Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/168

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154
EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT.

there he did not neglect his opportunities. He studied the grievances of the Irish people on the spot, and hence his never-failing sympathy with that much-enduring race. By his hand was drawn up the famous manifesto of the Irish Republic which ushered in the Fenian agitation. In 1853, through the death of an aunt, he inherited a small sum of money, out of which he purchased his discharge, and returned to London, quitting the regiment with a "very good character" from his colonel, who all along treated him with marked consideration. He was soon lucky enough to find employment in the chambers of a solicitor named Rogers, a liberal-minded man, who was proof against all the shafts of anonymous bigotry which were showered on him as the harborer of Iconoclast. In this office Mr. Bradlaugh acquired a knowledge of legal principles and procedure of which the most eminent counsel at the English bar might well be proud. He again began to lecture in various metropolitan free-thought institutions, more particularly the Hall of Science, City Road, of which my friend, Mr. Evelyn Jerrold, has recently given an account so just and graphic.

In 1855 Mr. Bradlaugh had his first encounter with the police authorities in regard to the right of public meeting in Hyde Park. He carried his point, and was publicly thanked by the Royal Commission of Inquiry for the value of the evidence given by him on the occasion. In 1858 Mr. Edward Truelove, the well-known and personally estimable free-thought publisher, was arrested for issuing the pamphlet, "Is Tyrannicide Justifiable?" while Simon Bernard was at the same time incarcerated, at the instance of the French Gov-