Carlile now took over the absolute control of Sherwin’s publishing business, and dropped the title of Sherwin’s Register in favor of the Republican. In all, this journal ran into fourteen volumes, and was edited, for the most part, from Dorchester jail. We shall have occasion to refer to its contents in the course of the present biography. '

As we have seen, Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, and Elihu Palmer's Principles of Nature, had already been condemned as blasphemous publications. This fact caused Carlile to feel it incumbent upon him to republish them in vindication of the absolute freedom of the Press. It is an evidence of Carlile’s disinterestedness that not only did he not agree with Paine’s theological opinions, but was even actively opposed to them. So much is clear from a letter that he wrote from Dorchester jail, dated June 9th, 1820, to the Rev. W. Wait, B.A., of King’s Square, Bristol. In this letter Carlile declared :—

“Although I applaud the manner in which Paine has rescued the name and character of the deity from the groveling notions which the Jew and Christian hold of him, still, when I come to his notions of a future state, I consider Paine to be quite as much a fanatic in matters of-religion as yourself, sir. There is nothing in the Bible, in the Koran, or in the reveries of the late Johanna Southcote, more ridiculous or superstitious than that which may be found in Paine’s Theological works, under the head of My Private Thoughts of a Future State. I should be very happy, for the honor of Paine, if this paragraph could be proved to have been an interpolation to degrade his other writings, but I fear that it is genuine. I am the disciple of Paine in politics only. I do not go far with him in his theological sentiments. I consider his Age of Reason to be a most important and useful book as a primer to true theology.”

Nevertheless, Carlile knew how to defend and explain some of Paine’s vigorous attacks on that whited sepulcher of Christian phariseeism, the Church. Paine, with an historical intuition that took the place of a more extended learning, applied the word “adultery” to the union of Church and State. Dr. James Rudge, a minister of Limehouse, addressed a letter to Carlile through the columns of the Christian Champion, in which he stated that he could not explain nor account for Paine’s assertion. Carlile replied in a letter dated from Dorchester Jail, January 10th, 1820, showing that Paine’s figure was applicable and proper on the following grounds :—-

“The Christian Church has ever been closely interwoven with every State in which it has existed . . . sometimes the Church has ruled the State, and at other times the State has mastered the Church. For instance, the Christian Church grew up with the decline of the Roman State, and at length prevailed over it; and the offices of state were all continued with, and subservient to, the offices of the Church, till at length the title of Sovereign or Emperor of the State sunk into the arms of holy mother Church. . . . . Again, at the period called the Reformation, or more properly speaking, the deviation from a former course, several States became masters of the Roman Church. . . . The act of adultery becomes applicable to the union of Church and State, because the Church professes to be a wife and a prude, and calls Jesus her spouse, her Lord and Master. The members of the Church affect to be negligent and not to be seeking after the emoluments of the State, whilst, like an unfaithful wife, they are continually running into this 'adulterous connection,' and suspiciously beguile the unwary observer with outward professions of purity and chastity. Each sister calls the other the ‘Whore of Babylon,’ and alternately prays for ‘the fall of this great, this drunken whore, whose abominations pollute the earth.’ This. you will say, is coarse and vulgar language. But recollect it is not the language of my mind. It is the language of what you call Scripture, and a just quotation and application."

From the situation of Carlile at the time that he wrote the letters containing the above remarks, it will be seen that we have anticipated what happened to him after his publication of Paine’s and Palmer's writings. This action afforded the authorities an opportunity of preparing an action of blasphemy against him. Whilst they were thus employing their time, the Prince Regent, acting upon their advice, addressed a letter to the magistrates of Manchester, and all the oflicers and privates concerned in the Peterloo massacres, recording the Royal gratitude “to them” for having so promptly preserved the peace and tranquility of the County.

Carlile replied to this piece of monarchial, governing-class insolence in two further letters addressed to the Regent and to Lord Sidmouth respectively. In these replies he spared neither the throne nor the Government. He simply spoke his mind-the mind of a friend of Freedom.