and men wondered how the order would be enforced; but Charles Bradlaugh was not the man to make a vulgar brawl, and the light touch on his shoulder was to him the touch of an authority he admitted and to which he bowed.  So he gravely accompanied his small captor, and was lodged in the Clock Tower of the House as prisoner until the House should further consider what to do with him—­the most awkward prisoner it had ever had, in that in his person it was imprisoning the law.

In a special issue of the National Reformer, giving an account of the Committee’s work and of Mr. Bradlaugh’s committal to the Clock Tower, I find the following from my own pen:  “The Tory party, beaten at the polls by the nation, has thus, for the moment, triumphed in the House of Commons.  The man chosen by the Radicals of Northampton has been committed to prison on the motion of the Tory ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, simply because he desires to discharge the duty laid upon him by his constituency and by the law of the land.  As this paper goes to press, I go to Westminster to receive from him his directions as to the conduct of the struggle with the nation into which the House of Commons has so recklessly plunged.”  I found him busily writing, prepared for all events, ready for a long imprisonment.  On the following day a leaflet from my pen, “Law Makers and Law Breakers,” appealed to the people; after reciting what had happened, it concluded:  “Let the people speak.  Gladstone and Bright are for Liberty, and the help denied them within the House must come to them from without.  No time must be lost.  While we remain idle, a representative of the people is illegally held in prison.  Northampton is insulted, and in this great constituency every constituency is threatened.  On freedom of election depends our liberty; on freedom of conscience depends our progress.  Tory squires and lordlings have defied the people and measured their strength against the masses.  Let the masses speak.”  But there was no need to make appeals, for the outrage itself caused so swiftly a growl of anger that on the very next day the prisoner was set free, and there came protest upon protest against the high-handed action of the House.  In Westminster Hall 4,000 people gathered to cheer Mr. Bradlaugh when he came to the House on the day after his liberation.  In less than a week 200 meetings had thundered out their protest.  Liberal associations, clubs, societies, sent up messages of anger and of demand for justice.  In Trafalgar Square there gathered—­so said the papers—­the largest crowd ever seen there, and on the Thursday following—­the meeting was held on Monday—­the House of Commons rescinded its resolution, refusing to allow Mr. Bradlaugh to affirm, and admitted him on Friday, July 2nd, to take his seat after affirmation.  “At last the bitter struggle is over,” I wrote, “and law and right have triumphed.  The House of Commons has, by rescinding the resolution passed by Tories and Ultramontanes, re-established