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THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH. THE STORY OF RICHARD CARLILE. S U P P L E M E N T TO “ T H E L I T E R A R Y G U I D E , " J U L Y , 18 9 9 . W e who live in an epoch of almost complete intellectual liberty can never fully realize the difficulties against which those reformers who secured our freedom had to struggle. Liberty of thought is surely as clear a case of natural right as the right to breathe, to eat, and to move about; and as a logical deduction it follows that, if thought is free, the expression of thought should be free also. But this is a hard lesson to learn, and not many nations of the world have yet mastered it. England we consider to be the home of liberty; but even in England freedom of thought has been a very gradual, sometimes a retarded, development. The later Georgian period witnessed various organized and very dangerous efforts on the part of authority to repress and fetter the mind. Foiled in its attempt to rivet the chains on the bold and aspiring colonists of America, it endeavoured to crush the spirit of progress in England. One of the men who fought most vigorously against this rising tide of tyranny was Richard Carlile, a man whose restless energy, dogged perseverance, and the calm cheerfulness with which he endured persecution and imprisonment, have greatly contributed to that freedom of the press and o f open discussion which is one of the commonplaces of the social life of to-day. In the early years of this present century one set of opinions in morals, politics, and religion was alone considered to be right, and these opinions were those which had become “ established ” in Church and State. Any man who dared to express other opinions had, of course, to be punished, on the principle of “ encouraging the others.” The truth that opinion must be free simply because it is opinion stood a fair chance of being forgotten. Result—a ruling class full of smug complacency, having all truth in their possession, and doling it out a little drop at a time to the thirsty multitude as an act of charity. Another result __a few honest and thinking men determined to rebel against mental serfdom, and, even at the cost of much personal suffering, to secure the natural liberties proper to a healthy community. A Life of Richard Carlile* has recently been published by one of his children, and from it the following particulars have been condensed. He was born on December 8th, 1700, in a humble station of life. An imperfect education, with,' however, some knowledge of Latin, and a hard apprenticeship to a mechanical trade, made up his childhood and youth. About 18 16 he began to take an interest in political matters, and wrote articles for the newspapers, at first with very slight success. Revolution was in the air, and Carlile’s sympathies were entirely with the party of reform. He became associated with a young man named Sherwin, and took over a paper established by him, and continued it under the aggressive title of The Republican. From this time dates Carlile’s entrance into public life, and jt was not long before he was in the thick of the fray. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 18 17 had cowed and silenced many of the leading reformers ; but Carlile, nevertheless, resolved to go beyond a kind of advocacy which seemed to him of a “ milk-and-water ” description, __and that whatever the consequences might be to himself. On August 1 6th, 18 19 , he took part in the great meeting at gt Peter’s Fields, Manchester, which had been convened to discuss the unwarrantable suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the monstrously tyrannical clauses of the new measure known as the “ Six Acts.” The meeting—a perfectly peaceable and orderly one—was suddenly charged by the military, and men, women, and children were cut down in a most brutal manner. This was the notorious peterloo Massacre, in which eleven persons lost their lives and six hundred were injured by ferocious and unprovoked cruelty- Escaping with a few bruises, Carlile wrote .to the * The B a ttle o f the P ress, as Told in the Sto ry J the L i f e o f R ic h a rd C a r l i le . By his daughter, TiiEomiLA Carlilf. Campbell. (Bonner.) 320 PP-; 6s Home Secretary (Lord Sidmouth) a letter which marked him in the eyes of the Government as a dangerous man. This letter deals with the conduct of the “ magisterial and yeomanry assassins of Manchester,” and opens with the following paragraph :— “ As a spectator of the horrid proceedings of Monday last at Manchester, I feel it my duty to give the public a narrative of those proceedings through the medium of a letter addressed to you, who ought to be the conservator o f the public peace. My motives for doing this are twofold : the first is to call on you, as Secretary of State for the Home Department, to cause the magistrates of Manchester, and the Yeomanry Cavalry acting under their direction, to be brought to the bar of public justice for the unprovoked slaughter of the peaceable and distressed inhabitants of that place and neighbourhood whilst legally exercising their rights in public meeting assembled. For, unless the administrators of affairs in the governmental department of the country feel it their duty immediately to take this step, the people have no alternative but to identify the ministers in the metropolis with the magistrates of Manchester as having conjointly violated and subverted that known and admitted law of the country which countenances the meeting o f popular assemblies f o r a discussion o f the best means to obtain a redress o f th eir grievances." He goes on to state that, failing redress, the people will have to hold meetings in future with arms in their hands, and resist by force “ the attacks of similar assassins.” The letter is very long, but enough has been quoted to show its purport and enable us to comprehend the malignity with which the plain-spoken writer was very soon persecuted. The Chairman of the meeting, a Mr. Hunt, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for presiding over a peaceful gathering, while the thanks of the Prince Regent were conveyed to the magistrates, officers, and privates who had, by a cowardly butchery,“ so promptly preserved the peace and tranquillity of the country.” Carlile wrote two further letters in stronger terms than the first, and Sir Francis Burdett also expressed in a celebrated letter to the electors of Westminster his burning indignation at the massacre. For thus indulging in the luxury of free speech he was fined ,£ 1,5 00. Carlile had already spent eighteen weeks in prison for being so injudicious as to publish certain parodies on the Book of Common Prayer, and it was now intended that he should have considerably enlarged opportunities for meditating on the error of his reforming ways. A month after the Manchester massacre he learnt that numerous informations which had been filed against him by the Attorney-General would be proceeded with, and that the first and most important of these would be the charge of “ blaphemous lib el” involved in his publication of Thomas Paine’s A ge o f Reason. Carlile’s line of defence was, briefly : (r) That the A g e o f Reason was not a blasphemous or irreligious work—on the contrary, that it inculcated the belief in one God, and set it forth in rational and noble terms; and (2) that the attacks made in the Age o f Reason on the moral and historical imperfections of the Bible could be justified by examination of the Bible itself, and by appeal to eminent writers and other witnesses who had given adequate study to the subject. A few extracts from the pleadings of this trial will probably be of greater interest than any summary:— “ The C h ie f Ju s t ic e : The charge against the defendant on this occasion is the publication of a book calumniating and reviling the Holy Scriptures. It is not that, in any book published by him, the doctrines of revealed religion were discussed with that respect, temper, and moderation which ought to be applied to the discussion of every subject, human or divine, public or private. It can be no defence of such a charge that the party against whom it is preferred should reiterate in his address to the jury the same sort of calumny as that which is contained in the book for the publication of which he has been called on to answer, and I should very ill discharge my duty as a judge or a Christian if 1 suffered this Court to be made a theatre for uttering calumny against the religion of the country. Anything the

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THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH.

THE STORY OF RICHARD CARLILE.

S U P P L E M E N T TO “ T H E L I T E R A R Y G U I D E , " J U L Y , 18 9 9 .

W e who live in an epoch of almost complete intellectual liberty can never fully realize the difficulties against which those reformers who secured our freedom had to struggle. Liberty of thought is surely as clear a case of natural right as the right to breathe, to eat, and to move about; and as a logical deduction it follows that, if thought is free, the expression of thought should be free also. But this is a hard lesson to learn, and not many nations of the world have yet mastered it. England we consider to be the home of liberty; but even in England freedom of thought has been a very gradual, sometimes a retarded, development. The later Georgian period witnessed various organized and very dangerous efforts on the part of authority to repress and fetter the mind. Foiled in its attempt to rivet the chains on the bold and aspiring colonists of America, it endeavoured to crush the spirit of progress in England. One of the men who fought most vigorously against this rising tide of tyranny was Richard Carlile, a man whose restless energy, dogged perseverance, and the calm cheerfulness with which he endured persecution and imprisonment, have greatly contributed to that freedom of the press and o f open discussion which is one of the commonplaces of the social life of to-day.

In the early years of this present century one set of opinions in morals, politics, and religion was alone considered to be right, and these opinions were those which had become “ established ” in Church and State. Any man who dared to express other opinions had, of course, to be punished, on the principle of “ encouraging the others.” The truth that opinion must be free simply because it is opinion stood a fair chance of being forgotten. Result—a ruling class full of smug complacency, having all truth in their possession, and doling it out a little drop at a time to the thirsty multitude as an act of charity. Another result __a few honest and thinking men determined to rebel against mental serfdom, and, even at the cost of much personal suffering, to secure the natural liberties proper to a healthy community.

A Life of Richard Carlile* has recently been published by one of his children, and from it the following particulars have been condensed. He was born on December 8th, 1700, in a humble station of life. An imperfect education, with,' however, some knowledge of Latin, and a hard apprenticeship to a mechanical trade, made up his childhood and youth. About 18 16 he began to take an interest in political matters, and wrote articles for the newspapers, at first with very slight success. Revolution was in the air, and Carlile’s sympathies were entirely with the party of reform. He became associated with a young man named Sherwin, and took over a paper established by him, and continued it under the aggressive title of The Republican. From this time dates Carlile’s entrance into public life, and jt was not long before he was in the thick of the fray. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 18 17 had cowed and silenced many of the leading reformers ; but Carlile, nevertheless, resolved to go beyond a kind of advocacy which seemed to him of a “ milk-and-water ” description, __and that whatever the consequences might be to himself. On August 1 6th, 18 19 , he took part in the great meeting at gt Peter’s Fields, Manchester, which had been convened to discuss the unwarrantable suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the monstrously tyrannical clauses of the new measure known as the “ Six Acts.” The meeting—a perfectly peaceable and orderly one—was suddenly charged by the military, and men, women, and children were cut down in a most brutal manner. This was the notorious peterloo Massacre, in which eleven persons lost their lives and six hundred were injured by ferocious and unprovoked cruelty- Escaping with a few bruises, Carlile wrote .to the

* The B a ttle o f the P ress, as Told in the Sto ry J the L i f e o f R ic h a rd C a r l i le . By his daughter, TiiEomiLA Carlilf. Campbell. (Bonner.) 320 PP-; 6s

Home Secretary (Lord Sidmouth) a letter which marked him in the eyes of the Government as a dangerous man. This letter deals with the conduct of the “ magisterial and yeomanry assassins of Manchester,” and opens with the following paragraph :—

“ As a spectator of the horrid proceedings of Monday last at Manchester, I feel it my duty to give the public a narrative of those proceedings through the medium of a letter addressed to you, who ought to be the conservator o f the public peace. My motives for doing this are twofold : the first is to call on you, as Secretary of State for the Home Department, to cause the magistrates of Manchester, and the Yeomanry Cavalry acting under their direction, to be brought to the bar of public justice for the unprovoked slaughter of the peaceable and distressed inhabitants of that place and neighbourhood whilst legally exercising their rights in public meeting assembled. For, unless the administrators of affairs in the governmental department of the country feel it their duty immediately to take this step, the people have no alternative but to identify the ministers in the metropolis with the magistrates of Manchester as having conjointly violated and subverted that known and admitted law of the country which countenances the meeting o f popular assemblies f o r a discussion o f the best means to obtain a redress o f th eir grievances." He goes on to state that, failing redress, the people will have to hold meetings in future with arms in their hands, and resist by force “ the attacks of similar assassins.” The letter is very long, but enough has been quoted to show its purport and enable us to comprehend the malignity with which the plain-spoken writer was very soon persecuted.

The Chairman of the meeting, a Mr. Hunt, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for presiding over a peaceful gathering, while the thanks of the Prince Regent were conveyed to the magistrates, officers, and privates who had, by a cowardly butchery,“ so promptly preserved the peace and tranquillity of the country.” Carlile wrote two further letters in stronger terms than the first, and Sir Francis Burdett also expressed in a celebrated letter to the electors of Westminster his burning indignation at the massacre. For thus indulging in the luxury of free speech he was fined ,£ 1,5 00.

Carlile had already spent eighteen weeks in prison for being so injudicious as to publish certain parodies on the Book of Common Prayer, and it was now intended that he should have considerably enlarged opportunities for meditating on the error of his reforming ways. A month after the Manchester massacre he learnt that numerous informations which had been filed against him by the Attorney-General would be proceeded with, and that the first and most important of these would be the charge of “ blaphemous lib el” involved in his publication of Thomas Paine’s A ge o f Reason. Carlile’s line of defence was, briefly : (r) That the A g e o f Reason was not a blasphemous or irreligious work—on the contrary, that it inculcated the belief in one God, and set it forth in rational and noble terms; and (2) that the attacks made in the Age o f Reason on the moral and historical imperfections of the Bible could be justified by examination of the Bible itself, and by appeal to eminent writers and other witnesses who had given adequate study to the subject. A few extracts from the pleadings of this trial will probably be of greater interest than any summary:—

“ The C h ie f Ju s t ic e : The charge against the defendant on this occasion is the publication of a book calumniating and reviling the Holy Scriptures. It is not that, in any book published by him, the doctrines of revealed religion were discussed with that respect, temper, and moderation which ought to be applied to the discussion of every subject, human or divine, public or private. It can be no defence of such a charge that the party against whom it is preferred should reiterate in his address to the jury the same sort of calumny as that which is contained in the book for the publication of which he has been called on to answer, and I should very ill discharge my duty as a judge or a Christian if 1 suffered this Court to be made a theatre for uttering calumny against the religion of the country. Anything the

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