The Battle of The Press Part 1

The Battle of The Press.

by Theophila Carlile Campbell.

PREFACE.

In presenting to the present generation of England and America the comprehensive though necessarily condensed history of the life and work of the great pioneer in the cause of mental freedom, I am actuated by two princ.i.p.al motives, the foremost of which is the desirable duty of presenting to the people of to-day a faithful account of the work done by Carlile and the enormous sacrifices he made, as well as the terrible imprisonments he endured in the accomplishment of the task he set himself to do, namely, to establish for his countrymen a really Free Press, and the right of free oral discussion, as, up to his time, neither right had ever been accorded to any of the peoples of Europe by either Church or State.

In the prosecution of his self-appointed task he was a.s.sailed by the reigning powers with all the malignity and religious fury that characterised the days of the Inquisition. No lie was too black to be hurled at him, no motive too low to be imputed to him, the minds of his countrymen were purposely influenced against him in order that they might not understand his real object--that of benefiting them--and to divert attention from his enemies' misdoing. So he was given the horns, hoofs, and tail of Satan himself, and invested with all the attributes of this fallen angel. It is not to be wondered at that the majority of the people at that time were so influenced, when we consider the very limited resources of the times in regard to information. Almost all of this was carried and given by word of mouth, and it was naturally colored by the views or feelings of those who gave it out.

To rescue the name of a true friend of the people from the undeserved obloquy or silence under which it has been so long obscured, and to place his memory and name where it truly belongs in the list of the honored dead of his country, and in the hearts of his countrymen, there to dwell as long as English history lasts, is the second motive. In doing this we may turn upon all the evidences, both public and private, the modern searchlight of critical investigation, and I am satisfied that when the clouds of malignant abuse and the ma.s.s of unsubstantiated charges that were heaped upon his name and fame by those who were interested in doing so are cleared away, his name and the record of his life will stand out from the past as a star of the first magnitude stands out from the darkened sky of night--bright, clear, and pure.

I therefore, with confidence, commit the record of Carlile, as a man with the highest aims, unselfish purpose, and finest motives, who gave the efforts of a n.o.ble life and high moral purpose for the advancement of truth and the benefit of his fellow-men, to an enlightened and unbia.s.sed generation, not doubting that it will recognise the true merit of the man and appreciate the value of his accomplishments for the benefit not only of his countrymen but of the world at large.

THEOPHILA CARLILE CAMPBELL.

THE BATTLE OF THE PRESS, AS TOLD IN THE LIFE OF RICHARD CARLILE

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY

"Yet shall remembrance from oblivion's veil, Relieve your scene and sigh with grief sincere, And soft compa.s.sion at your tragic tale, In silent tribute pay her kindred tear."

We who rejoice in a Free Press to-day can hardly realise the condition of the Press in Europe at the opening of the nineteenth century.

In England, eighty years ago, he who dared to express opinions in opposition to the Established Church, or in any way offensive to the government of the day, rendered himself liable to heavy fines and severe imprisonment. The following extract will show better, perhaps, than anything else what a deplorable state the Press was in when Richard Carlile entered upon his great fight, and the obstacles he had to encounter:--

"It is difficult to imagine a more degraded and dangerous position than that in which every political writer was placed in the year 1817. In the first place, he was subject by a Secretary of State's warrant to be imprisoned upon suspicion under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Secondly he was open to an _ex-officio_ information under which he would be compelled to find bail or be imprisoned. The power of _ex-officio_ information had been extended so as to compel bail by an Act of 1808; but from 1808 to 1811, during which three years forty such informations were laid, only one person was held to bail."*

* Larned's "Encyclopaedia and Topical History".

This was the time and this the state of affairs which greeted Carlile when he first entered into public life. He did not then see a man who had the courage to stand up boldly against such formidable odds. He, therefore, resolved to raise the standard of an absolutely Free Press, and be himself the bearer of the colors. This he knew involved possibilities of imprisonment, of exile, losses and suffering. He believed that his example would rally the weak and scattered forces of the writers of the day, and rouse the people to a sense of their degradation and dangerous condition, and to a recognition of the oppressive character of the rulers then in power.

In gathering materials for the life of Richard Carlile, I have drawn freely from his own publications, and also from a ma.s.s of correspondence extending over many years of his life. These letters were in most cases strictly private, yet every one of them would bear publication as far as Carlile is concerned. He, however, was the recipient of many confidences on the part of his friends--their sorrows were always his by sympathy.

The claims of friendship, long since past, still hold good, though he would profit and not lose by the publication of the whole correspondence.

Chief amongst his publications were the fourteen volumes of the _Republican_, a weekly paper of thirty-two pages, ten or more volumes of which were edited in Dorchester Gaol. The very name of Republican in those days was a challenge to combat. This publication was the direct outcome of the Manchester ma.s.sacre. The name had once before been adopted, but was withdrawn by Mr. Sherwin, the proprietor, as too dangerous.

After the rash and brutal conduct of the Government at Peter's Fields--or "Peterloo", as it came to be called--Carlile took up the paper, restored the name _Republican_, and, raising the war-cry of "a Free Press", kept it up through five of his six years of imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol and for one year after.

The horrors of the French Revolution, and the declaration of independence of the Colonial States of America, were yet too fresh in memory for the authorities of the time to see without alarm what seemed to be the flag of Republicanism flaunted in their very faces, and they sought to put it down at all hazards. The story of the battle between the authorities and Carlile will be found in the story of his life.

It lasted for many years, but Carlile lived to come off a victor. The Government finally declared themselves defeated by him in his mode of moral warfare in the struggle for the freedom of the Press, p.r.o.nouncing him invincible in the course he had taken.

It was said of the _Republican_ that the only section of the British Press which could be said to be free at that time, was that which was issued from Dorchester Prison!

Before his six years of imprisonment had expired, Carlile was informed that it was Lord Castlereagh, the then Prime Minister, who was so determined to crush him, and also that it was his publication of the horrors of the Manchester ma.s.sacre and his open letters to the King and Lord Sidmouth that gave the offence--Castlereagh himself having given the order for the ma.s.sacre, and being solely responsible for it.

The charge of blasphemous libel was decided upon, after much consultation, as the strongest that could be brought to bear upon Carlile, as in that case the help and strength of the Church could be had, and the minds of the people could be turned from the contemplation of that b.l.o.o.d.y affair at Manchester. So our hero was marked for slaughter. The fiat had gone forth! Judge, Attorney-General, and all the prosecutors were whipped into line and made to try this case and find this verdict, however reluctant they might have been, and _were_, to do so.

With this view of the case, which I believe to be the correct one, the reader will more readily comprehend how those stingingly sarcastic letters to Gifford must have stung and rankled in the wounds.

Carlile may be said to have travelled his native isle like the champion of old--always mounted on his charger of fearlessness, and armed cap-a-pie for the encounter of his enemies. They always knew where to find him, and he was always ready to do battle for the right and against wrong. He never skulked nor concealed himself, nor took ship to avoid his enemies. He wore his colors in his helmet in plain sight of all, with proud defiance, and if, as sometimes happened, he was for the time worsted in an encounter, he neither cringed nor fawned, nor asked for quarter. He nursed his wounds as best he might, and never wavered in his determination to fight for the right while life endured.

The names of the various publications brought out by Carlile indicated in a measure the att.i.tude he a.s.sumed. They were the _Republican_, the _Deist_, the _Moralist_, the _Lion_, the _Prompter_, the _Gauntlet_, the _Christian Warrior_, the _Phoenix_, the _Scourge_, and the _Church_.

Carlile never changed the character of a paper to suit the times, but always stopped the old paper and started a new one whenever he felt that the old one had accomplished the purpose for which he had started it.

In the matter of praise and blame Carlile ran the whole gamut, from the highest _crescendo_ of approval to the _ba.s.so profundi_ of malediction.

He was called "the intellectual Saviour" and the "moral regenerator of mankind" by his friends, and "the great Satan of the day" by his enemies; and he was equally unmoved by the extravagance of either.

During the whole course of his public life he did not turn aside for one instant nor stray one foot from the path he had marked out for himself.

Fines, confiscations, or imprisonments could not crush him, and we find him saying, on entering into the tenth year of imprisonment, that "he was now well seasoned for the fight"!

He was warned by a faithful friend, previous to his sentence of imprisonment in 1830, that a measure had been discussed in the private councils of the Government, that the old law of flogging should be revived for his suppression, fines, confiscations, and imprisonments having failed to accomplish it. On hearing that the measure had been abandoned and a further imprisonment agreed upon, he "confessed to having drawn a long breath ". He never despaired, however, but was always confident of success, and never had any misgiving as to the future outcome of the fight.

And now I come to the close of this introductory chapter, and ask the readers of the present day to turn over the pages of the life of this much misrepresented man.

If to map out a plan of duty in youth and to follow it out till death through good and evil report, unspoiled by praise, unmoved by a.s.saults the most ferocious; if to endure losses and the sacrifice of all domestic comforts and apparently unending imprisonment, and never to lose courage or be cast down in spirit; if to bear every evil unshaken and to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the object to be attained, though that object be no selfish one, but for the benefit of down-trodden humanity; if to stand at the helm through storm and fire, through adverse winds and tides, and at last to pilot the barque of a n.o.ble purpose to a sure haven--if this be evidence of greatness of mind, then he was great, for this he _did!_

He was great, too, in his ability to lead the people. He was a great educator of the people; he taught them to think for themselves. He started hundreds of young men, taught them to read, to think, to compare. No man ever did more of this work than Carlile. He taught the working men to be cleanly in their habits, to shun liquor and tobacco, and to dress well.

All his followers, at least all the young men he acknowledged as such, were models of intelligence and upright conduct, and all who survived him did credit to his teaching, and lent valuable aid in the struggle for a Free Press. And so he kept on till death came, all too soon; but not till he had seen above him the bow of promise on the clouds of ignorance, which promised for all a brighter and more beautiful day--the day of mental freedom.

"Who n.o.ble deeds by n.o.ble means obtains, Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains, Like good Aurelius let him reign Or die like Socrates, That man is great indeed!"--Pope.

CHAPTER II. HIS BIRTH, YOUTH, AND EARLY MANHOOD

R. C. to E. S. C.*

* Eliza Sharples Carlile ("Isis").

"Enfield Highway,

"_December 7th_, 1842.

"Love,--This is calculated to reach you at Ashburton on my birthday. In the year 1790, fifty-two years ago, I first drew breath at three in the morning of the eighth day, in an upper room of a large barrack-like house, the lower corner of Steave-ahead Lane. The manger of Bethlehem was not more humble. I was born into much the same conditions I now find my children. With a father much too talented to apply himself to any of the ordinary business of life, my subsistence depended on the industry of a mother, and the kindness of relatives. I was in this condition till five years of age, when a shop at the corner of Lawrence Lane, given up to my mother by an old uncle, for ten years furnished moderate supplies for subsistence. In this respect I was brought up, like yourself, on the side of a mother, save that you had a better father as a family man. I lost my father at four and a half years old, but I cannot see that he ever ministered to my subsistence, though he was a man of much talent; at last he profligately enlisted for a soldier, under which discipline he soon died at the age of thirty-four. In the chapel of Lawrence Lane, where, from nine to twelve years of age, I got some Latin, you will probably find my name cut in the boards, if it be worth looking for. At 'Lads-Well, at the bottom of that lane, you will see the scene of some early exploits of mine, one of which was, 'Julian like',* with a new suit of clothes on, trying to jump over this well.

* Carlile's son.

I jumped in! and on a Sunday, too! The stile of the first meadow was a leaping bar, and in the church-yard you cannot see a tomb or headstone, forty years old, but I have jumped over it. Should you see the centre of the town flooded in its drains, you may see my picture as a boy (Julian like, again) beating through it. I have bathed and fished in every brook, and stolen apples from every tree within a mile of the town.

Julian is not near as excitable over his paper cap, embellished on and before the 5th of November, than I was then in scouring the hedges for miles around, from daylight till dark, to gather a f.a.ggot wherewith to burn the effigy of 'old Tom Paine', my now venerated political father!

I have played at hoop through every crick and corner of the shambles and market-place, have well pelted both towers with tennis-b.a.l.l.s, and the flagstones of the street with peg-tops, and have often formed one of the troops of rag-a-m.u.f.fins of old 'Stoaf Jeffery'. I have hooted Bob Nicholls because he was a little man; and have 'dabbed' at, instead of eating, cakes and treacle on Brim Park. As a boy I had neither father nor master, nor can I bear anything of the kind as a man. With me the rights of the boys and the rights of men are one and the same thing, and you know how much I advocate the rights of woman. [At another time he tells of his early efforts at school, which we will let him do in his own way, and shall prefer this method throughout the entire history wherever it is practicable.] My first schoolmistress was old 'Cherry Chalk', who taught me the alphabet on a horn book, and performed all sorts of cures without medicine by the potent power of charms. She was a witch, but much respected as one who performed wonderful cures. There was another old woman who had the t.i.tle of 'Witch', and one in a town is enough on whom Christian ignorance might vent its spleen. It happened that I escaped all injury from the witch, as I was a favorite boy with her until I grew old enough to be mischievous to her. Whether old 'Cherry Chalk' perfected me in the alphabet I cannot now say, but I perfectly well remember that I was taught about Christ, Cross, or Criss-Cross; now, I dare say that this emblem of the Christian religion was at the bottom of all her charms and spells. I had two other school mistresses of a more respectable stamp than old 'Cherry Chalk'. I believe the first taught for three half-pence a week and the other for twopence. When I got to a five-penny school it was considered an extravagant affair, too expensive to be borne, and a successful effort was made to put me upon the list of free scholars. From the age of six to nine I was at writing and arithmetic; from nine to twelve at Latin.