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.)

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.)

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.)

Carlile spent the first twelve to thirteen years of his life at home, receiving his early education at a local chapel school. Subsequently placed with a chemist and druggist at Exeter, he only remained in his situation four months, as he could not stand the tyranny of his employment. The next four months were spent at home, at a small shop which his uncle had presented to his mother in 1795, six months after the death of his father. Here he employed his time in painting pictures, which were sold to his mother's customers. Returning to Exeter, he was apprenticed for seven years to a tin-smith, the work proving exceedingly hard and the hours excessively long. During this period the battle for the Free Press was becoming more and more a ... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

Throughout his incarceration Carlile’s vigorous pen had continued to expose the abuses of our class society and its corrupt governmentalism in the columns of the Republican. “Justice,” he declared, “is nowhere found in the country. Her painted figure only is visible in our courts of law and iniquity. We have the shadow to torment our eyes and senses, whilst the substance is sought in vain. . . . The law cannot reach determined rogues, surpliced hypocrites, and flagitious ministers, nor their bribed supporters.” From this he concluded that “the true definition of law. . . is the caprice of the ruling power.” “Law, like religion,” he says again, "is a mere word. They are words of sound wit... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)

In March, 1819, the German student, Karl Sandt, killed the Russian police spy, German liberticide, and hired agent of the despots of Europe, Kotzbue, Sandt was executed over twelve months later. The latter event led Carlile to applaud the motive and deed in the columns of the Republican for June 9th, 1820. He also praised the firm manner in which Sandt had played the martyr. “Tyrants,” he lamented, “are the last men to take lessons from example and history. Their ambition impels-them to go on. They are actuated by feelings similar to the common robber, who has often felt himself enriched by his booty and doubts not but that he shall be equally successful in the next attempt. He thus goes on from time to time until the hand... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)