There was no intolerance in Carlile’s habits. ‘I have no wish,’ these were his words, ‘to force my opinions on any man—if he wishes to have them, he must either buy them or challenge me to defend them; and, in this last instance, it must be some one whom I consider worth contending with, before I would open my mouth.’(1) He was of a retiring turn, and utterly incapable of obtruding himself, where there was the possibility of his not being desired. It was a sense of duty alone that made him brave, his moral courage was great, but it was the courage of conviction. Carlile was an illustration of Bulwer’s remark, that courage in one thing, is not to be mistaken for courage in everything. He who opposed himself without fear to the spies of Sidmouth, and the edicts of Castlereagh, who singly withstood public opinion on the questions of Marriage and Religion, when that opinion knew no reason and no mercy, he felt, through his whole life, a want of fair confidence in himself, when addressing a public audience. Large numbers, called together by his name, produced in him a sense of disturbing responsibility and embarrassment.(2) When liberated from imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol—an ill discipline certainly for oratory—he trembled at committing his reputation to the lapses of an inexperienced tongue. His friends thought he would never make a speaker, but his perseverance prevailed. Still his efforts were irregular; sometimes he was as eloquent as the best, at others timidly hesitating. Probably his stolid nature wanted passion to excite it—some nature’s, like deep waters, are only to put in motion by a storm. A paralytic stroke, in March 1841, affected the muscles of the mouth and tongue, and diminished his acquired power. Hume has said that Christian sects manifest intolerance, which increases in intensity the nearer their valuing creeds coincide. This has been true of some classes of infidels, but Carlile wisely regarded with favour the approximation of sects to reason. He encouraged the Rev. Robert Taylor’s Deistical friends, because, like the Unitarians, they would break up some part of the superstition of other sects. His impression was that, ‘Though not themselves free from superstition, they would lessen the sum total among all the sects, and, in so doing, do a certain amount of good.’(3) 1. Repub. vol. iv. p. 33. 2. Gauntlet, No. 30 p. 385. 3. Repub. vol. xvi. p. 130.