CHAPTER II. THE PUBLISHER AND THE PRISONER
CHAPTER III. THE EDITOR AND THE ATHEIST
CHAPTER IV. HIS DEATH AND CHARACTER
ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL
PREFACE
When I first entered London, one Saturday evening in 1842, I was not
known personally to half a dozen persons in it. On reaching the office
of the Oracle of Reason, I found an invitation (it was the first I
received in the metropolis) from Richard Carlile to take tea with him on
the next afternoon at the Hall of Science. There was no name known to me
in London from whom an invitation could have come which I should have
thought a greater honour. The conversation at table was directed to
advising me as to my defence at my coming trial. He requested me to hear
his evening lecture, which he devoted to the policy of sceptical defence
which he thought most effectual. At the conclusion, he called upon me
for my coincidence or dissent. I stated some objections which I
entertained to his scientifico-religious views with diffidence but
distinctness. The compliments which he paid me were the first words of
praise which I remember to have trusted. Coming from a master in our
Israel, they inspired me with a confidence new to me. I did not conceal
my ambition to merit his approval. On my trial at Gloucester, he watched
by my side fourteen hours, and handed me notes for my guidance. After my
conviction, he brought me my first provisions with his own hand. He
honoured me with a public letter during my imprisonment, and uttered
generous words in my vindication, when those in whose ranks I had fought
and fallen were silent. It was my destiny, on my liberation, to be able
to pour my gratitude only over his grave. In his Life and Character,
here attempted, I am proud to confess that 1 have written with affection
for his memory, but I have also, written with impartiality--for he who
encouraged me to maintain the truth at my own expense, would be quite
willing, if need be, that I maintain it at his.
G. J. H.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF RICHARD CARLILE
CHAPTER I. HIS PARENTAGE, APPRENTICESHIP, AND MARRIAGE
I have accomplished the liberty of the press in England, and oral
discussion is now free. Nothing remains to be reformed but the ignorance
and vices of the people, whose ignorance cannot be removed, while their
bodies are starved and their church remains a theatre of idolatry and
superstition.' These were the proud and wise words uttered in the last
periodical edited by Richard Carlile. They are the history of his
life--the eulogy of his career--and the witnesses or his political and
religious penetration.
Of Carlile's family, I can gather little beyond this, that his father
had some reputation as an arithmetician. He published a collection of
arithmetical, mathematical, and algebraical questions. His talent was
individual though mediocre. He put his questions into verse and
intermixed them with paradox. His career was various and brief: first a
shoemaker, he aspired to be and became an exciseman. Like Burns, his
habits suffered by his profession, and he often fell into intoxication.
Of his own accord he retired from the Excise, became successively
schoolmaster and soldier, and died at the age of 34, no person's enemy
but his own.(1) Carlile's mother was now left a widow, with three infant
children. For several years she was in a flourishing business, but it
began to decay with the pressure of the times, about 1800, and she was
afflicted alternately with sickness and poverty. Thence to the time of
her death, she was assisted by Carlile, who was her only son. As a woman
she was virtuous, as a mother kind and indulgent. She died at the age of
60. It is an evidence of Carlile's honourable notions of duty, that out
of thirty shillings per week, which he earned as a journeyman, he
supported his wife and several children, and spared an offering for the
support of his mother and sisters; and it deserves to be mentioned in
his behalf, that the first dissatisfaction he experienced in married
life arose from the opposition which he received in the discharge of
these generous duties.
1. Carlile to Lord Brougham, Gauntlet, No. 8, p. 113. 1833.
Richard Carlile was born in Ashburton, Devonshire, December 8, 1790. He
was but four years of age at the death of his father. He early felt his
father's ambition. Before he was twelve years of age, he determined to
be something in the world, and afterwards his unexpressed ideas were
ever at work and accumulating. His dreams by night, and his thoughts by
day, all worked one way, and vaguely contemplated some sort of
purification of the church.(1) But how far he was from understanding the
part he was to play is clear from the circumstance, that on the 5th of
November, he used to gather faggots to burn 'Old Tom Paine,' instead of
Guy Fawkes; and it was not till 1810, when he was twenty years old, that
he first saw in the hands of an old man in Exeter, a copy of the Rights
of Man.(2)
Carlile received all the education that village free schools could
afford. The educational routine where his own Gifford had before been a
scholar, was confined to writing, arithmetic, and sufficient Latin to
read a physician's prescription. His first place seems to have been with
Mr. Lee, chemist and druggist, in Exeter, but, being set to do things
which he deemed derogatory to one who was able to read a physician's
prescription, he left the shop after four months' service. Being too
much of a man to go to school again, he lived idly three months, amusing
himself with colouring pictures to sell in his mother's shop. His
mother's principal wholesale customers were the firm of Gifford and Co.,
which consisted of the brothers of that Attorney-General who had such
extensive dealings with the son afterwards, in a different line. At the
pressing wish of Carlile's mother, he was apprenticed to a business
which he never liked, that of tinplate working, and, like Bunyan, he
became a tinman. He served seven years and three months to a Mr.
Cummings, whom he has described as a hard master, as one who considered
five or six hours for sleep all the recreation necessary for his youths.
Carlile had no knowledge then of the 'Rights of Man,' but he betrayed
some knowledge of the rights of apprentices,(3) and his impatience under
injustice was then manifested, as his term of service was one series of
conspiracies, rebellions, and battles. On being relieved from this worse
than seven years' imprisonment, he resolved to follow that business no
longer than he should be compelled. His ambition then was to get his
living by his pen.
1. Gauntlet, No. 8, p. 113.
2. Repub. vol. 5, p. 134.
3. Republican, vol. ii. pp. 226-7.
The office of an exciseman, which was offered him, he refused,
remembering the fate of his father, and continued to follow his
business, as journeyman tinman, in various parts of the country, and in
London, where he first arrived in February, 1811. He returned to Exeter
the same year. In 1813, we find him in London again, working at Benham
and Sons, Blackfriars Road. A short sojourn in Gosport, in the previous
year 1812, led to his acquaintance with the person who became, after two
months' courtship, Mrs. Carlile. He was at that time twenty-three, and
she thirty years of age. Mrs. Carlile was not without accomplishments as
to personal appearance; and temper excepted, was not without most of the
qualifications necessary to a good tradesman's wife.(1)
Mrs. Carlile had talents for business, which were of the greatest value
to her husband in the course of his career. He, bent on propagandism,
never paid that attention to the details of trade which was necessary to
keep a business together. But their difference in education, in age, in
intellectual aspiration and their opponency in disposition, early
converted their union into an intimacy tolerated rather than prized, and
entire separation ensued twenty years after. Peculiar conduct on the
part of relatives was alleged as promotive of these results, but this
conduct I do not particularise as the explanation of the parties
concerned is not before me, and cannot now be obtained. Of personal
causes, temper seems to have been a chief one. Writing to Mr. Hunt, in
1822, Carlile said, 'Knowing Mrs. C. to possess a _warm_ temper, as I
do, I wonder,' etc.(2) In 1819, the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Carlile
was arranged to take place, so soon as he had the means of making a
sufficient settlement for her comfort: it was not, however, till 1832,
when the annuity of L50, bequeathed him by Mr. Morrison, of Chelsea,
cleared itself of legacy duty, that he was able to provide for her. Then
it was that they parted, she taking all the household furniture and L100
worth of books.
1. A Scourge, p. 18. 1834.
2. Rep. vol. vi. p. 15.
His elder sister remained a violent Methodist, and was never reconciled
to his anti-religious labours. Mrs. Carlile, as well as his younger
sister, who both incurred imprisonment on his account, did it rather
from natural resentment at the injustice practised for his destruction,
than from any sympathy with his opinions. But, in this respect, they
behaved with a bravery worthy of their name; they resolutely refused to
compromise--the sister the brother, or the wife the husband, at all
risks to themselves. None of his family, save a first cousin,
countenanced his proceeding; he stood alone on his own hearth, as he
stood often alone in the world.