That election gave me my first experience of anything in the nature of rioting.  The violent abuse levelled against Mr. Bradlaugh by the Whigs, and the foul and wicked slanders circulated against him, assailing his private life and family relations, had angered almost to madness those who knew and loved him; and when it was found that the unscrupulous Whig devices had triumphed, had turned the election against him, and given over the borough to a Tory, the fury broke out into open violence.  One illustration may be given as a type of these cruel slanders.  It was known that Mr. Bradlaugh was separated from his wife, and it was alleged that being an Atheist, and, (therefore!) an opponent of marriage, he had deserted his wife and children, and left them to the workhouse.  The cause of the separation was known to very few, for Mr. Bradlaugh was chivalrously honourable to women, and he would not shield his own good name at the cost of that of the wife of his youth and the mother of his children.  But since his death his only remaining child has, in devotion to her father’s memory, stated the melancholy truth:  that Mrs. Bradlaugh gave way to drink; that for long years he bore with her and did all that man could do to save her; that finally, hopeless of cure, he broke up his home, and placed his wife in the care of her parents in the country, leaving her daughters with her, while he worked for their support.  No man could have acted more generously and wisely under these cruel circumstances than he did, but it was, perhaps, going to an extreme of Quixotism, that he concealed the real state of the case, and let the public blame him as it would.  His Northampton followers did not know the facts, but they knew him as an upright, noble man, and these brutal attacks on his personal character drove them wild.  Stray fights had taken place during the election over these slanders, and, defeated by such foul weapons, the people lost control of their passions.  As Mr. Bradlaugh was sitting well-nigh exhausted in the hotel, after the declaration of the poll, the landlord rushed in, crying to him to go out and try to stop the people, or there would be murder done at the “Palmerston,” Mr. Fowler’s headquarters; the crowd was charging the door, and the windows were being broken with showers of stones.  Weary as he was, Mr. Bradlaugh sprang to his feet, and swiftly made his way to the rescue of those who had maligned and defeated him.  Flinging himself before the doorway, from which the door had just been battered down, he knocked down one or two of the most violent, drove the crowd back, argued and scolded them into quietness, and finally dispersed them.  But at nine o’clock he had to leave Northampton to catch the mail steamer for America at Queenstown, and after he had left, word went round that he had gone, and the riot he had quelled broke out afresh.  The Riot Act was at last read, the soldiers were called out, stones flew freely, heads and windows were broken,