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 early part of the proceedings
contented themselves with singing a refrain for 'God and Rome.' It was
about ten minutes after your father had begun to speak that a signal
was given, on which a sudden rush was made upon the meeting. There had
not been up to this moment any indication whatever that the Irish were
armed, but every man and woman (and there were many women and girls
with them) was possessed of a bludgeon of some sort. Their onslaught
was furious and brutal, and for a time successful. They carried the
mound in a few minutes, but the blood upon many of our friends aroused
such a feeling of indignation, that in a time less than it takes
me to write it the mound was stormed from the Piccadilly side, and
again captured by us. There were in the crowd about a dozen Grenadier
Guardsmen, who were ardent admirers of Garibaldi, and there were quite
fifty others, possibly passive spectators. The former formed two deep,
and with their walking-sticks rushed down the mound into the mass of
the yelling Irish. The effect was electrical. Their comrades in the
crowd raised a sudden shout, and in ten minutes the Irish were in full
retreat, throwing away their sticks to escape the indignation of the
people they had so wantonly and brutally attacked. Many were captured
by the police, and I clearly remember the constables gathering up their
bludgeons, and making bundles of them with their belts. It must be
confessed that no quarter was given, and scores of them got severely
mauled. Cardinal Wiseman referred to the brutality of the infidel mob
in a pastoral a few days after, in which he used the term 'lambs' to
describe these religious ruffians. _Punch_, the next week, 'caught on'
to this word, and in its weekly cartoon depicted this mob of Irish
assailing a public meeting over the heading of 'Cardinal Wiseman's
Lambs.'"]

Thus an assemblage which should have done honour to Garibaldi as well
as to England, for, as the _Advertiser_ says, "it was composed of the
élite of the working classes and a large portion of the middle class,"
was turned by the Irish Catholics into a fight and a panic calling
for the interference of the police. It is little to be wondered at
that when Mr Bradlaugh was invited by the Working Men's Committee to
attend and speak he hesitated to accept the invitation, feeling as he
did that the conveners were not able to control the antagonism of the
Irish Catholics which had already manifested itself at other meetings.
"I have no wish," he afterwards said, "for immediate martyrdom, and
considerably abbreviated my speech when I found that knives were used
as arguments."

In the winter of 1862 Mr Bradlaugh made a public appeal to the
Freethinkers of Great Britain to raise money on behalf of the
distressed Lancashire operatives. He begged them to "waste no time,
but at once in your large workshops and in your social meetings levy
a rate for the reduction of the Lancashire distress." Those who were
Freethinkers amongst the destitute in Lancashire were of course
relieved by the General Relief Committee, but naturally they were
excluded from the various charitable undertakings carried out by
committees belonging to different denominations. As the relief afforded
by the General Committee and the Board of Guardians only averaged
1s. 8-1/2d. per head weekly, it will be seen how greatly dependent
the distressed were upon the extra help of these other committees. A
touching little story of Christian charity _versus_ principle in rags
was taken by Mr T. S. Oates, then Secretary to the Lancashire Secular
Union Special Distress Fund, from the _Rochdale Observer_ of Dec.
13th, and was, he said, a fair sample of what frequently happened. A
benevolent lady belonging to Middleton, on making her usual charitable
round, entered one day a house in Parkfield, where she found "poverty
in its worst shape." The father of the family was in rags, and the lady
told the man that if he would come to her house that evening she would
give him other clothes. The man, of course, was overjoyed, but when he
was told that after he had the clothes he would be expected to attend
church, and if he did not do so the clothes were to be returned, his
joy was considerably cooled down. Then it was said that

 "after making her statement, the lady left to make further inquiries
 into the cases of distress, leaving the man of poverty to reflect
 on the offer made to him. After a short consideration he commenced
 looking at his unsightly apparel, and then muttered to himself: 'Yo
 mun poo me through a bit longer, owd friends; it'll do noan to pop mi
 conscience for a shute of cloas!'"

My father did not preach without practising, although to me it is
marvellous how, with his own struggle for existence, he always found
a way to help others in their struggles. But this winter it was
especially hard: several times he was called away to the Continent, and
several times his health broke down, until he was so ill that he had
to give up editing his paper, and for some months was also obliged to
give up lecturing. Nevertheless, he contrived to keep an engagement he
had made to lecture for the Relief Fund in Manchester on Feb. 1, 1863,
in which he paid the whole of his own expenses, and so was able to hand
£10 over to the Treasurer. Later on in the year he was lecturing again
on behalf of the same object.

 * * * * *

Almost concurrently with his efforts to raise money for Lancashire,
he was making eloquent appeals for funds to aid Poland against her
oppressors, and when he had somewhat recovered his health he addressed
meetings on behalf of the struggling Poles. He spoke at Plumstead,
Deptford, and Cleveland Hall, at Birmingham and Sheffield, where the
fire and passion of his speeches evoked the utmost enthusiasm; at
Halifax, where people walked eight and ten miles in the drenching
rain to hear him, and at other places the details of which are not
recorded. "Viva la Polonia" was a cry which, twenty years ago, found "a
sympathising echo from every freeman in Europe, from every honest heart
in the civilised world;" and my father was behind none in the warmth
of his sympathy, or in the activity he displayed to give it practical
effect.

Neither, with all this public work, was he unmindful or ungrateful for
kindnesses shown himself personally; and so he never forgot the debt
he owed his early friend, Mr Jones, who now in consequence of old age
and infirmities was reduced to extreme poverty. In the November of
this same year he gave the last of his annual lectures for the benefit
of his staunch old friend. On this occasion, too, Mr Bendall, the
lessee of the Hall of Science, gave the use of the hall--as indeed he
frequently did, often at considerable inconvenience to himself--and
the proceeds of the lecture and subscriptions amounted to upwards of
£8, of which the greater part served to pay the funeral expenses of
the brave old man, who, contemporary with Thomas Paine, had played his
part in the struggles for a free pre

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