It is pleasant to put on record here Mr. Bradlaugh’s grave approval of the heavy work done in the police-courts, and the following paragraph shows how generously he could praise one not acting on his own lines:  “As I have on most serious matters of principle recently differed very widely from my brave and loyal co-worker, and as the difference has been regrettably emphasised by her resignation of her editorial functions on this Journal, it is the more necessary that I should say how thoroughly I approve, and how grateful I am to her for, her conduct in not only obtaining bail and providing legal assistance for the helpless unfortunates in the hands of the police, but also for her daily personal attendance and wise conduct at the police-stations and police-courts, where she has done so much to abate harsh treatment on the one hand and rash folly on the other.  While I should not have marked out this as fitting woman’s work, especially in the recent very inclement weather, I desire to record my view that it has been bravely done, well done, and most usefully done, and I wish to mark this the more emphatically as my views and those of Mrs. Besant seem wider apart than I could have deemed possible on many of the points of principle underlying what is every day growing into a most serious struggle.”  Ever did I find Charles Bradlaugh thus tolerant of difference of opinion, generously eager to approve what to him seemed right even in a policy he disapproved.

The indignation grew and grew; the police were silently boycotted, but the people were so persistent and so tactful that no excuse for violence was given, until the strain on the police force began to tell, and the Tory Government felt that London was being hopelessly alienated; so at last Sir Charles Warren fell, and a wiser hand was put at the helm.

CHAPTER XIV.

THROUGH STORM TO PEACE.

Out of all this turmoil and stress rose a Brotherhood that had in it the promise of a fairer day.  Mr. Stead and I had become close friends—­he Christian, I Atheist, burning with one common love for man, one common hatred against oppression.  And so in Our Corner for February, 1888, I wrote:—­“Lately there has been dawning on the minds of men far apart in questions of theology, the idea of founding a new Brotherhood, in which service of Man should take the place erstwhile given to service of God—­a brotherhood in which work should be worship and love should be baptism, in which none should be regarded as alien who was willing to work for human good.  One day as I was walking towards Millbank Gaol with the Rev. S.D.  Headlam, on the way to liberate a prisoner, I said to him:  ’Mr. Headlam, we ought to have a new Church, which should include all who have the common ground of faith in and love for man.’  And a little later I found that my friend Mr. W.T.  Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, had long been brooding