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uelove said it would be as well to adopt a _nom
de plume_. But if any name was to appear to the pamphlet, I said I was
disposed to think that it should be my own. And so it came to pass that
the pamphlet appeared with the title--'Tyrannicide: is it Justifiable?
by W. E. Adams. Published by Edward Truelove, 240 Strand, London.' Two
or three days after the announcement of the publication, when only a
few hundred copies had been sold, Mr Truelove was arrested, brought
before the Bow Street magistrate, and held to bail for publishing a
seditious libel on Louis Napoleon. As a matter of course, nobody knew
the author. It was suspected indeed that the name attached to the
pamphlet was a fiction, and that the essay was the production of a
French exile.

"The arrest of Mr Truelove was regarded as an attack upon the liberty
of the press--an attempt to restrict the right of public discussion.
So regarding it, a number of gentlemen, prominently identified with
advanced opinions, formed what was called a 'Truelove Defence Fund.'
Mr Bradlaugh, who was among the first to volunteer assistance, was
appointed secretary of the committee; the late James Watson accepted
the office of treasurer; and contributions and other help were
received from John Stuart Mill, W. Cunningham, M.P., Dr Epps, Arthur
Trevelyan, Professor F. W. Newman, W. J. Fox, M.P., Jos. Cowen,
junr., Abel Heywood, P. A. Taylor, Harriet Martineau, etc. Six months
after Mr Truelove had been arrested, the whole affair came to a most
'lame and impotent' conclusion. It was at the instance of Sir Richard
Bethel, Attorney-General under Lord Palmerston, and probably at the
instigation of the Government of Louis Napoleon, whom the pamphlet
was alleged to have libelled, that the prosecution was commenced.
The case was withdrawn by Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Attorney-General under
the Government of Lord Derby, on the understanding that Mr Truelove
would sell no more of the pamphlets. Down to the evening preceding the
day fixed for the trial, Mr Truelove, though he had doubts as to the
result, fully expected that the matter would be fought out. On that
evening, however, when it was too late to instruct other counsel, Mr
Truelove was informed that the counsel already retained for the defence
announced that the affair would have to be compromised. So it came to
pass that Chief Justice Campbell, six months after the prosecution had
been instituted, dismissed Mr Truelove with many words of caution.
It need not be said that Mr Bradlaugh was as much disgusted with
this termination of the case as Mr Truelove himself. The secret of
the collapse, I think, was this:--Edwin James, who was retained for
the defence, and who had political ambitions which were never fully
realised on account of misdeeds which compelled him to retire from
public life and from his own country, practically sold his client in
order that the Government might be relieved from a distasteful and
unpleasant position."

CHAPTER IX.

EARLY LECTURES AND DEBATES.

I do not know at what date or at what place my father delivered his
first provincial lectures, but the earliest of which I can find any
record occurred in January 1858, when on the 10th of that month he
delivered two lectures at Manchester, a town in which, as we shall
see later on, he was not altogether unknown, although in a totally
different capacity. In reading the little there is to read about these
early lecturing days I have been impressed with the fact that while
in London his lectures were favourably received, and he was evidently
gaining goodwill as he went from one hall to another, in the country he
seems to have touched the hearts and the feelings of his audiences for
or against him wherever he went. At these first Manchester lectures the
reporter writes: "His manly, earnest, and fearless style of advocacy
were much admired, and evidently produced a deep impression. Everybody
who heard him wished to hear him again." In the April following he
lectured in Sheffield, and from that time forward his visits to the
provinces were very frequent. Sheffield almost adopted him, and he went
there again and again; in 1858 and 1859 he went also to Newcastle,
Sunderland, Bradford, Northampton, Doncaster, Accrington, Blackburn,
Halifax, Bolton, and other towns, leaving a trail of excitement in his
wake wherever he went. The descriptions of his personal appearance and
the comments on his lectures at this time are more or less amusing.
The first I will note here shall be one from his own pen, written to
Mr Alfred Jackson in 1858, on the occasion of his earliest visit to
Sheffield. He says: "You ask me to tell you how you may know me. I am
6 ft. 1 in. in height, about twenty-five years of age, dress in dark
clothing, am of fair complexion, with only the ghost of a prospective
whisker."

In a brief account of his Sheffield lectures that year my father says
that when he reached the Temperance Hall a copy of the _Sheffield
Independent_ was put into his hands, in which the Rev. Brewin Grant
announced his intention to take no notice of him. But Mr Grant proved
to be of a rather fickle temper, for on the morning following this
first lecture "a small bill was printed and industriously circulated,
entitled 'Iconoclast clasted,' being a challenge to myself from this
very Brewin Grant who had previously determined not to notice me." On
the first night Mr Bradlaugh had "a perfect crowd of opponents;" on the
second he found that fresh troops had been levied against him. These
"were led to the fray by the Rev. Eustace Giles (a stout Dissenting
minister with a huge black bag). After the lecture this gentleman rose
to reply, and commenced by extracting from his bag three huge volumes
of Van der Hooght's Hebrew Bible, which he declared was the original
Word of God, and which he requested me to read aloud to the audience. I
complied by reading and translating a verse, to each word of which Mr
Giles and his coadjutors nodded approval."

Going to Newcastle in September, my father found that the description
of his personal appearance had so preceded him that the gentleman who
met him, Mr Mills, came "straight to me on the platform as though we
were old acquaintances instead of meeting for the first time." In
Newcastle he lectured twice in the Nelson Street Lecture Hall (which
has quite recently, I believe, been turned into a market), and was
fairly, if briefly, reported by the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_. While
in the town he took the opportunity of listening to a lecture delivered
by "J. Cowen, jun.," as Mr Joseph Cowen was then styled.

From Newcastle he went to Sunderland, where a person who came from
the Rev. Mr Rees, a clergyman of that place, brought him a parody of
the Church service entitled "The Secularist's Catechism," which was
intended as some far-reaching and scathing sarcasm on the Secularist's
"creed," but which is really as pretty a piece of blasphemy as ever
issued from the pen of a Christian minister. Mr Bradlaugh tells how the
pers

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