about by
good men--of all shades of opinion, but of one faith in justice--over
Tory contempt of law and Ultramontane bigotry. It is the reassertion
of civil and religious liberty under the most difficult circumstances,
the declaration that the House of Commons is the creation of the
people, and not a club of the aristocracy with the right of
blackballing in its own hands."

The battle between Charles Bradlaugh and his persecutors was now
transferred to the law courts. As soon as he had taken his seat he was
served with a writ for having voted without having taken the oath, and
this began the wearisome proceedings by which his defeated enemies
boasted that they would make him bankrupt, and so vacate the seat he
had so hardly gained. Rich men like Mr. Newdegate sued him, putting
forward a man of straw as nominal plaintiff; for many a weary month
Mr. Bradlaugh kept all his enemies at bay, fighting each case himself;
defeated time after time, he fought on, finally carrying the cases to
the House of Lords, and there winning them triumphantly. But they were
won at such heavy cost of physical strength and of money, that they
undermined his strength and burdened him heavily with debt. For all
this time he had not only to fight in the law courts and to attend
scrupulously to his Parliamentary duties, but he had to earn his
living by lecturing and writing, so that his nights away from the
House were spent in travelling and his days in incessant labour. Many
of his defeated foes turned their weapons against me, hoping thus to
give him pain; thus Admiral Sir John Hay, at Wigton, used language of
me so coarse that the _Scotsman_ and _Glasgow Herald_ refused to print
it, and the editor of the _Scotsman_ described it as "language so
coarse that it could have hardly dropped from a yahoo." August 25th
found me at Brussels, whither I went, with Miss Hypatia Bradlaugh, to
represent the English Freethinkers at the International Freethought
Conference. It was an interesting gathering, attended by men of
world-wide reputation, including Dr. Ludwig Buechner, a man of noble
and kindly nature. An International Federation of Freethinkers was
there founded, which did something towards bringing together the
Freethinkers of different countries, and held interesting congresses
in the following years in London and Amsterdam; but beyond these
meetings it did little, and lacked energy and vitality. In truth, the
Freethought party in each country had s