its good name in the eyes of the world.  The triumph is not one of Freethought over Christianity, nor is it over the House of Commons; it is the triumph of law, brought 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 so much to do in holding its own that little time and thought could be given to international organisation.  For myself, my introduction to Dr. Buechner, led to much interesting correspondence, and I translated, with his approval, his “Mind in Animals,” and the enlarged fourteenth edition of “Force and Matter,” as well as one or two pamphlets.  This autumn of 1880 found the