The battle of the press — Story, Setting & Ideas

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY

"Yet shall remembrance from oblivion's veil, Relieve your scene and sigh with grief sincere, And soft compassion 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 mass 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 massacre. 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, pronouncing 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 massacre and his open letters to the King and Lord Sidmouth that gave the offence--Castlereagh himself having given the order for the massacre, and being solely responsible for it.