Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/107

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being set to perform some office incompatible with the dignity of one who could read a prescription. For a time he coloured pictures, which were sold in the shop kept by his mother. Her principal trade customers were Gilford & Co., brothers of Robert, afterwards attorney-general and lord Gifford [q.v.]. Carlile was eventually in apprenticed to Mr. Cumming, a tinman, a master, who considered five or six hours for sleep all the recreation necessary for his apprentices. Carlile frequently rebelled against this injustice. He had ambition to earn his living by his pen. In the meantime he worked as a Journeyman tinman in various parts of the country. In 1813 he was employed at Benham & Sons’, Blackfriars Road, London; in 1816 at the firm of Matthews & Masterman of Union Court, Holborn. There he saw for the first time one of the works of Thomas Paine, whose effigy he had helped to burn when a boy. Excited by the vigour of the ‘Rights of Man’ and the distress of the time, he wrote letters to newspapers, but only with the result of seeing a notice in the ‘Independent Whig,' a ‘half-employed mechanic is too violent.' He wrote to Hunt and Cobbett without interesting them. In 1817 the ‘Black Dwarf,’ a London weekly publication, edited by Jonathan Wooler, first appeared. This periodical was much more to Carlile's taste than Cobbett's 'Register,' and was continued till 1819. The Habeas Corpus Act was than suspended, and the sale of obnoxious literature exposed to dangers which only stimulated Carlile. He borrowed 1l. from his employer, bought with it a hundred ‘Dwarfs,’ and on 9 March 1817 sallied forth from the manufactory with the papers in a handkerchief. He traversed London in every direction to get news-vendors to sell the ‘Dwarf.' He carried the ‘Dwarf' round several weeks, walking thirty miles a day at a profit of fifteen pence and eighteen pence. When Steill, the publisher of the 'Dwarf' was arrested, Carlile offered to take his place. ‘I did not then see,’ he laid later in life, ‘what my experience has since taught me, that the greatest despotism ruling the press is popular ignorance. He printed and effected the sale of 25,000 copies of Southey's 'Wat Tyler’ in 1817, in spite of the author's objection. The ‘Parodies ’ of Hone being suppressed, Carlile reprinted them, and also published in 1817 a series of parodies by himself, entitled ‘The Political Litany, diligently revised, to be said or sung until the Appointed Change occurs;' ‘The Sinecurists' Creed;' 'The Bullet Te Deum;’ ‘A Political Catechism;’ ‘The Order for the Administration of Loaves and Fishes.' These publications cost Carlile eighteen weeks' imprisonment in the king's bench prison, from which he was liberated without trial on the acquittal of William Hope. In 1818 Carlile published the theoligical, political, and miscellaneous works of Paine, together with a memoir. He was prosecuted, and he published other works of a similar character. By the end of October 1819 he had six indictments against him. In November be was sentenced to 1,500l. fine and three years’ imprisonment in Dorchester gaol. In the midldle of the night he was handcuffed and driven of between two armed officers to Dorchester, a distance of 120 miles. His trial lasted three days, and attracted the notice of the Emperor Alexander of Russia, who thought it necessary to issue a ukase to forbid any report of it being brought into his territory. During this imprisonment he was ordered to be taken out of his cell half an hour each day. He resented the exhibition by remaining two years and s half in his room without going into the open air. Carlile busied himself in gaol with the publication of a periodical called ‘The Republican,' which he in 1819 and continued till 1826 (14 vols. The first twelve volumes are dated from Dorchester gaol. Mrs. Carlile resumed in the publication of this and other of her husband's works was sentenced in January 1821 to two year's imprisonment, also in Dorchester gaol. But Carlile still managed to publish his writings, and at once issued a report of his wife's trial. The same year a constitutional association was form for prosecuting Carlile’s assistants; 6,000l. was raised, and the Duke of Wellington put his name at the head of the list. The sheriff of the court of king's bench took possession of Carlile‘s house in Fleet Street, furniture, and stock in trade, but Carli1e‘s publications still issued from the prison. In 1822, in the week in which Peel took possession of the home office, a second seizure was made of the house and stock at 65 Fleet Street, under pretence of satisfying the lines, but neither in this nor the former seizure was a farthing allowed in the abatement of the Sues, and Carlile was kept in Dorchester gaol for six years, from 1819 to 1825-three years' imprisonment being taken in lieu of the fines. His sister, Mary Anne, was lined 500l., and subjected to twelve months’ imprisonment from July 1821, for publishing Carlile‘s ‘New Year‘s Address to the Reformers of Great Britain’ (1821). Carlile published a report of her trial. The rate of liquidation of fines established by the crown was twelve months for every 500l. In 1825 it was reported that the cabinet council had come to the conclusion that prosecutions should be discontinued. No more persons