"In a dark room, unfriended and unseen, Toiled o'er his types, a poor unlearn'd young man. The place was low, unfurnitured and mean, But there the freedom of a race began."
I corresponded with them in their heroic days. It is one of the letters of Phillips to me I quote here:--
"My dear Sir,--I ought long ago to have thanked you for sending me copies of your pamphlets on John Stuart Mill and the Rochdale Pioneers--and with so kind and partial a recognition of my co-operation with you in your great cause.
"That on Mill was due certainly to a just estimate of him, but how sad that human jackals should make it necessary. That on Co-operation I read and read again, welcoming the light you throw on it, for it is one of my most hopeful stepping-stones to a higher future. Thank you for the lesson--it cleared one or two dark places--not the first by any means--for I've read everything of yours I could lay my hands on. There was one small volume on Rhetoric--'Public Speaking and Debate,' methods of address, hints towards effective speech, etc.--which I studied faithfully, until some one to whom I had praised and lent it, acting probably on something like Coleridge's rule, that books belong to those who most need them--never returned me my well-thumbed essay, to my keen regret. Probably you never knew that we had printed your book. This was an American reprint--wholly exhausted--proof that it did good service. We reprinted, some ten years ago, one of your wisest tracts, the 'Difficulties that obstruct Co-operation.' It did us yeoman service. But enough, I shall beg you to accept a volume of old speeches printed long ago, because it includes my only attempt to criticise you--which you probably never saw. In it I will put, when I mail it, the last and best photograph of Sumner, and if you'll exchange, I'll add one of
With Mr. Charles Bradlaugh I had personal relations all his life. I took the chair for him at the first public lecture he delivered. I gave him ready applause and support. At the time of what was called his "Parliamentary struggle," I was entirely with him and ready to help him. It was with great reluctance and only in defence of principle, to which I had long been committed, that I appeared as opposed to him. He claimed to represent Free Thought, with which I had been identified long before his day. My conviction was that a Free Thinker should have as much courage, consistency, and self-respect as any Apostle, or Jew, or Catholic, or Quaker. All had in turn refused to make a profession of opinion they did not hold, at the peril of death, or, as in the case of O'Connell and the Jews, at the certainty of exclusion from Parliament. They had only to take an oath, to the terms of which they could not honestly subscribe. Mr. Bradlaugh had no scruple about doing this. In the House of Commons he openly kissed the Bible, in which he did not believe--a token of reverence he did not feel. He even administered to himself the oath, which was contrary to his professed convictions. This seemed to be a reflection upon the honour of Free Thought. Had I not dissented from it, I should have been a sharer in the scandal, and Free Thought--so far as I represented it--would have been regarded as below the Christian or Pagan level.