"There are those who reproach my marriage. They are scarcely worth notice; but this I have to say for myself, that nothing could have been more pure in morals, more free from venality. It was not only a marriage of two bodies, but a marriage of two congenial spirits; or two minds reasoned into the same knowledge of true principles, each seeking an object on which virtuous affection might rest, and grow, and strengthen. And though we passed over a legal obstacle, it was only because it could not be removed, and was not in a spirit of violation of the law, nor of intended offence or injury to any one. A marriage more pure and moral was never formed and continued in England. It was what marriage should be, though not perhaps altogether what marriage is in the majority of cases. They who are married equally moral, will not find fault with mine; but where marriage is merely of the law or for money, and not of the soul, there I look for abuse."[2] [Footnote 2: In the _Gauntlet_ for Sept. 22nd, 1833, Carlile, who had been formally separated from his wife nine months previously, says:-- "Many months did not elapse before we stood pledged to a moral marriage, and to a resolution to avow that marriage immediately after my liberation. I took the first opportunity of doing it, as I now take the first of explaining the introduction. As a public man, I will be associated with nothing that is to be concealed from the public. Many, I know, will carp upon my freedom as to divorce and marriage; and to such persons I say, if they are worth a word, that I do so because I hate hypocrisy, because I hate everything that is foul and indecent, because I will not deceive any one. I have led a miserable wedded life through twenty years, from disparity of mind and temper; and, for the next twenty, I have resolved to have a wife in whom I may find a companion and helpmate.... I will make one woman happy, and I will not make any other woman unhappy. RICHARD CARLILE. "_P.S._--I would not have intruded this matter upon the public notice had it not been intended that the lady, as well as myself, will continue to lecture publicly. We are above deception. Our creed is truth, and our morals nothing but is morally and reasonably to be defended. Priestcraft hath no law for us; but every virtue, everything that is good and useful to human nature in society, has its binding law on us. We will practise every virtue and war with every vice. This is our moral marriage and our bond of union. Who shall show against it any just cause or impediment?"]