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ngland, but it was maligned in a
quarter where indeed it might have looked for fair play and a little
justice--I mean by the Unitarians.[38] The cynical reflection that
those who have themselves broken away from the conventional thought of
the times always damn those who go a little further than themselves,
carries a germ of truth within its bitter shell. The Unitarian
body always seem to treat Freethinkers with an acrimony special to
themselves and us. Individual Unitarians whom I have known personally
have been kind, pleasant, liberal-minded people, but Unitarians as
a body or as represented by their organ seldom enough have turned a
kindly side towards atheists.

[Footnote 38: See _Inquirer_, May 31, 1862.]

With every man's hand against it, with financial difficulties to
cripple it, both the editor and the company of the unfortunate paper
felt compelled to review the situation, and put matters on a somewhat
different footing. Hence at a duly convened meeting held in September
the company was wound up, and Mr Bradlaugh "appointed liquidator
according to the terms of the Joint Stock Company's Act, 1856." From
this time the sole responsibility, financial and otherwise, rested upon
my father. Unfortunately, a few months later his health broke down, and
at the urgent entreaty of his friends he "most reluctantly resolved to
determine his connection as Editor, and to retire entirely from the
conduct and responsibilities of the paper."

He begged therefore the support of all friends to Mr John Watts, who
had consented to take up the onerous burden of editorship. Mr John
Watts, in an address published the following week, wished it to be
understood that he was taking up the editorship at the "express wish"
of Iconoclast. On quitting the editor's chair with the issue of No. 146
(Feb. 28), Mr Bradlaugh gave expression to his wishes in regard to the
conduct of the paper.

"I should wish," he says, "that the _National Reformer_ may continue
to advocate the fullest liberty of thought and utterance, conceding
to others that which it claims for itself. That it should be plain
and honest in its attacks on shams. That it should spare no falsehood
merely because uttered by a great man, show no mercy to royal treachery
simply from reverence for royalty, and have no pardon for crowned wrong
while ragged wrong shall suffer...."

To Freethinkers and Radicals he says, with a bitter prescience of his
own future fate indicated in some of his words: "Your duty lies not in
petty personal strife, but in the diffusion of the great and mighty
truths for which our predecessors have risked stake and dungeon. Your
duty is not to take part in disputes whether John or Thomas is the
better leader, but rather so to live as to need no leaders. A public
man's life is composed of strange phases. If successful, he wins his
success with hard struggling. As he struggles the little great ones
before him, who envy his hope, block up his path. His ignorance is
exposed, his incapability made manifest; and then when he has won the
victory, and made a place for standing, each envious cowardly caviller,
who dares not meet him face to face, stabs him with base innuendo in
the back. I do not envy any statesman's character in the hands of his
political antagonists, still less do I envy when I hear him dissected
behind his back by his pseudo-friends."

In concluding his article he gives special praise to Mr John Watts and
Mr Austin Holyoake for their help on the paper, taking the blame for
all its past shortcomings on his own shoulders.

From February 1863 until April 1866 Mr John Watts edited the _National
Reformer_; but unless my father happened to be abroad, as he frequently
was during the early part of the sixties, traces of him were to be
found somewhere or other in the paper, either in an article from
his pen, a letter, or answers to correspondents on legal points.
During these three years he contributed several notable articles,
such as "Notes on Genesis and Exodus," "The Oath Question," "Real
Representation of the People," "A Plea for Atheism," "Universality of
Heresy," "The Atonement," "Antiquity and Unity of the Origin of the
Human Race," "The Twelve Apostles," "Why do Men Starve?" and "Labour's
Prayer," and many of which have been from time to time revised or
rewritten, and published and republished in pamphlet form.

He also gave the paper considerable financial assistance, amounting in
the three years to upwards of £250.

On the 22nd of April 1866, a notice appeared in the _National_
_Reformer_ to the effect that Mr Bradlaugh would resume his editorial
duties on the paper, of which he had never relinquished the copyright.
The occasion for this announcement was a very sad one. Just as in
1863 Mr Bradlaugh, overtaken by illness, was obliged to lay aside his
burden of editorship, so in 1866 Mr John Watts also became too ill to
continue his work. But the illness of Mr John Watts was unhappily more
serious than Mr Bradlaugh's; it was the forerunner of his death. In the
November of the same year a career of some promise was cut short at
its opening, and Mr John Watts died of consumption at the early age of
thirty-two.

When he learned of his friend's illness my father readily consented
to resume his former task as editor, and appointed as sub-editor
Mr Charles Watts, who spoke of the satisfaction it had been to his
brother to have so willing and able a friend take charge of the paper
once more. A little later Mr Austin Holyoake was associated in the
sub-editing with Mr Charles Watts.

Thus in 1866 the journal was once more under the full control of Mr
Bradlaugh, and although he subsequently, for a time, associated another
editor with himself, he thought for it and fought for it, wrote for it
and cared for it, from that time until within a fortnight of his death,
when from his dying bed he dictated a few words for me to write. He had
to fight for it in press and law court.

In 1867 the high-priced and refined _Saturday Review_ started the
story, so often repeated since, that Mr Bradlaugh had compared God with
a monkey with three tails; and further declared, with that delicacy
of language which one expects to meet in such aristocratic company,
that "such filthy ribaldry as we have, from a sense of duty, picked
off Bradlaugh's dunghill, is simply revolting, odious, and nauseating
to the natural sense of shame possessed by a savage." Needless to
say, the "savage" feelings of the _Saturday Review_ were much too
delicate to admit any reply from the editor of the journal attacked.
Mr Bradlaugh, of course, replied in his own paper, and "B. V." took
up the cudgels also on behalf of his friend. He wrote at some length,
and the following quotation truly and amusingly pictures the _National
Reformer_ at least:--

 "This poor _N. R._! Let us freely admit that it has many
 imperfections, many faults; its poverty secures for it a constant
 supply of poor writers, while securing for us, the poor writers,
 an opportunity of pub

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