I beg your pardon, sir, and that of the House too, if in this warmth there seems to lack respect for its dignity.

And as I shall have, if your decision be against me, to come to that table when your decision is given, I beg you, before the step is taken in which we may both lose our dignity--mine is not much, but yours is that of the Commons of England--I beg you, before the gauntlet is fatally thrown, I beg you, not in any sort of menace, not in any sort of boast, but as one man against six hundred, to give me that justice which on the other side of this hall the judges would give me, were I pleading there before them." But no eloquence, no plea for justice, could stay the tide of Tory and religious bigotry, and the House voted that he should not be allowed to take the oath.

Summoned to the table to hear the decision communicated by the Speaker, he answered that decision with the words firmly spoken: "I respectfully refuse to obey the order of the House, because that order was against the law." The Speaker appealed to the House for direction, and on a division--during which the Speaker and Charles Bradlaugh were left together in the chamber--the House ordered the enforcement of Mr.Bradlaugh's withdrawal.

Once more the order is given, once more the refusal made, and then the Serjeant-at-Arms was bidden to remove him.

Strange was the scene as little Captain Cosset walked up to the member of Herculean proportions, and men wondered how the order would be enforced; but Charles Bradlaugh was not the man to make a vulgar brawl, and the light touch on his shoulder was to him the touch of an authority he admitted and to which he bowed.