Life and Character of Richard CarlileWho has not thrilled at the lofty question of Volumnia to Coriola.n.u.s:-
'Think'st thou it honourable for a n.o.ble man
Still to remember wrongs.'
Shall G.o.d be less honourable and remember the wrong done against him, not by his equals, but by his own frail creatures! To be unable to trust G.o.d is to degrade him. Those pa.s.sages in the New Testament which give the narratives most interest and dignity, are the parables in which a servant is told to forgive a debt to one who had forgiven him; in which a brother is to be forgiven until seventy times seven (that is unlimitedly); and the prayer where men claim forgiveness as they have themselves forgiven others their trespa.s.ses. What was this but erecting a high moral argument against the relentlessness of future punishment of erring man? If, therefore, man is to forgive, shall G.o.d do less? Shall man be more just than G.o.d? Is there anything so grand in the life of Christ as his forgiving his enemies, as he expired on the cross? Was it G.o.d the Sufferer behaving more n.o.bly than will G.o.d the Judge? Was this the magnificent teaching of fraternity to vengeful man, or is it to be regarded but as a sublime libel on the hereafter judgments of heaven?
The Infidel is Infidel to error, but he believes in truth and humanity, and when he believes in G.o.d, he will prefer to believe that which is n.o.ble of him. He will be able to trust him. Holding by no conscious error, doing no dishonour in thought and offering, his homage to love and truth, why should the unbeliever fear to die! Carlile saw not less clearly than this, nor felt less strongly, and he knew that only those fear death who have never thought about it at all, or thought about it wrongly.
Carlile's early career gave evidence of that iron hauteur which characterised him. In dedicating from Dorchester Gaol, his second volume of the _Republican_, to Sir Robert Gifford, the Attorney General of that day, (1820) he wrote, 'Grat.i.tude being one of the n.o.blest traits in the character of animals, both rational and irrational, _to which ever you may deem me allied_, I feel that I owe it to you.' Carlile taunted the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or as he most correctly styled it the Vice Society, saying that, 'next to their secretary, Pritchard, the lawyer, he had gained most by their existence,(1) and had sold more Deistical volumes in one year through their exertions than he should in seven, in the ordinary course of business.'(2) Carlile's cheerful disposition resisted the sombre influence of the dungeon, and he declared when Wedderb.u.m arrived at Dorchester Gaol that he would 'endeavour to get him chaplain, as the officiating one was so extremely fat that he could hardly get up to the pulpit, and when there, he was so long in recovering from the exertion, that he could not read the prayers with sufficient solemnity.(3)
1. Repub. vol. ii. p. 183.
2. Repub. vol. ii. p. 185.
3. Repub. vol. iii. p. 112.
The fourth volume of the _Republican_ Carlile also dedicated to Gifford, the Attorney General, beginning, 'My constant and learned friend, between you and the Vice Society I am at loss how to pay my courtesies, so as to avoid jealousy. You acted n.o.bly with my first volume. My second you neglected; and I had resolved to stop when I heard of your renewed prosecutions. I am sorry we did not understand each other better before.' A paragraph in the Dedication of his sixth volume to George IV.
was in these words, 'You are not only the head of the State but of the Church too, and as I am an intermeddler with the matters of both, I, your Banishment Act notwithstanding, dedicate my volume to both heads at once, with the most profound hope and prayer that neither of them may ache after reading it.' When Carlile took notice of Mease, he thus addressed him-'To Mr. Thomas Mease, grocer, draper, and methodist.' The letter to Mease, was dated 'Dorchester Gaol, December 18, year 1822; of the G.o.d that was born of a woman, who was his own father, and who was killed to please himself. The _immortal_ G.o.d that died.' The letter commenced thus,-'Sir Saint and Savage.' To Mr. Dronsfield he wrote-'I am not humble; civility to all; servility to none is the becoming characteristic of manhood.'(1) Alluding to the extensive sale of Wat Tyler, which had such an influence on his early fortunes, Carlile exclaimed, 'Glory to thee, O Southey! Happy mayst thou be in singing hexameters to thy old Royal Master, when thou hast pa.s.sed the _reality_ as well as the _vision_ of judgment! Yes, my patron! to that best of thy productions, "Wat Tyler," do I owe the encouragement I first found to persevere.(2)
Of his own Every Woman's Book, Carlile said, 'It had sustained Mr.
Cobbett's malignity-one of the most powerful venoms which the animal world had produced.'(3) Carlile characterised the weak point in his own character with severe felicity, when speaking of others. 'Conceit,' said he, 'is a malady of humanity, of which some people die.'(4) These words might stand as the epitaph of his own public influence. The following pa.s.sage occurred in that letter to me, alluded to in the preface. 'You, Southwell and others,' said he, 'are now where I once was, resting upon the mere flippant vulgarisms of what you and the world consent to call Atheistic infidelity, regulating your amount of wisdom by a critical contrast with other people's folly.(5) I hope we were never amenable to the censure with which this sentence opens: the concluding words are shrewd and instructive, which I repeat for the sake of those young gentlemen who take up infidelity as a pastime, instead as a principle.
1. Repub. vol. vii. p. 868.
2. Repub. vol. vii. p. 674.
3. Lion, vol. ii. p. 450.
4. Oracle of Reason, vol. i. p. 366.
5. Oracle of Reason, vol. i. p. 366.
It is due to Carlile to observe that the annoyance he marshalled against authority was chiefly retaliative. He disowned a placard put in his window, which said, 'This is the Mart for Sedition and Blasphemy,' as he deemed it an admission that he did vend something of the kind. 'I sell,'
said he, 'only truth and right reason.'(1) (In parenthesis it maybe observed, that he denied that any human tribunal was competent to declare what was blasphemy.) How much farther Carlile was impartial than are Christians, is evidenced by the fact that he published Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in conjunction with Paine's Age of Reason.(2) In another respect he behaved as Christians never behave, he never questioned the youths he employed, nor any of his dependents as to their opinions, nor did he use any means to induce them to comprehend or adopt his.(3) He held his opinions too proudly to intrigue or supplicate others to accept them.
In candour, in independency of judgment, in perfect moral fearlessness of character, I believe Carlile cannot be paralleled among the public men of his time. Lovel writes:
He is a slave who dare not be,
In the right with two or three.
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. Though Paine was his great prototype, he was prompt, both in his early enthusiasm and in his latter days, to acknowledge Paine's defects as a theologian. 'About "G.o.d" Paine,' said he, 'was not altogether wise, but less unwise than the world at large.(4) In his earliest attachments, Carlile discriminated, 'I neither look,' wrote he 'on Mr. Gibbon nor Mr. Hume, as standards of infidelity to the Christian religion.'(5) He hesitated at Sh.e.l.ley's views of marriage, deeming them crude.(6) Carlile was able to take anything up or put anything down at the bidding of his judgment.
He said to Mr. Searlett, 'At present I am not a tinman, but I should never feel ashamed to return to it to earn an honest livelihood, if circ.u.mstances should render it necessary in this or any other country,'(7)
1. Repub. vol. v.r. 12.
2. Repub. vol. v. p. 89 3. Repub. vi. p. 778.
4. Scourge, p. 110.
5. Repub. vol. ii. p. 168.
6. Repub. vol. v. p. 148.
7. Repub. vol. ii. p. 403.
He began a periodical or ended it at will. No taunt deterred him, no threat intimidated him, no smile seduced him. Carlile was perfectly able to stand alone. He avowed himself an Atheist when no one else did. When he understood that arbitrary checks to population were necessary he said so and distinguishing the particular kinds of checks, disguisedly hinted at by Political Economists, or anonymously broached in handbills, he specified them and added these words, 'I think these plans tor the prevention of conception good, and publicly say it.'(1) Although that saying involved his own reputation and that of his cause. If Carlile had the querulousness, which condemned others, he had also the rarer courage which condemned himself. If he called others fools he called himself one, when his judgment convinced him that he had been in error. To those whom he found he had wronged, he made no dubious acknowledgment.
Disdaining deceit always he openly made the amplest apology frank words could express. 'I ask Mr. Cobbett's pardon, and make the due apology,'
said he, on finding that he had made an erroneous attribution to him.(2) To Dr. Olinthus Gregory he was more emphatic still.(3) Carlile proclaimed the excellence of Cobbett's Grammar, and the superiority of Hunt's Roasted Corn,(4) at the same time that he roasted the authors of both. Major Cartwright's 'English Const.i.tution Produced and Ill.u.s.trated,' he praised in some parts, while he mercilessly a.s.sailed it in others.(5) He acknowledged the kindness of his prosecutors, where they were kind, with the same fullness with which he execrated them when brutal.(6) To his bitterest enemy he was constantly thus just, and his own faults he confessed with as little reserve as he pointed out those or his enemies. His intellect was rude, but most robust. He had a pa.s.sion for truth and did not care whether it went against him or for him; he told it with equal zest. He not only as many do, professed to love free speaking; he could _bear it_ of himself. He held, as a public man should do, his reputation in his hand, and he would toss it up as one would a ball.
1. Repub. No. 18, vol. ii. pp. 566-6. 1825.
2. Repub. vol. xii. p. 29.
3. Repub. vol. xii. p. 727.
4. Repub. vol. vi. p. 12.
5. Repub. vol. viii. p. 18.
6. Repub. vol. x. pp. 63-4.
Carlile had a just notion of the relation of personalities to principles. 'Human nature,' said he, 'through whatever improved modifications it may pa.s.s, will still have its frailties, and those frailties have no relation to the social principles that may be advocated, nor do they emanate from newly advocated social principles, but from the frailty of that nature,... and any exhibition of such frailty belongs to the individual, and not to the principles const.i.tuting the public cause.'... But it is one thing to perceive the tenor of personalties, and another and very different thing to be able to conduct them. Mr. Carlile was utterly unable to conduct them usefully. They must be entered upon, not on personal, but upon public grounds; or they lose all moral effect. If undertaken from spleen, or vanity, they belong to the cla.s.s of 'quarrels,' and damage both the writer and nis cause. If entered upon to preserve the integrity of a public question, such intention must be made very evident and the _improvement_ alone, and not the mortification of the party criticised, must be steadily kept in view. This Mr. Carlile never understood: he wounded, he disparaged, he recriminated. He did not weigh character through its entire extent. He mistook a part for the whole. It was in this erroneous way, that he condemned Cobbett and Hunt, was querulous to his friends in Parliament, and most unjust to his most important and devoted allies. Ricardo, Hume, Brougham, Burdett, who presented pet.i.tions for him, seem to me to have treated him much better than he treated them.
Richard Carlile's reputation was founded on the joint profession of Republicanism, and ultimately of Deism and Atheism. He owed much to the _time_ when he made these professions, and not a little to the talent with which he maintained them. But did his services rest exclusively on the conditions under which they were rendered, their value would still stand high in the opinion of those capable of estimating the steps of public progress. He had to incur an obnoxious singularity, and brave imminent danger in order to purchase a field of action for others. This is a work which the world does not applaud like the manifestation of genius and talent, but it is a work which requires a courage and a sentiment of self-sacrifice, which the world's favourites rarely display. The work of the pioneer of thought is a work done for men of genius and talent; a work they are seldom able to do for themselves-for talent is prudent, and genius is timid; it is a work, however, which must be done by some one, or freedom languishes, invention is dumb, talent is misdirected, and philosophy creeps stealthily along starting at the sound of its own footsteps.
1. Sherwin*s Republican, No. 2, p. 21.
No adequate estimate or the merits of Carlile, and no tolerant judgment of his faults can be formed without taking into account the aspects of the times when he struggled, and the unscrupulous and powerful enemies against which he contended. _Then_ the most hateful types of Toryism and Christianity were rampant-_Then_ Castlereagh declared in Parliament that it was necessary that 'the last spark of the spirit of the French Revolution should be extinguished.'(1) Malignant and servile Attorney-Generals and vindictive Judges left no man's liberty or life safe if he professed liberal opinions. The press was intimidated, and public meetings, who complained, butchered. It was under these formidable circ.u.mstances that Carlile undertook to free the press, and to make the famous works of the 'rebellious needleman' household books in England, and to oppose himself singly to crown and mitre, ana brave whatever political and priestly vengeance could inflict, when political and priestly power were unchecked by public opinion.
1. The apparent offensiveness of some of his addresses was created by Christians themselves, an Instance occurs in his letter to 'Old William Wilberforce,' to whom he said 'sinner,'
instead of 'sir,' but this was because Wilberforce was a self-styled sinner.-Repub. vol. ii. p. 388
It is in reference to the same public circ.u.mstances that Carlile's faults are to be judged.
Those who in these days shall peruse the pages of Carlile's periodicals will be startled at the fierce invective and measureless denunciation which abound there. But let those who affect to pa.s.s over his name on this account, call to recollection the deadly arena of antagonism in which he had to fight the battle of freedom. The course he took is indeed not to be imitated now. We exist in better times, when the conflict of reason has succeeded to the strife of pa.s.sion. We have better arts, because we have a fairer field, and we owe that fairer field to such men as Carlile. Let us not impose our modes of warfare on men who fought with savages, and demand of the actors of other times that virtue which belongs exclusively to our opportunities. Men who are patriotic in easy chairs and by the fire-side only, who never incur damped feet in the public cause, and essay the reform of society in kid gloves and white waistcoats, know nothing, and can allow nothing for that strife of spirit in which men live, who take up the dice box of oppression to play for liberty, and whose stakes are their lives. Let the Christian whose altar is protected by law, whose arrogance over infidels is part and parcel of the statutes, and is applauded by public opinion; let the sleek and unruffled saint beware how he judges one on whose head was every day poured out the phials of holy malignity, whom the highest authorities stooped to defame, whose name was sacked at the instigation of every miserable deacon or venal informer, whose household G.o.ds were strewn in the streets by policemen selected for their ferocity-whose wife was consigned to a gaol, and himself doomed to spend nine years and a half in the endurance of the unceasing indignity of vindictive imprisonment. Where the Christian in ermine has been brutal, vituperative, and malignant, let him not exact a perennial delicacy of sentiment from his victim, writhing under his provocations. Taking these circ.u.mstances into account he is little acquainted with human nature, who will wonder that Carlile, in the sixth year of an imprisonment caused by Lords Castlereagh, Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Eldon, should from Dorchester Gaol, dedicate the volume of the Trials of his Wife, Sister, and Shopmen in these words-'To the Memory of Robert Stewart, Marquis of Londonderry, Viscount Castlereagh, etc., who eventually did that for himself which millions wished some n.o.ble mind would do for him-_Cut his throat_.'
The strait-laced moralist of this generation may turn to the volumes of the Carlile's Trials, and find that Mrs. Carlile was indicted for publishing a paragraph justifying a.s.sa.s.sination of tyrants. I have no sympathy with this doctrine. I deem it far n.o.bler and more useful to society, to submit to be the victim than to victimize others. But Carlile acted on a resolute sense of self-defence. He was a believer in Brutus and Colonel t.i.tus, and he lived in darker times when the policy of moral resistance was less clear and less practicable than now.
The Society for the Suppression of Vice distinguished him in 1820, as 'that most audacious offender, Carlile.'(1) The _Age_ called him 'a miscreant tinker.'(2) The _Sunday Times_ described him as 'a wretched man in the very kennel of contempt, from whom his proselytes fled as if he were emerged from a pest-house, and advised that he should rot in oblivion.'? And in this way papers and pulpits rang fascinating changes on such adjectives as fiend, monster, wretch, execrable, hideous, obscene, abandoned, infamous, etc., etc., till when he took a tour through the country in 1828, the idea of Carlile current among the pious was that of a black griffin with red glaring eyes-a tail with forked end, talons instead of fingers, and hoofs instead of toes.'(3)
1. Repub. vol. ii. p. 182.
2. Repub. vol. xii. p. 121 3. Repub. vol. xii. p. 151.
Yet this man whom the Government, the Pulpit, and the Press co-operated thus to describe, was human, and not devoid of generous filial affection. When in Dorchester Gaol, in 1820, a letter came sealed with black wax, which, Carlile suspecting to announce the death of his mother, he threw it aside for four hours-not finding resolution to open it. 'I had hoped,' said he, 'that her life would have been extended a few years, that she might have witnessed the result of my present career. But it affords me pleasure to think that she sunk calmly to sleep, neither tortured by priests nor superst.i.tious notions. It affords me pleasure,' cried he, exultingly, 'that in spite of the efforts of the Society for the Suppression of vice, the Priests, and the Attorney-General of a wicked administration, I have still retained a roof to shelter her, and under which she died.'(1) The department of progress in which Carlile worked has not yet received recognition by society. Society only remembers the genius which is creative, not that which is practical-though it profits in its ulterior stages more by the practical than the creative. The world has been rich in theory ages ago, and would have realised universal happiness by this time had it encouraged those who reduce its theories to practice. When a great truth is proclaimed, it produces no fruit till society is ploughed and sown with it. The pioneer, the orator, and the journalist, are they who practicalise truth: and he who re-a.s.serts it, who insists upon it, and re-echoes it by all the arts of repet.i.tion-he it is who really advances society. He is the worker; yet society accords him no distinction, no posthumous memory. Hence it requires more generosity of sentiment to be useful than to be great. He who seeks distinction may advance society as he achieves distinction: but the advancement of society is secondary with him-the advancement of himself is the primary consideration, and he is often careless whether society advances or retrogrades provided he lays hold of its renown and keeps it. Hence he who seeks fame is selfish-he who seeks utility is generous, because he is certain that society will neglect him, as it pays its honours to those who serve it least. The theorist provides for the future, but it is the worker who makes the future by realising the fulness of the present. It was in this department that Carlile laboured. He left no distinct book, he bequeathed no invention, he is the author of no famous theory; but his life was a poem of heroic and voluntary sacrifice, by which new freedom was won and secured to posterity; and men are now benefited through his exertions who remember him not, who know him not, and who would disown him or revile him if they did. Attorney-Generals delight to prate about the danger to society of dissemminating new opinions-the danger is to him alone who undertakes the task. Let him who thinks that mankind are to be set on change too rapidly, read the Life of Carlile. The deadly opposition by which he was a.s.sailed is the answer to their fears.
Society loves its opinions, and clings to them, whether they be error or truth. It hates him who teaches it to alter its course, however the change may be for its benefit. It is the destiny of the Reformer to serve mankind, and to be cursed by them for his pains. He who is not prepared for this has no business to be a Reformer. Then has he no reward? His proud reward is the satisfaction of contemplating the benefit he confers upon men who are not to be conciliated by good intentions, nor penetrated by favours bestowed. To give happiness to a friend is but a common place delight, but the pride of conferring pleasure upon an enemy is a n.o.ble pa.s.sion, of which only exalted natures are susceptible. This is the pa.s.sion of the true Reformer, and this is his reward.
1. Repub vol. ii. pp. 376-7.
Of Carlile's errors it may be said that they were fostered, if not developed by the position in which he was placed. In the autumn of his career, he grew to think better of himself than of other men, but it was in a great measure because he had done more and dared more. He was impatient of a rival, because his rivals as political or anti-religious leaders wanted the proper qualification. Carlile had suffered so much, and so long, that he not unnaturally became convinced that suffering was the sole qualification of a public teacher. He confounded endurance with ability, and doubted the integrity or the courage of those who had dared nothing. He was tolerant of rivals in proportion as they had suffered any thing. His great imprisonments were so many wounds which he had received in the service of freedom, and he was proud of them as a Spartan hero of scars. He graduated, as _a patriot_, in dungeons, and he suspected the qualifications of every man who had not taken out a diploma from the Attorney-General. Carlile was one of those men who are tattooed by the enemy into whose hands they fall, and who are dyed by the influences against which they struggle. He was like a man who fights all day in the front rank; who is discoloured by the powder expended in the battle, and never after wears the hue of peace. Cobbett and O'Connell manifested the same peculiarity. They outlived their day. They were living memorials of themselves and of the times which _they_ had changed. He who judges any of these men impartially, will recognize their virtues as arising in the greatness of their natures and their faults, but as the accidents of their local positions. So posterity will judge Richard Carlile.
ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL
Examination of the body of Mr. Richard Carlile.
The well-known Mr. Richard Carlile, bookseller, late of Fleet Street, bequeathed his body for the purpose of anatomical dissection. By permission of the governors of St. Thomas's Hospital, his remains were removed from his residence in Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, to that Inst.i.tution; and, on Tuesday last, there was a numerous a.s.semblage of the friends of the deceased and members of the medical profession, to witness his post mortem examination. The chest and abdomen only were opened, and the necessity that existed for the knowledge of anatomy, not only to the surgeon, but to the physician, was shown. Mr. Grainger delivered a short address on the occasion, thinking that the object of the deceased would be obtained by this proceeding in public, and by a statement of the motives which, had actuated him in giving his remains for dissection.
The ill.u.s.trious Bentham, actuated by the same benevolent feeling, had at the close of the last century, left his body for dissection, and that at a time when the prejudice against anatomical examinations was so great that bodies were procured with the utmost difficulty. That prejudice was perhaps less at the present time, but still sufficiently strong to interfere very materially with that due supply of subjects, so essential to the proper education of the medical student, and of such vital importance to the community at large. Such difficulties existed that no lecturer in this country had ever yet been able to complete a course of operative surgery, properly so called. Mr. Carlile deserved the approbation of all the friends of humanity for attempting to remove this prejudice by leaving his remains for anatomical purposes.
Mr. Grainger vindicated medical men from the charge of irreligion, and contended that medical and anatomical studies, if _properly_ pursued, served to demonstrate the truth, not only of natural, but of revealed religion. _The Lancet,_ No. 1,016, p. 774, February 18, 1843.