BKADLAUGH BONNEE
BR.EKSTAD
In 1866 he founded the National Secular
Society, which nourished greatly under his
care. In 1868-69 Mr. Bradlaugh s defence
of the National Reformer against the Law
Officers of the Crown under two Govern
ments compelled the repeal of the odious
Security Laws, and so placed cheap demo
cratic and heretical periodical publications
on an equal footing with more highly priced
ones. In 1868 he first contested Northamp
ton, for which he was returned in 1880,
though, on account of the House refusing
to permit him to take the oath, it was only
in 1886, after an heroic struggle and
repeated re-election, that he took his seat.
He lectured three times in the United
States (1873, 1874, and 1875), and in 1889
paid a memorable visit to India, where his
services to the people were many and great.
In 1876 he was prosecuted with Mrs.
Besant for publishing a Malthusian work
and convicted, but he successfully appealed
against the sentence. In 1888 he forced
through Parliament a Bill giving the right
to affirm instead of taking an oath, and
in the following year he introduced a Bill
for the Abolition of the Blasphemy Laws.
Mr. Bradlaugh preferred tho title of Atheist
("but I do not say there is no God," he
explained), and his vast energy and power
ful oratory were the main influence in
emancipating the workers of Britain.
D. Jan. 30, 1891.
BRADLAUGH BONNER, Hypatia,
writer, second daughter of Charles Brad- laugh. B. Mar. 31, 1858. Ed. private schools England and Paris, and London University. She qualified in chemistry and mathematics, and taught those sub jects at the Hall of Science evening classes from 1880 to 1888. Prior to 1878 and again in 1888 she acted as secretary to her father, and she worked on the staff of the National Reformer. She married Arthur Bonner in 1885. Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner is an Atheist, like her father, and has rendered great service to Eationalism by her lectures and writings. Her chief work, written in collaboration with Mr. J. M.
103
Robertson, is her Life of her father (2 vols.,.
1894).
BRADLEY, Francis Herbert, philo sopher. B. 1846. Ed. Cheltenham and Marlborough. He is a Fellow of Merton- College, Oxford, and one of the principal English philosophical writers of our time. In his best known work, Appearance and Reality (1893), Mr. Bradley rejects em phatically the doctrine of a personal God " a person is finite and meaningless," he- says and, in regard to immortality, he thinks that " the balance of hostile proba bility seems so large that the fraction on the other side to my mind is not consider able " (pp. 507 and 532-33). He declares, that " there is but one Reality," that this is spiritual and inscrutable, and that this Absolute is " not the God of religion " (p. 447). In his later Essays on Truth and Reality (1914) the teaching is un altered. God is merely " the Supreme Will for good which is experienced within finite minds " (p. 435), and Christianity is. rebuked by the dictum that " any but an inferior religion must condemn all self- seeking after death " (p. 459).
BR^EKSTAD, Hans Lien, art jour nalist. B. (Norway) Sep. 7, 1845. Son of a Norse shipmaster, Brsekstad came to- England in 1877, and, after some years in a bookseller s shop, he adopted journalism and became assistant-editor of Black and White. He translated into English various works by Bjornson and other Scandinavian and Danish writers. An enthusiastic champion of the independence of Norway, his house in London was for many years a patriotic centre, and from 1909 to 1915 he was Norwegian Vice-Consul. In 1914 the Norwegian Storthing voted him a pension of 300 a year. Braekstad was an Agnostic, an active Director for many years of the Rationalist Press Association,, and a zealous worker in the popularization of art, letters, and international good feeling. D. June 8, 1915. 104
