Latter-Day Pamphlets...had the year 1848, one of the most singu-lar, disastrous, amazing, and, on...

Latter-Day Pamphlets

Thomas Carlyle

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Contents

[February 1, 1850.] The Present Time. 1

[March 1, 1850.] Model Prisons. 69

[April 1, 1850.] Downing Street. 127

[April 15, 1850.] The New Downing Street. 185

[May 1, 1850.] Stump-Orator. 251

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But as yet struggles the twelfthhour of the Night. Birds of dark-ness are on the wing; spectres up-roar; the dead walk; the livingdream. Thou, Eternal Providence,wilt make the Day dawn!—JEANPAUL.

Then said his Lordship, “Well.God mend all!"—"Nay, by God,Donald, we must help him to mendit!” said the other.—RUSHWORTH(Sir David Ramsay and Lord Rea,in 1630).

[February 1, 1850.]The Present Time.

The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity,child and heir of all the Past Times with theirgood and evil, and parent of all the Future, isever a “New Era” to the thinking man; andcomes with new questions and significance,however commonplace it look: to know it, andwhat it bids us do, is ever the sum of knowl-edge for all of us. This new Day, sent us outof Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens;—amid the bustling trivialities and loud emptynoises, its silent monitions, which if we can-not read and obey, it will not be well withus! No;—nor is there any sin more fearfullyavenged on men and Nations than that same,which indeed includes and presupposes allmanner of sins: the sin which our old piousfathers called “judicial blindness;"—which we,with our light habits, may still call misinter-pretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty toits real meanings and monitions, stupid disre-gard of these, stupid adherence active or pas-

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sive to the counterfeits and mere current sem-blances of these. This is true of all times anddays.

But in the days that are now passing overus, even fools are arrested to ask the mean-ing of them; few of the generations of menhave seen more impressive days. Days of end-less calamity, disruption, dislocation, confu-sion worse confounded: if they are not daysof endless hope too, then they are days of ut-ter despair. For it is not a small hope that willsuffice, the ruin being clearly, either in actionor in prospect, universal. There must be anew world, if there is to be any world at all!That human things in our Europe can everreturn to the old sorry routine, and proceedwith any steadiness or continuance there; thissmall hope is not now a tenable one. Thesedays of universal death must be days of uni-versal new-birth, if the ruin is not to be totaland final! It is a Time to make the dullest manconsider; and ask himself, Whence he came?Whither he is bound?—A veritable “New Era,”to the foolish as well as to the wise.

Not long ago, the world saw, with thought-less joy which might have been very thought-ful joy, a real miracle not heretofore consid-ered possible or conceivable in the world,—a Reforming Pope. A simple pious crea-ture, a good country-priest, invested unex-pectedly with the tiara, takes up the New Tes-tament, declares that this henceforth shall be

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his rule of governing. No more finesse, chi-canery, hypocrisy, or false or foul dealing ofany kind: God’s truth shall be spoken, God’sjustice shall be done, on the throne called ofSt. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, or Father ofChristendom, shall preside there. And sucha throne of St. Peter; and such a Christen-dom, for an honest Papa to preside in! TheEuropean populations everywhere hailed theomen; with shouting and rejoicing leadingarticles and tar-barrels; thinking people lis-tened with astonishment,—not with sorrow ifthey were faithful or wise; with awe rather asat the heralding of death, and with a joy as ofvictory beyond death! Something pious, grandand as if awful in that joy, revealing oncemore the Presence of a Divine Justice in thisworld. For, to such men it was very clear howthis poor devoted Pope would prosper, withhis New Testament in his band. An alarmingbusiness, that of governing in the throne of St.Peter by the rule of veracity! By the rule ofveracity, the so-called throne of St. Peter wasopenly declared, above three hundred years,ago, to be a falsity, a huge mistake, a pesti-lent dead carcass, which this Sun was wearyof. More than three hundred years ago, thethrone of St. Peter received peremptory judi-cial notice to quit; authentic order, registeredin Heaven’s chancery and since legible in thehearts of all brave men, to take itself away,—to begone, and let us have no more to do with


it and its delusions and impious deliriums;—and it has been sitting every day since, it maydepend upon it, at its own peril withal, andwill have to pay exact damages yet for everyday it has so sat. Law of veracity? What thisPopedom had to do by the law of veracity, wasto give up its own foul galvanic life, an offenceto gods and men; honestly to die, and get itselfburied.

Far from this was the thing the poor Popeundertook in regard to it;—and yet, on thewhole, it was essentially this too. “Reform-ing Pope?” said one of our acquaintance, oftenin those weeks, “Was there ever such a mira-cle? About to break up that huge imposthumetoo, by ‘curing’ it? Turgot and Necker werenothing to this. God is great; and when ascandal is to end, brings some devoted manto take charge of it in hope, not in despair!"—But cannot he reform? asked many simplepersons;—to whom our friend in grim banterwould reply: “Reform a Popedom,—hardly. Awretched old kettle, ruined from top to bot-tom, and consisting mainly now of foul grimeand rust: stop the holes of it, as your anteces-sors have been doing, with temporary putty, itmay hang together yet a while; begin to ham-mer at it, solder at it, to what you call mendand rectify it,—it will fall to sherds, as sure asrust is rust; go all into nameless dissolution,—and the fat in the fire will be a thing worthlooking at, poor Pope!"—So accordingly it has

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proved. The poor Pope, amid felicitationsand tar-barrels of various kinds, went on joy-fully for a season: but he had awakened, heas no other man could do, the sleeping ele-ments; mothers of the whirlwinds, conflagra-tions, earthquakes. Questions not very solu-ble at present, were even sages and heroesset to solve them, began everywhere withnew emphasis to be asked. Questions whichall official men wished, and almost hoped, topostpone till Doomsday. Doomsday itself hadcome; that was the terrible truth!

For, sure enough, if once the law of ve-racity be acknowledged as the rule for hu-man things, there will not anywhere be wantof work for the reformer; in very few placesdo human things adhere quite closely to thatlaw! Here was the Papa of Christendom pro-claiming that such was actually the case;—whereupon all over Christendom such resultsas we have seen. The Sicilians, I think, werethe first notable body that set about applyingthis new strange rule sanctioned by the gen-eral Father; they said to themselves, We donot by the law of veracity belong to Naplesand these Neapolitan Officials; we will, by fa-vor of Heaven and the Pope, be free of these.Fighting ensued; insurrection, fiercely main-tained in the Sicilian Cities; with much blood-shed, much tumult and loud noise, vocifer-ation extending through all newspapers andcountries. The effect of this, carried abroad


by newspapers and rumor, was great in allplaces; greatest perhaps in Paris, which forsixty years past has been the City of Insurrec-tions. The French People had plumed them-selves on being, whatever else they were not,at least the chosen “soldiers of liberty,” whotook the lead of all creatures in that pursuit,at least; and had become, as their orators, ed-itors and litterateurs diligently taught them,a People whose bayonets were sacred, a kindof Messiah People, saving a blind world in itsown despite, and earning for themselves a ter-restrial and even celestial glory very consid-erable indeed. And here were the wretcheddown-trodden populations of Sicily risen to ri-val them, and threatening to take the tradeout of their hand.

No doubt of it, this hearing continually ofthe very Pope’s glory as a Reformer, of thevery Sicilians fighting divinely for liberty be-hind barricades,—must have bitterly aggra-vated the feeling of every Frenchman, as helooked around him, at home, on a Louis-Philippism which had become the scorn of allthe world. “Ichabod; is the glory departingfrom us? Under the sun is nothing baser, byall accounts and evidences, than the system ofrepression and corruption, of shameless dis-honesty and unbelief in anything but humanbaseness, that we now live under. The Ital-ians, the very Pope, have become apostles ofliberty, and France is—what is France!"—We

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know what France suddenly became in theend of February next; and by a clear enoughgenealogy, we can trace a considerable sharein that event to the good simple Pope withthe New Testament in his hand. An outbreak,or at least a radical change and even inver-sion of affairs hardly to be achieved withoutan outbreak, everybody felt was inevitable inFrance: but it had been universally expectedthat France would as usual take the initiativein that matter; and had there been no reform-ing Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, Francehad certainly not broken out then and so, butonly afterwards and otherwise. The Frenchexplosion, not anticipated by the cunningestmen there on the spot scrutinizing it, burstup unlimited, complete, defying computationor control.

Close following which, as if by sympa-thetic subterranean electricities, all Europeexploded, boundless, uncontrollable; and wehad the year 1848, one of the most singu-lar, disastrous, amazing, and, on the whole,humiliating years the European world eversaw. Not since the irruption of the NorthernBarbarians has there been the like. Every-where immeasurable Democracy rose mon-strous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voiceof Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs andthe profane:—Enter, all the world, see whatkind of Official holy it is. Kings everywhere,


and reigning persons, stared in sudden horror,the voice of the whole world bellowing in theirear, “Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histriosnot heroes! Off with you, off!” and, whatwas peculiar and notable in this year for thefirst time, the Kings all made haste to go, asif exclaiming, “We are poor histrios, we sureenough;—did you want heroes? Don’t kill us;we couldn’t help it!” Not one of them turnedround, and stood upon his Kingship, as upona right he could afford to die for, or to riskhis skin upon; by no manner of means. That,I say, is the alarming peculiarity at present.Democracy, on this new occasion, finds allKings conscious that they are but Play-actors.The miserable mortals, enacting their HighLife Below Stairs, with faith only that thisUniverse may perhaps be all a phantasm andhypocrisis,—the truculent Constable of theDestinies suddenly enters: “Scandalous Phan-tasms, what do you here? Are ‘solemnly con-stituted Impostors’ the proper Kings of men?Did you think the Life of Man was a grimacingdance of apes? To be led always by the squeakof your paltry fiddle? Ye miserable, this Uni-verse is not an upholstery Puppet-play, buta terrible God’s Fact; and you, I think,—hadnot you better begone!” They fled precipi-tately, some of them with what we may call anexquisite ignominy,—in terror of the treadmillor worse. And everywhere the people, or thepopulace, take their own government upon

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themselves; and open “kinglessness,” what wecall anarchy,—how happy if it be anarchy plusa street-constable!—is everywhere the orderof the day. Such was the history, from Balticto Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia,Austria, from end to end of Europe, in thoseMarch days of 1848. Since the destruction ofthe old Roman Empire by inroad of the North-ern Barbarians, I have known nothing similar.

And so, then, there remained no King inEurope; no King except the Public Haranguer,haranguing on barrel-head, in leading arti-cle; or getting himself aggregated into a Na-tional Parliament to harangue. And for aboutfour months all France, and to a great de-gree all Europe, rough-ridden by every speciesof delirium, except happily the murderous formost part, was a weltering mob, presided overby M. de Lamartine, at the Hotel-de-Ville; amost eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman,whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet,priest and heaven-sent evangelist, and whoma wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to beproperly “the first stump-orator in the world,standing too on the highest stump,—for thetime.” A sorrowful spectacle to men of reflec-tion, during the time he lasted, that poor M.de Lamartine; with nothing in him but melo-dious wind and soft sawder, which he andothers took for something divine and not di-abolic! Sad enough; the eloquent latest imper-sonation of Chaos-come-again; able to talk for


itself, and declare persuasively that it is Cos-mos! However, you have but to wait a little, insuch cases; all balloons do and must give uptheir gas in the pressure of things, and are col-lapsed in a sufficiently wretched manner be-fore long.

And so in City after City, street-barricadesare piled, and truculent, more or less murder-ous insurrection begins; populace after popu-lace rises, King after King capitulates or ab-sconds; and from end to end of Europe Democ-racy has blazed up explosive, much higher,more irresistible and less resisted than everbefore; testifying too sadly on what a bot-tomless volcano, or universal powder-mineof most inflammable mutinous chaotic ele-ments, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and ac-quirements everywhere, in the present epoch,rests! The kind of persons who excite or givesignal to such revolutions—students, youngmen of letters, advocates, editors, hot inex-perienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justlybankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere onthe discontent of the millions and blowing itinto flame,—might give rise to reflections as tothe character of our epoch. Never till now didyoung men, and almost children, take such acommand in human affairs. A changed timesince the word Senior (Seigneur, or Elder) wasfirst devised to signify “lord,” or superior;—asin all languages of men we find it to have been!

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Not an honorable document this either, as tothe spiritual condition of our epoch. In timeswhen men love wisdom, the old man will everbe venerable, and be venerated, and reckonednoble: in times that love something else thanwisdom, and indeed have little or no wisdom,and see little or none to love, the old manwill cease to be venerated; and looking moreclosely, also, you will find that in fact he hasceased to be venerable, and has begun to becontemptible; a foolish boy still, a boy withoutthe graces, generosities and opulent strengthof young boys. In these days, what of lord-ship or leadership is still to be done, the youthmust do it, not the mature or aged man; themature man, hardened into sceptical egoism,knows no monition but that of his own frigidcautious, avarices, mean timidities; and canlead no-whither towards an object that evenseems noble. But to return.

This mad state of matters will of course be-fore long allay itself, as it has everywhere be-gun to do; the ordinary necessities of men’sdaily existence cannot comport with it, andthese, whatever else is cast aside, will havetheir way. Some remounting—very tempo-rary remounting—of the old machine, undernew colors and altered forms, will probablyensue soon in most countries: the old histri-onic Kings will be admitted back under con-ditions, under “Constitutions,” with nationalParliaments, or the like fashionable adjuncts;


and everywhere the old daily life will try to be-gin again. But there is now no hope that sucharrangements can be permanent; that theycan be other than poor temporary makeshifts,which, if they try to fancy and make them-selves permanent, will be displaced by newexplosions recurring more speedily than lasttime. In such baleful oscillation, afloat asamid raging bottomless eddies and conflictingsea-currents, not steadfast as on fixed founda-tions, must European Society continue sway-ing, now disastrously tumbling, then painfullyreadjusting itself, at ever shorter intervals,—till once the new rock-basis does come to light,and the weltering deluges of mutiny, and ofneed to mutiny, abate again!

For universal Democracy, whatever wemay think of it, has declared itself as an in-evitable fact of the days in which we live;and he who has any chance to instruct, orlead, in his days, must begin by admittingthat: new street-barricades, and new anar-chies, still more scandalous if still less san-guinary, must return and again return, tillgoverning persons everywhere know and ad-mit that. Democracy, it may be said ev-erywhere, is here:—for sixty years now, eversince the grand or First French Revolution,that fact has been terribly announced to allthe world; in message after message, some ofthem very terrible indeed; and now at last allthe world ought really to believe it. That the

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world does believe it; that even Kings nowas good as believe it, and know, or with justterror surmise, that they are but temporaryphantasm Play-actors, and that Democracyis the grand, alarming, imminent and indis-putable Reality: this, among the scandalousphases we witnessed in the last two years, is aphasis full of hope: a sign that we are advanc-ing closer and closer to the very Problem itself,which it will behoove us to solve or die; thatall fighting and campaigning and coalition-ing in regard to the existence of the Problem,is hopeless and superfluous henceforth. Thegods have appointed it so; no Pitt, nor body ofPitts or mortal creatures can appoint it oth-erwise. Democracy, sure enough, is here; oneknows not how long it will keep hidden un-derground even in Russia;—and here in Eng-land, though we object to it resolutely in theform of street-barricades and insurrectionarypikes, and decidedly will not open doors to iton those terms, the tramp of its million feetis on all streets and thoroughfares, the soundof its bewildered thousand-fold voice is in allwritings and speakings, in all thinkings andmodes and activities of men: the soul thatdoes not now, with hope or terror, discern it,is not the one we address on this occasion.

What is Democracy; this huge inevitableProduct of the Destinies, which is everywherethe portion of our Europe in these latterdays? There lies the question for us. Whence


comes it, this universal big black Democracy;whither tends it; what is the meaning of it?A meaning it must have, or it would not behere. If we can find the right meaning of it,we may, wisely submitting or wisely resistingand controlling, still hope to live in the midstof it; if we cannot find the right meaning, if wefind only the wrong or no meaning in it, to livewill not be possible!—The whole social wis-dom of the Present Time is summoned, in thename of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clearto itself, and lay deeply to heart with an eyeto strenuous valiant practice and effort, whatthe meaning of this universal revolt of the Eu-ropean Populations, which calls itself Democ-racy, and decides to continue permanent, maybe.

Certainly it is a drama full of action,event fast following event; in which curiosityfinds endless scope, and there are interests atstake, enough to rivet the attention of all men,simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitudelift up their voices, gratulating, celebratingsky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement,more than plentiful, that now the New Era,and long-expected Year One of Perfect Hu-man Felicity has come. Glorious and immortalpeople, sublime French citizens, heroic barri-cades; triumph of civil and religious liberty—O Heaven! one of the inevitablest privatemiseries, to an earnest man in such circum-stances, is this multitudinous efflux of ora-

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tory and psalmody, from the universal fool-ish human throat; drowning for the momentall reflection whatsoever, except the sorrow-ful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and must resignedlybear your part in the same. The front wallof your wretched old crazy dwelling, long de-nounced by you to no purpose, having at lastfairly folded itself over, and fallen prostrateinto the street, the floors, as may happen, willstill hang on by the mere beam-ends, and co-herency of old carpentry, though in a slop-ing direction, and depend there till certainpoor rusty nails and worm-eaten dovetailingsgive way:—but is it cheering, in such circum-stances, that the whole household burst forthinto celebrating the new joys of light and ven-tilation, liberty and picturesqueness of posi-tion, and thank God that now they have gota house to their mind? My dear household,cease singing and psalmodying; lay aside yourfiddles, take out your work-implements, if youhave any; for I can say with confidence thelaws of gravitation are still active, and rustynails, worm-eaten dovetailings, and secret co-herency of old carpentry, are not the best basisfor a household!—In the lanes of Irish cities,I have heard say, the wretched people aresometimes found living, and perilously boil-ing their potatoes, on such swing-floors andinclined planes hanging on by the joist-ends;but I did not hear that they sang very much


in celebration of such lodging. No, they slidgently about, sat near the back wall, andperilously boiled their potatoes, in silence formost part!—

High shouts of exultation, in every dialect,by every vehicle of speech and writing, risefrom far and near over this last avatar ofDemocracy in 1848: and yet, to wise minds,the first aspect it presents seems rather to beone of boundless misery and sorrow. Whatcan be more miserable than this universalhunting out of the high dignitaries, solemnfunctionaries, and potent, grave and reverendsigniors of the world; this stormful rising-upof the inarticulate dumb masses everywhere,against those who pretended to be speakingfor them and guiding them? These guides,then, were mere blind men only pretending tosee? These rulers were not ruling at all; theyhad merely got on the attributes and clothesof rulers, and were surreptitiously drawingthe wages, while the work remained undone?The Kings were Sham-Kings, play-acting asat Drury Lane;—and what were the peoplewithal that took them for real?

It is probably the hugest disclosure offalsity in human things that was ever atone time made. These reverend Digni-taries that sat amid their far-shining sym-bols and long-sounding long-admitted profes-sions, were mere Impostors, then? Not atrue thing they were doing, but a false thing.

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The story they told men was a cunningly de-vised fable; the gospels they preached to themwere not an account of man’s real positionin this world, but an incoherent fabrication,of dead ghosts and unborn shadows, of tradi-tions, cants, indolences, cowardices,—a falsityof falsities, which at last ceases to stick to-gether. Wilfully and against their will, thesehigh units of mankind were cheats, then;and the low millions who believed in themwere dupes,—a kind of inverse cheats, too,or they would not have believed in them solong. A universal Bankruptcy of Imposture;that may be the brief definition of it. Im-posture everywhere declared once more to becontrary to Nature; nobody will change itsword into an act any farther:—fallen insol-vent; unable to keep its head up by these falsepretences, or make its pot boil any more forthe present! A more scandalous phenomenon,wide as Europe, never afflicted the face of thesun. Bankruptcy everywhere; foul ignominy,and the abomination of desolation, in all highplaces: odious to look upon, as the carnage ofa battle-field on the morrow morning;—a mas-sacre not of the innocents; we cannot call ita massacre of the innocents; but a universaltumbling of Impostors and of Impostures intothe street!—

Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful?There is a joy in it, to the wise man too; yes,but a joy full of awe, and as it were sadder


than any sorrow,—like the vision of immor-tality, unattainable except through death andthe grave! And yet who would not, in his heartof hearts, feel piously thankful that Impos-ture has fallen bankrupt? By all means letit fall bankrupt; in the name of God let it doso, with whatever misery to itself and to allof us. Imposture, be it known then,—knownit must and shall be,—is hateful, unendurableto God and man. Let it understand this every-where; and swiftly make ready for departure,wherever it yet lingers; and let it learn neverto return, if possible! The eternal voices, veryaudibly again, are speaking to proclaim thismessage, from side to side of the world. Not avery cheering message, but a very indispens-able one.

Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here;that we are not permitted to regret its beinghere,—for who that had, for this divine Uni-verse, an eye which was human at all, couldwish that Shams of any kind, especially thatSham-Kings should continue? No: at all costs,it is to be prayed by all men that Shams maycease. Good Heavens, to what depths have wegot, when this to many a man seems strange!Yet strange to many a man it does seem; andto many a solid Englishman, wholesomely di-gesting his pudding among what are calledthe cultivated classes, it seems strange ex-ceedingly; a mad ignorant notion, quite het-erodox, and big with mere ruin. He has been

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used to decent forms long since fallen emptyof meaning, to plausible modes, solemnitiesgrown ceremonial,—what you in your icono-clast humor call shams, all his life long; neverheard that there was any harm in them, thatthere was any getting on without them. Didnot cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceriesand spiceries come in from the East and theWest, quite comfortably by the side of shams?Kings reigned, what they were pleased to callreigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached,and honorable members perorated; and tocrown the whole, as if it were all real andno sham there, did not scrip continue sal-able, and the banker pay in bullion, or paperwith a metallic basis? “The greatest sham, Ihave always thought, is he that would destroyshams.”

Even so. To such depth have I, the poorknowing person of this epoch, got;—almost be-low the level of lowest humanity, and downtowards the state of apehood and oxhood!For never till in quite recent generations wassuch a scandalous blasphemy quietly set forthamong the sons of Adam; never before did thecreature called man believe generally in hisheart that lies were the rule in this Earth;that in deliberate long-established lying couldthere be help or salvation for him, could therebe at length other than hindrance and de-struction for him. O Heavyside, my solidfriend, this is the sorrow of sorrows: what


on earth can become of us till this accursedenchantment, the general summary and con-secration of delusions, be cast forth from theheart and life of one and all! Cast forth itwill be; it must, or we are tending, at all mo-ments, whitherward I do not like to name.Alas, and the casting of it out, to what heightsand what depths will it lead us, in the saduniverse mostly of lies and shams and hol-low phantasms (grown very ghastly now), inwhich, as in a safe home, we have lived thiscentury or two! To heights and depths of so-cial and individual divorce from delusions,—of “reform” in right sacred earnest, of indis-pensable amendment, and stern sorrowful ab-rogation and order to depart,—such as cannotwell be spoken at present; as dare scarcelybe thought at present; which nevertheless arevery inevitable, and perhaps rather imminentseveral of them! Truly we have a heavy taskof work before us; and there is a pressing callthat we should seriously begin upon it, beforeit tumble into an inextricable mass, in whichthere will be no working, but only sufferingand hopelessly perishing!

Or perhaps Democracy, which we an-nounce as now come, will itself manage it?Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, fur-nished with ballot-boxes and such like, will it-self accomplish the salutary universal changefrom Delusive to Real, and make a newblessed world of us by and by?—To the great

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mass of men, I am aware, the matter presentsitself quite on this hopeful side. Democracythey consider to be a kind of “Government.”The old model, formed long since, and broughtto perfection in England now two hundredyears ago, has proclaimed itself to all Nationsas the new healing for every woe: “Set upa Parliament,” the Nations everywhere say,when the old King is detected to be a Sham-King, and hunted out or not; “set up a Par-liament; let us have suffrages, universal suf-frages; and all either at once or by due degreeswill be right, and a real Millennium come!”Such is their way of construing the matter.

Such, alas, is by no means my way of con-struing the matter; if it were, I should havehad the happiness of remaining silent, andbeen without call to speak here. It is becausethe contrary of all this is deeply manifest tome, and appears to be forgotten by multitudesof my contemporaries, that I have had to un-dertake addressing a word to them. The con-trary of all this;—and the farther I look intothe roots of all this, the more hateful, ru-inous and dismal does the state of mind allthis could have originated in appear to me.To examine this recipe of a Parliament, howfit it is for governing Nations, nay how fit itmay now be, in these new times, for governingEngland itself where we are used to it so long:this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which allthinking men, and good citizens of their coun-


try, who have an ear for the small still voicesand eternal intimations, across the temporaryclamors and loud blaring proclamations, arenow solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorousfact itself; which will one day, and that per-haps soon, demand practical decision or rede-cision of it from us,—with enormous penaltyif we decide it wrong! I think we shall allhave to consider this question, one day; bet-ter perhaps now than later, when the leisuremay be less. If a Parliament, with suffragesand universal or any conceivable kind of suf-frages, is the method, then certainly let usset about discovering the kind of suffrages,and rest no moment till we have got them.But it is possible a Parliament may not bethe method! Possible the inveterate notionsof the English People may have settled it asthe method, and the Everlasting Laws of Na-ture may have settled it as not the method!Not the whole method; nor the method at all,if taken as the whole? If a Parliament withnever such suffrages is not the method settledby this latter authority, then it will urgentlybehoove us to become aware of that fact, andto quit such method;—we may depend upon it,however unanimous we be, every step takenin that direction will, by the Eternal Law ofthings, be a step from improvement, not to-wards it.

Not towards it, I say, if so! Unanim-ity of voting,—that will do nothing for us if

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so. Your ship cannot double Cape Horn byits excellent plans of voting. The ship mayvote this and that, above decks and below,in the most harmonious exquisitely constitu-tional manner: the ship, to get round CapeHorn, will find a set of conditions alreadyvoted for, and fixed with adamantine rigor bythe ancient Elemental Powers, who are en-tirely careless how you vote. If you can, by vot-ing or without voting, ascertain these condi-tions, and valiantly conform to them, you willget round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffianWinds will blow you ever back again; the inex-orable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors fromChaos, will nudge you with most chaotic “ad-monition;” you will be flung half frozen on thePatagonian cliffs, or admonished into shiversby your iceberg councillors, and sent sheerdown to Davy Jones, and will never get roundCape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship;—yes indeed, the ship’s crew may be very unani-mous, which doubtless, for the time being, willbe very comfortable to the ship’s crew, andto their Phantasm Captain if they have one:but if the tack they unanimously steer uponis guiding them into the belly of the Abyss,it will not profit them much!—Ships accord-ingly do not use the ballot-box at all; andthey reject the Phantasm species of Captains:one wishes much some other Entities—sinceall entities lie under the same rigorous set oflaws—could be brought to show as much wis-


dom, and sense at least of self-preservation,the first command of Nature. Phantasm Cap-tains with unanimous votings: this is consid-ered to be all the law and all the prophets, atpresent.

If a man could shake out of his mind theuniversal noise of political doctors in this gen-eration and in the last generation or two, andconsider the matter face to face, with his ownsincere intelligence looking at it, I venture tosay he would find this a very extraordinarymethod of navigating, whether in the Straitsof Magellan or the undiscovered Sea of Time.To prosper in this world, to gain felicity, vic-tory and improvement, either for a man or anation, there is but one thing requisite, Thatthe man or nation can discern what the trueregulations of the Universe are in regard tohim and his pursuit, and can faithfully andsteadfastly follow these. These will lead himto victory; whoever it may be that sets himin the way of these,—were it Russian Auto-crat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, Forceof Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury,M’Croudy the Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of Political Economy,—sets him in thesure way to please the Author of this Uni-verse, and is his friend of friends. And again,whoever does the contrary is, for a like reason,his enemy of enemies. This may be taken asfixed.

And now by what method ascertain the

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monition of the gods in regard to our affairs?How decipher, with best fidelity, the eternalregulation of the Universe; and read, fromamid such confused embroilments of humanclamor and folly, what the real Divine Mes-sage to us is? A divine message, or eter-nal regulation of the Universe, there verilyis, in regard to every conceivable procedureand affair of man: faithfully following this,said procedure or affair will prosper, and havethe whole Universe to second it, and carry it,across the fluctuating contradictions, towardsa victorious goal; not following this, mistak-ing this, disregarding this, destruction andwreck are certain for every affair. How findit? All the world answers me, “Count heads;ask Universal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes,and that will tell.” Universal Suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well,—I perceive wehave got into strange spiritual latitudes in-deed. Within the last half-century or so, ei-ther the Universe or else the heads of menmust have altered very much. Half a cen-tury ago, and down from Father Adam’s timetill then, the Universe, wherever I could heartell of it, was wont to be of somewhat ab-struse nature; by no means carrying its secretwritten on its face, legible to every passer-by;on the contrary, obstinately hiding its secretfrom all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere per-sons, and partially disclosing it to the wiseand noble-minded alone, whose number was


not the majority in my time!Or perhaps the chief end of man being now,

in these improved epochs, to make money andspend it, his interests in the Universe havebecome amazingly simplified of late; capableof being voted on with effect by almost any-body? “To buy in the cheapest market, andsell in the dearest:” truly if that is the sum-mary of his social duties, and the final divinemessage he has to follow, we may trust himextensively to vote upon that. But if it is not,and never was, or can be? If the Universe willnot carry on its divine bosom any common-wealth of mortals that have no higher aim,—being still “a Temple and Hall of Doom,” not amere Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the un-fathomable Universe has decided to reject Hu-man Beavers pretending to be Men; and willabolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideousmud-deluges, their “markets” and them, un-less they think of it?—In that case it were bet-ter to think of it: and the Democracies andUniversal Suffrages, I can observe, will re-quire to modify themselves a good deal!

Historically speaking, I believe there wasno Nation that could subsist upon Democ-racy. Of ancient Republics, and Demoi andPopuli, we have heard much; but it is nowpretty well admitted to be nothing to ourpurpose;—a universal-suffrage republic, ora general-suffrage one, or any but a most-limited-suffrage one, never came to light, or

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dreamed of doing so, in ancient times. Whenthe mass of the population were slaves, andthe voters intrinsically a kind of kings, ormen born to rule others; when the voterswere real “aristocrats” and manageable de-pendents of such,—then doubtless voting, andconfused jumbling of talk and intrigue, might,without immediate destruction, or the needof a Cavaignac to intervene with cannon andsweep the streets clear of it, go on; and beau-tiful developments of manhood might be pos-sible beside it, for a season. Beside it; or even,if you will, by means of it, and in virtue of it,though that is by no means so certain as isoften supposed. Alas, no: the reflective con-stitutional mind has misgivings as to the ori-gin of old Greek and Roman nobleness; andindeed knows not how this or any other hu-man nobleness could well be “originated,” orbrought to pass, by voting or without voting,in this world, except by the grace of God verymainly;—and remembers, with a sigh, thatof the Seven Sages themselves no fewer thanthree were bits of Despotic Kings, Tυραννoι,“Tyrants” so called (such being greatly wantedthere); and that the other four were very farfrom Red Republicans, if of any political faithwhatever! We may quit the Ancient Classi-cal concern, and leave it to College-clubs andspeculative debating-societies, in these latedays.

Of the various French Republics that have


been tried, or that are still on trial,—of thesealso it is not needful to say any word. Butthere is one modern instance of Democracynearly perfect, the Republic of the UnitedStates, which has actually subsisted for three-score years or more, with immense success asis affirmed; to which many still appeal, as to asign of hope for all nations, and a “Model Re-public.” Is not America an instance in point?Why should not all Nations subsist and flour-ish on Democracy, as America does?

Of America it would ill beseem any En-glishman, and me perhaps as little as an-other, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriot-ically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough,America is a great, and in many respectsa blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sureenough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxonmen prove themselves worthy of their geneal-ogy; and, with the axe and plough and ham-mer, if not yet with any much finer kind ofimplements, are triumphantly clearing outwide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance andrefuge of mankind, arenas for the future his-tory of the world; doing, in their day and gen-eration, a creditable and cheering feat underthe sun. But as to a Model Republic, or amodel anything, the wise among themselvesknow too well that there is nothing to be said.Nay the title hitherto to be a Commonwealthor Nation at all, among the εθνη of the world,is, strictly considered, still a thing they are

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but striving for, and indeed have not yet donemuch towards attaining. Their Constitution,such as it may be, was made here, not there;went over with them from the Old-PuritanEnglish workshop ready-made. Deduct whatthey carried with them from England ready-made,—their common English Language, andthat same Constitution, or rather elixir ofconstitutions, their inveterate and now, asit were, inborn reverence for the Constable’sStaff; two quite immense attainments, whichEngland had to spend much blood, and valiantsweat of brow and brain, for centuries long, inachieving;—and what new elements of polityor nationhood, what noble new phasis of hu-man arrangement, or social device worthy ofPrometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes tolight in America? Cotton crops and Indiancorn and dollars come to light; and half aworld of untilled land, where populations thatrespect the constable can live, for the presentwithout Government: this comes to light; andthe profound sorrow of all nobler hearts, hereuttering itself as silent patient unspeakableennui, there coming out as vague elegiac wail-ings, that there is still next to nothing more.“Anarchy plus a street-constable:” that also isanarchic to me, and other than quite lovely!

I foresee, too, that, long before the wastelands are full, the very street-constable, onthese poor terms, will have become impossi-ble: without the waste lands, as here in our


Europe, I do not see how he could continuepossible many weeks. Cease to brag to me ofAmerica, and its model institutions and con-stitutions. To men in their sleep there is noth-ing granted in this world: nothing, or as goodas nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing andballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic an-cestors, saying, “It is well, it is well!” Corn andbacon are granted: not a very sublime boon,on such conditions; a boon moreover which,on such conditions, cannot last!—No: Amer-ica too will have to strain its energies, in quiteother fashion than this; to crack its sinews,and all but break its heart, as the rest of ushave had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle withthe Pythons and mud-demons, before it canbecome a habitation for the gods. America’sbattle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful thoughnothing doubting, will wish her strength forit. New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them;enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were everborn of mud, loom huge and hideous out ofthe twilight Future on America; and she willhave her own agony, and her own victory, buton other terms than she is yet quite awareof. Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers,in a very successful manner; hitherto, in spiteof her “roast-goose with apple-sauce,” she isnot much. “Roast-goose with apple-sauce forthe poorest workingman:” well, surely thatis something, thanks to your respect for thestreet-constable, and to your continents of fer-

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tile waste land;—but that, even if it could con-tinue, is by no means enough; that is not evenan instalment towards what will be requiredof you. My friend, brag not yet of our Ameri-can cousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars,industry and resources, I believe to be almostunspeakable; but I can by no means worshipthe like of these. What great human soul,what great thought, what great noble thingthat one could worship, or loyally admire, hasyet been produced there? None: the Americancousins have yet done none of these things.“What they have done?” growls Smelfungus,tired of the subject: “They have doubled theirpopulation every twenty years. They have be-gotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded ex-ample, Eighteen Millions of the greatest boresever seen in this world before,—that hithertois their feat in History!"—And so we leavethem, for the present; and cannot predict thesuccess of Democracy, on this side of the At-lantic, from their example.

Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and onthat, Democracy, we apprehend, is forever im-possible! So much, with certainty of loudastonished contradiction from all manner ofmen at present, but with sure appeal to theLaw of Nature and the ever-abiding Fact, maybe suggested and asserted once more. TheUniverse itself is a Monarchy and Hierarchy;large liberty of “voting” there, all manner ofchoice, utmost free-will, but with conditions


inexorable and immeasurable annexed to ev-ery exercise of the same. A most free common-wealth of “voters;” but with Eternal Justiceto preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced byAlmighty Power! This is the model of “consti-tutions;” this: nor in any Nation where therehas not yet (in some supportable and withalsome constantly increasing degree) been con-fided to the Noblest, with his select series ofNobler, the divine everlasting duty of direct-ing and controlling the Ignoble, has the “King-dom of God,” which we all pray for, “come,”nor can “His will” even tend to be “done onEarth as it is in Heaven” till then. My Chris-tian friends, and indeed my Sham-Christianand Anti-Christian, and all manner of men,are invited to reflect on this. They will findit to be the truth of the case. The Noble inthe high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is,in all times and in all countries, the AlmightyMaker’s Law.

To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnlyconsecrate him by whatever method, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from old wont,this, little as we may regard it, is, in all timesand countries, a practical blasphemy, and Na-ture will in nowise forget it. Alas, therelies the origin, the fatal necessity, of modernDemocracy everywhere. It is the Noblest, notthe Sham-Noblest; it is God-Almighty’s No-ble, not the Court-Tailor’s Noble, nor the Able-Editor’s Noble, that must, in some approxi-

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mate degree, be raised to the supreme place;he and not a counterfeit,—under penalties!Penalties deep as death, and at length terribleas hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend!—Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to thechief place; does any sane man deliberatelybelieve such a thing? That nevertheless is theindispensable result, attain it how we may: ifthat is attained, all is attained; if not that,nothing. He that cannot believe the ballot-boxto be attaining it, will be comparatively indif-ferent to the ballot-box. Excellent for keep-ing the ship’s crew at peace under their Phan-tasm Captain; but unserviceable, under such,for getting round Cape Horn. Alas, that thereshould be human beings requiring to havethese things argued of, at this late time of day!

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of thefoolish to be governed by the wise; to beguided in the right path by those who knowit better than they. This is the first “right ofman;” compared with which all other rightsare as nothing,—mere superfluities, corollar-ies which will follow of their own accord outof this; if they be not contradictions to this,and less than nothing! To the wise it is nota privilege; far other indeed. Doubtless, asbringing preservation to their country, it im-plies preservation of themselves withal; butintrinsically it is the harshest duty a wiseman, if he be indeed wise, has laid to hishand. A duty which he would fain enough


shirk; which accordingly, in these sad times ofdoubt and cowardly sloth, he has long every-where been endeavoring to reduce to its mini-mum, and has in fact in most cases nearly es-caped altogether. It is an ungoverned world;a world which we flatter ourselves will hence-forth need no governing. On the dust of ourheroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, say-ing to one another, It is well, it is well! Byinheritance of their noble struggles, we havebeen permitted to sit slothful so long. By no-ble toil , not by shallow laughter and vaintalk, they made this English Existence from asavage forest into an arable inhabitable fieldfor us; and we, idly dreaming it would growspontaneous crops forever,—find it now in atoo questionable state; peremptorily requiringreal labor and agriculture again. Real “agri-culture” is not pleasant; much pleasanter toreap and winnow (with ballot-box or other-wise) than to plough!

Who would govern that can get along with-out governing? He that is fittest for it, is ofall men the unwillingest unless constrained.By multifarious devices we have been en-deavoring to dispense with governing; and byvery superficial speculations, of laissez-faire,supply-and-demand, &c. &c. to persuade our-selves that it is best so. The Real Captain, un-less it be some Captain of mechanical Indus-try hired by Mammon, where is he in thesedays? Most likely, in silence, in sad isola-

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tion somewhere, in remote obscurity; tryingif, in an evil ungoverned time, he cannot atleast govern himself. The Real Captain undis-coverable; the Phantasm Captain everywherevery conspicuous:—it is thought PhantasmCaptains, aided by ballot-boxes, are the truemethod, after all. They are much the pleasan-test for the time being! And so no Dux or Dukeof any sort, in any province of our affairs,now leads: the Duke’s Bailiff leads, what lit-tle leading is required for getting in the rents;and the Duke merely rides in the state-coach.It is everywhere so: and now at last we see aworld all rushing towards strange consumma-tions, because it is and has long been so!

I do not suppose any reader of mine, ormany persons in England at all, have muchfaith in Fraternity, Equality and the Revolu-tionary Millenniums preached by the FrenchProphets in this age: but there are manymovements here too which tend inevitably inthe like direction; and good men, who wouldstand aghast at Red Republic and its adjuncts,seem to me travelling at full speed towardsthat or a similar goal! Certainly the no-tion everywhere prevails among us too, andpreaches itself abroad in every dialect, uncon-tradicted anywhere so far as I can hear, Thatthe grand panacea for social woes is whatwe call “enfranchisement,” “emancipation;” or,translated into practical language, the cuttingasunder of human relations, wherever they


are found grievous, as is like to be pretty uni-versally the case at the rate we have been go-ing for some generations past. Let us all be“free” of one another; we shall then be happy.Free, without bond or connection except thatof cash-payment; fair day’s wages for the fairday’s work; bargained for by voluntary con-tract, and law of supply-and-demand: this isthought to be the true solution of all difficul-ties and injustices that have occurred betweenman and man.

To rectify the relation that exists betweentwo men, is there no method, then, but thatof ending it? The old relation has become un-suitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; it impera-tively requires to be amended; and the rem-edy is, Abolish it, let there henceforth be norelation at all. From the “Sacrament of Mar-riage” downwards, human beings used to bemanifoldly related, one to another, and eachto all; and there was no relation among hu-man beings, just or unjust, that had not itsgrievances and difficulties, its necessities onboth sides to bear and forbear. But hence-forth, be it known, we have changed all that,by favor of Heaven: “the voluntary principle”has come up, which will itself do the busi-ness for us; and now let a new Sacrament,that of Divorce, which we call emancipation,and spout of on our platforms, be universallythe order of the day!—Have men consideredwhither all this is tending, and what it cer-

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tainly enough betokens? Cut every humanrelation which has anywhere grown uneasysheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was com-pulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was perma-nent among us to the condition of nomadic:—in other words, loosen by assiduous wedgesin every joint, the whole fabric of social exis-tence, stone from stone: till at last, all nowbeing loose enough, it can, as we already seein most countries, be overset by sudden out-burst of revolutionary rage; and, lying as meremountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you tosing Fraternity, &c., over it, and to rejoice inthe new remarkable era of human progress wehave arrived at.

Certainly Emancipation proceeds withrapid strides among us, this good while; andhas got to such a length as might give rise toreflections in men of a serious turn. West-Indian Blacks are emancipated, and it ap-pears refuse to work: Irish Whites have longbeen entirely emancipated; and nobody asksthem to work, or on condition of finding thempotatoes (which, of course, is indispensable),permits them to work.—Among speculativepersons, a question has sometimes risen: Inthe progress of Emancipation, are we to lookfor a time when all the Horses also are to beemancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle? Horses too have “motives;”are acted on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats,terror of platted leather; nay they have van-


ity, ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vin-dictiveness; some rude outline of all our hu-man spiritualities,—a rude resemblance to usin mind and intelligence, even as they havein bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings,his affections, gratitudes; and deserves goodusage; no human master, without crime, shalltreat him unjustly either, or recklessly lay onthe whip where it is not needed:—I am sure ifI could make him “happy,” I should be willingto grant a small vote (in addition to the latetwenty millions) for that object!

Him too you occasionally tyrannize over;and with bad result to yourselves, among oth-ers; using the leather in a tyrannous unnec-essary manner; withholding, or scantily fur-nishing, the oats and ventilated stabling thatare due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fearsthey are a little tyrannous at times. “Am Inot a horse, and half-brother?"—To remedywhich, so far as remediable, fancy—the horsesall “emancipated;” restored to their primevalright of property in the grass of this Globe:turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So long as grass lasts, Idare say they are very happy, or think them-selves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth,on a dry spring morning, with a sieve of oatsin his hand, and agony of eager expectationin his heart, is he happy? Help me to ploughthis day, Black Dobbin: oats in full measure

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if thou wilt. “Hlunh, No—thank!” snortsBlack Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty andthe grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou per-haps? “Hlunh!"—Gray Joan, then, my beau-tiful broad-bottomed mare,—O Heaven, shetoo answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of themwill plough a stroke for me. Corn-crops areended in this world!—For the sake, if not ofHodge, then of Hodge’s horses, one prays thisbenevolent practice might now cease, and anew and better one try to begin. Small kind-ness to Hodge’s horses to emancipate them!The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooneror later, inevitable. To have in this habit-able Earth no grass to eat,—in Black Jamaicagradually none, as in White Connemara al-ready none;—to roam aimless, wasting theseedfields of the world; and be hunted hometo Chaos, by the due watch-dogs and due hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretched-ness as were never seen before! These thingsare not sport; they are terribly true, in thiscountry at this hour.

Between our Black West Indies and ourWhite Ireland, between these two extremesof lazy refusal to work, and of famishing in-ability to find any work, what a world havewe made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings,and idle godless nonsenses of one kind andanother! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone,Voluntary Principle, Time will mend it:—till


British industrial existence seems fast becom-ing one huge poison-swamp of reeking pesti-lence physical and moral; a hideous livingGolgotha of souls and bodies buried alive;such a Curtius’ gulf, communicating with theNether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now.These scenes, which the Morning Chroni-cle is bringing home to all minds of men,—thanks to it for a service such as Newspapershave seldom done,—ought to excite unspeak-able reflections in every mind. Thirty thou-sand outcast Needlewomen working them-selves swiftly to death; three million Paupersrotting in forced idleness, helping said Needle-women to die: these are but items in the sadledger of despair.

Thirty thousand wretched women, sunkin that putrefying well of abominations; theyhave oozed in upon London, from the univer-sal Stygian quagmire of British industrial life;are accumulated in the well of the concern, tothat extent. British charity is smitten to theheart, at the laying bare of such a scene; pas-sionately undertakes, by enormous subscrip-tion of money, or by other enormous effort,to redress that individual horror; as I and allmen hope it may. But, alas, what next? Thisgeneral well and cesspool once baled cleanout to-day, will begin before night to fill it-self anew. The universal Stygian quagmireis still there; opulent in women ready to beruined, and in men ready. Towards the same

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sad cesspool will these waste currents of hu-man ruin ooze and gravitate as heretofore; ex-cept in draining the universal quagmire itselfthere is no remedy. “And for that, what is themethod?” cry many in an angry manner. Towhom, for the present, I answer only, “Not‘emancipation,’ it would seem, my friends; notthe cutting loose of human ties, something farthe reverse of that!”

Many things have been written aboutshirtmaking; but here perhaps is the saddestthing of all, not written anywhere till now,that I know of. Shirts by the thirty thousandare made at twopence-halfpenny each; and inthe mean while no needlewoman, distressedor other, can be procured in London by anyhousewife to give, for fair wages, fair help insewing. Ask any thrifty house-mother, highor low, and she will answer. In high housesand in low, there is the same answer: noreal needlewoman, “distressed” or other, hasbeen found attainable in any of the houses Ifrequent. Imaginary needlewomen, who de-mand considerable wages, and have a deep-ish appetite for beer and viands, I hear ofeverywhere; but their sewing proves too of-ten a distracted puckering and botching; notsewing, only the fallacious hope of it, a fondimagination of the mind. Good sempstressesare to be hired in every village; and in Lon-don, with its famishing thirty thousand, notat all, or hardly,—Is not No-government beau-


tiful in human business? To such length hasthe Leave-alone principle carried it, by way oforganizing labor, in this affair of shirtmaking.Let us hope the Leave-alone principle has nowgot its apotheosis; and taken wing towardshigher regions than ours, to deal henceforthwith a class of affairs more appropriate for it!

Reader, did you ever hear of “ConstitutedAnarchy”? Anarchy; the choking, sweltering,deadly and killing rule of No-rule; the con-secration of cupidity, and braying folly, anddim stupidity and baseness, in most of theaffairs of men? Slop-shirts attainable threehalfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living bod-ies and immortal souls? Solemn Bishops andhigh Dignitaries, our divine “Pillars of Fireby night,” debating meanwhile, with theirlargest wigs and gravest look, upon some-thing they call “prevenient grace”? Alas, ournoble men of genius, Heaven’s real messen-gers to us, they also rendered nearly futile bythe wasteful time;—preappointed they every-where, and assiduously trained by all theirpedagogues and monitors, to “rise in Parlia-ment,” to compose orations, write books, or inshort speak words, for the approval of review-ers; instead of doing real kingly work to beapproved of by the gods! Our “Government,”a highly “responsible” one; responsible to noGod that I can hear of, but to the twenty-sevenmillion gods of the shilling gallery. A Govern-ment tumbling and drifting on the whirlpools

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and mud-deluges, floating atop in a conspicu-ous manner, no-whither,—like the carcass ofa drowned ass. Authentic Chaos come up intothis sunny Cosmos again; and all men singingGloria in excelsis to it. In spirituals and tem-porals, in field and workshop, from Manch-ester to Dorsetshire, from Lambeth Palace tothe Lanes of Whitechapel, wherever men meetand toil and traffic together,—Anarchy, An-archy; and only the street-constable (thoughwith ever-increasing difficulty) still maintain-ing himself in the middle of it; that so, for onething, this blessed exchange of slop-shirts forthe souls of women may transact itself in apeaceable manner!—I, for my part, do professmyself in eternal opposition to this, and dis-cern well that universal Ruin has us in thewind, unless we can get out of this. My friendCrabbe, in a late number of his IntermittentRadiator, pertinently enough exclaims:—

“When shall we have done with all thisof British Liberty, Voluntary Principle, Dan-gers of Centralization, and the like? It is re-ally getting too bad. For British Liberty, itseems, the people cannot be taught to read.British Liberty, shuddering to interfere withthe rights of capital, takes six or eight millionsof money annually to feed the idle laborerwhom it dare not employ. For British Libertywe live over poisonous cesspools, gully-drains,and detestable abominations; and omnipotentLondon cannot sweep the dirt out of itself.


British Liberty produces—what? Floods ofHansard Debates every year, and apparentlylittle else at present. If these are the results ofBritish Liberty, I, for one, move we should layit on the shelf a little, and look out for some-thing other and farther. We have achievedBritish Liberty hundreds of years ago; andare fast growing, on the strength of it, one ofthe most absurd populations the Sun, amonghis great Museum of Absurdities, looks downupon at present.”

Curious enough: the model of the worldjust now is England and her Constitution;all Nations striving towards it: poor Franceswimming these last sixty years in seas ofhorrid dissolution and confusion, resolute toattain this blessedness of free voting, or todie in chase of it. Prussia too, solid Ger-many itself, has all broken out into cracklingof musketry, loud pamphleteering and Frank-fort parliamenting and palavering; Germanytoo will scale the sacred mountains, how steepsoever, and, by talisman of ballot-box, inhabita political Elysium henceforth. All the Na-tions have that one hope. Very notable, andrather sad to the humane on-looker. For it issadly conjectured, all the Nations labor some-what under a mistake as to England, andthe causes of her freedom and her prosper-ous cotton-spinning; and have much misreadthe nature of her Parliament, and the effect ofballot-boxes and universal suffrages there.

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What if it were because the English Par-liament was from the first, and is only justnow ceasing to be, a Council of actual Rulers,real Governing Persons (called Peers, MitredAbbots, Lords, Knights of the Shire, or howso-ever called), actually ruling each his section ofthe country,—and possessing (it must be said)in the lump, or when assembled as a Coun-cil, uncommon patience, devoutness, probity,discretion and good fortune,—that the saidParliament ever came to be good for much?In that case it will not be easy to “imitate”the English Parliament; and the ballot-boxand suffrage will be the mere bow of RobinHood, which it is given to very few to bend, orshoot with to any perfection. And if the Peersbecome mere big Capitalists, Railway Direc-tors, gigantic Hucksters, Kings of Scrip, with-out lordly quality, or other virtue except cash;and the Mitred Abbots change to mere Able-Editors, masters of Parliamentary Eloquence,Doctors of Political Economy, and such like;and all have to be elected by a universal-suffrage ballot-box,—I do not see how the En-glish Parliament itself will long continue sea-worthy! Nay, I find England in her own bigdumb heart, wherever you come upon her in asilent meditative hour, begins to have dread-ful misgivings about it.

The model of the world, then, is at onceunattainable by the world, and not muchworth attaining? England, as I read the


omens, is now called a second time to “showthe Nations how to live;” for by her Parlia-ment, as chief governing entity, I fear she isnot long for this world! Poor England mustherself again, in these new strange times, theold methods being quite worn out, “learn howto live.” That now is the terrible problem forEngland, as for all the Nations; and she aloneof all, not yet sunk into open Anarchy, butleft with time for repentance and amendment;she, wealthiest of all in material resource, inspiritual energy, in ancient loyalty to law, andin the qualities that yield such loyalty,—sheperhaps alone of all may be able, with hugetravail, and the strain of all her faculties, toaccomplish some solution. She will have to tryit, she has now to try it; she must accomplishit, or perish from her place in the world!

England, as I persuade myself, still con-tains in it many kings; possesses, as oldRome did, many men not needing “election”to command, but eternally elected for it bythe Maker Himself. England’s one hope is inthese, just now. They are among the silent, Ibelieve; mostly far away from platforms andpublic palaverings; not speaking forth the im-age of their nobleness in transitory words, butimprinting it, each on his own little section ofthe world, in silent facts, in modest valiantactions, that will endure forevermore. Theymust sit silent no longer. They are summonedto assert themselves; to act forth, and articu-

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lately vindicate, in the teeth of howling multi-tudes, of a world too justly maddened into allmanner of delirious clamors, what of wisdomthey derive from God. England, and the Eter-nal Voices, summon them; poor England neverso needed them as now. Up, be doing every-where: the hour of crisis has verily come! Inall sections of English life, the god-made kingis needed; is pressingly demanded in most; insome, cannot longer, without peril as of con-flagration, be dispensed with. He, whereso-ever he finds himself, can say, “Here too amI wanted; here is the kingdom I have to sub-jugate, and introduce God’s Laws into,—God’sLaws, instead of Mammon’s and M’Croudy’sand the Old Anarch’s! Here is my work, hereor nowhere."—Are there many such, who willanswer to the call, in England? It turns onthat, whether England, rapidly crumbling inthese very years and months, shall go down tothe Abyss as her neighbors have all done, orsurvive to new grander destinies without solu-tion of continuity! Probably the chief questionof the world at present.

The true “commander” and king; he whoknows for himself the divine Appointments ofthis Universe, the Eternal Laws ordained byGod the Maker, in conforming to which liesvictory and felicity, in departing from whichlies, and forever must lie, sorrow and defeat,for each and all of the Posterity of Adam in ev-ery time and every place; he who has sworn


fealty to these, and dare alone against theworld assert these, and dare not with thewhole world at his back deflect from these;—he, I know too well, is a rare man. Difficult todiscover; not quite discoverable, I apprehend,by manoeuvring of ballot-boxes, and riddlingof the popular clamor according to the mostapproved methods. He is not sold at any shopI know of,—though sometimes, as at the signof the Ballot-box, he is advertised for sale. Dif-ficult indeed to discover: and not very muchassisted, or encouraged in late times, to dis-cover himself ;—which, I think, might be akind of help? Encouraged rather, and com-manded in all ways, if he be wise, to hide him-self, and give place to the windy Counterfeitof himself; such as the universal suffrages canrecognize, such as loves the most sweet voicesof the universal suffrages!—O Peter, what be-comes of such a People; what can become?

Did you never hear, with the mind’s earas well, that fateful Hebrew Prophecy, Ithink the fatefulest of all, which sounds dailythrough the streets, “Ou’ clo! Ou’ clo!"—A certain People, once upon a time, clam-orously voted by overwhelming majority, “Nothe; Barabbas, not he! Him, and what he is,and what be deserves, we know well enough:a reviler of the Chief Priests and sacredChancery wigs; a seditious Heretic, physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country andmankind: To the gallows and the cross with

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him! Barabbas is our man; Barabbas, weare for Barabbas!” They got Barabbas:—haveyou well considered what a fund of purblindobduracy, of opaque flunkyism grown trucu-lent and transcendent; what an eye for thephylacteries, and want of eye for the eter-nal noblenesses; sordid loyalty to the pros-perous Semblances, and high-treason againstthe Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens inthese natures? For it was the consummationof a long series of such; they and their fathershad long kept voting so. A singular People;who could both produce such divine men, andthen could so stone and crucify them; a Peopleterrible from the beginning!—Well, they gotBarabbas; and they got, of course, such guid-ance as Barabbas and the like of him couldgive them; and, of course, they stumbled everdownwards and devilwards, in their trucu-lent stiffnecked way; and—and, at this hour,after eighteen centuries of sad fortune, theyprophetically sing “Ou’ clo!” in all the cities ofthe world. Might the world, at this late hour,but take note of them, and understand theirsong a little!

Yes, there are some things the universalsuffrage can decide,—and about these it willbe exceedingly useful to consult the univer-sal suffrage: but in regard to most thingsof importance, and in regard to the choice ofmen especially, there is (astonishing as it mayseem) next to no capability on the part of uni-


versal suffrage.—I request all candid persons,who have never so little originality of mind,and every man has a little, to consider this.If true, it involves such a change in our nowfashionable modes of procedure as fills mewith astonishment and alarm. If popular suf-frage is not the way of ascertaining what theLaws of the Universe are, and who it is thatwill best guide us in the way of these,—thenwoe is to us if we do not take another method.Delolme on the British Constitution will notsave us; deaf will the Parcae be to votes ofthe House, to leading articles, constitutionalphilosophies. The other method—alas, it in-volves a stopping short, or vital change of di-rection, in the glorious career which all Eu-rope, with shouts heaven-high, is now gallop-ing along: and that, happen when it may, will,to many of us, be probably a rather surprisingbusiness!

One thing I do know, and can again assertwith great confidence, supported by the wholeUniverse, and by some two hundred genera-tions of men, who have left us some recordof themselves there, That the few Wise willhave, by one method or another, to take com-mand of the innumerable Foolish; that theymust be got to take it;—and that, in fact, sinceWisdom, which means also Valor and heroicNobleness, is alone strong in this world, andone wise man is stronger than all men unwise,they can be got. That they must take it; and

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having taken, must keep it, and do their God’sMessage in it, and defend the same, at theirlife’s peril, against all men and devils. ThisI do clearly believe to be the backbone of allFuture Society, as it has been of all Past; andthat without it, there is no Society possible inthe world. And what a business this will be,before it end in some degree of victory again,and whether the time for shouts of triumphand tremendous cheers upon it is yet come, ornot yet by a great way, I perceive too well! Abusiness to make us all very serious indeed. Abusiness not to be accomplished but by noblemanhood, and devout all-daring, all-enduringloyalty to Heaven, such as fatally sleeps atpresent,—such as is not dead at present ei-ther, unless the gods have doomed this worldof theirs to die! A business which long cen-turies of faithful travail and heroic agony, onthe part of all the noble that are born to us,will not end; and which to us, of this “tremen-dous cheering” century, it were blessednessvery great to see successfully begun. Begun,tried by all manner of methods, if there is onewise Statesman or man left among us, it verilymust be;—begun, successfully or unsuccess-fully, we do hope to see it!

In all European countries, especially inEngland, one class of Captains and comman-ders of men, recognizable as the beginning ofa new real and not imaginary “Aristocracy,”has already in some measure developed it-


self: the Captains of Industry;—happily theclass who above all, or at least first of all, arewanted in this time. In the doing of materialwork, we have already men among us that cancommand bodies of men. And surely, on theother hand, there is no lack of men needing tobe commanded: the sad class of brother-menwhom we had to describe as “Hodge’s eman-cipated horses,” reduced to roving famine,—this too has in all countries developed itself;and, in fatal geometrical progression, is evermore developing itself, with a rapidity whichalarms every one. On this ground, if not on allmanner of other grounds, it may be truly said,the “Organization of Labor” (not organizableby the mad methods tried hitherto) is the uni-versal vital Problem of the world.

To bring these hordes of outcast captain-less soldiers under due captaincy? This isreally the question of questions; on the an-swer to which turns, among other things,the fate of all Governments, constitutionaland other,—the possibility of their continu-ing to exist, or the impossibility. Captain-less, uncommanded, these wretched outcast“soldiers,” since they cannot starve, mustneeds become banditti, street-barricaders,—destroyers of every Government that cannotput them under captains, and send them uponenterprises, and in short render life human tothem. Our English plan of Poor Laws, whichwe once piqued ourselves upon as sovereign,

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is evidently fast breaking down. Ireland, nowadmitted into the Idle Workhouse, is rapidlybursting it in pieces. That never was a “hu-man” destiny for any honest son of Adam;nowhere but in England could it have lastedat all; and now, with Ireland sharer in it,and the fulness of time come, it is as good asended. Alas, yes. Here in Connemara, yourcrazy Ship of the State, otherwise dreadfullyrotten in many of its timbers I believe, hassprung a leak: spite of all hands at the pump,the water is rising; the Ship, I perceive, willfounder, if you cannot stop this leak!

To bring these Captainless under due cap-taincy? The anxious thoughts of all men thatdo think are turned upon that question; andtheir efforts, though as yet blindly and to nopurpose, under the multifarious impedimentsand obscurations, all point thitherward. Iso-lated men, and their vague efforts, cannot doit. Government everywhere is called upon,—in England as loudly as elsewhere,—to givethe initiative. A new strange task of thesenew epochs; which no Government, never so“constitutional,” can escape from undertak-ing. For it is vitally necessary to the exis-tence of Society itself; it must be undertaken,and succeeded in too, or worse will follow,—and, as we already see in Irish Connaughtand some other places, will follow soon. Towhatever thing still calls itself by the nameof Government, were it never so constitu-


tional and impeded by official impossibilities,all men will naturally look for help, and di-rection what to do, in this extremity. If helpor direction is not given; if the thing calledGovernment merely drift and tumble to andfro, no-whither, on the popular vortexes, likesome carcass of a drowned ass, constitution-ally put “at the top of affairs,” popular indig-nation will infallibly accumulate upon it; oneday, the popular lightning, descending forkedand horrible from the black air, will annihilatesaid supreme carcass, and smite it home toits native ooze again!—Your Lordship, this istoo true, though irreverently spoken: indeedone knows not how to speak of it; and to meit is infinitely sad and miserable, spoken ornot!—Unless perhaps the Voluntary Principlewill still help us through? Perhaps this Irishleak, in such a rotten distressed condition ofthe Ship, with all the crew so anxious aboutit, will be kind enough to stop of itself?—

Dismiss that hope, your Lordship! Letall real and imaginary Governors of England,at the pass we have arrived at, dismiss for-ever that fallacious fatal solace to their do-nothingism: of itself, too clearly, the leak willnever stop; by human skill and energy it mustbe stopped, or there is nothing but the sea-bottom for us all! A Chief Governor of Eng-land really ought to recognize his situation; todiscern that, doing nothing, and merely drift-ing to and fro, in however constitutional a

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manner, he is a squanderer of precious mo-ments, moments that perhaps are priceless;a truly alarming Chief Governor. Surely, toa Chief Governor of England, worthy of thathigh name,—surely to him, as to every livingman, in every conceivable situation short ofthe Kingdom of the Dead—there is somethingpossible; some plan of action other than thatof standing mildly, with crossed arms, till heand we—sink? Complex as his situation is,he, of all Governors now extant among thesedistracted Nations, has, as I compute, by farthe greatest possibilities. The Captains, ac-tual or potential, are there, and the millionCaptainless: and such resources for bringingthem together as no other has. To these out-cast soldiers of his, unregimented roving ban-ditti for the present, or unworking workhouseprisoners who are almost uglier than banditti;to these floods of Irish Beggars, Able-bodiedPaupers, and nomadic Lackalls, now stagnat-ing or roaming everywhere, drowning the faceof the world (too truly) into an untenantableswamp and Stygian quagmire, has the ChiefGovernor of this country no word whatever tosay? Nothing but “Rate in aid,” “Time willmend it,” “Necessary business of the Session;”and “After me the Deluge”? A Chief Governorthat can front his Irish difficulty, and steadilycontemplate the horoscope of Irish and BritishPauperism, and whitherward it is leading himand us, in this humor, must be a—What shall


we call such a Chief Governor? Alas, in spiteof old use and wont,—little other than a tol-erated Solecism, growing daily more intoler-able! He decidedly ought to have some wordto say on this matter,—to be incessantly oc-cupied in getting something which he couldpractically say!—Perhaps to the following, ora much finer effect?

Speech of the British Prime-Minister to thefloods of Irish and other Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or stationary, andthe general assembly, outdoor and indoor, ofthe Pauper Populations of these Realms.

“Vagrant Lackalls, foolish most of you,criminal many of you, miserable all; the sightof you fills me with astonishment and despair.What to do with you I know not; long have Ibeen meditating, and it is hard to tell. Hereare some three millions of you, as I count: somany of you fallen sheer over into the abyssesof open Beggary; and, fearful to think, everynew unit that falls is loading so much morethe chain that drags the others over. On theedge of the precipice hang uncounted millions;increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a day.They hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls,cramping themselves down, holding on withall their strength; but falling, falling one af-ter another; and the chain is getting heavy, sothat ever more fall; and who at last will stand?What to do with you? The question, What todo with you? especially since the potato died,

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is like to break my heart!“One thing, after much meditating, I have

at last discovered, and now know for sometime back: That you cannot be left to roamabroad in this unguided manner, stumblingover the precipices, and loading ever heavierthe fatal chain upon those who might be ableto stand; that this of locking you up in tem-porary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble,and subsisting you on Indian meal, till youcan sally forth again on fresh roamings, andfresh stumblings, and ultimate descent to thedevil;—that this is not the plan; and that itnever was, or could out of England have beensupposed to be, much as I have prided myselfupon it!

“Vagrant Lackalls, I at last perceive, allthis that has been sung and spoken, for along while, about enfranchisement, eman-cipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and reli-gious liberty over the world, is little otherthan sad temporary jargon, brought upon usby a stern necessity,—but now ordered by asterner to take itself away again a little. Sadtemporary jargon, I say: made up of senseand nonsense,—sense in small quantities, andnonsense in very large;—and, if taken for thewhole or permanent truth of human things, itis no better than fatal infinite nonsense eter-nally untrue. All men, I think, will soon haveto quit this, to consider this as a thing prettywell achieved; and to look out towards another


thing much more needing achievement at thetime that now is.

“All men will have to quit it, I believe. Butto you, my indigent friends, the time for quit-ting it has palpably arrived! To talk of glo-rious self-government, of suffrages and hus-tings, and the fight of freedom and such like,is a vain thing in your case. By all humandefinitions and conceptions of the said fight offreedom, you for your part have lost it, andcan fight no more. Glorious self-governmentis a glory not for you, not for Hodge’s eman-cipated horses, nor you. No; I say, No. You,for your part, have tried it, and failed. Leftto walk your own road, the will-o’-wisps be-guiled you, your short sight could not descrythe pitfalls; the deadly tumult and press haswhirled you hither and thither, regardless ofyour struggles and your shrieks; and here atlast you lie; fallen flat into the ditch, drown-ing there and dying, unless the others thatare still standing please to pick you up. Theothers that still stand have their own difficul-ties, I can tell you!—But you, by imperfect en-ergy and redundant appetite, by doing too lit-tle work and drinking too much beer, you (Ibid you observe) have proved that you cannotdo it! You lie there plainly in the ditch. And Iam to pick you up again, on these mad terms;help you ever again, as with our best heart’s-blood, to do what, once for all, the gods havemade impossible? To load the fatal chain with

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your perpetual staggerings and sprawlings;and ever again load it, till we all lie sprawl-ing? My indigent incompetent friends, I willnot! Know that, whoever may be ‘sons of free-dom,’ you for your part are not and cannot besuch. Not ‘free’ you, I think, whoever may befree. You palpably are fallen captive,—caitiff,as they once named it:—you do, silently buteloquently, demand, in the name of mercy it-self, that some genuine command be taken ofyou.

“Yes, my indigent incompetent friends;some genuine practical command. Such,—if I rightly interpret those mad Chartisms,Repeal Agitations, Red Republics, and otherdelirious inarticulate howlings and bellow-ings which all the populations of the worldnow utter, evidently cries of pain on their andyour part,—is the demand which you, Cap-tives, make of all men that are not Captive,but are still Free. Free men,—alas, had youever any notion who the free men were, whothe not-free, the incapable of freedom! Thefree men, if you could have understood it, theyare the wise men; the patient, self-denying,valiant; the Nobles of the World; who can dis-cern the Law of this Universe, what it is, andpiously obey it; these, in late sad times, hav-ing cast you loose, you are fallen captive togreedy sons of profit-and-loss; to bad and everto worse; and at length to Beer and the Devil.Algiers, Brazil or Dahomey hold nothing in


them so authentically slave as you are, my in-digent incompetent friends!

“Good Heavens, and I have to raise someeight or nine millions annually, six for Eng-land itself, and to wreck the morals of myworking population beyond all money’s worth,to keep the life from going out of you: a smallservice to you, as I many times bitterly re-peat! Alas, yes; before high Heaven I mustdeclare it such. I think the old Spartans,who would have killed you instead, had shownmore ‘humanity,’ more of manhood, than Ithus do! More humanity, I say, more of man-hood, and of sense for what the dignity ofman demands imperatively of you and of meand of us all. We call it charity, beneficence,and other fine names, this brutish WorkhouseScheme of ours; and it is but sluggish heart-lessness, and insincerity, and cowardly low-ness of soul. Not ‘humanity’ or manhood, Ithink; perhaps apehood rather,—paltry imi-tancy, from the teeth outward, of what ourheart never felt nor our understanding eversaw; dim indolent adherence to extraneousand extinct traditions; traditions now reallyabout extinct; not living now to almost any ofus, and still haunting with their spectralitiesand gibbering ghosts (in a truly baleful man-ner) almost all of us! Making this our strug-gling ‘Twelfth Hour of the Night’ inexpress-ibly hideous!-

“But as for you, my indigent incompetent

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friends, I have to repeat with sorrow, but withperfect clearness, what is plainly undeniable,and is even clamorous to get itself admitted,that you are of the nature of slaves,—or if youprefer the word, of nomadic, and now even va-grant and vagabond, servants that can find nomaster on those terms; which seems to me amuch uglier word. Emancipation? You havebeen ‘emancipated’ with a vengeance! Fool-ish souls, I say the whole world cannot eman-cipate you. Fealty to ignorant Unruliness,to gluttonous sluggish Improvidence, to theBeer-pot and the Devil, who is there that canemancipate a man in that predicament? Nota whole Reform Bill, a whole French Revolu-tion executed for his behoof alone: nothing butGod the Maker can emancipate him, by mak-ing him anew.

“To forward which glorious consummation,will it not be well, O indigent friends, thatyou, fallen flat there, shall henceforth learnto take advice of others as to the methodsof standing? Plainly I let you know, and allthe world and the worlds know, that I for mypart mean it so. Not as glorious unfortunatesons of freedom, but as recognized captives,as unfortunate fallen brothers requiring thatI should command you, and if need were, con-trol and compel you, can there henceforth bea relation between us. Ask me not for In-dian meal; you shall be compelled to earn itfirst; know that on other terms I will not give


you any. Before Heaven and Earth, and Godthe Maker of us all, I declare it is a scandalto see such a life kept in you, by the sweatand heart’s-blood of your brothers; and that,if we cannot mend it, death were preferable!Go to, we

Latter-Day Pamphlets...had the year 1848, one of the most singu-lar, disastrous, amazing, and, on...

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