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 PAELIAIEHTAEY OATHS AID 
 AFFIRMATIONS. 
 
 SPEECH delivered at the City Branch of the 
 Church Defence Institution, 25 May, 1881, 
 by the Eight Hon. J. G. Hubbard, M.P. 
 
 I can imagine no subject more grave, or more entitled to 
 command the attention of this meeting, than that which I select 
 as my theme in opening this evening's session of the "City" 
 Church Defence Institution. 
 
 Charles Bradlaugh, returned by the electors of Northampton, 
 presented himself at the table of the House of Commons on the 
 2nd May, 1880, and claimed to be allowed to affirm in virtue 
 of the Evidence Amendment Acts, which enable persons " upon 
 whose conscience an Oath has no binding effect, to give evidence 
 in Courts of Justice upon an Affirmation." 
 
 This claim of Mr. Bradlaugh, referred to a Committee of the 
 House, was negatived, and thereupon Mr. Bradlaugh again 
 presented himself at the table of the House— this time— to take 
 and subscribe the Oath. He was "stayed from doing this, and 
 his claim to take the Oath was referred to another Committee, 
 which, on 16th June, 1880, decided "that the compliance by 
 Mr. Bradlaugh with the form used when an Oath is taken would 
 not be the taking of an Oath within the meaning of the statutes, 
 and that the House could and ought to prevent his going through 
 the form," but cons'uded by recommending " that he be per- 
 mitted to affirm, in order that his right to do so might be deter- 
 mined by the Law Courts," 
 
 Upon the discussion cf this Report, it was moved by Mr. 
 Labouchere that bo be permitted to affirm ; but the House, by 
 275 against 230, approved Sir Hardinge Giffard's amendment
 
 (on the 23rd June, 1880), " That, having regard to the anterior 
 proceedings, Mr. Bradlaugh be permitted neither to take the Oath 
 nor affirm." This Resolution was (on the 2nd July) set aside 
 by the motion carried by the Prime Minister (with a majority 
 of 54), " That every person claiming to be a person ' entitled to 
 affirm ' shall be permitted to affirm without question, but subject 
 to any liability by statute." 
 
 Thereupon Mr. Bradlaugh made and subscribed the affirmation 
 prescribed in The Parliamentary Oaths Act 1866 and 1868. 
 Having thereafter sat and voted, proceedings were instituted 
 against him for the recovery of the penalties which he had 
 incurred. The result of the proceedings was, that all the judges 
 before whom the case was argued, viz., Mr. Justice Matthew in 
 the Court of Queen's Bench, and in the Court of Appeal, Judges 
 Bramwell, Bagallay, Lush, Brett, and Cotton concurred in 
 deciding — " that Charles Bradlaugh was not a person by law 
 permitted to affirm," that his having given evidence on affirma- 
 tion in Courts of Justice had no relevance to his claim to make 
 the affirmation prescribed as a qualification for a Member of 
 Parliament, and that he had incurred the penalty attached to 
 the omission of the oath by any one who (being neither Quaker, 
 Moravian, nor Separatist) was not u a Quaker or other person 
 by law permitted to affirm." 
 
 During the course of these proceedings, and while his appeal 
 against this sentence was still pending, on April 1st, 1881, a 
 new writ for Northampton was issued on the ground that 
 Mr. Bradlaugh had vacated his seat by not taking the oath 
 required by Parliament. Thereupon Mr. Bradlaugh again 
 sought and obtained re-election. Presenting himself at the 
 table of the House on the 26 April, and proposing to take 
 the Oath, Sir Stafford Northcote interposed to prevent his 
 so doing, and in reply to cries of " order " the Speaker 
 declared " that having regard to the former resolutions of the 
 House, and to the Reports of the Committees in reference 
 to this matter, he could not withhold from the House the 
 opportunity of expressing its judgment upon the new conditions 
 under which the Oath is now proposed to be taken." 
 
 With this sanction Sir Stafford Northcote moved and carriec 1 

 
 by 208 to 175, u That Mr. Bradlaugh be not permitted to go 
 through the form of repeating the words ot the Oath." 
 
 Mr. Bradlauoh, entering the House and refusing to withdraw 
 in obedience to the direction of the Speaker or the House, was 
 forcibly removed. 
 
 On the 10th May, Mr. Bradlaugh again forcing his way into 
 the House, the House resolved, upon the motion of Sir Stafford 
 Northcote, " That the Serjeant-at-Arms do remove Mr. Brad- 
 lauHi from the House until he shall enframe not further to dis- 
 turb the proceedings of the House." 
 
 At this stage of the affair the Government proposed to termi- 
 nate the alleged difficulty by legislation, and on the 2nd May 
 the Attorney-General moved for leave to bring in a Bill to 
 amend the laws relating to Parliamentary Oaths ; the motion 
 was opposed, and to this day leave has not been given, and our 
 purpose is to consider what justification the Government have 
 for their proposal. The grounds alleged for this measure are 
 the following: — 
 
 1. It is to obviate a continued struggle between the 
 House and Mr. Bradlaugh ; 
 
 2. It is to avoid a denial of electoral rights to the 
 borough of Northampton ; 
 
 3. It is to extinguish the last remains of religious tests. 
 These primary objections are easily disposed of: 
 
 1. The struggle between Mr. Bradlaugh and the House is 
 ended by the irresistible order of the House, which excludes 
 him from its precincts, and until the expiry of this Parliament 
 will ensure immunity from his intrusion unless the Resolution 
 be rescinded. 
 
 2. Temporarily Northampton is represented by one member 
 instead of two, and for that grievance, if it be one, the electors 
 of Northampton have themselves alone to blame. Like every 
 other constituency they are unfettered in their choice of a repre- 
 sentative, but their elect must qualify himself for his seat by 
 assuming the responsibility of the office through one of the 
 forms appointed by law, and according to the sense in which 
 they were appointed. They knew at the last election, from the 
 resolutions of the House, taken in connexion with the decisions
 
 of the Law Courts, that Mr. Bradlaugh had been pronounced 
 incapable of taking either Oath or Affirmation, and their re- 
 electing him with that knowledge entailed the inevitable con- 
 sequence of his rejection. It would be supremely ridiculous to 
 gratify Northampton by affronting every respectable constituency 
 in the United Kingdom. 
 
 3. The Oath and Affirmation now obligatory upon every 
 member of the Legislature are not religious tests, distinguishing 
 between one religion and another ; they are the forms in which 
 allegiance to the Crown is plighted by men of all religions. 
 
 The Oath (to be taken by every Member at the table of the 
 house whilst a full House of Commons is sitting, with their 
 Speaker in his chair) runs thus — 
 
 I do swear that I will be faithful and bear true 
 
 allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, her heirs and suc- 
 cessors according to law, so help me God. 
 
 From this brief and simple form no one is excepted unless he 
 be a Quaker, Moravian, or Separatist, whose objection is founded 
 not on their denial of God but on their holding God and His 
 Name in such reverence that they decline to invoke Him even 
 for the most solemn and serious purpose, and require, that as 
 made in His presence, a full reliance should be placed on their 
 Affirmation, distinguished from the Oath by the substitution for 
 the words " do swear" of the words "do solemnly, sincerely, 
 and truly declare and affirm," and by the omission of the words 
 " so help me God" 
 
 As the existing Oath and Affirmation are not tests, neither are 
 they the remains of intolerance. Their wise and enlightened 
 purpose is to require from all admitted to the responsible duty 
 of legislating for " the advancement of God's glory, the good of 
 His church, and the safety, honour, and welfare of the sovereign," 
 that guarantee for the truth of their asseveration, which is con- 
 veyed in the recognition of a supreme Being — expressly invoked 
 in the Oath and emphatically recognised in the scrupulous 
 reverence which induced the omission of God's Name from the 
 solemn Affirmation. 
 
 The precise form of the proposed Oaths Amendment Bill is 
 not yet published, but the Attorney- General explains that it
 
 consists in an extension of the fourth section of the Act of I860, 
 so as to enable any one to make the affirmation now assigned to 
 u Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists." I do earnestly trust 
 that the descendants of the brave and God-fearing Quakers, 
 who, suffering for conscience' sake, won by their constancy the 
 privilege they sought, will resent this attempt to confound their 
 punctilious observance of God's written Word with the con- 
 temptuous rejection of God and His Word, and place Atheists 
 and Quakers in the same category. Yet this attempt has received 
 through the unsanctioned publication of a private letter the in- 
 cautious but powerful advocacy of the Lord Chancellor. Those 
 who, from their recollection of Roundell Palmer, respect and 
 esteem Lord Selborne, will readily accept his assurance of 
 horror at Mr. Bradlaugh's opinions, they will feel that nothing 
 but a sense of justice which he pleads as due alike to Christian 
 and Infidel would have evoked his advocacy of an odious cause, 
 and they will with him rejoice to find that this advocacy is war- 
 ranted neither by the facts of the case, by the law of England, 
 nor by the law of equity. 
 
 I proceed to establish this proposition. 
 
 " It does not appear to me," writes Lord Selborne, u just to 
 assert against one particular man (however bad he may be) a 
 power in the House of Commons to test the sincerity of an Oath 
 which he appears to take in the manner prescribed by law — by 
 an extrinsic evidence of his actual belief or disbelief." 
 
 The conclusion would be correct, if the premisses were correct, 
 but they are not correct. 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh did not propose to take the Oath in the manner 
 prescribed by law, for the law requires not only that certain 
 words be recited but that they be uttered in the sense and 
 intention of the Oath, and the sense and intention Mr. Bradlaugh 
 had unmistakeably disavowed. No " extrinsic evidence " was 
 required or alleged. Mr. Bradlaugh's original claim to affirm 
 as " a person upon whose conscience an Oath would have no 
 binding effect " was conclusive upon the point of his disbelief, 
 and had any doubt remained it would have been dispelled by 
 Mr. Bradlaugh's manifesto of the 20th May designing the Oath 
 as an idle and unmeaning form. This manifesto was in the
 
 hands of the Members of the House when Mr. Bradlaugh on 
 the 21st May presented himself to take the Oath. The power 
 of prevention then for the first time asserted by the House had 
 truly no precedent, but truly also " there was no precedent of a 
 Member coming to the table and intimating that an Oath would 
 not as an Oath be binding on his conscience." 
 
 That this unprecedented conduct of Mr. Bracllaugh justified 
 the intervention of the House may be maintained upon the 
 dictum of Mr. Gladstone, that " taking the Oath in connection 
 with the declaration that the words were of no value was not 
 taking the Oath at all," a conclusion accepted also by Sir Henry 
 James on the 21st June, 1880. 
 
 The contention that the House should have looked on com- 
 placently while Mr. Bradlaugh was reciting a form of words 
 which to him were no Oath at all, because there was no prece- 
 dent to guide them, is simply monstrous. No Englishmen could 
 calmly permit their earthly sovereign to be insulted, still less 
 could they tolerate an outrage to their heavenly King, and by 
 their acquiescence be accomplices in an act of defiant profanity. 
 " To take God's name in vain" is forbidden in the Decalogue, 
 and the supercession of the third commandment by a parliamen- 
 tary resolution would be but the first step towards the abroga- 
 tion of other commandments exceedingly irksome to those who 
 are aggrieved by the restraint of God's laws upon the indul- 
 gence of their vices and evil passions. 
 
 " Binding on his conscience " is a phrase constantly occur- 
 ring in immediate connection with Mr. Bradlaugh's disavowal 
 of a Supreme Being. A claim to having a conscience and a 
 disclaimer of God's existence are self-destructive propositions. 
 Conscience is the mind of man guided by God's spirit. The 
 voice, the warnings, the reproofs of conscience, are the voice, 
 the warnings, the reproofs of God. If there be no God, there 
 can be no conscience ; and if a man professing Atheism asserts 
 that he too has a conscience — for he feels and obeys its motions 
 his averment, if true, means this, that in him also, though he 
 disowns it, God's Spirit moves, for God left not himself without 
 a witness in the mind of any man made in His image. Intel- 
 lectual pride and persistent wilful sin may silence and expel the
 
 Spirit; but in the mind of man so deserted, as there is no God, 
 so there can be no conscience. 
 
 Lord Selborne's remark that " if it be wron£ to admit 
 unbelievers to share in civil government our laws ought to be 
 made practically efficacious fur that purpose, which every one 
 knows they are not," is equivalent to saying that because y<>u 
 cannot read men's hearts and test the sincerity of their promises 
 upon the most sacred and important matters you should abrogate 
 all the sanctions which lend to those promses their solemnity 
 and force, and through the appeal to a higher power secure the 
 fidelity of him who promises. The denial of any power other 
 and higher than himself cancels all responsibility and leaves a 
 man free (whatever he may have promised) to follow the course 
 which he deems most conducive to his personal advantage and 
 present enjoyment. 
 
 It has been alleged, that when Mr. Bradlaugh returned to the 
 House on the 2 (3th April from his second election, he appeared 
 and should have been treated as a new man. The history of 
 the case leads to a different opinion. Mr. Bradlaugh's identity 
 had not altered, nor had the House whom Mr. Bradlaugh in- 
 sulted been changed. This Parliament has been treated by him 
 with unexampled indignity ; and by this Parliament his offence 
 can never be condoned. The continuity of the parliamentary 
 incident, and the justification legally and morally of the House 
 to take the course it has pursued, are definitely established by 
 the Speaker's deliberate decision upon the 20th May. 
 
 Mr. Collins, newly returned from Knaresborough, presented 
 himself to take the Oath, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson interposed 
 with a view to questioning him. Mr. Collins took the Oath, 
 notwithstanding the interposition, with the approval of the 
 Speaker, who explained his reason in these words : — 
 
 " The lion. Member for Knaresborough presented himself at 
 the Table of the House to take the Oath of allegiance, as pre- 
 scribed by the Parliamentary Oaths x\ct, according to the usual 
 practice of this House. It had been reported to me, no doubt, 
 that the lion. Baronet, the Member for Carlisle, intended to 
 interpose, and I had determined that it was my duty, in case 
 any interposition was offered by the lion. Baronet, or by any
 
 other Member of this House, not to allow such interposition. I 
 wish to point out to the House that the case of the lion. Member 
 for Northampton was essentially different, that the lion. Member 
 himself raised the questions which demanded the consideration 
 of the House, and led to those proceedings with which the 
 House is familiar. Had he in the first instance presented him- 
 self to take the oath, as the hon. Member for Knaresborough 
 has done to-day, I should not have permitted any Member to 
 interpose, and I am persuaded in so doing T have taken the 
 course that is consistent with my duties to this House." 
 
 These well considered words must definitively close the dis- 
 cussion of this painful episode in our Parliamentary history — 
 expressing as they do the impartial judgment of an authority 
 from which there is no appeal. 
 
 In view of this authority it will be a relief to Lord Selborne 
 to find that he can retract his charge of injustice against the 
 House of Commons, who, fulfilling a public duty and acting 
 within their legal rights, have thus far maintained the dignity 
 of the Legislature and averted the perpetration of a flagrant 
 dishonour to Almighty God. 
 
 These remarks are based exclusively upon occurrences passing 
 within the House of Commons, but they should suffice wherever 
 known to excite a determined protest against any legislation 
 calculated to impair the serious and solemn responsibility which 
 should attend admission to the Imperial Legislature.
 

 
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