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as undergoing one of the many terms of imprisonment
to which he was condemned for conscience' sake, Miss Sharples came to
London, and on the 29th of the same month she gave her first lecture at
the Rotunda.

On the 11th of February this young woman of barely twenty-eight
summers, but one month escaped from the trammels of life in a country
town, amidst a strictly religious environment, started a "weekly
publication" called _Isis_, dedicated to "The young women of England
for generations to come or until superstition is extinct." The _Isis_
was published at sixpence, and contains many of Miss Sharples'
discourses both on religious and political subjects. In religion she
was a Deist; in politics a Radical and Republican; thus following
in the footsteps of her leader Richard Carlile. I have been looking
through the volume of the _Isis_; it is all very "proper" (as even
Mrs Grundy would have to confess), and I am bound to say that the
stilted phrases and flowery turns of speech of sixty years ago are to
me not a little wearisome; but with all its defects, it is an enduring
record of the ability, knowledge, and courage of Mrs Sharples Carlile.
She reprints some amusing descriptions of herself from the religious
press; and were I not afraid of going too much out of my way, I would
reproduce them here with her comments in order that we might picture
her more clearly; but although this would be valuable in view of the
evil use made of her name in connection with her kindness to my father,
it would take me too far from the definite purpose of my work. In her
preface to the volume, written in 1834, she thus defends her union with
Richard Carlile:--

"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?"]

Of course, all this happened long before Mr Bradlaugh became acquainted
with Mrs Carlile; when he knew her, sixteen or seventeen years later,
she was a broken woman, who had had her ardour and enthusiasm cooled by
suffering and poverty, a widow with three children, of whom Hypatia,
the eldest, could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old
at the most. I have been told by those who knew Mrs Carlile in those
days that in spite of all this she still had a most noble presence,
and looked and moved "like a queen." Her gifts, however, they said,
with smiles, certainly did not lie in attending to the business of the
coffee room--at that she was "no good." She was quiet and reserved, and
although Christians have slandered her both during her lifetime and up
till within this very year on account of her non-legalised union with
Richard Carlile, she was looked up to and revered by those who knew
her, and never was a whisper breathed against her fair fame.

Amongst the frequenters of the Warner Street Temperance Hall I find
the names of Messrs Harvey, Colin Campbell, the brothers Savage,[3] the
brothers Barralet, Tobias Taylor, Edward Cooke, and others, of whom
most Freethinkers have heard something. They seem to have been rather
wild, compared with the sober dignity of the John Street Institution,
especially in the way of lecture bills with startling announcements,
reminding one somewhat of the modern Salvation Army posters. The
neighbourhood looked with no favourable eye upon the little hall, and I
am told that one night, when a baby was screaming violently next door,
a rumour got about that the "infidels" were sacrificing a baby, and
the place was stormed by an angry populace, who were with difficulty
appeased.

[Footnote 3: There were three of these brothers, all remarkable for
their courage, pertinacity, or ability. One of them, John Savage,
refused to pay taxes in 1833. The best of his goods were seized and,
in spite of Mr Savage's protests, carried away in a van. There was so
much feeling about the taxes at the time that no sooner did the people
living in the neighbourhood (Circus Street, Marylebone) hear of the
seizure than they collected in great numbers. The van was followed,
taken possession of, and brought back to Circus Street. The goods were
removed, the horse taken out of the shafts, and the van demolished.
After the news spread throughout the metropolis the excitement became
so great that the Horse Guards at the Regent's Park Barracks were put
under arms. They had lively times sixty years ago.]

It was to this little group of earnest men that the youth Charles
Bradlaugh was introduced in 1848, as one eager to debate, and
enthusiastically determined to convert them all to the "true religion"
in which he had bee

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