against him until the
_déchéance_ came. I am not sure now that I always judged him fairly;
but nothing, I think, could have tempted me either to write or speak
of him with friendliness or kindliness during his life. _Le sang de
mes amis etait sur son âme._ Now that the tomb covers his remains, my
hatred has ceased; but no other feeling has arisen in its place. Should
any of his family seek to resume the Imperial purple, I should remain
true to my political declarations of sixteen years since, and should
exert myself to the uttermost to prevent France falling under another
Empire. I write this with much sadness, as the years 1870 to 1873
have dispelled some of my illusions, held firmly during the fifteen
years which preceded. I had believed in such men as Louis Blanc, Ledru
Rollin, Victor Hugo, as possible statesmen for France. I was mistaken.
They were writers, talkers, and poets; good men to ride on the stream,
or to drown in honest protest, but lacking force to swim against, or
turn back, the tide by the might of their will. I had believed too in
a Republican France, which is yet only in the womb of time, to be born
after many pangs and sore travailing."

When Mr Bradlaugh acted as Secretary for the Defence, his duties were
performed in no merely formal way, but with the utmost energy and
enthusiasm. In order to give more time to this work, he suspended the
publication of his Commentary on the Bible, and in issuing the "Appeal"
for the Defence fund wrote in earnest entreaty for his staunch and
fearless friend, saying truly enough, "It would be a stain on us for
years if we left poor Truelove to fight the battle of the press alone."

But my father's sympathies were all his life long on the side of the
weak and oppressed, and in this particular instance he came in personal
contact with the friends and associates of Orsini, if not with Orsini
himself (which, indeed, I am under the impression was the case), so
that the whole tone of his surroundings was anti-Napoleonic. Felice
Orsini must have been personally known to many of the advanced thinkers
in England, for I notice that in the winter of 1856 he was lecturing
at Woolwich (and probably elsewhere) on "Austrian and Papal Tyranny in
Italy." Those who knew him, even those who could not approve his deed,
yet honoured and revered him as a hero and a martyr.

My father spoke of him as "the noble, the brave, the true-hearted
Orsini." In 1859, writing of him: "One year since and his blood was
scarce dry! Bernard was a prisoner; Allsop a fugitive. Now Orsini
lives: the spirit of his greatness passed into a hundred others, and
the dead hero lives. Priests in their masses say, 'Pray for the memory
of the dead;' we say, 'Work for the memory of the dead!' Orsini needs
a monument o'er his grave. He is buried in the hearts of the freemen
of Europe, and his monument should be indestructible Republicanism
throughout France, Italy, Hungary, and Poland." Alas! for my father's
dreams of a Republic for those striving and oppressed nations. Poland
still lies at the feet of Russia, Hungary is held in the iron grasp
of Imperial Austria, and but a year or so ago Republican France and
Monarchical Italy were ready to fly at one another's throats.

The result of the prosecution of Mr Truelove, which is told more
fully at the end of this chapter by an abler pen than mine, was the
abandonment by the Government of all proceedings on certain conditions;
and although Mr Truelove, as well as his friends, would have preferred
a trial and acquittal to a withdrawal on the conditions accepted by his
counsel, nevertheless it was an undoubted triumph for the principle
of the liberty of the press and free discussion. When at length the
struggle ended it was proposed to raise a sum of money to compensate Mr
Truelove for the loss he must have sustained in his business, but this
Mr Truelove, with true public spirit, chivalrously refused.

Dr Bernard, in the conduct of whose defence Mr Bradlaugh was also
associated, seems to have been personally a most lovable man. I do not
think that I myself recollect him, but he was so often spoken of in
our family, and always with affection and regret, and his photograph
so proudly kept, that he seems a familiar figure in my early memories;
there was a tradition, of which as a child I was immensely proud (as
though I had played a conscious and important part in the matter!)
that the evening on which I was born, the 31st of March, my father
was delivering an oration upon Orsini in some Hall in London; at the
conclusion he was followed home by the police, and, being aware of the
fact, he led his pursuers a pretty chase. The notes of this address
were afterwards written out on thin paper and ironed, by an expert
laundress attached to my father and mother, into the folds of Dr
Bernard's shirt and conveyed to him in prison. In a notice which he
wrote of a meeting of the Political Reform League in the October of
the same year, Mr Bradlaugh alludes to the presence of "Simon Bernard,
who with his frank and good-humoured bearing seems quite unlike a
conspirator." He not infrequently took the chair at Dr Bernard's
meetings at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, and elsewhere, returning home
on one occasion with sundry rents in his coat, the result of Catholic
objections to Dr Bernard's strictures on the Pope, aided by the rancour
of persons friendly to Louis Napoleon.

Mr Headingley[22] says that when Dr Bernard was tried, great anxiety
was felt as to t

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