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 The most important English freethinkers who appealed to the masses were Holyoake, the apostle of "secularism," and Bradlaugh. The great achievement for which Bradlaugh will be best remembered was the securing of the right of unbelievers to sit in Parliament without taking an oath (1888). The chief work to which Holyoake (who in his early years was imprisoned for blasphemy) contributed was the abolition of taxes on the Press, which seriously hampered the popular diffusion of knowledge. In England, censorship of the Press had long ago disappeared (above, p. 139); in most other European countries it was abolished in the course of the nineteenth century.

In the progressive countries of Europe there has been a marked growth of tolerance (I do not mean legal toleration, but the