During Carlile's imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol, he edited the
_Republican_, a Weekly Journal, which he conducted through fourteen
volumes. Its circulation reached at one time as high as 15,000. He saw
that a work had to be done, and he prepared to do it; if he could not do
it so well as he could wish, he resolved to do it as well as he was
able. He offered his ardour in the public cause as an apology for the
want of a grammatical education. Drawn into authorship by the force of
events, he hardly knew in what grammatical accuracy consisted, till he
felt his own deficiency through the criticisms of his correspondents,
some of whom did not hesitate to tell him, that he was unfit for a
public writer. This state of things continued till the fourth volume of
the _Republican_, where he wisely resolved to put his prison hours to
educational uses.(1) But his editorial duties were his best education,
and this he admitted; 'I give,' said he, in 1825, 'a receipt to the
criticism of my friends upon my writings for the better part of the
knowledge that I now possess.'(2) Some of Carlile's correspondents were
men from whom it was an honour to receive direction. From Francis Place
he gleaned all his ideas of Political Economy, and what Carlile called
the 'all-surpassing question of the regulation of the numbers of the
people.' It was from Jeremy Bentham, through Mr. Place, that he was
instructed not to attempt the building of any system of his own, but to
go on pulling down existing errors, every item of success in which, was
in fact, so much good building.(3) In Carlile's last days he spoke of
Francis Place as 'his old tutor who had a hard task to beat all the
superstition out of him.'
1. See Repub. vol. iv. p. 191.
2. Lion, vol. i. p. 373.
4. Christian Warrior, p. 13.
While others were calling Carlile 'Atheist and Infidel,' Place was
calling him 'the most, obstinately superstitious fellow alive;' but
always paid him the compliment of admitting that he was worth the
trouble, and that if he could be set right he would keep right.(1)
When Carlile's days of thinking began, he began with himself. He knew
himself well, and this was the source of his strength. Like Cobbett he
could write always well of himself. His first study was to form a mind
of his own on the basis of the best known principles.(2) Carlile began
to write a man. Nature made him for an agitator. He had an iron will and
limitless self-reliance. I have been told by one who advised him
frequently, that no man could control him. His first papers in the
_Republican_, are thoughtful, manly, self-possessed, nervous, and
resolute. Sherwin preceded Carlile in the publication of a work, called
the _Republican_, but, after the fourth number, it was changed into
'_Sherwin's Weekly Political Register_,' on the ground that people were
afraid of its name. But Carlile resumed its title, and selected those
articles only which had the real names and addresses of the author
appended. He called upon the friends of his opinions to avow themselves,
and declared himself ambitious of incurring martyrdom, if martyrdom was
necessary to the cause of liberty.(3)
Carlile's political and religious prototype was Paine. Carlile always
wrote with manifest purpose, and seems to have emulated the plain vigour
of Cobbett and the invective of Junius.
Carlile's habits were marked by great abstemiousnesss. Seldom taking
animal food,(4) he refused wine(5) when offered a dozen at Dorchester
Gaol, preferring good milk. He was morally as well as physically
particular. In the rules of the Deistical Society, he provided that only
persons of good character should be eligible.(6) 'It is important to
you, Republicans,' wrote he, from Dorchester Gaol, 'that however humble
the advocates of your principles may be, they should exhibit a clear
moral character to the world.'(7) He never sold a copy of any work which
he would hesitate to read to his children.(8) He expressed a hope, when
fairs were popular, that fairs would be put down all over the country.
He was one of the first thus to oppose what the pious then approved.
1. Christian Warrior, p. 26.
2. Gauntlet, No. 8, p. 113.
3. Repub. No. 1, vol. i.
4. Repub. vol. ii. p. 148.
5. Repub. vol. ii. p. 234.
6. Repub. vol. v. ft. 31.
7. Repub. vol. vi. p. 3.
8. Repub. vol. vii. p. 36.
There was no intolerance in Carlile's habits. 'I have no wish,' these
were his words, 'to force my opinions on any man--if he wishes to have
them, he must either buy them or challenge me to defend them; and, in
this last instance, it must be some one whom I consider worth contending
with, before I would open my mouth.'(1) He was of a retiring turn, and
utterly incapable of obtruding himself, where there was the possibility
of his not being desired. It was a sense of duty alone that made him
brave, his moral courage was great, but it was the courage of
conviction. Carlile was an illustration of Bulwer's remark, that courage
in one thing, is not to be mistaken for courage in everything. He who
opposed himself without fear to the spies of Sidmouth, and the edicts of
Castlereagh, who singly withstood public opinion on the questions of
Marriage and Religion, when that opinion knew no reason and no mercy, he
felt, through his whole life, a want of fair confidence in himself, when
addressing a public audience. Large numbers, called together by his
name, produced in him a sense of disturbing responsibility and
embarrassment.(2) When liberated from imprisonment in Dorchester
Gaol--an ill discipline certainly for oratory--he trembled at committing
his reputation to the lapses of an inexperienced tongue. His friends
thought he would never make a speaker, but his perseverance prevailed.
Still his efforts were irregular; sometimes he was as eloquent as the
best, at others timidly hesitating. Probably his stolid nature wanted
passion to excite it--some nature's, like deep waters, are only to put
in motion by a storm. A paralytic stroke, in March 1841, affected the
muscles of the mouth and tongue, and diminished his acquired power.
Hume has said that Christian sects manifest intolerance, which increases
in intensity the nearer their valuing creeds coincide. This has been
true of some classes of infidels, but Carlile wisely regarded with
favour the approximation of sects to reason. He encouraged the Rev.
Robert Taylor's Deistical friends, because, like the Unitarians, they
would break up some part of the superstition of other sects. His
impression was that, 'Though not themselves free from superstition, they
would lessen the sum total among all the sects, and, in so doing, do a
certain amount of good.'(3)
1. Repub. vol. iv. p. 33.
2. Gauntlet, No. 30 p. 385.
3. Repub. vol. xvi. p. 130.
Carlile's writings abound in instances of great political penetration:
thus he placed on the title page of the second volume of the
_Republican_ these words--'Liberty is the property of man: a Republic
only can protect it.' The same volume contained his qualification ot
equality. 'Equality,' says he, 'means not an equality of riches, but of
rights merely.'(1) Yet the contrary is asserted to this hour.
'Timidity,' wrote he in 1828, 'maybe seen sitting on the countenance of
almost every Politician. He speaks and speculates with a trembling which
generates a prejudice in others. As it is the slave who makes the
tyrant, so it is timidity in the Politician which creates the prejudice
of the persecutor.'(2) In words to this effect, he pourtrayed that
conventional caution of the newspaper press, which is to this hour the
bane of popular progress. He had a distincter conception of the part to
be played by education in public reform, than any other agitator of his
rank at that time. 'I have before advised your majesty,' said he, in
dedicating vol. 12 of the _Republican_ to George IV., 'to patronise
Mechanics' Institutions, and you will become a greater monarch than
Buonaparte. Kings must come to this, and he will be the wisest who does
it first and voluntarily.' Republicanism was not with Carlile, as with
so many--politics in rags; he never divested it of efficiency and
dignity. To one who said that his exacting L100 shares for his Book
Company was aristocratic, he answered, 'Call it what you please, that is
republican which is done well.'(3) Carlile took a view of the rationale
and initiation of revolution in England as manly as it was sagacious.
'In the beginning of my political career,' he writes, 'I had those
common notions which the enthusiasm of youth and inexperience produces,
that all reforms must be the work of physical force. The heat of my
imagination shewed me everything about to be done at once. I am now
enthusiastic, but it is in _working_ where I can work _practically_
rather than theoretically; and though I would be the last to oppose a
well-applied physical force, in the bringing about reforms or
revolutions, I would be the last in advising others to rush into useless
dangers that _I would shun, or where I would not lead_. I have long
formed the idea that an insurrection against grievances in this country
must, to be successful, be spontaneous and not plotted, and that all
political conspiracies may be local and even individual evils. I
challenge the omniscience of the Home Office to say whether I ever
countenanced anything of the kind in word or deed. I will do nothing in
a political point of view which cannot be done openly.'(4) There is a
strong vein of political wisdom in all this, not yet appreciated by
popular politicians, and this has the merit of having been written at a
time, when (as indeed now) the maxim of English popular progressive
politics is not to find how much can be done _within the law_, but how
much can be done _without it_ and _against it_: a policy which dooms
Democracy to ceaseless antagonisms in the attainment of its claims, and
will, if persisted in, fetter it with impotence when the victory is won.
1. Repub. vol. xiv. p. 105.
2. Lion, vol. i. p. 3.
3. Repub. vol. xii. p. 3.
4. Repub. vol. xiv. pp. 5, 6.
The progress of Carlile's convictions respecting religion is evident and
honourable to his thoughtfulness. He was twenty-seven years old before
he conceived any error in the article religion. His attention was first
drawn to the fact by finding that the suppressed writings of his day
chiefly related to religion. When the Attorney General first called him
profane, for publishing Hone's Parodies, he was a very different man.
Through several volumes of the _Republican_ he was a Deist only. But
reflection led him onwards step by step. A first indication is in these
words--'Paine, in his lifetime, appears to have been the advocate of a
Deistical church, but such an attempt shall ever find my reprobation, as
unnecessary and mischievous.'(1) The reason he assigned was, that
science alone could lead to true devotion, and lectures on science were,
therefore, the proper worship. In his first controversy with Cobbett, he
avowed himself, as Mr. Owen always has, a believer in a great
controlling power of Nature. But at this point, Carlile's belief had
grown practical in its negation, as he wrote, 'I advocate the abolition
of all religions, without setting up anything new of the kind.'(2) By
this time he had become a confirmed materialist, and soon after, defined
mind as a portion of the organization of the human body, acted upon by
the atmosphere and the body jointly, and dependent upon a peculiarity in
the organization, in the same manner as voice and life itself.(3) The
definitions he gave, in 1822, of Religion and Morality were essentially
the same as those since rendered more elegantly by Emerson. Carlile
defined Morality as a rule of conduct relating to man and man--Religion
as a rule of conduct, relating not to man, but to something which he
fancies to be his Maker.(4) Next he observed, 'I may have said that the
changes observed in phenomenon argue the existence of an active power in
the universe, but I have again and again renounced the notion of that
power being intelligent or designing.(5) 'It is not till since my
imprisonment that I have avowed myself Atheist.'(6)
1. Repub. vol. iv. p. 220.
2. Repub. vol. v. p. 201.
3. Repub. vol. vi.
4. Repub. vol. vi. p. 249.
5. Repub. vol. vii. p. 26.
6. Repub. vol. vii. p. 397.
He reached the climax of his Atheism on the title page to his tenth
volume of the _Republican_, where he declared 'There is no such a God in
existence as any man has preached; nor any kind of God and this
declaration was so far carried out in detail, as to exclude from the
_Republican_ _God, nature, mind, soul_, and _spirit_, as words without
proto types.(1)
The two extremes of Carlile's career exhibit a coincidence of terms, but
betray to the initiated observer a radical progress and distinction of
opinion. In his first work, he wrote, 'Science is the Antichrist;'(2) in
his last, 'Science is the Christ.'(3) When he wrote the first he was a
Deist, when he wrote the last he was an Atheist.
We commonly find that extreme political enthusiasts in youth, pass, in
old age, like Sir Francis Burdett, into extreme Conservatism: but it is
a phenomenon in intellect, that Carlile, whose convictions, not his
passions, led him to hold positive materialism, should lapse into a more
than Swedenborgian mysticism. 'I have discovered,' said he, 'that the
names of the Old Testament, either apparently of persons or places, are
not such names as the religious mistakes have constructed, but names of
states of mind manifested in the human race, and, in this sense, the
Bible may be scientifically read as a treatise on spirit, soul, or mind,
and not as a history of time, people, and place.'(4) To insist on the
utility of such a theory, except as a mere theory of theological
explanation (useful as explaining it away altogether), was very strange
in Carlile. It seems like the artifice of a beaten man to conciliate an
implacable enemy. But Carlile was no beaten man. A few months only
before his death, he wrote to Sir Robert Peel, in reference to the
imprisonment of Mr. Southwell and myself, avowing his determination to
renew martyrdom, if Sir Robert persisted in reviving persecution. But
Carlile did make the capital error of proposing to explain science under
Christian terms, which was giving to science, which is universal, a
sectarian character. Hence, he was found using the words God, soul,
Christ, etc., with all the pertinacity of a divine, and scandalising his
friends by taking out his diploma as a preacher. In this, he manifested
his old courage. He was still true to himself, and was still an Atheist,
but veiling his materialism under a Swedenborgian nomenclature.
1. Repub. vol. xiv. p, 770.
2. Preface, p. 14. to vol. i. of Repub.
3. Christian Warrior.
4. Christian Warrior, p. 30.
But the adoption of Swedenborgian terminology was a virtual recantation,
and Carlile lost caste by it as did Lawrence. Lawrence gained no
practice, and Carlile no influence. Indeed, I never knew any of these
virtual recantations to be believed, or even respected by the world, who
forced them on. A real recantation I never knew beyond this, that
Atheists have acceded to Pantheism, or perhaps, relapsed into
Unitarianism. But they have always remained Rationalists. None that 1
have known and watched--not even the weakest, have fallen into
Evangelism. Carlile, by his new course, exposed himself to be distrusted
by his less observing but warm friends, and he conciliated no foe among
the Christians. Carlile, however, was no hypocrite, nor did he take this
new course for venal ends. He was as in all things else conscientious.
Still his course was one of choice, not of necessity. He was free as
ever to expound science, as science, or to expound it in the language of
religion. He adopted the mystic course. This was his error of judgment,
not an alteration of conviction. If I may explain the paradox of his
conduct in a paradox of terms, this is the expression of it:--From being
a Material Atheist, he became a Christian Atheist. His definition of a
Christian at this stage, was 'a man purged from error.'(1) That this
course was no more than a mode of inculcation of his favourite Atheism
is evident, intrinsically, and also from the fact that he was so much a
realist, as to still avow his detestation of fiction; and so coherently
did he keep to this text, that he never ceased to make war on poetry,
theatres, and romance, from the commencement of his career down to the
last number of the _Christian Warrior_.
But the condemnation I pass upon the philosophy of his latter days shall
not be exparte. I subjoin that passage in which he has most powerfully
stated his own case.
'The first problem in human or social reform is _through what medium
must it be made_. In what is called a religious state of society, that
is, a state of idolatry and superstition, can reform be carried out
through any other medium than its religion! My experience, added to the
best advice I could find, is, that, with a religious people, religion is
the only medium of reform. If I were opposed in that problem, I could
successfully defend my side of it. The Charter shall change the
constituency of the House of Commons, without improving the House.
Socialism may create 20 Tytherlies, but it has still done nothing for
the nation. But science thrown into the church as a substitute for
superstition in the education of the people, begins at once to
regenerate the people, the parliament, the institutions, and the throne.
It is the substitution of the known for the unknown, the real for the
unreal, the certain for the uncertain. Religion is the erroneous mind's
chief direction. It must be corrected by and through the medium which it
most respects. It rejects all other opposing conditions, and increases
its tenacity for its errors. To reform religion by science, is to
regenerate fallen man, and to save a sinking country.
1. Cheltenham Free Press, Any. 1842.
2. Christian Warrior, p. 31,
There is great wisdom in this language. The question is, _how_ shall the
problem be solved? In this Carlile erred, as he did with the theory of
personalities, which he conceived with equal ability. I conceive that
Science is independent of Theology in its essence and its terms.
Religion may be brought to science by adroit interpretations, and
improved in character and significance; but Science can never be brought
to Religion without being 'paltered in a double sense,' and lowered in
dignity and intelligibility.