BRADLAUGH AGAIN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 1, 25 April 1884, Page 9

BRADLAUGH AGAIN.

Mb. Bbadlaugh baa beea agaia a source of trouble to the House of Commons, and particularly to the Government. Though armed with ■ an authorisation, which is the fourth of a series, from the electors of Northampton, he was again excluded. The attitude of the House of Commons simply reduces itself to this, that it is master of its own business and its own proceedings within the House, and, further, perhaps, that within the precincts of the House, it is above the law. Therefore, the majority consider themselves justified in ostracising a man who first declared, with ostentatious bravado, that an oath had no meaning for him, and afterwards attempted to take that oath, in the face of the House, as it were by violence. The position of the Government is a singular and not a very happy one. Mr. Gladstone's casuistry is exhausted in indirect arguments for Mr. Bradlaugh's admission. The result of this is that a great section of the public think that Mr. Gladstone and his Government are aiders and abettors of Mr. Bradlaugh. This is not directly the fact. Probably there is no man in the House who has a greater abhorrence of Mr. Bradlaugh than the Premier, and possibly the main motive actuating Mr. Gladstone in advocating Mr. Bradlaugh's admission is that by making the man a Peri at the door of the Bouee he would be playing into his vulgar hand, and that there is given to him that 'amount of advertisement which he wants, and without which he would be nobody.— Dublin Freeman.