It was in 1816, while employed as a tinplate worker, by the firm of
Matthews and Masterman, of Union Court, Holbom Hill, that he first
essayed public life. He was then twenty-six years of age. Before this
time he had read no work of Paine's; but the distress of that year
excited him to inquiry. Knowledge speedily prompted nim to action. He
wrote scraps for the newspapers, (principally the _Independent Whig_ and
the _Newt_) which scraps were all condemned: 'A half-employed Mechanic
is too violent;' this was the notice in answer to correspondents. He
annoyed Mr. Cobbett by a foolish acrostic, on the name of Hunt. He wrote
to Hunt himself, and paraded one night, two hours in front of his hotel,
in Covent Garden, before he could muster courage sufficient to ask the
waiter to take his effusion up. At this time he burned to see himself in
print; although, as he afterwards confessed, he was not able to write a
single sentence fit to meet the public eye.(2)
1. Repub. vol. xi. p. 101.
2. Repub. vol. xii. p. 2.
In 1817 _The Black Dwarf_ made its appearance, which was much more to
Carlile's taste than _Cobbett's Register_, but as the Habeas Corpus Act
was suspended, and Sidmouth had sent forth his Circular, there was a
damp among the newsvendors, and few would sell. This excited Carlile
with a desire to become a bookseller. The story of Lackington beginning
with a stall encouraged him. He resolved to set a good example in the
trade of political pamphlets. Finding the sale of the _Black Dwarf_ very
low, he borrowed L1 from his employer, and invested it in one hundred
_Dwarfs_, and on the 9th of March, 1817, he sallied forth from the
manufactory, with his stock in his handkerchief, to commence the trade
of bookselling. He traversed the metropolis in every direction to get
newsvendors to sell the _Dwarf_, and called every day to see how they
sold. He inquired also after _Cobbett's Register_, and Sherwin's
_Republican_, but finding that they did not want pushing, he took none
of those round. Indeed, he refused to avail himself of the profit he
could have made by taking _Cobbett's Register_ because it did not go far
enough.(1) He carried the _Dwarf_ round several weeks, walking thirty
miles a day, for a profit of fifteen and eighteen pence. At length an
information was lodged against the publisher, and Mr. Steill was
arrested. Carlile at once offered to take his place.
1. Repub, vol. xi. p. 102.
Mr. Wooler, however, arranged the matter, and Carlile's offer was
declined Mr. Sherwin, then a young man, (formerly keeper of South-well
Bridewell, Nottinghamshire,) editing the _Republican_, perceived
Carlile's value, and offered him the publishing of his paper, which he
accepted. Carlile guaranteed Mr. Sherwin against arrest, which left him
free to be bold without danger. The shop on which he now entered was
183, Fleet Street, which Mr. Cobbett afterwards occupied. Carlile's
first ideas of politics were, that neither writers, printers, nor
publishers were bold enough; and he now commenced to set the example he
thought wanted. 'I did not then see,' he said, in the decline of his
life, 'what my experience has since taught me that the greatest
despotism ruling the press is the popular ignorance. I made the
calculation, which has been an error embittering my whole public life,
that the entire people would assist and applaud an attempt, however
humble, to set the press free. I have found myself like our
parliamentary reformers idolizing a virtue of the imagination not yet
brought into existence. I correctly made the calculation of having to
pass through five or six years' imprisonment, to appease the angered
authorities of having defied their will; but I had not calculated that,
after having conquered the authorities, by self-sacrifice, the greater
difficulty would remain, of having to conquer the ignorance and vice of
the people, by still more painful sacrifices.'
His first step was a resistance to the attempt of the poet laureat,
Southey, to suppress the sale of his early Poem, 'Wat Tyler.' He sold
twenty-five thousand of that poem in 1817.
The second was a prosecution, defence, and imperfect verdict gained
against Thomas Jonathan Wooller.
The third was the reprint of the political works of Thomas Paine, by
himself and Mr. Sherwin.
The fourth was the trials and acquittals of William Hone, which Carlile
forced on, by reprinting those suppressed political squibs called 'The
Parodies on the Book of Common Prayer.'
The Parodies cost him eighteen weeks' imprisonment in the King's Bench
Prison, from which he was liberated with out trial, on the acquittals of
William Hone.
By the end of the year 1818 he had published the Theological Works of
Thomas Paine. The prosecutions instituted induced him to go on printing
other similar works, such as the 'Doubts of Infidels,' 'Watson Refuted,'
'Palmer's Principles of Nature,' 'The God of the Jews,' &c. &c. By the
month of October, 1819, he had at least six indictments pending against
him. Two of the indictments were tried from the 12th to the 16th of
October, and verdicts obtained against him. He was committed to the
King's Bench Prison, and on the 16th of November sentenced to fifteen
hundred pounds fine, and three years imprisonment in Dorchester Goal. In
the middle of the night he was handcuffed, and driven off between two
armed officers to Dorchester, a distance of one hundred and twenty
miles.
The first thing he did, at the close of his trial, was to print the 'Age
of Reason,' in twopenny sheets, as part of the report of the trial,
having taken care to read the whole in defence. Of these he sold more in
a month than of the volumes in a-year. For this publication, a
prosecution was instituted against Mrs. Carlile, but was dropped on her
declining the sale. She was not however long unmolested.
Under pretence of seizing for Mr. Carlile's fines, the sheriff, with a
writ of _levari facias_, from the Court of King's Bench, took possession
of his house, furniture, stock in trade, and closed the shop. It was
thus held, from the 16th of November to the 24th of December. Rent
became due and it was then emptied.
Under Mr. C.'s desire Mrs. Carlile renewed a business, in January 1820,
with what could be scraped together from the unseized wreck of their
property. In February she was arrested; but the first indictment failed
through a flaw in the verdict. She was immediately proceeded against by
the Attorney-General, and became her husband's fellow-prisoner in
Dorchester Gaol in February 1821, after having done good service in the
shop for a-year.
Carlile's sister Mary Ann succeeded Mrs. Carlile in the management of
the business, but was also immediately prosecuted. The first indictment
failed in this case, by the honesty of one of the jurymen. In the second
the judge (Best) suppressed the defence. By the month of November, 1821,
his sister was also a prisoner in Dorchester Gaol, and under a fine of
five hundred pounds.
In the course of the year, 1821, a new association had been formed,
called the "Constitutional Association." It asked for subscription to
pay the expenses of prosecuting the assistants of his business. Six
thousand pounds were subscribed, and the Duke of Wellington saw fit to
put his name with his money, at the head of the list. Carlile's sister's
trial was the first check the Association received. The unsuccessful
prosecution of Thomas Dolby, the second. Then came a troop of assistants
to the encounter: to wit, Susanna Wright, George Beer, John Barkley,
Humphrey Boyle, Joseph Rhodes, William Holmes, and John Jones. All
these, save Jones, sustained terms of imprisonment, from six months to
two years; but they succeeded in breaking down the "Constitutional
Association."
Then came James Watson and William Tunbridge, both meeting imprisonment.
In the month of February, 1822, Mrs. Wright being then in possession of
the house, the very week that Mr. Peel had taken possession of the Home
Office, a second seizure was made of the house and stock of 55, Fleet
Street, and the house finally wrested from Carlile. This was done on the
pretence of satisfying the fines; but neither from this nor the former
seizure was a farthing allowed in the abatement of the fines, and
Carlile was detained in Dorchester Gaol to the end of the sixth year,
three years' imprisonment having been taken in lieu of the fines.
Joseph Trust was the only person prosecuted in 1823, and the Lord Chief
Justice Abbott intimated that enough had been done; but in May, 1824,
there came a new rage for prosecutions from the government, when Charles
Sanderson, Thomas Jefferies, William Haley, William Campion, Richard
Hassell. Michael O'Connor, William Cochrane, John Clarke, John
Christopher, and Thomas Riley Perry, were severally arrested, and the
last nine imprisoned, through various periods, from six months to three
years.
Two years Mrs. Carlile was kept in Dorchester Gaol: so was his sister,
a-year having been taken for her L500 fine. After this it was reported,
that the Cabinet, had, in council acknowledged Carlile invincible in the
course of moral resistance which he had taken, and no more persons were
arrested from his shop, while no one of his publications had been
suppressed.
His imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol was in some respects, severe. The
first magisterial order was that he should be led into the open air only
as a caged animal, to be exhibited to the gaze of the passing curious,
half an hour each day, or an hour every other day, or as the gaoler
might be pleased. This, and similar orders caused him to pass two years
and a-half in his chamber, without going into the open air.
When he came to trial in 1819, he had no clear understanding of the
subject of his defence, it was compiled from the pleadings of others for
toleration and free discussion. In this mental state he entered
Dorchester Gaol. He had taken the impression from the hint of an aged
political friend, that all the evils of mankind rooted in the
superstition and the consequent priestcraft practised upon them, that he
resolved to devote the solitude of his imprisonment to the study of
religious mysteries, and fearlessly and faithfully to make the
revelation for the common good of man. His defence, on his first three
days' trial, alarmed the Emperor Alexander of Russia, who issued an
Ukase, forbidding any printed report of it from being brought into his
territory. His first defence was much interrupted; his second was
entirely suppressed.
When he was liberated from Dorchester Gaol, in 1826, the freedom of the
press was complete, as far as government or aristocratical societies
were concerned. His shopmen were detained to complete their sentences of
three years' imprisonment, not much to the political merit of Sir Robert
Peel, who gave up not a day in either case, save that of a bad young
man, who had unprincipledly intruded himself among them. To honest
opposition he yielded nothing, but was, in every sense of the character,
an inveterate persecutor.
Though the freedom of the press was accomplished in 1829, something more
remained to be accomplished, which was the freedom of public oral
discussion; and on this object Carlile set his thoughts.
When Mr. Taylor was prosecuted and imprisoned, in 1828, Carlile was
called into action in his new character. He immediately converted a
large room in his house, 62, Fleet Street, into a Sunday School of Free
Discussion, and introduced a public debate on all useful political
subjects on the Sabbath Day. This had not been done before by any one
anywhere. By a subscription he got Mr. Taylor well supported in prison,
and on his liberation accompanied him to Cambridge, as an infidel
Missionary, to challenge the University to public discussion. They
passed from Cambridge to Liverpool, presenting a printed circular of
public challenge to every priest on the road. One only accepted it, the
Rev. David Thom, of Liverpool, who quailed at the very onset, and
withdrew. This was done in 1829.
In 1830 he sought a larger sphere of action for public meetings than his
own dwelling-house, and engaged a series of buildings and theatres
called the Rotunda, in Blackfriars Road. Soon after he gained possession
of this building, the second French Revolution broke out, which gave a
new impetus to political feeling in London. Giving to every man liberty
of speech in his theatres, the Rotunda was attended bv all the public
men of note out of parliament; and the public meetings there became so
frequent and so large, that the government took alarm, and the prophecy
of the day was, that the Rotunda would cause a Revolution in England.
While the Tories remained in office, they did not molest him, but the
Whigs no sooner took office, than they very foully made war on him, and
caused him thirty-two months imprisonment in the Compter of the City of
London.
The Rev. Robert Taylor was also prosecuted under the Whig
Administration, and filled out two years in Horse-monger Lane Gaol, for
his preaching in the Rotunda.
In 1834 and 1835, Carlile passed ten weeks in the same Compter, for
resistance to the payment of Church Rates; making his total of
imprisonment nine years and four months.
These church-rates were assessed upon his house, 62, Fleet Street. When
his goods were seized, he retaliated by taking out the two front windows
and placing therein two effigies--one of a bishop, and the other of a
distraining officer. After a time, he added a devil, who was linked
arm-in-arm with his Grace. Such crowds were attracted, that public
business was impeded. Eventually, Mr. Carole was indicted for a
nuisance. The court was less virulent than before: it was externally
courteous. He defended himself in a speech of coherency and good sense,
but was found guilty, and ultimately sentenced to pay a fine of 40s. to
the King, and give sureties in L200 (himself in L100, and two others in
L50 each), for good behaviour for three years. The spirit in which he
met this award was characteristic of the veteran martyr.
'They have sentenced me' said he, 'to three years' imprisonment. So much
for their leniency! It is a mockery to say that I may, if I please,
purchase my liberty. I cannot do it. I shall have more liberty in prison
than in walking the streets at the discretion of one set of men, and at
the hazard of L100 penalty to two others. It is a case in which I will
not interfere to abate one hour of the imprisonment. When the gates are
open to me I will walk out, but I will not pay or do anything to procure
release.'(1) And he wrote to Mr. Cope, keeper of Newgate, to desire that
he would get him removed to the Compter, and he quietly announced next
week that he had been removed to his old room.'
1. _A Scourge_, No. 12, pp. 89, 90.
Before sentence he made a deposition in court. As this was his last
imprisonment, I quote the concluding words of this deposition. They show
the temper in which the dying lion shook his mane.
'And deponent further saith, that in case the court should think a
penalty necessary, this deponent has no other property from which he can
pay a fine than printed books; and from the political business in which
this deponent is involved, he cannot reasonably ask any other person to
become his sureties, that his future proceedings may not be construed
into political offence; not but that this deponent is anxious to live in
peace and amity with all men, _but that there do exist many political
and moral evils which this deponent will, through life, labour to
abate.'_
This was the tone of his entire career. When in 1819, a law was proposed
by Castlereagh, to inflict banishment upon him for a second offence, he
wrote:--'In some cases, this power of banishment might amount to a
deprivation of life; but for my own part, I think nothing of it, and
hope to show, that it will not have the least tendency to change my
course.'(2) 'Indictments and warrants have never affected me--they have
been the life of my business.' He was present at the 'Manchester
massacre,' and escaped narrowly falling a victim, first to the soldiers,
and afterwards to the police, who let him pass, not knowing his name.
The danger he ran on all hands was imminent. On the morning when the
government chose to reveal the Thistlewood plot of their own concoction,
they arranged that their agents of the vice society should arrest Mrs.
Carlile,(3) to associate, as far as possible, his family in that
proceeding. Not only were parties inculpated without fault, but tried
without defence. The humble advocate was bullied into the abandonment of
his political client, and the powerful one was bribed. Mr. Cooper was
frowned into silence and threatened. Mr. Cross obtained a silk gown for
his _defence_ of Brandreth and Mr. Justice Best won the same distinction
by his _defence_ of Despard. So virulent were the rulers of that day
that Peel refused to liberate Mrs. Carlile after thirteen months
detention, though in daily expectation of accouchment which might occur
at an hour when assistance could not be had.(4) In addressing Mrs.
Gaunt, of Manchester, Mrs. Carlile observed in reference to the position
in which she was placed, 'My spirits and strength are good, or I should
have everything to dread in childbirth in such a place as this
[Dorchester Gaol], where humanity is a marketable commodity, and where,
what is still worse, I am one of those excluded from the market at any
price.(5)
1. A Scourge, No. 12, p. 90.
2. Republican, vol. ii. p. 5. Idem. p. 60.
3. Republican, vol. ii. p 254.
4. Republican, vol. v. p. 301.
5. Republican, vol. v. p. 608.
Of the risks Carlile ran from espionage, he has detailed many instances.
I quote one passage in his own words. He is speaking of Paine:--'I
revere,' says he, 'the name of Thomas Paine; the image of his honest
countenance is constantly before me. I have him in bust [now in
possession of Mr. Watson], in whole length figure; for which I may thank
the late government of Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Sidmouth, who
appointed Edwards the spy to this task, he, who when he failed to get me
hanged, caused the death of Thistlewood, and others. Edwards occupied
_six months_ of 1819, in excuse of making this statute to keep at my
heels. He followed me closely until I was in Dorchester Gaol. There I
escaped him; and then, immediately, he was put on other game with which
he succeeded. The very men that he hanged, he brought about me in the
King's Bench Prison, offering me their lives, if I would use them for
any purpose. I had then, a clear sighted purpose of my own, which these
men did not understand. At that age I should have had no objection to a
little physical force fighting; but I was sober enough to see its
impracticability, and thus I frustrated the acquaintance, which
Liverpool, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, and their spy Edwards, wished to bring
me into with Jack Ketch. I found Edwards a tradesman in Fleet Street, as
an artist, before I got there, and I so became his next door neighbour.
He succeeded, in occupation, the shop which William Hone had, and where
he published his famous Parodies. When I came to No. 55, in January,
1819, Edwards had been two years at No. 56, so I had little ground to
suspect his spyship.
I had known him as a customer through that time. He pleaded that his
father had been an old politician: nor was my suspicion excited by his
having a brother in the Hatton Garden Police. When I entered upon No.
55, he pleaded what a great convenience it would be to him in business,
if I would allow him to lodge in my house, as he had a shop next door
without a dwelling-house. I had almost yielded; but the shrewd
suspicions of Mrs. Carlile, re-acting upon his villainous countenance,
put it aside. He was then placed in an upper story lodging of the
opposite house, (where was born my statue of Paine) in the under part of
which was placed a man of the name of John Carlisle, a bookseller, to
oppose me, in conflict with another class of publications. This was the
work of the government, superintended by their agent, John Reeve.
Edwards did not scruple to talk to me about meeting the Archbishop of
Canterbury in Windsor Castle; but left me to infer, that it was about
his art as a modeller, not as a spy. I can now see, that he was placed
in Hone's old shop, to keep out a political publisher; and I have since
divined a deep history of the spy system of that time, which I never
feared, because I had nothing morally to fear in what I purposed to do.
One, I have marked, as an old acquaintance, a man connected with the
Stamp Office, very regularly at my lectures for years. From, or in the
house of John Carlisle, by Edwards, was concocted the plot called the
Cato Street Conspiracy. In beginning, middle, and end, that was wholly
the work of Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth, with Edwards as an agent.
After the finish of that political tragedy, Edwards was provided for in
one of the colonies, it has been said, the Cape of Good Hope. John
Carlisle dwindled into great poverty in Fleet Street, was made permanent
constable, and at last very strangely got his house burned down, just
after I came triumphantly from six years' imprisonment in Dorchester
Gaol, and established myself _ruinously_ in splendid No. 62.'(1)
Yet it was in such times and amid such dangers that Carlile formed the
resolution, and adhered to it to the day of his death, never to cease
any publication so long as any prosecution or intimidation menaced it.
Placing himself always where danger was to be braved, his position was
from the first prominent, and attracted to him many leading political
characters, who saw in him a vicarious sacrifice for that freedom they
were willing to enjoy, if it could be done without paying so troublesome
a price as the ministers of that day charged for it. But, as the danger
grew imminent, they began to pull him back and condemn his open
conduct.(2) Cobbett at first said, 'You have done your duty bravely, Mr.
Carlile; if every one had done like you, it would have been all very
well.'(3) But afterwards he censured him without measure. Wooler, whom
Carlile offered to save, said that the publication of Paine's works
would put a stop to all the political writings of the day. But whatever
ground there appeared for these fears, a wise publicist should have
given Carlile all possible support, since he _ought to have_ triumphed
in his course. Major Cartwright deprecated the republication of Paine's
works as mischievous, to flying in the face of Juries; that when a jury
had once declared these works to be libels, the very _errors_ of that
jury ought to be respected. Yet against this dictum of the influential
veteran, Reformer, Carlile contended. He encountered greater obstacles
among such friends than among his enemies. It requires more courage to
fight against friends than against foes. Carlile illustrated the remark
of Mr. Miall, that 'martyrdom in the past tense is madness in the
present.' Then the Reformers Degan to call themselves 'Christian
Reformers,' 'Religious Reformers,' and by other safe conventional names
to distinguish themselves from 'Carlile and his party.'(4) No man should
lightly compromise his party by a dangerous step. Carlile is not
amenable to blame on this account. He took a necessary step for general
progress, and his triumph justified his penetration. A weaker man than
Carlile would not have been justified in the course which he took, as a
weaker man would have failed. But Carlile was a Buonarotti.
1. Christian Warrior, pp. 27-28.
2. Repub. vol. ii. p. 257.
3. Repub. v. pp 283-4
4. Christian Warrior, p. 10
Such was the difficulty of obtaining the forbidden books, in which he
set the example of dealing, that twelve guineas were offered for twelve
copies of the Age of Reason,(1) and L5 for five suppressed twopenny
Tracts.(2) In order to destroy a trade which they could not intimidate,
the Government arrested his shopmen with a rapidity intended to exhaust
them. To defeat this intention, books were sold through an aperture; so
that the buyer was unable to identify the seller.(3) Afterwards they
were sold by clockwork.(4) On a dial was written the name of every
publication for sale. The purchaser entered, and turned the hand of the
dial to the book he wanted, which, on depositing his money, dropped down
before him without the necessity of any one speaking. The Vice and
Constitutional Associations we both defied and defeated; notwithstanding
that the honoured name of Wilberforce was found on the list of the
members of one of the societies, and that of the Duke of Wellington
headed the other. The circulation of Carlile's books were quadrupled,
and a cheering crowd around his shop windows perpetually testified their
approval of his courage, and at public dinners in the provinces, the
health was drank of 'Carlile's invisible shopman.' Martyrdom, he said,
was contagious, and could he keep it up, he should glory in a perpetual
sessions at the Old Bailey. The result of his course he expresses with
honourable exultation. 'In this country the Age of Reason was spellbound
for twenty years, with the exception of a few copies put forth by Daniel
Isaac Eaton. From December, 1818, to December, 1822, I had sent into
circulation near 20,000 copies. Let corruption rub out that if she can,
as Mr. Cobbett said his 40,000 Registers.' By the month of June, 1824,
in the fifth year of his imprisonment, his calculation was verified; the
press was freed, and the Government, who had beaten Napoleon in a
physical conflict, was beaten by Carlile in a moral struggle--so
impotent is power to overcome the right, when brave men champion the
right.
1. Repub. vol. ii. p. 183.
2. Christian Warrior, p. 29.
3. Repub. vol. v. p. 56.
4. Repub. vol. v. p. 264.
Carlile was liberally supported, and found powerful friends. The third
and fourth years of his imprisonment produced subscriptions to the
amount of L500 per year, and for a long period his profits over the
counter were L50 per week. An idea of his occasional business may be
formed from the circumstance that once when a trial was pending, Mrs.
Carlile took L600 in the shop in one week. When he came from Dorchester
Gaol one friend lent him L1,000 to extend his business. But he got out
of money as fast as it came, and his ambition leading him to give the
greatest possible effect to his advocacy, he contracted liabilities at
62, Fleet Street, which embarrassed him. Indeed, continually torn from
his home by government prosecutions, he had ill opportunities of
maintaining business habits. The latter part of his life was passed in
the vicissitudes and anxieties of fallen fortunes.