Every movement, every cause, has its ebbs and flows; there seems to be only a certain amount of activity possible to men in the mass, and now it flows in one direction, now in another. The Freethought movement, when Mrs Besant came into it, had for some years been slowly but surely increasing in activity and prosperity. The National Secular Society, although not so complete an organisation as it was soon to become, was nevertheless to be found in all the great centres of population. The _National Reformer_, the representative organ of Freethought, in the five years which lay between 1867 and 1872 had nearly doubled its circulation, and was read in almost all parts of the world. It was sent to the three presidencies of India, the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, the West Indies, Egypt, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Germany. On its staff there were several very able writers, and if it was not exactly a profitable property, it at least paid its way.
People have sometimes deliberately asserted that Mrs Besant's desertion and Mr Bradlaugh's death inflicted an irremediable injury on the cause of Freethought, but this is merely an assertion, and one which will not bear a moment's investigation. Happily for the human race, the growth of public opinion does not depend upon any single man or woman, however able, however energetic, he or she may be. The loss of a leader amongst men may for a moment check the onward movement, and it may be there is even a temporary reaction--a swing back--but never in the history of the world has the loss of one of its pioneers proved an "irremediable injury" to the cause of progress.
If indeed it should be thought, and it is a proposition that I am not in a position to deny, that this is a moment of ebb in the tide of Freethought, the fact would only be in harmony with the general tendency of the times, and would prove nothing against the ultimate acceptance of the truths of Materialism. The growth of population in our great cities has caused the evils of poverty to press more closely upon general attention, and the public energy is directed towards seeking a solution for these immediately important problems, rather than for those more abstract theorems arising out of religious speculation.