Richard Carlile: His Battle for the Free Press : How Defiance Defeated Government Terrorism

Chapter 17
With the living, imitation is held to be the sincerest form of flattery; the dead we cannot flatter. But we can serve our fellows, and attain to the true heights of our own being by imitating the virtues of the dead warrior. The battle which his dead spirit bids us fight is a hard and unpopular one, but it is a battle which will result in victory for the free; a battle in which freedom’s sons will endure privations, oft-times want the necessaries of life, and suffer the contempt, if not the actual persecution, of the world; a battle in which, however, the sense of helping that cause that lacks assistance, of righting the wrong that needs assistance, of raising the intellectual capacity of the human race, of showing the workers the path of direct economic emancipation, will fully recompense for the pleasures foregone and kind words which society never extended to us. We again prostrate our spirit across the gulf of time; we see again this lion-hearted Richard firmly standing... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Chapter 16
A bitter struggle for existence was now waged, and the little family oftentimes starved for days at a stretch. Carlile was none the less enthusiastic and heroic about the cause, however. As George Jacob "Holyoake so well said, in candor, in independency of judgment, in perfect moral fearlessness of character, Carlile cannot be paralleled among the public men of his time. . . . Carlile was no slave. He was able to stand in the right by himself against the world. One forgives his errors, his vanity, and his egotism, for the bravery of his bearing and his speech.” Nevertheless, there was a good deal of simplicity—-—an unostentatious simple greatness--in Carlile’s character. As to this, let the following words, quoted from the preface to Holyaoke's four-chaptered Life and Character of Richard Carlile , speak: -- "When I first entered London, one Saturday evening in 1842, I was not known personally to half-a-dozen persons i... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Chapter 15
Carlile was unexpectedly released from the Compter in -1833, after the Government of the day had sent three warrants to the governor of the jail ordering his release, the third of which removed the two sureties he had been ordered to find in £250 each, and a heavy personal fine that had been imposed, so that the Government had yielded on the two most important points of his indictment. The Sunday subsequent to his release, both Carlile and the Rev. Robert Taylor made their reappearance at the Rotunda, receiving an enthusiastic reception from an audience of over 2,000 people, this being their last appearance at this hall of free discussion, which was leased on the succeeding day to an actor named Davidge. This worthy, in an announcement to the public referring to the change of management, “hoped that they would congratulate themselves on the remarkable advantage a first-class theater would be to them over this sink of profligacy, etc., etc., which had been a focus for t... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Chapter 14
Christmas, 1831, was the last Elizabeth Sharples ever spent with her mother, sisters, and brothers, who never forgave her for her theological unbelief and political Republicanism. Preparations were made for her journey to London; which she reached on January 12th, 1832. She interviewed Carlile in the Compter, and re-opened the Rotunda for the purposes of delivering philosophic addresses and holding discussions. Seventeen days later she delivered her first lecture there, concealing her identity from the public, and speaking as “The Lady of the Rotunda.” Thus described, she lectured here and elsewhere in the Metropolis, on Sundays, and two or three times a week. Being one of the first women to mount the English platform as an independent thinker, she naturally attracted much attention, and the journal which she commenced in February, 1832, Isis, found a ready sale. She now successfully busied herself in seeking to obtain a mitigation of the sev... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Chapter 13
In 1829 Carlile celebrated Taylor's release from prison by establishing Sunday morning adult school Bible discussions, thus anticipating the modern Quaker adult school movement in much the same way as his colleague anticipated the orthodox Christian Evidence Society. Three months later Carlile and Taylor entered upon an infidel and republican mission through the north of England. On their return to London they opened-up, on May 30th, 1830, the Rotunda—4the one-time famous music-hall in Blackfriars Road, or Great Surrey Street as it was called—-as a Freethought Coliseum. The Rotunda had been, in turn, a natural history museum, a literary "Surrey Institute,” a music-hall, a circus, and a home of panorama. Coleridge had delivered his lectures on Shakespeare from its platform; and Hazlitt had delighted audiences therefrom with his lectures on The Comic Writers of England. It now became the home of Robert Taylor's interesting extravaganzas, more scholastically... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Throughout these proceedings Carlile had been loyally supported by his wife, Jane Carlile. The latter was seven years Carlile’s senior, and had made his acquaintance whilst he was on a visit to Gosport in 1813. They were married after a courtship of only two months’ duration. Finding that their temperaments were incompatible, they had wisely agreed to separate early in the year 1819. But they postponed putting their determination into effect owing to Richard’s imprisonment and the necessity of continuing the publishing business. At last the authorities-—who had wasted .a great deal of time in threatening, arresting, and then releasing Carlile—-brought the various indictments against her to "a trial" in January,... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

This brings us to the period which witnessed a great mental change in Carlile. The poverty and misery which became so prevalent among the masses in 1816 caused him to question his mother's faith, and to display an enthusiasm in the direction of Republicanism. Theologically, he inclined towards Atheism. But he did not definitely embrace it until a much later date. All these factors, operating together, led to Carlile reading advanced Whig papers like Leigh Hunt's Examiner, The News, Cobbett’s Twopenny Sheets, and Hone’s Register—all of which he came to regard as being too watery. His companions in the workshop were always talking and dreaming of revolution. He was dissatisfied with the tone of the papers he read. He craved ... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Richard Carlile was born on the 8th November, 1790, at Ashburton, in Devonshire: the son of a father much too talented to possess any business acumen, and of a mother, who worked hard and long in order to keep the family in food, clothes, and shelter. Robert Hall, the celebrated Baptist divine and exponent of the academic principles of the Free Press, was then twenty-six years of age. William Cobbett, the erstwhile agricultural laborer who became the first grammarian in England, was two years Hall’s senior. Erskine was forty, and had already played an important legal part in the Free Press agitation. And Thomas Paine, about whose writings the agitation chiefly centered, had but another nine- teen years to live. None of those per... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Present at the famous Peterloo meeting that was to have been addressed by Henry Hunt—-—the Parliamentary Reformer and brother of Leigh Hunt—-on 'Monday, August 15th, 1819, Carlile witnessed the massacre of defenseless women and children by the. Yeomanry and police. No less than 300,000 people——men, women, and children-—were assembled in and about the intended place of meeting, in a perfectly orderly and quiet manner. Mr. Hunt had began his discourse, and made some ironical observations upon the conduct of the magistrates in attempting to forbid the meeting, when, says Carlile:— “a cart, which evidently took its direction from that part of the field where the police and magistrates were assembl... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

(From January 12th to August 21st, 1819, five indictments were prepared against Carlile for blasphemy, based on his publication of Paine’s and Palmer’s writings. On the second date, Carlile was arrested for sedition on account of his further letters to the Regent and Lord Sidmouth on the Manchester massacre. He spent six days in the Giltspur Street Compter, and was then released on bail, the magistrate intimating that if he undertook to withdraw from circulation his accounts of the Manchester massacre no further proceedings would be taken against him. Carlile did not comply with this request. Thus defied, the Government was unwilling to answer Carlile’s impeachment by further canvasing accounts of its tyranny by proceeding... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)