Guy A. Aldred Archive
Written: 1912.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
In March, 1819, the German student, Karl Sandt, killed the Russian police spy, German liberticide, and hired agent of the despots of Europe, Kotzbue, Sandt was executed over twelve months later. The latter event led Carlile to applaud the motive and deed in the columns of the Republican for June 9th, 1820. He also praised the firm manner in which Sandt had played the martyr. “Tyrants,” he lamented, “are the last men to take lessons from example and history. Their ambition impels-them to go on. They are actuated by feelings similar to the common robber, who has often felt himself enriched by his booty and doubts not but that he shall be equally successful in the next attempt. He thus goes on from time to time until the hand of justice and oppressed" innocence arrests his course, and he is only convinced of former misdeeds by the near and certain approach of death.”
On the same date as these sentiments were published in" the Republican, Carlile was applauding the justice of political assassination in a letter he addressed to the Rev. W. Wait, A.B., of Bristol. This divine had written to Carlile deploring the tendency of his publications, and affirming that they were calculated to lead to violent conspiracies against the State, acts of assassination, and to the consequent destruction of the souls and bodies of many of Carlile’s fellow-countrymen. Carlile grasped the class basis of this gentleman’s hypocritical objection to murder, and immediately came to grips with him by propounding the following question: “What think you, sir, of those people who were slain at Manchester, innocent and unoffending ? Those murders have been trifled with in our courts of law.”
Carlile now proceeded to tell Mr. Wait more than he seemed to ask, so that it could not be said that he was evading the question, viz.:——
“I hold the destruction of tyrants by putting them to death suddenly and violently, or—if you should think me not sufficiently explicit--by assassinating them, to be an act just, moral, virtuous, and legal, agreeable to the law of nature which should be the foundation of all other law. A tyrant is the common destroyer of his species, and any member of that community in which he dwells and plays the tyrant . . . may, in my opinion, meritoriously put him to death. The moralist, or a man with the most humane mind, will stand aloof, and ask himself the following questions:——Which would have been the greatest outrage on the laws, morals, and welfare of this society? That this man, who is an avowed and admitted tyrant, should fall by the hand of one whom he has injured, or that he should have lived to have made unhappy, miserable, and in continual fear for their lives and properties, every member of this society that should not feel disposed to flatter and applaud his wicked measures? "
Carlile demanded a frank and candid answer to this last query of his clerical questioner. But this request was never complied with. Courage is no part of the clerical habit. But it was of Carlile’s, for he proceeded to add :—
“But as I consider that the majority of the present ministers are tyrants and enemies to the interest and welfare of the maple of this country. so also am I bold to confess that if an man. who has suffered unjustly under their administration should be so git indifferent about his own life as to slay any one or more of them, I would tune my lyre to sing his praises. I consider it to be a want of virtue and true courage that makes a man seek companions to perform such an act. It is a proof that he calls upon others to do that which he has not resolution enough to do single-handed ; and in seeking men that will co-operate with him, he is sure to fall in with the most vicious of mankind, and mar all the good he might have done as an individual. I condemn an association for such purposes."
A few years later he addressed himself with equal energy to the task of encouraging the insurgent agricultural laborers to continue their career of revolt. He told them that they had more just and moral cause for wasting property and burning farm produce than ever king or faction that ever made war had for making war. In war all destruction of property was counted lawful. Upon the ground of that, which was called a law of nations, Carlile told them theirs was a state of war, and their quarrel was the want of the necessaries of life in the midst of abundance. Further, Governmental severity of repression would warrant their resistance even to death and to life for life. The issues Carlile impressed upon them in the following terms :——
"You see hoards, of food, and you are starving; you see a Government rioting in every sort of luxury and wasteful expenditure, and you, ever ready to labor, cannot find one of the comforts of life. Neither your silence nor your patience has obtained for you the least respectful attention from that Government. The more tame you have grown, the more you have been oppressed and despised, the more you have been trampled on; and it is only now that you begin to display your physical as well as your moral strength that your cruel tyrants treat with you and offer you terms of pacification."