ker. But
starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in
the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland,
where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one
showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable.

In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised
the L30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to
London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the
Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did.

He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to
lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's
Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great
proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly
hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men
have endured greater hardships.

In 1860 the _National Reformer_ was started, and his warfare in the
courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he
unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned
to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the
constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts
are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891.

His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages.
Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had
never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a
propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was
often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never
taught the extent of his own ignorance.

His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a
perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any
abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion.
It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported
by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are
irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and
cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be
the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This
is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as
applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is
expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied
by the exercise of