Such was the difficulty of obtaining the forbidden books, in which he set the example of dealing, that twelve guineas were offered for twelve copies of the Age of Reason,(1) and £5 for five suppressed twopenny Tracts.(2) In order to destroy a trade which they could not intimidate, the Government arrested his shopmen with a rapidity intended to exhaust them. To defeat this intention, books were sold through an aperture; so that the buyer was unable to identify the seller.(3) Afterwards they were sold by clockwork.(4) On a dial was written the name of every publication for sale. The purchaser entered, and turned the hand of the dial to the book he wanted, which, on depositing his money, dropped down before him without the necessity of any one speaking. The Vice and Constitutional Associations we both defied and defeated; notwithstanding that the honoured name of Wilberforce was found on the list of the members of one of the societies, and that of the Duke of Wellington headed the other. The circulation of Carlile’s books were quadrupled, and a cheering crowd around his shop windows perpetually testified their approval of his courage, and at public dinners in the provinces, the health was drank of ‘Carlile’s invisible shopman.’ Martyrdom, he said, was contagious, and could he keep it up, he should glory in a perpetual sessions at the Old Bailey. The result of his course he expresses with honourable exultation. ‘In this country the Age of Reason was spellbound for twenty years, with the exception of a few copies put forth by Daniel Isaac Eaton. From December, 1818, to December, 1822, I had sent into circulation near 20,000 copies. Let corruption rub out that if she can, as Mr. Cobbett said his 40,000 Registers.’ By the month of June, 1824, in the fifth year of his imprisonment, his calculation was verified; the press was freed, and the Government, who had beaten Napoleon in a physical conflict, was beaten by Carlile in a moral struggle—so impotent is power to overcome the right, when brave men champion the right. 1. Repub. vol. ii. p. 183. 2. Christian Warrior, p. 29. 3. Repub. vol. v. p. 56. 4. Repub. vol. v. p. 264.