Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2)

Justice Grove, an amiable and fair though unsubtle judge, argued very courteously (while incidentally avowing that his sympathies were on the side of minimising oaths) that the legislature could not be held to have enacted an oath in the tolerant expectation that it would be taken by some men for whom the adjuration had no meaning. That was no doubt a perfectly reasonable point for a judge to put; but, on the other hand, nothing is more common than the plea of judges – it was made by Justice Grove himself – that they have only to do with the law as it stands; and if in this case they were to look into the probable state of mind of the legislature, it was plainly their business to take into account all the well-known facts of the case, including the notorious fact that members known to their fellow-members to be Atheists or "Lucretian" Theists had repeatedly sat in the House.

Their lordships, of course, repeated their former decision – Lord Coleridge giving the very inaccurate reason that no "new point" or "new argument" had been raised – and the rule for a new trial was refused. Immediately Bradlaugh appealed; and the case was heard (on the motion for a new trial, and, secondarily for seven days' time to move for arrest of judgment after the first motion should have been adjudged upon) in the Court of Appeal on 15th December by Lords Justices Brett (Master of the Rolls), Cotton, and Lindley. These judges heard the appeal with great patience, and on the 18th gave judgment to the effect that they could not grant a rule for a new trial on the ground that the verdict was against the evidence. But on "many other questions in the case which it is not improbable might all be raised upon the appeal by way of arrest of judgment," they thought it right to grant "a rule nisi to show cause upon all the other points taken by the defendant, upon condition that the appeal in arrest of judgment is brought on at the same time." The argument on this rule was taken on 26th January 1885, when the Attorney-General and Sir Hardinge Giffard argued (a point which had been left open before) that no appeal lay, the case being technically a criminal one. This plea, after voluminous argument, was overruled – the point being settled by Bradlaugh's references to portions of the Crown Suits Act which the other side had not dealt with. Then came the argument on the main issue. To a lay listener Lord Justice Brett seemed to give a more strictly judicial attention to the problem than did any of the judges who had dealt with it hitherto, and never was the subject more fully illuminated. In a previous trial Justice Grove had noticed the anomaly that whereas an oath or affirmation was set up as a means of securing true answers, the judge had to satisfy himself beforehand on a witness's bare word as to the nominally all-important point whether an oath would be "binding on his conscience." Bradlaugh now brought out another no less precious anomaly, namely, that the Speaker, at the opening of Parliament, must of necessity administer the oath to himself; and that the first forty members must positively break the law, seeing that they swear while there is not a "full House" sitting. Another curious issue was raised by the Court. An unbeliever could certainly be punished for perjury; how, then, could his oath be "no oath," when perjury expressly meant false testimony given on oath? Sir Hardinge Giffard's answer was that no man may "take profit from his own wrong." It might have been more dramatically put that the Christian law says to the Atheist, "Heads, we win; tails, you lose."

Despite the fairness of the hearing given, it soon became apparent that the Master of the Rolls held that "religious test" could only mean test as between different forms of religion, and that to exclude an Atheist from civic rights is not to impose a religious test. Now, the English tests of last century were as between sects, not as between religions; that is, they were denominational; that is, political. Still, they were always known as religious tests. It would surely follow that "religious test" meant any test connected with religious matters. In that case Lord Justice Brett's distinction was completely arbitrary and fallacious. But on grounds such as these, among others, the judgment was given (28th January) against the appellant. It was certainly an able judgment – as able as it was lengthy. It raised, among other things, the exquisitely complicated anomaly that Bradlaugh could satisfy a judge on his bare statement that he was an Atheist, and yet, after affirming on that ground, could be solemnly examined as to whether he was an Atheist. And the judge very explicitly laid it down that if a non-believer in a falsehood-punishing Deity were to take the oath unopposed, with all the customary formalities, he could on proof be sued for the penalty of £500 for every vote he had given. This meant, if anything, that the Atheists or Agnostics then sitting in Parliament were all so liable.

Lord Justice Cotton, with much simplicity, laid it down that the law of England "undoubtedly" was that if a person in the "unhappy position" of not believing in a lie-avenging Deity took the oath, it was not a real oath. And Lord Justice Lindley, with a certain cynical candour, dealt with Bradlaugh's main argument, that it was absurd to hold that a man is by law incapable of doing that which the law requires him to do. "I agree in the absurdity," said his lordship, "but not in the argument adduced from it." He held that the only solution would be that the defendant "could not be properly elected."

"It is a mistake to suppose," said Lord Justice Lindley further, "and I think it is as well the mistake should be known, that persons who do not believe in a Supreme Being are in the state in which it is now supposed they are. There are old Acts of Parliament still unrepealed by which such people can be cruelly persecuted. Whether that is a state of law which ought to remain or not is not for me to express an opinion upon; but having regard to the fact that these Acts of Parliament still remain unrepealed, I do not see my way to hold judicially that this oath was not kept alive by Parliament for the very purpose, amongst others, of keeping such people out of Parliament."

This last deliverance is memorable on several grounds – memorable as showing the need, from the point of view of one more judge, for a repeal of the brutal laws of the past against heresy; and further memorable as showing once more how ready are judges to rest alternately on mutually exclusive principles of interpretation. On the point as to whether the case was one in which an appeal lay, Lord Justice Lindley grounded his opinion on the fact that there was not to be found in the Judicature Act "the slightest indication of any intention on the part of the legislature" to prevent appeals in cases which were "previously made civil proceedings for the purposes of appeals." On the same principle, he ought to have looked whether there were the "slightest indication of any intention on the part of the legislature" in modern acts to exclude all Atheists from oath-taking. There is no such indication. Not a word is said of excluding unbelievers. On the contrary, it was only with difficulty that the legislature could be got to meet the fact that there were many Atheists who at times had to give testimony in courts of law. Had the legislature really desired to exclude all Atheists from oath-taking it would surely have said so, knowing as it must have done how common unbelieving oath-taking had been. And all the judges, as individuals, must have known perfectly well that privately known Atheists had sat in every Parliament for generations. Such are the conditions of legal judgment on questions of legal principle.

Bradlaugh at once gave notice of appeal to the House of Lords; and, all things considered, he had as good chances of success as ever he had. But this litigation had now reached its climax, and the appeal did not come off. The struggle had gone far towards completing its fifth year, and relief was almost within sight. It was not to come from legislation. Mr Hopwood had undertaken to introduce an affirmation Bill grappling with the whole position, which was not merely an affair of the admission of Atheists, but of providing also for certain religionists who, not being Quakers, Moravians, or Separatists, were not entitled to affirm, though strongly objecting to the oath. And there were yet further matters to be dealt with, as the position of freethinking jurors. But the saving credit of passing such a measure was not in store for the "Liberal" Parliament. At the Liberal Conference on Reform in 1884, presided over by Mr John Morley, a resolution had been unanimously carried in favour of Northampton's right; and at the Conference of the National Liberal Federation in 1885, Mr Hopwood's Bill was unanimously approved of; but though this action was backed up by countless resolutions of Liberal and Radical Clubs, and hundreds of petitions,¹⁸⁷

the Anglican and Roman Churches set to work as zealously as ever to oppose, the Liberal Government would make no attempt to grant facilities in the House, the Bill was blocked, and nothing was done while that Government remained in office. But when, on their being defeated at their own wish on the Budget, a Conservative Ministry took office, Bradlaugh at once presented himself (6th July) to be sworn. He might have presented himself before the re-elected Tory ministers, in which case they could not have taken part in the proceedings against him, but he treated them with the chivalry they never showed to him, and allowed the ministers first to be sworn in. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, took up the matter on the lines of Northcote, who was now made a peer, and moved that Bradlaugh be as before excluded from the precincts. Mr Parnell and Mr Healy went further, appealing to the Speaker to have Bradlaugh (who was standing below the bar) wholly excluded from the House at once, before the motion was debated. To this stretch of malice the Speaker could not accede, and the debate proceeded in the usual way. Mr Hopwood moved an amendment declaring legislation to be necessary "on wider grounds than the interests of a constituency." Gladstone, though deprecating any general legislation on the subject, supported the amendment. Only 219 voted for it, however, and 263 against, the majority again including many Home Rulers and a number of Liberals, while many more Liberals had absented themselves. Against most of these, vigorous measures were taken in the constituencies, which now had before them the imminent prospect of a fresh general election. In this election it had been arranged that Bradlaugh should stand for the new borough of East Finsbury, London, as well as for Northampton, on the understanding that if elected for both he should sit for Northampton. This was a generous attempt on the part of the Finsbury Radicals to strengthen his case; but other Radical candidates being less generous, he finally withdrew from the Finsbury candidature to avoid a split in the Radical camp. In Northampton the fight had little excitement in it, the conclusion being foregone. Mr Richards at one of his meetings claimed credit for avoiding personalities, and mentioned that he had in his pockets letters from several persons offering to flood Northampton with slanderous tracts. He did not add that that device had been played out, and had become just a little unsafe besides. Towards the election day virulent placards were resorted to, from force of habit. Bradlaugh did not post a single bill. The poll (25th November) stood: – Labouchere, 4845; Bradlaugh, 4315; Richards, 3890; Bradlaugh thus standing higher than ever before. The difference between him and his colleague was represented by 366 plumpers for Mr Labouchere, and 300 votes split with the Tory, less 126 plumpers for Bradlaugh, and 10 split for him and the Tory. The news was received everywhere with special enthusiasm. But still more significant was the havoc wrought among those pseudo-Liberal members who had turned the scale against Bradlaugh in the House. Mr Samuel Morley had been forced to retire from Bristol, Mr M'Cullagh Torrens from Finsbury, the Hon. H. W. Fitzwilliam from Dewsbury, Mr Jerningham from Berwick, and then later from Blackpool, the selection being cancelled before the election; Mr George Courtauld, Unitarian, from Maldon, Sir Alexander Gordon from Aberdeenshire, Sir Thomas Chambers from Marylebone, and Baron de Ferrières from Cheltenham. These were all opposed by former supporters on the express ground of their votes in the Northampton question. Others who went to the poll, again, were defeated on the same score. Mr Norwood at Hull was defeated by the running of a special Radical candidate in protest against his anti-Bradlaugh action in the House. Mr A. P. Vivian, a frequent absentee on the question, was defeated in North-west Cornwall, and Sir W. Charley at Ipswich. Mr B. Whitworth, formerly of Drogheda, chosen and then dismissed at Hackney, was defeated at Lewisham. Prominent Tory and other enemies suffered in a hardly less degree. Newdegate, after beginning his candidature, withdrew rather than meet certain defeat; Sir Henry Drummond Wolff was defeated, so was Earl Percy, so was Sir J. E. Wilmot, so was Mr Warton, so was "O'Donnell." Dr Lyons collapsed at nomination in Dublin. M'Coan was thrown out at Lancaster, Mr Nicholson at Petersfield, and Mr Denzil Onslow at Poplar. Of new Tory candidates who had been specially offensive in their hostility, Mr Hammond was beaten at Newcastle, Mr Bruce Wentworth at Barnsley, Mr Holloway at Stroud, and Mr Edwardes-Moss at Southport. There was no mistaking the "Bradlaugh element" in these cases; and though some Radicals who had stood by him were also defeated, as Mr Hopwood and Mr Hugh Mason, that was solely owing to the hostility of the Irish vote, then being manœuvred by Parnell to weaken the Liberals. Much of the work of destroying the renegade Liberals had been done by Bradlaugh in person in his lecturing tours. "I think I have settled a round dozen of them," he remarked some time before the election. One former Liberal member, who had been his persistent enemy in the House, finding defeat staring him in the face through Bradlaugh's action, came to him in his hotel when he was lecturing in the constituency concerned, and humbled himself to ask for mercy. Bradlaugh gravely refused. "You are very hard," whined the petitioner, who had thought fit to work iniquity with the majority for five long years, with as little thought of justice as of generosity.

The tables thus turned, it is probable that in the first Parliament which assembled in 1886, an Affirmation Bill could have been carried in the teeth of the Tory minority, seeing that even some Tory members had had to pledge themselves to support such a Bill; and Mr Serjeant Simon had arranged to re-introduce Mr Hopwood's. But the settlement was precipitated in an unexpected way. Bradlaugh wrote Sir Michael Beach asking how the Government would treat the Bill if introduced, and received a non-committal answer. Soon afterwards it was announced that communications had passed on the subject between Sir Michael and the new Speaker-elect, Mr Peel; and Bradlaugh wrote to ask Sir Michael what they were, but was refused the information, whereupon he strongly protested. The mystery was only cleared up when the new Parliament assembled on 13th January 1886.¹⁸⁸ The new Speaker had determined to reverse the policy of his predecessor in the Bradlaugh case, and the Tory Cabinet in vain sought to dissuade him. On the opening day, before any members were sworn, he informed the House that he had had two communications – one from Sir Michael Hicks Beach, and one from two other members, Mr Raikes and Sir John Kennaway, appealing to him not to let Bradlaugh take the oath. To these requests he flatly declined to accede. In the former Parliament, he pointed out, the Speaker had taken no independent authority on himself, but had always acted on the instructions of the House. "We are assembled," he went on,

"in a new Parliament. I know nothing of the resolutions of the past. (Cheers.) They have lapsed; they are void; they are of no effect in reference to this case. (Renewed cheers.) It is the right, the legal, statutable obligation of members, when returned to this House, to come to the table and take the oath prescribed by statute. ('Hear, hear.') I have no authority, I have no right, original or delegated, to stand between an hon. member and his taking of the oath. ('Hear, hear.') I have been further asked whether, when the House is completed, and after a quorum has been constituted, it would be competent for a motion to be made intervening between the hon. member for Northampton and his taking of the oath. I have come clearly and without hesitation to the conclusion that it would neither be my duty to prohibit the hon. gentleman from coming, nor to permit a motion to be made standing between him and his taking of the oath. (Opposition cheers.) The hon. member takes that oath under whatever risks may attach to him in a court of law. ('Hear, hear.') But it is not for me – I respectfully say it is not for the House – to enter into any inquisition – (cheers) – as to what may be the opinions of a member when he comes to the table to take the oath. I am bound, and the House is bound, by the forms of this House, and by the legal obligations and rights of members. If a member comes to this table and offers to take the oath, I know of no right whatever to intervene between him and the form, of legal and statutable obligation. (Cheers.)"

The Chancellor of the Exchequer in vain sought to make a declaration: he was called to order. Bradlaugh was duly sworn, with a Tory Ministry in nominal command of the House. The protesters against "profanation" had to stand by and see what they had defined as profanation "solemnly" – as the law courts defined solemnity – authorised by the supreme authority of the House. They had refused to permit affirmation; their oath was now, on their own declaration, outraged and trampled upon. At the same time, the whole past procedure of the House, the whole course of the last Speaker, was overruled and impeached as unwarrantable. The House had drunk its cup to the dregs.

§ 22

The Tory press naturally solaced itself by repeating the well-tried falsehood that Bradlaugh had originally refused to take the oath, and declaring that he had now eaten his words. On 26th January, dissatisfied with that unsubstantial comfort, Mr Raikes asked the Government if they would prevent Bradlaugh from sitting and voting until he had proved his capacity to take the oath, or until the judgment of the Court of Appeal was reversed by a higher tribunal. Sir M. Hicks Beach formally replied that he was not prepared to take action, and no action of the kind was ever taken. Soon the Tories, being in the minority in the House, were turned out and the Liberals installed in their places. Appealed to to enter a stet processus in the action in which Bradlaugh had appealed, they timorously declined, dreading Tory comment. But when the Tories later in the year were returned to power by the election following on Mr Gladstone's defeat on his first Home Rule Bill, and Lord Randolph Churchill became leader of the House of Commons, that versatile personage, desirous of placating if possible so formidable and so avowed an enemy as Bradlaugh, gave the relief which the Liberals had refused. Bradlaugh was thus finally secured in his seat by the capitulation of one of the most unscrupulous and offensive of his old enemies. Churchill's allusion in the House to Bradlaugh's supporters as the "scum and dregs of the nation" had elicited from Bradlaugh, in connection with his agitation against perpetual pensions, a short tractate on the manner of the founding of the Churchill family, which struck his lordship in a fashion he had not been used to at the hands of Gladstone, or even of Mr Chamberlain; and he desired to make peace. He did not obtain it.

But not only did the Tory party, as represented by its new leader in the Commons, thus give up all it had contended for: it was finally to make personal submission to the man it had wronged. The Affirmation Bill introduced by Mr Serjeant Simon never reached a debate; and it was left to Bradlaugh to carry one on his own initiative in 1888, by the votes of the men, Tory and Parnellite, who had defeated former Bills. Last of all, it was in the same Tory House of Commons, while Bradlaugh lay dying, that there was carried the resolution he had repeatedly put down, expunging from the journals of the House the old votes for his exclusion, even as the resolutions against Wilkes had been expunged. If the act was one of repentance, it the more certainly implied an infamous wrong done.

There were certainly many reasons why the Tory party should repent. They had "struck for themselves an evil blow," though the sudden rising of the Home Rule issue served to obscure the consequences of their course in the Northampton struggle. It was impossible that as a party they could have gained in credit by it either among the masses or among thoughtful and earnest men. Nothing was more notorious than that nine-tenths of the leading Bradlaugh-baiters were the least worthy men in the House. Wolff, described by Bradlaugh as a noted retailer of choses grivoises; Churchill, the noisy and reckless charlatan of the new Toryism, "the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence;"¹⁸⁹ Tyler, the company-promoter, hooted by the shareholders he had impoverished; "O'Donnell," the turncoat; Callan, the drunken; Newdegate, besotted with more fumes than those of fanaticism; Fowler and Warton, the gross and blatant; Healy, the ever-rowdy – these could not gain good repute from alliance with types like Mr Samuel Morley, and could not be made respectable by the leadership of Northcote, whom they hustled and humiliated. It is not possible to say with entire certainty what had been the general view of Beaconsfield on the case while he lived; but it is difficult to believe that he could have taken any satisfaction in seeing the most prominent function of the new Toryism made out to be the rowdy resistance to the sitting of a freethinking member, and the insolent refusal of a constituency's rights.

There can be no doubt, I think, that one effect of the whole episode was to create a new and widespread intensity of antagonism to the prevailing religion and to the Conservative cause. Men who had before regarded Christianity with indifference or disfavour or contempt, as a delusion, began to detest it as a living fountain of injustice; and men who had seen in recent Conservatism a policy of diverting the people's attention from home needs by foreign adventure, now saw in it a great machinery for working iniquity within the State. The party which had been seen making gun-wadding of the decalogue in its wars of aggression had now made a crass Semitic Theism the pretext for a dastardly effort to crush one man, partly by way of embarrassing the opposite side; and the party which denounced "disloyalty" took sides with the disloyalists to the same end. Of course, the heat of the immediate struggle did not last on one side any more than on the other; above all, it did not last with Bradlaugh himself; but it is certain that thousands of Freethinkers date their conversion from the time of Bradlaugh's fight with the bigots; and I fancy there are still many who preserve the impression they then gained of what Voltaire meant by "the infamous," and the purpose they then formed to make war on it throughout their lives. As regards Toryism, too, though "each day brings its petty dust, our soon-choked souls to fill," the adherents of that cause may rely on it that for many a citizen, for many a day to come, their declarations of concern for justice and right, in any case whatever, are made derisory by memories of their five-year-long course of gleeful injustice to the Atheist. Time brings its revenges. If Liberals in mass have deserved ten years of frustration, in an effort to do right, by their former treatment of Ireland, Tories in turn have wrought for the cup of defeat they have tasted, and are yet to drain to the dregs. And the Irishmen who, claiming freedom for themselves, shamelessly withheld from another even the rights they already enjoyed – they, too, have paid and are paying for their misdeeds, despite their avowed repentance.

As for the Conservative party, despite its practical recantation, it would be too much to say that there is any real concern among the mass of its members for the five years' carnival of injustice over Bradlaugh. I have gone through Mr Lang's "Life of Northcote" without finding one word of regret for the whole shameful business, though he quotes a passage in which Northcote expressed in his diary a mild deprecation of the ruffianism of some of his followers in the matter. But, indeed, the capacity to do the thing as it was done excludes the capacity to be ashamed of it. Toryism is transmuted, but does not repent. At best, new Tories may at times deprecate the action of their predecessors.

§ 23

Whatever be the sympathies with which the matter is looked at, there is no gainsaying the historical fact that Bradlaugh's struggle is a decisive episode in constitutional history. It will always rank in English annals with the partially parallel case of Wilkes, dating a hundred and twenty years earlier; and it will be a very bold or a very blind majority which ever again attempts to exclude from the House of Commons a duly-elected member against whom no legal objection lies. Of Wilkes, Mr Gladstone has declared that whether we choose it or not, his name must be enrolled among those of the great champions of English freedom. If that be so, Bradlaugh's name must stand still higher, in that it represents not only the principle of the rights of constituencies, but the principle of freedom of conscience in the last and most serious issue. And in every moral respect, Bradlaugh's case stands above that of Wilkes. The point in which they best compare is their courage; but even the undoubted courage with which Wilkes faced an unpopular king and unpopular ministers was a less rare thing than the fortitude which faced the hate and the slander of half of the more articulate part of the nation. For the rest, though he had the merit of geniality, Wilkes was a poor creature enough in many ways – a rascal towards his wife, a leader of ribald orgies, a prurient poetaster, a briber of constituencies, while professing to be uncorrupting and incorruptible. He was a blasphemer in the strict and really bad sense of a man deriding a Deity in whom he did not profess to disbelieve; he wrote and privately printed indecent verse for the indecency's sake. And if he is to be remembered for courage in that he resisted an unpopular Ministry with a great and aristocratic party to support and salary him, much more so is Bradlaugh, who was scouted and insulted by many even of the Liberals that felt constrained at times to vote on his behalf, and who had little save poor men's help in his long and costly fight. It is significant of the worth of common opinion that Wilkes was much more readily forgiven for real and ill-meant and undisputed obscenity than was Bradlaugh for the earnest and scrupulous defence of true doctrines infamously miscalled obscene. On the point of politics, Wilkes is hardly more justly notable than on the point of character. He had no higher mission than to attack an autocratic and unpopular minister; his very animus was partly the evil and vulgar spirit of racial animosity; he had no high purpose of political reform. After unwilling drudgery in a public office of dignity, he found his chosen reward in a semi-sinecure. Bradlaugh stood for great causes in the world of thought as well as in the world of action: he was a thinker and a high-minded reformer where Wilkes was at best a high-spirited adventurer.

And as Wilkes was the worse man, so he had the worse case. When elected in 1768, he was legally an outlaw – albeit under an unjust sentence; and his supporters signalised his success by a riot, breaking windows wholesale, mobbing and insulting leading opponents. Afterwards he was elected while a prisoner. Certainly Parliament, in his case, took a more courageously illegal course than it did in Bradlaugh's, not only refusing to admit him, but declaring him disqualified, voiding his seat, and declaring Luttrell member when elected by the minority. The jugglers of 1880-85 kept a member out of his seat without daring to declare the seat therefore vacant, though the law courts hinted not obscurely that an Atheist was hors la loi in respect of the chief civic rights. Certainly in the case of Wilkes the King was known to be the main mover in the breaking of the law, and so was more openly putting the liberties of the whole people in jeopardy. But the fact that in Bradlaugh's case the tyrants were bigots and partisans, representing masses of electors, and the wronged man a heretic, only made the danger the more profound. The final triumph of the law-breakers would in his case have been a worse blow to freedom than it could have been in that of Wilkes, just because so many hundreds of thousands of bigots would have rejoiced in it. It would have been more dangerous to democracy, because undermining democracy from within, whereas the ostracism of Wilkes was an ostentatious blow from without. The "many-headed tyranny of an unscrupulous senate" is a more sinister thing when it rests on the fanaticism of thousands than when it is the mere subservience of time-servers to the sovereign; for if the principle were to be practically established that a man may be politically ostracised for theological heresy, the axe would be laid to the root of a greater thing than political privilege. What the Inquisition did for Spain, brainless bigotry might have begun to do for England. It had become clear that the law courts would not give any decision which struck at the freedom of the House of Commons to act as it pleased, our constitution being thus seen to lack the safeguard set up in the Supreme Court of the United States; though the House went through the form of arguing its case before the judges. The value of their decisions was seen when, after Bradlaugh took the oath before Mr Speaker Peel, he was allowed to sit in peace though he had been declared legally incapable of taking an oath. Evidently the principle of legality had little remaining validity. It may be, nevertheless, that the time is not yet come for the majority of Englishmen to realise fully how much was saved to their heritage by Bradlaugh's long stand against nefarious faith. The language of sincere conviction still blends with the language of cant in calling his opinions "peculiar" or worse; and half of those who stood beside him on the political issue were anxious in avowing their repudiation of his doctrines and his personality. But even in the few years between his struggle and his death there was a change; and to say that he has not yet had his full share of honour is only to say that his fame will be at its clearest in the larger air of a more enlightened day.