Life and Character of Richard Carlile Part 2

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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.serted 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' Inst.i.tutions, 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 100 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 a.s.signed 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 t.i.tle page to his tenth volume of the _Republican_, where he declared 'There is no such a G.o.d in existence as any man has preached; nor any kind of G.o.d and this declaration was so far carried out in detail, as to exclude from the _Republican_ _G.o.d, 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, pa.s.s, in old age, like Sir Francis Burdett, into extreme Conservatism: but it is a phenomenon in intellect, that Carlile, whose convictions, not his pa.s.sions, 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s upon the philosophy of his latter days shall not be exparte. I subjoin that pa.s.sage 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 superst.i.tion, 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 const.i.tuency 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 subst.i.tute for superst.i.tion in the education of the people, begins at once to regenerate the people, the parliament, the inst.i.tutions, and the throne.

It is the subst.i.tution 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.

CHAPTER IV. HIS DEATH AND CHARACTER

Carlile's death took place on this wise. He had come up from Enfield to Bouvene Street, Fleet Street, to live on the old field of war, and edit the _Christian Warrior._ While a van of goods were unpacking at the door, one of his boys strayed out and went away. Carlile was fond of his children, and he set out anxiously to seek his child. The excitement ended in death. On Carlile's return he was seized with a fatal illness.

Bronchitus, which he was told by his medical advisers would soon destroy him, if he came to live in the city, set in, and the power of speech soon left him. Mr. Lawrence, the author of the famous 'Lectures on Man,'

whom Carlile always preferred in his illnesses, was sent for. He promptly arrived, but p.r.o.nounced recovery hopeless; and Richard Carlile expired February 10,1843, in his fifty-third year.

Wishing to be useful in death as in life, Carlile devoted his body to dissection. Always above superst.i.tion, in practice as well as in theory, his wish had long been-that his body, if he died first, should be given to Mr. Lawrence. At that time the prejudice against dissection was almost universal, and only superior persons rose above it. His wish was complied with by his family, and the post mortem examination was published in the _Lancet_ of that year.

Carlile's burial took place at Kensal Green Cemetry. He was laid in the consecrated part of the ground-nearly opposite the Mausoleum of the Ducrow family. At the interment, a clergyman appeared, and with the usual want of feeling and of delicacy, persisted in reading the Church service over him. His eldest son Richard, who represented his sentiments as well as his name, very properly protested against the proceeding, as an outrage upon the principles of his father and the wishes of the family. Of course the remonstrance was disregarded, and Richard, his brothers, and their friends left the ground. The clergyman then proceeded to call Carlile 'his dear departed brother,' and to declare that he 'had died in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection.'

Carlile left six children-Richard, Alfred, and Thomas Paine, by his wife Mrs. Jane Carlile; and Julian, Theophila, and Hypatia, by 'Isis,' the lady to whom he united himself after his separation from his wife.

Mrs. Carlile survived him only four months. She died in the same house, No. 1, Bouverie Street, and was buried in the same grave. It is hoped that a suitable monument will soon mark the resting place of England's stoutest champion of free discussion, political and religious.

All stories about the recantation of Carlile, to which the pious have given currency, are necessarily false, as he was never able to recant.

He lost his power of speaking long before death approached so near as to suggest recanting to him. But death had no power to make his strong spirit quail at ideal terror or to shake the firm convictions of his understanding. His dying words, therefore, are the last which he addressed to the public in his _Christian Warrior_, and they were these-'The enemy with whom I have to grapple is one with whom _no peace can be made. Idolatry will not parley. Superst.i.tion will not treat on covenant. They must be uprooted for public and individual safety_.'(1)

1. Christian Warrior, No. 4 p. 83.

These words which he published thirteen days only before his death, are those which he, doubtless, would have p.r.o.nounced in his last hour, had consciousness and strength remained with him.

In the early portion of my imprisonment in Gloucester Gaol, the Rev.

Samuel Jones, in order to move me by fear to the retraction of my convictions, told me before a cla.s.s of prisoners that 'the notorious Richard Carlile was dead, and had died horribly; but he had made what amends he could by recanting his dreadful principles on his death-bed-had denounced his infidel colleagues, and implored mercy of G.o.d. You see, therefore,' added the Rev. libeller to me, 'what you have to look forward to.' Great, however, was the Rev. Mr. Jones'

astonishment and confusion, when a short time after, Mr. Carlile himself walked into my cell, alive and well, to offer me his generous sympathy and advice to enable me the better to combat the old enemies of free thought and free speech. The usual stories told of infidel recantations are about as well founded as was this fabrication concerning Carlile, by the Rev. Samuel Jones, visiting magistrate of Gloucester Gaol.

But _why_ should Carlile recant! Why should the unbeliever fear to die!

There are four things on which Christians hang the terrors which usually haunt their death-beds. Let us examine them.

1. The story of the Fall.

2. The rejection of the offer of salvation.

3. The sin of unbelief.

4. The vengeance of G.o.d.

1. If man fell in the garden of Eden-who placed him there! G.o.d! Who placed the temptation there? G.o.d! Who gave him an imperfect nature-a nature of which it was foreknown it would fall! G.o.d! To what does this amount!

If a parent placed his poor child near a fire at which he knew it would be burnt to death, or near a well into which he knew it would fall and be drowned, would any power of custom prevent our giving speech to the indignation of the heart, and p.r.o.nouncing such a parent a miscreant! And can we pretend to believe G.o.d has so acted, and at the same time be able _to trust_ him! If G.o.d has so acted, he may so act again. This creed can afford no consolation in death. If he who disbelieves this dogma fears to die, he who believes it should fear death more.

2. Salvation, it is said, is offered to the fallen. But man is not fallen, except on the revolting hypothesis just discussed. And before man can be accepted by G.o.d, he must, according to Christians, own himself a degraded sinner. Is salvation worth this humiliation! But man is not degraded. No man can be degraded by the act of another. Dishonour can come only by his own hands: and depravity has not come thus. Man, therefore, needs not this salvation. And, if he needed it, he could not accept it. Debarred from purchasing it himself, he must accept it as an act of grace. But it is not well to go even to heaven on sufferance. We despise the poet who is not above a patron; we despise the citizen who crawls before the throne; and shall G.o.d be said to have less love of self-respect than man! He who will consent to be saved after this fashion hath most need to fear that he shall perish, for he deserves it.

3. Then, in what way can there be a _sin_ of unbelief? Is not the understanding the subject of evidence? A man, with evidence before him, can no more help seeing it or feeling its weight, than a man with his eyes or ears open can help seeing the house or tree before him, or hearing the sounds made around him. If a man disbelieve, it is because his conviction is true to his understanding. If I disbelieve a proposition, it is through lack of evidence; and the act is as virtuous (so far as virtue can belong to that which is inevitable), as the belief of it, when the evidence is perfect. If it is meant that a man is to believe, whether he sees evidence or not, it means that he is to believe certain things, whether true or false; in fine, that he may qualify himself for heaven by hypocrisy and lies. It is of no use that the unbeliever is told that he will be d.a.m.ned if he does not believe; what human frailty may do is another thing; but the judgment is clear, that a man _ought_ not to believe, nor profess to believe, what seems to him to be false, although he should be d.a.m.ned. The believer, who seeks to propitiate heaven by this deceit, ought to fear its wrath, not the unbeliever who rejects the dishonourable terms and throws himself on its justice.

4. There is the _vengeance_ of G.o.d. But is not the savage idea destroyed as soon as you name it? Can G.o.d have that which man ought not to have-_vengeance_. The jurisprudence of earth has reformed itself-we no longer _punish_ absolutely; we seek the _reformation_ of the offender.

We leave retaliation to savages; and shall we cherish in heaven an idea we have chased from earth? But _what_ has to be punished? Can the sins of man disturb the peace of G.o.d? If so, as men exist in myriads and action is incessant, then is G.o.d, as Jonathan Edwards has shown, the most miserable of beings and the _victim_ of his meanest creatures. We, see, therefore, that sin against G.o.d is _impossible_. All sin is finite and relative-all sin is sin against man. Will G.o.d punish this, which punishes itself? If man errs, the bitter consequences are ever with him.

Why should he err! Does he choose the ignorance, incapacity, pa.s.sion, and blindness, through which he errs? Why is he precipitated, imperfectly natured into a chaos of crime! Is not his destiny made for him; and shall G.o.d punish that sin which is his misfortune rather than his fault? shall man be condemned to misery in eternity _because_ he has been made wretched, and weak, and erring, in time.

But if man _has_ fallen at his conscious peril-_has_ thoughtlessly spurned salvation-_has_ offended G.o.d-will G.o.d therefore take vengeance?

Is G.o.d without dignity or magnanimity? If I do wrong to him, who does wrong to me, I come down (has not the ancient sage warned me) to the level of my enemy? Will G.o.d thus descend to the level of vindictive man!