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Ethical Culture, little as they are given to speaking out on matters of creed, receive little support. It is often said, with idle malice, that Bradlaugh's adherents were mostly working-men because he was not qualified to appeal to educated people; but even if that were true, it would not explain how it comes about that other and better-educated rationalists have not set up an organisation of middle-class and upper-class people. The explanation is mainly economic. As a matter of fact, Bradlaugh had hundreds of
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admirers among the middle and even some among the upper classes; and in France and elsewhere he was popular among the
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as at home among the masses. But the open avowal of
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in Great Britain has always meant, and will long mean, for one thing, a certainty of pecuniary loss, and a certain measure of ostracism to professional men and men of business. Let a merchant, or doctor, or shopkeeper, declare himself an active Atheist, and he will find it appreciably harder to get customers or clients. A man of established position and personal popularity may fairly hold his own while avowing scepticism in general intercourse; but even he will incur calumny and loss if he takes trouble to spread his opinions. Men in a small way of business are almost sure to suffer heavily; and it is still no uncommon thing for clerks and others to lose their situations on the simple ground of so-called
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In the more bigoted districts the risk is overwhelming. A shopkeeper in Belfast told the present writer that when he joined the Secularists there, his business, formerly brisk, fell off so rapidly and so ruinously that in a short time he had to give it up. Nothing, apparently, can make the majority of Christians, who claim that theirs is a
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realise that to seek to injure an Atheist for his opinions is an unworthy course. Mere Nonconformity has incurred, and still incurs, a certain measure of penalty. But Nonconformists seem none the less ready to inflict it in turn on others. Obviously, the number of middle-class people who can defy these risks is small. It is only among workmen, employed in large numbers by capitalists who do not take the trouble to inquire about their opinions, that the avowal of Secularism is safe. Even workmen, of course, are sometimes made to suffer in pocket, and often from slander in their own class; but they suffer less than the trading and professional classes. Hence it is that straightforwardness and sincerity abound more among them. It is not that
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have from birth any occult virtues denied to the rich, but that the economic conditions make for sincerity and openness among wage-earners more than among earners of fees and profits. It is difficult to guess what John Mill meant when he said that the workers in this country, though they esteemed truthfulness, are not as a body truthful. If he meant that they are capable of garbling facts in their own interest in matters of industry, he was only charging them with what may be charged equally against shopkeepers, stockbrokers, commission agents, traders, doctors, lawyers, politicians, and clergymen. It belongs to the nature of the case that in the important matter of loyalty to conviction, the workers are by reason of circumstances superior to the other classes. The upper classes, though, like each of the others, they include candid and sincere men and women, are as much coerced by social as are the middle classes by commercial considerations. The fear of being charged with