were arrested from Carlile's shop, and yet none of his publications had been suppressed. The last nine of his shopmen arrested were detained to complete their sentences, varying from six months* to three years' imprisonment. Sir Robert Peel refusing to rive up a single day. After his release Carlile published the earlier numbers of a new weekly Jolitical paper called 'The Gorgon,' and from anuary 1828 to December 1829 edited a six-penny weekly serial called 'The Lion' — a record of the prosecution of Robert Taylor, author of the 'Devil's Pulpit,' Carlile sought to establish freedom of speech, and in 1830 engaged the Rotunda, Blackfriars Road. Most of the public men in London out of parliament attended the discussions, and a liberty of speech never before known in England was permitted. The French revolution of 1830 gave further impetus to free speaking on the platform. Later, Carlile's house in Fleet Street was assessed for church rates. When his goods were seized he retaliated by taking out the two front windows to exhibit two effigies of a bishop and a distraining officer. After a time he added a devil, who was linked arm-in-arm with the bishop. Such crowds were attracted that public business was impeded. Carlile was again indicted, but the court was at least externally courteous. Carlile defended himself with good sense, but was sentenced to pay a fine of 40s. to the king and give sureties of 200/. — himself in 100l. and two others in 50l. — for his good behaviour for three years. As he refused to give sureties or ask others to become sureties, he entered with his accustomed spirit into three years' more imprisonment. Before sentence he made a deposition in court stating the grounds of his determination, and that, 'though anxious to live in peace and amity with all men, there did exist many political and moral evils which he would through life labour to abate.' Thus, with a further imprisonment in 1834-5 of ten weeks for resistance to the payment of church rates, he endured a total imprisonment of nine years and four months. He saw that the humiliation of the press could only be removed by resistance. In 1819 Castlereagh had proposed a law which would have inflicted transportation on Carlile for a second offence. Edwards, a clever spy, frequented his house for months, and made him a full-length model of Paine, with a view to win his confidence and involve him in the Cato Street conspiracy. When Thistlewood was seized it was intended to arrest Mrs. Carlile, her husband being then in prison, to suggest his complicity with Thistlewood. His shopmen were arrested so frequently that he sold his books by clockwork, so that the buyer was unable to identify the seller. On a dial was written the name of every publication for sale, the purchaser entered and turned the handle of the dial to the publication he wanted; on depositing the money the book dropped down before him. The peril of maintaining a free press in those days brought Carlile the admiration and sympathy of powerful friends unprepared themselves to incur such risks. The third and fourth years of his imprisonment produced him subscriptions to the amount of 600l. a year. For a long period his profits over the counter were 50l. a week. Once, when a trial was pending, Mrs. Carlile took 500l. in the shop m one week. But Carlile had a passion for propagandism, and incurred liabilities which exhausted all his resources. So long as he vindicated the political freedom of the press Cobbett said, 'You have done your duty bravely, Mr. Carlile ; if every one had done like you, it would be all very well.' But when he sought to establish the theological and even the medical freedom of the press, Cartwright and others deprecated his proceedings as mischievous or immoral.
Carlile married in 1813 one several years older than himself. Out of his slender wages of thirty shillings a week, even when he had several children, he continued to contribute to the support of his mother. This first led to domestic differences, which asperity of temper on his wife's part increased, and in 1819 a separation was agreed upon as soon as he had means of providing for her, which did not occur until 1832, when he was able to settle upon her an annuity bequeathed to him by Mr. Morrison of Chelsea. Otherwise Mrs. Carlile was not without good qualities. She had business talent, which her husband never acquired, and though having but little sympathy with his opinions, sne resented the oppression directed against him, and resolutely refused to compromise him or discontinue selling his publications, though it subjected her to two years' imprisonment. Carlile died on 10 Feb. 1843, in his fifty-third year, from an illness brought on by excitement in search of a child who had wandered from his door in Bouverie Street, London. Sir William Lawrence [q. v.], the author of the 'Lectures on Man,' saw him in his brief illness. He left his body for anatomical purposes to St. Thomas's Hospital. He followed the example of Bentham in desiring to remove by his own example the popular prejudice against dissection. Carlile was abstemious, habitually diffident, but bold under a sense of duty. He practised free speaking, and, what was rarer, never objected to its being used by others towards himself. Although he ordinarily
