He began a periodical or ended it at will. No taunt deterred him, no threat intimidated him, no smile seduced him. Carlile was perfectly able to stand alone. He avowed himself an Atheist when no one else did. When he understood that arbitrary checks to population were necessary he said so and distinguishing the particular kinds of checks, disguisedly hinted at by Political Economists, or anonymously broached in handbills, he specified them and added these words, ‘I think these plans tor the prevention of conception good, and publicly say it.’(1) Although that saying involved his own reputation and that of his cause. If Carlile had the querulousness, which condemned others, he had also the rarer courage which condemned himself. If he called others fools he called himself one, when his judgment convinced him that he had been in error. To those whom he found he had wronged, he made no dubious acknowledgment. Disdaining deceit always he openly made the amplest apology frank words could express. ‘I ask Mr. Cobbett’s pardon, and make the due apology,’ said he, on finding that he had made an erroneous attribution to him.(2) To Dr. Olinthus Gregory he was more emphatic still.(3) Carlile proclaimed the excellence of Cobbett’s Grammar, and the superiority of Hunt’s Roasted Corn,(4) at the same time that he roasted the authors of both. Major Cartwright’s ‘English Constitution Produced and Illustrated,’ he praised in some parts, while he mercilessly assailed it in others.(5) He acknowledged the kindness of his prosecutors, where they were kind, with the same fullness with which he execrated them when brutal.(6) To his bitterest enemy he was constantly thus just, and his own faults he confessed with as little reserve as he pointed out those or his enemies. His intellect was rude, but most robust. He had a passion for truth and did not care whether it went against him or for him; he told it with equal zest. He not only as many do, professed to love free speaking; he could _bear it_ of himself. He held, as a public man should do, his reputation in his hand, and he would toss it up as one would a ball. 1. Repub. No. 18, vol. ii. pp. 566-6. 1825. 2. Repub. vol. xii. p. 29. 3. Repub. vol. xii. p. 727. 4. Repub. vol. vi. p. 12. 5. Repub. vol. viii. p. 18. 6. Repub. vol. x. pp. 63-4.