Carlile had a just notion of the relation of personalities to principles. ‘Human nature,’ said he, ‘through whatever improved modifications it may pass, will still have its frailties, and those frailties have no relation to the social principles that may be advocated, nor do they emanate from newly advocated social principles, but from the frailty of that nature,... and any exhibition of such frailty belongs to the individual, and not to the principles constituting the public cause.’... But it is one thing to perceive the tenor of personalties, and another and very different thing to be able to conduct them. Mr. Carlile was utterly unable to conduct them usefully. They must be entered upon, not on personal, but upon public grounds; or they lose all moral effect. If undertaken from spleen, or vanity, they belong to the class of ‘quarrels,’ and damage both the writer and nis cause. If entered upon to preserve the integrity of a public question, such intention must be made very evident and the _improvement_ alone, and not the mortification of the party criticised, must be steadily kept in view. This Mr. Carlile never understood: he wounded, he disparaged, he recriminated. He did not weigh character through its entire extent. He mistook a part for the whole. It was in this erroneous way, that he condemned Cobbett and Hunt, was querulous to his friends in Parliament, and most unjust to his most important and devoted allies. Ricardo, Hume, Brougham, Burdett, who presented petitions for him, seem to me to have treated him much better than he treated them. Richard Carlile’s reputation was founded on the joint profession of Republicanism, and ultimately of Deism and Atheism. He owed much to the _time_ when he made these professions, and not a little to the talent with which he maintained them. But did his services rest exclusively on the conditions under which they were rendered, their value would still stand high in the opinion of those capable of estimating the steps of public progress. He had to incur an obnoxious singularity, and brave imminent danger in order to purchase a field of action for others. This is a work which the world does not applaud like the manifestation of genius and talent, but it is a work which requires a courage and a sentiment of self-sacrifice, which the world’s favourites rarely display. The work of the pioneer of thought is a work done for men of genius and talent; a work they are seldom able to do for themselves—for talent is prudent, and genius is timid; it is a work, however, which must be done by some one, or freedom languishes, invention is dumb, talent is misdirected, and philosophy creeps stealthily along starting at the sound of its own footsteps. 1. Sherwin*s Republican, No. 2, p. 21.