"The name, the name's the thing, To catch their venom and their sting."
If we may take the liberty of paraphrasing the lines of the immortal bard.
Carlile, with his constitutional dislike to everything secret, exposed all secret societies and orders from Freemasonry down. The members of the various orders who had outgrown or grown tired of the ceremonies of these different associations, furnished all the information to Carlile. These books were on sale for many years and attracted widespread attention. As usual Carlile was inundated with both praise and abuse, as the feelings of his critics leaned to one side or the other.
The fact of Carlile's adding the title of Reverend to his name came from the efforts made by the authorities to prevent him speaking to the people on Sundays in the open air, claiming that none but licensed clergymen were entitled to that privilege; Carlile met with this objection throughout England. This led him to the examination of the necessary qualifications for this privilege, and he found that a belief in God and an English half-crown (about sixty-two cents, of American money) would purchase the title of Reverend and give him the right to address the people on Sunday in the parks as well as everywhere else. This cheap honor was easily procured, and stopped all opposition on that head. So, as the _Reverend Richard Carlile_ he could speak anywhere and at any time, and, as he said, "With the Bible in my hand I can go anywhere and preach without the slightest diminution of my former principles". The transaction was simply a _ruse de guerre_ to gain an advantage over the enemy, which he did; yet it took a long time and many explanations to make people see why this was done, and to convince them that he had not gone over to the enemy.
In the course of one of his lecturing trips he tells the following story of himself:--
"My visit to Buxton was one of retirement. The only great man whom I met there, or rather took with me, was 'Puffendorf'. Having read much of the House of Commons debates in which there has been copious mentionings of Grotius, Vattel, and Puffendorf, I bought the great man for a couple of shillings in Manchester, and intended to study him in Buxton. To my surprise, I tried but could not read him; I tried again and again, but my perseverance failed me here, and I threw the book aside resolved to take no more books upon the recommendation of the House of Commons members. By reading 'Puffendorf' I thought I might qualify myself to be a member of the great council of the nation; but if nothing but Puffendorf will do I shall never get among them. I found this author, like Dugald Stewart since, deducing his theory of morals from the theory of the superstition of the age in which he lived, and exacting some most outrageous observances as moral and national law. It is but fair to say that my copy was translated by an English priest and was a professed abridgement, so that it is possible that the real original Puffendorf might still be as Macintosh, Burdett and others would have him to be."