First CB appearance on freethinkers blog
10/01/2011 10:13
I pray the opposing forces to continue their attacks, that by teaching me my weaknesses they may make me strong.
Here’s a nice Charles Bradlaugh passage that I just put up on my freethinkers blog, quoted in Four Hundred Years of Freethought, by Samuel P. Putnam, 1894. Putnam seems to be a very interesting character in his own right, and Bradlaugh was a giant. Stay tuned for more material from each of them…
I am an Infidel, a rough, self-taught Infidel. What honors shall I win if I grow grey in this career? Critics who would break a lance against me in my absence will tell you now that I am from the lower classes, without university education, and that I lack classical lore. Clergymen, who see God’s mercy reflected in an eternal hell, will tell you even that I am wanting in a conception of common humanity. Skilled penmen will demonstrate that I have not the merest rudiments of biblical knowledge. I thank these assailants for the past; when they pricked and stung me with their waspish piety, they did me good service, gave me the clue to my weaknesses, laid bare to me my ignorance, and drove me to acquire knowledge which might otherwise never have been mine. I pray the opposing forces to continue their attacks, that by teaching me my weaknesses they may make me strong….I have preached ‘equality,’ not by aiming to reduce men’s intellects to the level of my own, but rather by inciting each of my hearers to develop his mind to the fullest extent, obtaining thus the hope, not of an equality of ignorance, but of a more equal diffusion of knowledge.
Here’s a nice Charles Bradlaugh passage that I just put up on my freethinkers blog, quoted in Four Hundred Years of Freethought, by Samuel P. Putnam, 1894. Putnam seems to be a very interesting character in his own right, and Bradlaugh was a giant. Stay tuned for more material from each of them…
The Lady of the Rotunda
09/28/2011 15:54
I'm not going to reproduce all my free thinkers blog posts here, but since CB lived with Eliza Sharples, I thought this might be of particular interest to bradlaugh.com readers:
First Discourse of the Lady of the Rotunda.
The task which I propose to perform, I am told, has no precedent in this country; so I have great need of craving your indulgent attention and most gentle criticism.
A woman stands before you who has been educated and practiced in all the severity of religious discipline, awakened to the principles of reason but as yesterday, seeking on these boards a moral and a sweet revenge, for the outrage that has been committed on the majesty of that reason, and on the dignity of that truth, inasmuch as the barbaric administration of alleged law, that never had the consent of the people; of law, that has been made for the purpose, by the administrators of the law, has arrested the voices and imprisoned the persons of the two brave and talented men, who first made this building the temple of reason and truth, and who first essayed to teach the people of this country the practical importance and incalculable value of free and public oral discussion.
This, sirs, is my purpose; I appear before you to plead the cause of those injured men; to endeavor to reason before you as they reasoned before you; to follow their example, even if the sequel be a following them to a prison.
I have left a home, in a distant country, where comfort and even affluence surrounded me—a happy home, and the bosom of an affectionate and a happy family. I have left such a home, under the excitement which religious persecution has roused, to make this first and singular appearance before you, for a purpose, I trust that is second to none.
So much, by way of an introduction, where no introduction has been otherwise made. I come at once to the preliminaries of my present discourse.
Would you have from me a profession of faith?—You shall have it.
Faith, in its relation to superstition, I have none. But of faith, in the relation of the word to whatever is lovely, whatever is good, and whatever is true, whatever is morally binding and honorable, I flatter myself that I am rich, and of large possessions. At least, sirs, I submit this my faith to your most severe critical judgments.
But then, we are told, that they who have no faith in relation to superstition, are scoffers and scorners.
…This shall not be the seat of the scorner while it is in my hands, but the theatre of reason, of truth, and of free discussion; of an encouragement to every well expressed desire for mutual instruction.
…I purpose to speak, in my continued discourses, if this shall find favor with you, of superstitions and of reason, of tyranny and of liberty, of morals and of politics.
Of politics!—politics from a woman! Some will exclaim, yes, I will set before my sex the example of asserting an equality for them with their present lords and masters, and strive to teach all, yes all, that the undue submission, which constitutes slavery is honorable to none; while the mutual submission, which leads to mutual good, is to all alike dignified and honorable.
Superstition, I shall define to be the invention of the human imagination, where demonstration is not to be had, and where a system of alleged causes, falling back into a general first cause, is made of the fanciful idea of a personification of supposed principles…It would not be in vain, if man were superstitious enough to seek to make a paradise of the earth, instead of making his never-to-be-reached paradise of the conceits of his own brain. Help me sirs, in this mighty undertaking, and some of us may see that we have made the world the better for living in it.
The 15 June, 1832 Boston Investigator's excerpts from Eliza Sharples speech begin with Robert Dale Owen's description in column 2, and cover two columns. In the fifth column, there is a reprint from the Workingman’s Advocate, of an article covering RDO’s marriage to Mary Jane Robinson, including the text of their “protest” vows. Owen introduces Sharples (originally to readers of the New York Free Enquirer) with the following:
The Lady of the Rotunda.
New York, 11th May, 1832.
It needs not to repeat what every one admits, that this is an age prolific of interesting mental and moral phenomena; an age rich in prognostics of change and reform. The French Revolution, with the various novelties to which it has given birth (including the St. Simonian) is among the most marked of these. The growth of free opinion in this country is another; the boldness, sometimes verging on violence, of Richard Carlile and Robert Taylor is another; and the fact I am now about to detail is entitled to a place among the number.
A young unmarried English lady, said to be of a highly respectable and affluent family, and who conceals her name because her relations desire that it may not be published, has appeared in London, has hired “The Rotunda,” the same building where Taylor formerly lectured, delivers original lectures there twice every Sunday, and three times in the course of the week; and has commenced, on her own responsibility, a periodical entitled “The Isis.”
She delivered on the 29th January last her opening address, and repeated the same several times in the course of the ensuing week. Her lectured are thronged; how her periodical succeeds I have not heard.
…I am now about to leave this city for London, and hope, while there, to see this Lady of the Rotunda, if I can procure an introduction to her.—At all events, if her lectures are continued, I shall attend them; and “report progress,” as politicians say, to our readers.
The task which I propose to perform, I am told, has no precedent in this country; so I have great need of craving your indulgent attention and most gentle criticism.
A woman stands before you who has been educated and practiced in all the severity of religious discipline, awakened to the principles of reason but as yesterday, seeking on these boards a moral and a sweet revenge, for the outrage that has been committed on the majesty of that reason, and on the dignity of that truth, inasmuch as the barbaric administration of alleged law, that never had the consent of the people; of law, that has been made for the purpose, by the administrators of the law, has arrested the voices and imprisoned the persons of the two brave and talented men, who first made this building the temple of reason and truth, and who first essayed to teach the people of this country the practical importance and incalculable value of free and public oral discussion.
This, sirs, is my purpose; I appear before you to plead the cause of those injured men; to endeavor to reason before you as they reasoned before you; to follow their example, even if the sequel be a following them to a prison.
I have left a home, in a distant country, where comfort and even affluence surrounded me—a happy home, and the bosom of an affectionate and a happy family. I have left such a home, under the excitement which religious persecution has roused, to make this first and singular appearance before you, for a purpose, I trust that is second to none.
So much, by way of an introduction, where no introduction has been otherwise made. I come at once to the preliminaries of my present discourse.
Would you have from me a profession of faith?—You shall have it.
Faith, in its relation to superstition, I have none. But of faith, in the relation of the word to whatever is lovely, whatever is good, and whatever is true, whatever is morally binding and honorable, I flatter myself that I am rich, and of large possessions. At least, sirs, I submit this my faith to your most severe critical judgments.
But then, we are told, that they who have no faith in relation to superstition, are scoffers and scorners.
…This shall not be the seat of the scorner while it is in my hands, but the theatre of reason, of truth, and of free discussion; of an encouragement to every well expressed desire for mutual instruction.
…I purpose to speak, in my continued discourses, if this shall find favor with you, of superstitions and of reason, of tyranny and of liberty, of morals and of politics.
Of politics!—politics from a woman! Some will exclaim, yes, I will set before my sex the example of asserting an equality for them with their present lords and masters, and strive to teach all, yes all, that the undue submission, which constitutes slavery is honorable to none; while the mutual submission, which leads to mutual good, is to all alike dignified and honorable.
Superstition, I shall define to be the invention of the human imagination, where demonstration is not to be had, and where a system of alleged causes, falling back into a general first cause, is made of the fanciful idea of a personification of supposed principles…It would not be in vain, if man were superstitious enough to seek to make a paradise of the earth, instead of making his never-to-be-reached paradise of the conceits of his own brain. Help me sirs, in this mighty undertaking, and some of us may see that we have made the world the better for living in it.
The Lady of the Rotunda.
New York, 11th May, 1832.
It needs not to repeat what every one admits, that this is an age prolific of interesting mental and moral phenomena; an age rich in prognostics of change and reform. The French Revolution, with the various novelties to which it has given birth (including the St. Simonian) is among the most marked of these. The growth of free opinion in this country is another; the boldness, sometimes verging on violence, of Richard Carlile and Robert Taylor is another; and the fact I am now about to detail is entitled to a place among the number.
A young unmarried English lady, said to be of a highly respectable and affluent family, and who conceals her name because her relations desire that it may not be published, has appeared in London, has hired “The Rotunda,” the same building where Taylor formerly lectured, delivers original lectures there twice every Sunday, and three times in the course of the week; and has commenced, on her own responsibility, a periodical entitled “The Isis.”
She delivered on the 29th January last her opening address, and repeated the same several times in the course of the ensuing week. Her lectured are thronged; how her periodical succeeds I have not heard.
…I am now about to leave this city for London, and hope, while there, to see this Lady of the Rotunda, if I can procure an introduction to her.—At all events, if her lectures are continued, I shall attend them; and “report progress,” as politicians say, to our readers.
New Freethinkers blog
09/27/2011 13:03
CB and Cooperative Societies
09/23/2011 15:09
The Society’s pamphlet announces that their “sole object…is to obtain a House for each of its Members at a trifling Weekly Payment beyond their ordinary rental for a limited period — say 12 Years. Every man who has paid for a period of Fifteen or Twenty Years the rent on the House he lives in, must regret that the amount has not been applied to the actual purchase of the dwelling, which would then be a free shelter to him for the remainder of his days.” The Society promised to divide its profits annually, to keep its expenses low, and to make “Advances upon a new and safe method, and the repayment of Advances perfectly within the means of every prudent workman.”
Richard & Hypatia Carlile
09/22/2011 11:00
Yes, CB kept a portrait of Hypatia, and it survived his death 50 years after he was in love with her on Warner Street in East London. So yeah, maybe there’s more to that story than his daughter Hypatia wanted to tell…
Sunday Bloody Sunday
07/01/2011 12:11
I was driving home from work the other day, listening to music instead of audiobooks for a change; randomly playing the “top-rated songs” from my iPod. It’s surprising how songs you forgot you’d loved show up there from time to time. I found myself driving along to the snare-drum beat of U2’s 1983 hit, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which got me thinking about the events behind the song and about popular protest. (I cross-posted this to the Historical Society blog, so Americans would see it too)
The U2 song refers to the 1972 shooting of unarmed protestors in Derry, Ireland. But the name Bloody Sunday has also been used to describe the reaction to the first Selma March (1965), police violence against unemployed protestors in Vancouver BC (1938), a 1905 St. Petersburg massacre that helped spark the Russian Revolution, and two other days of violence in the Irish conflict (1920, 1921). The original Bloody Sunday was a November 1887 demonstration in London that was routed by the Army and Metropolitan Police.
The issues that led to 1887’s Bloody Sunday included the 1885-86 Irish Coercion Acts, but the demonstration was really a culmination of tensions brought on by England’s “Long Depression” of the 1870s. East Londoners had been demonstrating against unemployment and poverty in their section of London for several years. The difference in November of 1887 was, they marched westward with their protests, to Trafalgar.
The 1887 East End protestors were not the first to march on London’s centers of power. In 1848, Chartists had planned to march on Parliament, and had only been turned away when the Duke of Wellington placed cannons on the Westminster bridge over the Thames. But less than a generation later, Britain’s Reform League led demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands of protestors to Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park in 1866, and to the Agricultural Hall and Hyde Park again in 1867. These protests had been declared illegal by government authorities. So how did the reformers “get away with” these massive demonstrations?
The leaders of the Reform League demonstrations had learned from the 1848 intimidation of the Chartists. Charles Bradlaugh was an East Londoner who had been beaten by police at age 15, during an East London sympathy demonstration on the day the Chartists surrendered to Wellington. Bradlaugh was subsequently posted to County Cork with the British Army, where participating in the eviction of starving Irish peasants helped to radicalize him, and where he learned cavalry battle techniques and tactics. Bradlaugh insisted on public protests, against the wishes of many of his fellow Reform League leaders, and personally led them with the military discipline he had learned in Ireland.
200,000 Londoners marched on Hyde Park in July 1866. Home Secretary Spencer Walpole had outlawed the protest a few days earlier, and threatened military action. Bradlaugh and his radical allies in the Reform League leadership declared the government’s position unconstitutional, and announced they would challenge Walpole’s illegal attempt to bar peaceful, free assembly. Of course, in order to be legal, Bradlaugh realized the protest would have to be peaceful. And, aside from the famous destruction of some railings around the “Marble Arch” gate, which marchers led by a carriage of Reform League executives were prevented from entering by a troop of 1,600 police and soldiers, the demonstrationt was disciplined and nonviolent. Bradlaugh wasn’t at the railings, he was leading another column of protestors across Knightsbridge toward Hyde Park at the time.
To make a long story short, Spencer Walpole resigned in disgrace and the Reform League’s demonstrations established the right of Londoners to march, occupy public parks and squares, and demonstrate for their political rights. In 1868, the Reform Act passed, extending voting rights to working-class people for the first time in British history. And yet, twenty years later, Bloody Sunday. What had changed?
In 1887, Charles Bradlaugh was not at the head of the demonstration. He was exhausted and ill, following a six-year battle to take the seat in Parliament he’d been elected to in 1880. And he had doubts about the programs proposed by the Social Democratic Federation, which was sponsoring the protest. Bradlaugh advised readers of his National Reformer to stay away, and warned SDF and Fabian Society leaders to be cautious and consider the security of their people. Believing the precedent set by the Reform League had established their rights once and for all, Annie Besant, George Bernard Shaw, and the other leaders of the demonstration defied the government and marched. The results were disastrous.
Men, women, and children marchers were beaten by London police. Over two hundred people were hospitalized. Three were killed. Infantry and cavalry troops were on hand, with fixed bayonets; but luckily were not called into action. Several of the march’s leaders were arrested and held behind bars for six weeks.
It’s difficult to pinpoint all the factors that had changed, between 1866 and 1887. There was a new government, with new people in key positions — although in both cases, the Tories were in power. Chicago's Haymarket riot of 1886 was fresh in the minds of both the protestors and the government. The radicals who had been united behind the Reform League had split into factions. Socialists who seemed to be gaining ground in London political circles offered utopian ideals but had little connection with actual working people (the Labour Party was established in 1893, partly in response to these issues). But it’s’ possible that the key difference was the 1887 leaders’ belief that their right to protest, established 20 years earlier, was inviolable.
The lesson of Bloody Sunday, it seems to me, is that we can’t take our rights for granted. If we are not prepared to defend them, they can be taken from us. Like Charles Bradlaugh and his fellow reformers, we have to be resolute, disciplined, and nonviolent — but prepared to defend ourselves. It’s not insignificant that when Bradlaugh died four years after Bloody Sunday, one of the mourners at his simple secular funeral was twenty-one year old Mohandas Gandhi.
The U2 song refers to the 1972 shooting of unarmed protestors in Derry, Ireland. But the name Bloody Sunday has also been used to describe the reaction to the first Selma March (1965), police violence against unemployed protestors in Vancouver BC (1938), a 1905 St. Petersburg massacre that helped spark the Russian Revolution, and two other days of violence in the Irish conflict (1920, 1921). The original Bloody Sunday was a November 1887 demonstration in London that was routed by the Army and Metropolitan Police.
The issues that led to 1887’s Bloody Sunday included the 1885-86 Irish Coercion Acts, but the demonstration was really a culmination of tensions brought on by England’s “Long Depression” of the 1870s. East Londoners had been demonstrating against unemployment and poverty in their section of London for several years. The difference in November of 1887 was, they marched westward with their protests, to Trafalgar.
The leaders of the Reform League demonstrations had learned from the 1848 intimidation of the Chartists. Charles Bradlaugh was an East Londoner who had been beaten by police at age 15, during an East London sympathy demonstration on the day the Chartists surrendered to Wellington. Bradlaugh was subsequently posted to County Cork with the British Army, where participating in the eviction of starving Irish peasants helped to radicalize him, and where he learned cavalry battle techniques and tactics. Bradlaugh insisted on public protests, against the wishes of many of his fellow Reform League leaders, and personally led them with the military discipline he had learned in Ireland.
200,000 Londoners marched on Hyde Park in July 1866. Home Secretary Spencer Walpole had outlawed the protest a few days earlier, and threatened military action. Bradlaugh and his radical allies in the Reform League leadership declared the government’s position unconstitutional, and announced they would challenge Walpole’s illegal attempt to bar peaceful, free assembly. Of course, in order to be legal, Bradlaugh realized the protest would have to be peaceful. And, aside from the famous destruction of some railings around the “Marble Arch” gate, which marchers led by a carriage of Reform League executives were prevented from entering by a troop of 1,600 police and soldiers, the demonstrationt was disciplined and nonviolent. Bradlaugh wasn’t at the railings, he was leading another column of protestors across Knightsbridge toward Hyde Park at the time.
In 1887, Charles Bradlaugh was not at the head of the demonstration. He was exhausted and ill, following a six-year battle to take the seat in Parliament he’d been elected to in 1880. And he had doubts about the programs proposed by the Social Democratic Federation, which was sponsoring the protest. Bradlaugh advised readers of his National Reformer to stay away, and warned SDF and Fabian Society leaders to be cautious and consider the security of their people. Believing the precedent set by the Reform League had established their rights once and for all, Annie Besant, George Bernard Shaw, and the other leaders of the demonstration defied the government and marched. The results were disastrous.
Men, women, and children marchers were beaten by London police. Over two hundred people were hospitalized. Three were killed. Infantry and cavalry troops were on hand, with fixed bayonets; but luckily were not called into action. Several of the march’s leaders were arrested and held behind bars for six weeks.
The lesson of Bloody Sunday, it seems to me, is that we can’t take our rights for granted. If we are not prepared to defend them, they can be taken from us. Like Charles Bradlaugh and his fellow reformers, we have to be resolute, disciplined, and nonviolent — but prepared to defend ourselves. It’s not insignificant that when Bradlaugh died four years after Bloody Sunday, one of the mourners at his simple secular funeral was twenty-one year old Mohandas Gandhi.
From 1831 Boston Investigator
06/14/2011 16:31
The Boston Investigator, edited by Abner Kneeland, who was convicted in 1835 of blasphemy in Boston because he (like Bradlaugh 43 years later) had reprinted and advertised Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy.
Robert Forder
05/23/2011 15:23
Mr. Forder has written a brief account of his ancestor’s activities in the NSS and as a freethought publisher, which can be viewed by clicking here. He claims, “the importance of the Stonecutter Street address in disseminating contraceptive advice and knowledge has been grossly underestimated by the secondary sources published in recent years. In fact, the address was the main source of advice in those pioneering days when even the Malthusian League stopped short of publishing this type of material. As a very conservative estimate well over 500,000 Stonecutter Street birth control tracks were published and sold and the figure is probably nearer 1 million or more.” I completely agree. We need a much more thorough history of the contributions made by people like Robert Forder to both freethought and population control–and of how these two movements overlapped each other.
New Bradlaugh Biography
02/09/2011 20:22
Bradlaugh speaks in Boston, 1873
01/23/2011 18:32
The Boston Globe ran a story about Charles Bradlaugh's speech in Boston on October 18th 1873, which includes a transcript of his speech. Click on the headline to see the article. Bradlaugh was accompanied onto the stage by Wendell Phillips, Senator Charles Sumner, and William Lloyd Garrison. Phillips introduced Bradlaugh, saying “Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the Samuel Adams of 1873.” (the Globe accidentally said “1783”)
