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is head given him, of running us all into
great dangers and confusion."[91] The pious journals were of course
always and increasingly alarmed at the growing popular influence of the
hated and despised Atheist, and tried their best to counteract it, each
according to its lights. The most common way was to decry him: thus he
was not "endowed with superior attainments," nor had he "any faculty
or power of teaching other men." And after devoting a column or so to
showing how mean were his intellectual powers, the Christian critic
would then proceed in the like amiable fashion to decry Mr Bradlaugh's
personal appearance.

[Footnote 91: Essay in _Cornhill Magazine_, 1868, reprinted in book
form as "Culture and Anarchy."]

Just about this time Mr Bradlaugh expressed himself upon a small matter
which will strike a chord in the memories of many of those who took
part in meetings with him. I mean bands at processions. He said he was
glad to note "a strong disposition on the part of the Executive [of
the Reform League] to avoid the use of bands of music in our future
processions. Ten thousand men tramping seriously along the streets
towards Westminster will be unmistakable evidence of our earnestness."
This is the first public expression of his feeling on this subject that
I have come across, but there will still be many who can recall how
much Mr Bradlaugh objected to a serious procession being accompanied
by flying flags and a beating drum. A gala meeting on a Northumberland
or Durham moor was one thing, but men proceeding together in orderly
fashion to soberly demand a right or strenuously protest against a
wrong was another. But people like noise and merriment, even when they
are very much in earnest, and my father often had to submit to the band
and the banner, although in his heart he wished them well at home.

He generously determined that his lectures should not cost the League
one farthing. True, his Freethought friends helped him as much as lay
in their power, but they were poor, and the demands upon their purses
many, so that at the end of the year 1866 he found that in work for the
League he had spent out of his own pocket £30 in mere travelling and
hotel expenses.

At the quarterly election of officers in December 1866 Mr Bradlaugh
was again elected upon the Executive, and he appealed to his friends
to show renewed activity in the time of hard work which he felt lay
before them. On February 11th (1867) the League held two mass meetings,
one in the afternoon at Trafalgar Square, and one in the evening at
the Agricultural Hall. The Trafalgar Square meeting was, if possible,
"more complete, more orderly, and more resolute" than any previous one.
Mr Baxter Langley and Mr Bradlaugh were appointed "deputy marshals;"
they were mounted, and wore tri-coloured scarves and armlets (I have
my father's now). It was their special duty to see that order was
kept, and their office was no sinecure; for although the main body was
entirely orderly, still on the outskirts there was a fair sprinkling
of people who had come "to see the fun," and were bent on seeing it,
even if they had to make it for themselves. One form of creating "fun"
was the snatching off hats and throwing them into the fountain basins;
another was throwing stones from above on to the crowd below. This
dangerous amusement was checked by Mr Bradlaugh, who, singling out a
young fellow who had thrown a stone from the front of the National
Gallery, rode his horse right up the steps in pursuit. The young man
escaped amongst his companions, but Mr Bradlaugh's energy stopped that
form of "fun." That poor little brown horse! It would be difficult
to say which was the more tired, horse or rider, before they parted
company that day; the horse was small--as I have heard my father
say--for the weight it had to carry, and my father had not crossed a
horse since he left the army in 1853. For six and a half hours they
kept order together, and both must have been heartily glad when they
reached the Agricultural Hall, and the little brown horse went home to
his stall and his supper whilst Mr Bradlaugh went inside to speak.[92]

[Footnote 92: In a general "damnatory" description of the demonstration
given from "a club window," which appeared in the _Times_ of February
12th, there is a caricature of Mr Bradlaugh, spiteful in intent, but
amusing and really interesting if one looks between the would-be
scornful words. We are told that "a dapper youth, mounted on a brown
horse, exerted himself to make up for the shortcomings of the public
force, and was a host in himself. He was evidently a man in authority,
and acted in close connection with the Reform magnates, whose carriages
stopped the way before our doors. He raised his whip as freely as if
it had been a constable's truncheon or gendarme's broad-sword, and
apostrophised, or--why should I not say the word--bullied the crowd in
a tone and with manners which would have done an alguazil's heart good.
The sovereign people put up with the man's arrogance with incredible
meekness and patience, and allowed itself to be marshalled hither and
thither as if the Queen's highway were the Leaguers' special property
and the public were mere intruders."

The "Club" man was evidently irritated that these same people who at
Hyde Park had refused to obey a police proclamation backed by a free
use of the truncheon and display of the bayonet, yet implicitly obeyed
the "youth mounted on a brown horse" whose only authority was derived
from the love the people bore him. The sneer as to "tone" and "manners"
is not worth noticing; you cannot issue commands to tens of thousands
in Trafalgar Square in the same gentle tone in which you can ask for
the salt to be passed across the dinner-table.]

The day wound up with the meeting in the Agricultural Hall, which
was addressed by professors, clergymen, and members of Parliament,
Irishmen, Scotchmen, and men like Ernest Jones, directly representing
the working men. Never was there such a wonderful sight as this
gathering. At the previous Agricultural Hall meeting "the vast hall
presented a surging mass of human beings without form or coherence;"
this time it was a solid body of thousands upon thousands of citizens
with faces all anxiously upturned towards the platform. I know not
whether it was arranged that Mr Bradlaugh should be one of the speakers
or not, but in any case he was called for again and again by the
audience, and in response made a brief but earnest speech.

At the next quarterly meeting of the Reform League he was re-elected on
the Executive by a vote of five-sixths of those present, although he
had made a grave declaration to the Council "that events were possible
which would necessitate holding meetings under conditions forbidden by
Act of Parliament, and that he, having determined if needful to resist
the Government decision as to Hyde Park, did not desire to remain on
the Executive of a body whom he might injure by a policy too advanced."

The

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