NOV
1
NOV
1993
2 3 1993
JUNi 31995
MARl 3
:JUN16
1997
wsa
NOV 2
2003
NOV 2 6 2009
NOV 1 9
ZOOS
CHARTISM.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
It
never smokes but there
is
fire."— Old Proverb.
LONDON:
JAMES FRASER, REGENT STREET.
1840.
:
LONDON
I'HIKTEI? BY
LEVEY, ROBSOS, AND FRANKLTS,
40
St.
Martin's Lane.
ERiNDALE
COLLEGE
LIBRARY
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.
II.
III.
PAGE
...
Condition-of-England Question
Statistics
New Poor-Law
IV. Finest Peasantry in the
16
World
,
.
V. Rights and Mights
49
VII. Not Laissez-Faire
New
63
Eras
IX. Parliamentary Radicalism
X. Impossible
.24
36
VI. Laissez-Faire
VIII.
1
9
69
.
.
.
.89
96
!
-^^
CHARTISM.
4^
CHAPTER
r
I.
CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION.
A
FEELING very generally
exists that the condition
and disposition of the Working Classes is a rather
ominous matter at present that something ought to
be said, something ought to be done, in regard to it.
;
And
surely, at
an epoch of history when the
Petition' carts itself in
waggons along the
'
National
streets,
and
bound with iron hoops, four men bearing
it,' to a Reformed House of Commons
and Chartism
numbered by the million and half, taking nothing by
is
presented
'
;
its
iron-hooped Petition, breaks out into brickbats,
cheap pikes, and even into sputterings of conflagration,
such very general feeling cannot be considered unnatural
has for
To us individually
many years appeared,
!
all
to
which
itself
to be the
practical matters whatever
of
if
;
most ominous
a matter in regard
something be not done, something
one day, and
The time
matter appears, and
this
in
will
do
a fashion that will please nobody.
is verily come for acting
more for consultation about acting
and articulate inquiry about it
B
in
in
;
how much
it,
for speech
it
,
CHARTISM.
2
We
are aware that, according to the newspapers.
Chartism
down
extinct
that a
;
Reform Ministry has
So say the newspapers
manner.
effectual
put
'
;
— and
yet,
most readers of newspapers know withal that
alas,
is
is
the chimera of Chartism' in the most felicitous
indeed the
'
it
chimera' of Chartism, not the reality,
which has been put down.
The
distracted incoherent
embodiment of Chartism, whereby in late months it
took shape and became visible, this has been put
down or rather has fallen down and gone asunder by
;
gravitation
and law of nature
but the living essence
:
Chartism means
of Chartism has not been put down.
the bitter discontent
grown
condition therefore or the
Working
and mad, the wrong
wrong
disposition, of the
a new name for a
many names, which will yet have
Classes of England.
thing which has had
The matter
many.
fierce
It is
of Chartism
is
weighty,
;
by no means end
day or to-morrow.
this
nistry, constabulary rural police,
grants of
not well
or
less
to
Birmingham
all this will
new
;
will
;
Reform Mi-
levj^
of soldiers,
all this is well,
or
is
put down only the embodiment
chimera' of Chartism.
'
new
;
money
deep-
did not begin yesterday
rooted, far-extending
The
essence continuing,
and ever new embodiments, chimeras madder or
mad, have to continue. The melancholy fact re-
mains, that this thing
known
Chartism does exist
has existed
;
at present
;
by the name
and, either
'
put
down,' into secret treason, with rusty pistols, vitriolbottle and match-box, or openly brandishing pike and
torch (one knows not in which case more fatal-looking),
is
like to exist
with
it.
till
quite other methods have been tried
What means
this bitter
discontent of the
CHAP.
CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION.
I.
3
Working Classes ? Whence comes it, whither goes it ?
Above all, at what price, on what terms, will it probably consent to depart from us and die into rest
?
These are questions.
To
say that
To
answer.
mad, incendiary, nefarious,
all this, in
never so
many
is
no
dialects, is
;'
Glasgow Thuggerj^,' Glasgow Thugs
a witty nickname the practice of Number 60'
saying
it
it is
say
is
little.
'
'
'
:
entering his dark room, to contract for and settle the
price of blood with operative assassins, in a Christian
once distinguished by
city,
its
doubtless a fact worthy of
horror do for
what
do
will
it ?
What will
rigorous Christianism,
horror
all
execration
is
but what will
:
;
nay
at bottom,
condemnation and banishment to Botany Bay
Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meetBirmingham riots, Swing conflagrations, are so
many symptoms on the surface you abolish the symptom to no purpose, if the disease is left untouched.
for it?
ings,
;
Boils on the surface are curable or incurable,
—small
matter which, while the virulent humour festers deep
poisoning the sources of life
and certain
enough to find for itself ever new boils and sore issues ways of announcing that it continues there, that
it would fain not continue there.
within
;
;
;
Delirious Chartism will not have raged entirely
to
no purpose, as indeed no earthly thing does
have forced
all
men
thinking
so, if it
of the community to
think of this vital matter, too apt to be overlooked
otherwise.
Is the condition
people wrong
;
so
wrong
of the English working
that rational working
men
cannot, will not, and even should not rest quiet under
it ?
A
most grave
case,
complex beyond
all
others in
CHARTISM.
4;
the world
a case wherein Botany Bay, constabulary
;
rural police,
and such
like, will avail
but
Or
little.
the discontent itself mad, like the shape
it
took
the condition of the working people that
is
wrong
own
their disposition, their
ings that are
wrong?
lice
;
but
thoughts, beliefs and feel-
This too were a most grave
case, little less alarming, little less
former one.
is
Not
?
complex than the
In this case too, where constabulary po-
and mere rigour of coercion seems more
coercion will by no means do
all,
at
home,
coercion by itself
If there do exist general
even do much.
madness of discontent, then sanity and some measure
not by conof content must be brought about again,
will not
—
When
stabulaiy police alone.
in the great
the thoughts of a people,
mass of it, have grown mad, the combined
issue of that people's workings will be a madness,
incoherency and ruin
!
an
Sanity will have to be re-
covered for the general mass
;
coercion
itself will
other-
wise cease to be able to coerce.
We
no
light
have heard
on
it
asked,
Why
this question of the
Parliament throws
Working
the condition or disposition they are in ?
Classes,
remote observer of Parliamentary procedure
surprising, especially in late
what space
Reformed
and
Truly to a
seems
it
times, to see
this question occupies in the
Debates of
Can any other business whatsoever be so
pressing on legislators ?
A Reformed Parliament, one
would think, should inquire into popular discontents
For
before they get the length of pikes and torches
what end at all are men, Honourable Members and
Reform Members, sent to St. Stephen's, with clamour
and effort kept talking, struggling, motioning and
the Nation.
!
;
CHAP.
CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION.
I.
counter-motioning
The
?
of people in a country
itself
:
this
is
5
condition of the great body
the condition of the country
you would say
is
a truism in
all
times
;
a
truism rather pressing to get recognised as a truth now,
and be acted upon,
to do
The
!
Yet read Hansard's
in these times.
Debates, or the Morning Papers,
if
you have nothing
A is to be in
old grand question, whether
B, with the innumerable subsidiary questions
office or
growing out of
that, courting
for a blessed solution of that
paragraphs and suiFrages
:
Canada
question, Irish
Appropriation question, West India question. Queen's
Bedchamber question
;
Game Laws, Usury Laws
can Blacks, Hill Coolies, Smithfield
carts,
—
cattle,
Afri-
manner of questions and subjects, except
omega of all
Surely Ho-
all
simply this the alpha and
nourable
;
and Dog-
Members ought
England question
too.
!
to speak of the Condition-of-
Radical Members, above
by the people,
to interpret and articulate the dumb deep want of the
people
To a remote observer they seem oblivious of
their duty. Are they not there, by trade, mission, and
friends of the people
;
chosen with
\
all;
1
'
effort,
!
/
/
express appointment of themselves and others, to speak
for the
good of the
British Nation ?
Whatsoever great
British interest can the least speak for
beyond
all
they are called to speak.
speakers for that great
dumb
itself,
They
toiling class
for that
are either
which cannot
speak, or they are nothing that one can well specify.
Alas, the remote observer
of Parliaments
:
how
knows not the nature
Parliaments, extant there for the
British Nation's sake, find that they are extant withal
for their
own
sake;
how
Parliaments travel so natu-
rally in their deep-rutted routine,
common-place worn
)
CHARTISM.
b
into ruts axle-deep,
~
from which only strength, insight
and courageous generous exertion can
ment or
lift
any Parlia-
how in Parliaments, Reformed or Unmay chance to be a strong man, an
vehicle;
reformed, there
original, clear-sighted, great-hearted, patient
man, or to be none such
;
and valiant
—how, on the whole.
ments, lumbering along in their deep ruts of
many
place, find, as so
Parlia-
common-
of us otherwise do, that the
and the travelling very toilsome of
and for the day the evil thereof sufficient What
ruts are axle-deep,
itself,
!
Parliaments ought to have done in this business, what
they
will,
can or cannot yet do, and where the limits of
their faculty
and culpability may
were a long investigation
enter at this moment.
happily plain enough.
What
And
be
left
good
in regard to
it,
they have done
is
un-
Wisdom
of the Nation has
as nothing whatever.
we
yet, as
lie,
which we need not
Hitherto, on this most national
of questions, the Collective
availed us as
into
;
say,
it
is
a question which cannot
to the Collective Folly of the Nation
In
1
or out of Parliament, darkness, neglect, hallucination
.
/
;.,
must contrive to cease in regard to it; true insight into
it must be had.
How inexpressibly useful were true
insight into it a genuine understanding by the upper
classes of society what it is that the under classes in;
trinsically
mean
;
a clear interpretation of the thought
f,
which
I
struggling there, with inarticulate uproar, like
at heart torments these wild inarticulate souls,
creatures in pain, unable to speak what
Something they do mean
;
in
some true thing
in the centre of their confused hearts,
hearts created
is
by Heaven too:
—
to the
dumb
them
!
withal,
for they are
Heaven
it
is
CHAP.
CONDITION-Or-ENGLAND QUESTION.
I.
what thing
clear
to us not clear.
;
Perfect clearness on
For, as
it
well said, all battle
is
know one
the parties
Would that
were equivalent
is
7
were
it
remedy of it.
to
misunderstanding
did
;
another, the battle would cease.
Nojnan at bottom means injustice it is always for
some obscure distorted image of a right that he con;
,
f
tends
an obscure image
:
diffracted, exaggerated, in
|
the wonderfuUest way, by natural dimness and
ishness
getting tenfold
;
more
self-
I
by exaspera-
diffracted
j
tion of contest,
cognisable
man own
yet
;
at length
till
it
become
all
the image of a right.
still
but
irre-
Could a
was
to himself that the thing he fought for
wrong, contrary to fairness and the law of reason, he
would own
hopeless
;
also that
it
thereby stood condemned and
he could fight for
it
no longer.
Nay
inde-
pendently of right, could the contending parties get
but accurately to discern one another's might and
strength to contend, the one would peaceably yield to
the other and to Necessity
No
too were over.
days of Herodotus,
;
the contest in this case
African expedition now, as in the
is fitted
out against the South-icind.
One expedition was satisfactory in that department.
The South-wind Simoom continues blowing occasionallj',
hateful as ever,
pedition
The
was enough.
maddening
Do we
not
as ever
all
;
but one ex-
submit to Death?
highest sentence of the law, sentence of death,
passed on
tiently
all
under
of us by the fact of birth
it,
patiently undergo
it
;
is
we live pawhen the hour
yet
comes. Clear undeniable right, clear undeniable might:
either of these once ascertained puts an
All battle
is
end to
battle.
a confused experiment to ascertain one
and both of these.
I
CHARTISM.
8
What
are the rights,
what are the mights of the
dis-
contented Working Classes in England at this epoch
He
?
were an OEdipus, and deliverer from sad social
pestilence,
who could
The
say beforehand,
resolve us fully
For we may-
!
struggle that divider the upper
Europe, and more painfully
England than elsewhere, this too is a
struggle which will end and adjust itself as all other
struggles do and have done, by making the right clear
agd lower
in society over
and notably
in
and the might clear not otherwise than by
contented
;
what
is
Why
are the
Mean-
that.
;
time, the questions,
Working
Classes dis-
their condition, economical, moral,
in their houses
and their
as they figure
it
hearts, as
it
to themselves to be
is
;
in reality
and
what do they
complain of; what ought they, and ought they not
—
to complain of?
these are measurable questions; on
some of these any common mortal, did he but turn his
eyes to them, might throw some light.
Certain researches and considerations of ours on the matter,
since no one else will undertake
The
public.
nothing
;
it,
are
now
researches have yielded us
We
almost
are not without hope
that our general notion of the business,
it
be made
but the considerations are of old date, and
press to have utterance.
get
to
little,
uttered at
candid men.
all,
will
if
we can
meet some assent from many
CHAPTER
II.
STATISTICS.
A
WITTY statesman
We
figures.
said
you might prove anything by
have looked into various
^tatistic-Society Reports,
statistic
works,
Poor-Law Reports, Reports
and Pamphletslnot a few, with a sedulous eye to
question of
dition in
no
thew orking
England
grieve to say, with as good as
we
;
Assertion swallows assertion
result whatever.
cording to the old Proverb,
bell clinks!'
this
Classes and their general con-
'
ac-
;
as the statist thinks, the
Tables arejike cobwebs, like the sieve
of the Danaides
;
beautifully
reticulated, orderly
look upon, but which will hold no conclusion.
to
T'ables
are abstractions, and the object a most concrete one,
so difficult to read the essence of.
merable circumstances
may be
is
;
There are innu-
and one circumstance
the vital one on which
all
turned.
out
a science which ought to be honourable, the basis
many most important
of
carried on
are
;
by steam,
a wise head
is
sciences
this science,
;
but
it is
not to be
any more than others
requisite for carrying
clusive facts are inseparable
it
on.
Con-
from inconclusive except
by a head that already understands and knows.
to
left
Statistics*
Vain
send the purblind and blind to the shore of aPactolus
never so golden
:
finder alone picks
these find only gravel
up gold grains
there.
;
the seer and
And now
the
purblind oflPering you, with asseveration and protrusive
importunity, his basket of gravel as gold, what steps
b2
CHARTISM.
10
—
are to be taken with
him ?
Statistics, one may hope,
improve gradually, and become good for some-
will
Meanwhile
thing.
was partly
tirist
to be feared, the crabbed sa-
it is
right, as things
go
'A judicious man,
:
says he, 'looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but
from having ignorance
to save himself
With what
foisted
Useful-Knowledge Society stops
figure of arithmetic
!
To him
it
seems he has there
extracted the elixir of the matter, on which
thing more can be said.
It is needful that
into his said extracted elixir
;
and
probably, not without a sigh, that
pidity,
on him.'
member of some
your mouth with a
serene conclusiveness a
good only for the
now
no-
you look
ascertain, alas, too
it is
wash and va-
gutters.
Twice or three times have we heard the lamentaand prophecies of a humane Jeremiah, mourner
the poor, cut short by a statistic fact of the most
tions
for
decisive nature
How can
:
the condition of the poor be
other than good, be other than better; has not the aver-
age duration of
life in
England, and therefore
among
the most numerous class in England, been proved to
have increased
so, it
?
Our Jeremiah had
was an astounding
fact
;
whereby
to
admit
all
that, if
that ever he,
had observed on other sides of the matter
was overset without remedy. If life last longer, life
for his part,
must be less worn upon, by outward suffering, by inward discontent, by hardship of any kind the general
condition of the poor must be bettering instead of
worsening.
So was our Jeremiah cut short. And
;
now
for the
statistic
in. a
'proof?
may see
proofs
Pamphlet
'
Readers who are curious in
it
drawn out with
all
solemnity,
published by Charles Knight and
Com-
CHAP.
pany,'*
STATISTICS.
II.
— and perhaps himself draw
11
inferences from
Northampton Tables, compiled by Dr. Price
'
from
it.
re-
from 1735 to 1780;'
by Dr. Heysham from ob-
gisters of the Parish of All Saints
Carlisle Tables, collected
servation of Carlisle City for eight years,
lations
'
the calcu-
founded on them' conducted by another Doctor;
incredible
'
document considered
of science in France
ous scientific son of
—
:*
Adam
by men
some zeal-
satisfactory
not as
alas, is it
if
had proved the deepening
of the Ocean, by survey, accurate or cursory, of two
Isle of
mud-plashes on the coast of the
Dogs ?
to get knowledge, but to save yourself
ignorance foisted on you
The
'
Not
from having
!
man
condition of the working
in. this
country,
and has been, whether it is improving or
retrograding,
is a question to which from statistics
what
it
is
—
hitherto no solution can be got.
and statements, one is
he can ascertain by his own
tables
Hitherto, after
still left
many
mainly to what
eyes, looking at the con-
phenomenon for himself. There is no other
method and yet it is a most imperfect method. Each
crete
;
man expands
his
own handbreadth
the limits of the general whole;
man must
Hence
*
I
two
all
that
;
which there
satisfactorily ending.
An Essay on
of &c. &c.
each
is
seeable and ascertain-
discrepancies, controversies, wide-spread,
long-continued
hope of
less,
take what he himself has seen and ascer-
tained for a sample of
able.
of observation to
more or
the
is
at present
When
Means of Insurance
no means or
Parliament takes
against the Casualties
London, Charles Knight and Company, 1836.
shillings.
J
Price
12
CHARTISM.
up the Condition-of-England
'
to
question,' as
it
will
have
do one day, then indeed much may be amended
Inquiries wisely gone into, even on this most
!
complex
matter, will yield results worth something, not nothing.
But
it is
a most complex matter
;
on which, whether
for the past or the present. Statistic Inquiry, with
limited means, with
its
its
short vision and headlong ex-
tensive dogmatism, as yet too often throws not light,
but error worse than darkness.
What
things
constitutes the well-being of a
Many
man ?
of which the wages he gets, and the bread he
;
buys with them, are but one preliminary item. Grant,
however, that the wages were the whole; that once
knowing the wages and the price of bread, we know
all
then what are the wages ? Statistic Inquiry, in its
present unguided condition, cannot tell.
The average
rate of day's wages is not correctly ascertained for any
;
portion of this country
ries, it is
;
not only not for half-centu-
not even ascertained anywhere for decades
or years: far from instituting comparisons with the
past, the present itself is
unknown
given the average of wages, what
And
to us.
then,
the constancy of
is
employment what is the difficulty of finding employment; the fluctuation from season to season, from year
;
to year ?
Is
it
constant, calculable
ating, incalculable,
bling?
wages,
wages
or fluctu-
;
less of the nature, of
gam-
This secondary circumstance, of quality in
is
perhaps even more important than the pri-
mary one of
labourer,
tership
more or
;
by
or
quantity.
thrift
is
Farther
we
and industry, hope
such hope cut
off"
ask,
Can the
to rise to
from him
?
mas-
How
is
CHAP.
STATISTICS.
II.
he related to his employer
and mutual help
by
or
;
by bonds of
;
friendliness
and
opposition,
hostility,
chains of mutual necessity alone
In a word, what
?
human creature be supWith hunger preying
degree of contentment can a
posed
13
to enjoy in that position?
on him,
his
contentment
is
be small
likely to
But
I
"^
evea JgJtJb—ahmxdance, his discontent, his real misery
may be
great.
The
labourer's feelings, hia i^otion of
being justly dealt with or un justly
wholesom e
bis
;
composure, frugality, pros perity in the o np rase^ hip
acrid unres t, recklessn ess, gin-drinking, and gradual
rum
much
sEatf^gurc s
how
in the other,
represent
So much
all this ?
is still
o^arithmeticj
be ascertained
to
of it by no means easy to ascertain
Till,
!
among
the 'Hill Cooly' and 'Dog-cart' questions, there arise
in
Parliament and extensively out of
it
a
'
Condition-
of-England question,' and quite a new set of inquirers
and methods,
One
is
fact
little
on
of
it is
likely to
this subject,
be ascertained.
a fact which arithmetic
we have often considered
Whether the labourer,
saving money ?
Laying up
condition, painful as it may
capable of representing,
would be worth
all
whatever his wages
the rest
are, is
money, he proves that
his
be without and within,
is
:
not yet desperate
looks forward to a better day coming, and
lutely steering towards the
and darknesses of
radiance of hope,
same
;
that
his lot are united
— the
last, first,
the sole blessedness of man.
;
that he
is still
all
reso-
the lights
under a blessed
nay one may say
Is the habit
increased and increasing, or the contrary
of saving
?
Where
own
the present writer has been able to look with his
CHARTISM.
14
eyes,
decreasing, and in
is
it
disappearing.
many
quarters
Bank Accounts, and
Would that one could
all
but
up her Savings-
Statistic science turns
answers, " Increasing rapidly."
But the Danaides'documents
few years ago, in regions where
believe
it
I
sieve character of such statistic reticulated
is
A
too manifest.
thrift, to one's
were not; the
own knowledge, still was, Savings-Banks
labourer lent his money to some farmer,
of capital, or supposed to be of capital,
often lost
it
since ; or he bought a
a cottage with
it
;
nay hid
it
— and has
cow with
under
it,
too
bought
his thatch
:
the
Savings-Banks books then exhibited mere blank and
That they swell yearly now, if such be the fact,
what thrift exists does gradually resort
more and more thither rather than elsewhither ; but
zero.
indicates that
the question, Is thrift increasing? runs through the
reticulation,
and
is
as
water
spilt
on the ground, not
to be gathered here.
These are inquiries on which, had there been a
proper
*
Condition-of-England question,' some light
would have been thrown, before torch-meetings' arose
Far as they lie out of the course
to illustrate them
of Parliamentary routine, they should have been gone
'
!
into,
should have been glanced
fashion.
A
at, in
one or the other
Legislature making laws for the
Working
Classes, in total uncertainty as to these things,
good
lating in the dark; not wisely, nor to
The
man
is
legisissues.
simple fundamental question. Can the labouring
in this
find work,
England of
ours,
and subsistence by
who
his
is
willing to labour,
work
mere conjecture and assertion hitherto
;
?
is
matter of
not ascertain-
CHAP.
II.
STATISTICS.
IS
able by authentic evidence: the Legislature, satisfied
to legislate in the dark, has not yet sought
dence on
it.
They
pass their
without evidence as to
Poor-Law Bill
mentum cruets
is
itself
all this.
any evi-
New Poor-Law
Bill,
Perhaps their
New
only intended as an experi-
to ascertain all this?
Chartism
answer, seemingly not in the affirmative.
is
an
16
CHAPTER
III.
NEW POOR-LAW.
To
read the Reports of the Poor-Law Commissioners,
one had
faith
One
of humanity.
seems to have been
sole recipe
needful for the woes of England :
relief.'
less
on
England lay
its
if
enough, would be a pleasure to the friend
'
refusal of out-door
in sick discontent, writhing
power-
fever-bed, dark, nigh desperate, in waste-
fulness, want, improvidence,
Hyperion down the eastern
and eating
steeps, the
care,
till
like
Poor-Law Co m-
missione rs arnsp, ^j)^ ppid^ T>pt thp|-p bp_wY>ij{hn]jRes,
a nd bread of affliction and water of aflBiction th ere
It
was a simple invention
are.
And
see, in
;
as all truly great inventions
any quarter, instantly as the walls of
the workhouse arise, misery and necessity
out of sight,
—out
of being, as
dissolve into the inane
;
is
industry,
away,
fly
fondly hoped, and
frugality,
fertility,
rise
of wages, peace on earth and goodwill towards
men
do,
—
in the
Poor-Law Commissioners' Reports,
infallibly, rapidly
parties, supervene.
to be wished.
We
or not so rapidly, to the joy of
all
was a consummation devoutly
have looked over these four annual
It
Poor-Law Reports with a variety of reflections with
no thought that our Poor-Law Commissioners are the
inhuman men their enemies accuse them of being
;
with a feeling of thankfulness rather that there do
exist
men
of that structure too
deeper and deeper that Nature,
;
with a persuasion
who makes nothing
to
CHAP.
NEW POOR-LAW.
III.
17
no purpose, has not made either them or their Poor-
Law Amendment Act
they and
it
in vain.
We
hope
to
prove that
were an indispensable element, harsh but
salutary, in the progress of things.
Poor-Law Amendment Act meanwhile
we sometimes hear it named, the chief
glorj^' of a Reform Cabinet, betokens, one would imaTo say to the
gine, rather a scarcity of glory there.
poor, Ye shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the
That
this
should be, as
'
I
water of
affliction,
required not so
any
are
sense, as
made
and be very miserable while here,
much
a stretch of heroic faculty in
due toughness of bowels.
If paupers
miserable, paupers will needs decline in mul-
stop
titudeTj It is a secret known to all rat-catchers
up the granary-crevices, afflict with continual mewing,
:
alarm,
and going-off of
bourers
'
A
still
traps,
your
'
chargeable
la-
disappear, and cease from the establishment.
briefer
method
is
that of arsenic
a milder, where otherwise permissible.
;
perhaps even
Rats and pau-
human faculty was from of
them down, slowly or at once,
and needed no ghost or Reform Ministry to teach it.
Furthermore when one hears of all the labour of the
c ountry being absorbed into employment' by this new
s ystem of affl iction, when labour co mplaining oL-w^aat
That
c an find no audience, one cannj^t. but. paiTSP.
misery and unemployed labour should 'disappear' in
that case is natural enough should go out of sight,
pers can be abolished
;
the
old adequate to grind
'
,
;
but out of existence
What we do know
?
is
that
'
the
rates are diminished,' as they cannot well help being
that no statistic tables as yet report
deaths by starvation
:
this
much
;
increase of
we do know, and
not very
CHARTISM.
18
conclusively anything
sorption of
labour of the country
To
more than
this.
If this be ab-
the labour of the country, then
all
is
all
the
absorbed.
believe practically that the poor and luckless
are here only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated,
and
some permissible manner made away
in
swept out of
sight, is
with,
the arrangements of good and
and
That
not an amiable faith.
success in this per-
ill
plexed scramble of a world, which a blind goddess was
always thought to preside over, are in fact the work of
a seeing goddess or god, and require only not to be
what stretch of heroic faculty or inspiwas needed to teach one that ? To
button your pockets and stand still, is no complex
recipe. Laissez faire, laissez passer !
Whatever goes
the widow picking nettles
on, ought it not to go on
for her children's dinner, and the perfumed seigneur
meddled with
:
ration of genius
'
;
delicately lounging in the CEil-du-Bceuf,
alchemy whereby he
and name
nettle,
Justice
itself?
ment
is
rent and law
it
and enacted, has
it
is
will extract
In brief, ours
is
has an
What
?'
is
written
not black-on-white to shew for
justice
of the nature of
let alone.
who
from her the third
but
;
attorney's parch-
all
Targum
or sacred-parchment.
a world requiring only to be well
Scramble along, thou insane scramble of
a world, with thy pope's
tiaras,
king's mantles
and
beggar's gabardines, chivalry-ribbons and plebeian gallows-ropes, where a Paul shall die on the gibbet and a
Nero sit fiddling as imperial Caesar thou art all right,
and shalt scramble even so and whoever in the press
;
;
is
trodden down, haa only to
broad
:
— Such
at
lie
bottom seems
there and be trampled
to
be the chief social
CHAP.
principle,
principle
if
Amendment Act
NEW POOR-LAW.
III.
which
many
be
to
aught was
And
chief social
in,
but pronounce at
heretical
false,
and damnable,
by no
all fit
if
ever
I
we said. Nature makes nothing in vain
Poor-Law Amendment Act. For withal
yet, as
not even a
we
A
things.
this present writer, for one, will
manner of means believe
times
Poor-Law
have, which the
it
has the merit of courageously as-
serting, in opposition to
principle
19
;
are far from joining in the outcry raised against
these poor
tigers
Poor-Law Commissioners,
in men's shape;
as if their
as if they
were
Amendment Act
were a mere monstrosity and horror, deserving instant
They
abrogation.
are not tigers
;
with an
idea
heretical
and damnable as a whole
of a theory:
their
men
Amendment
they are
truth, is
filled
Act,
orthodox
laudable as a half-truth; and was imperatively re-
quired to be put in practice.
To
create
men
filled
with a theory that refusal of out-door relief was the one
thing needful
Nature had no readier way of getting
:
out-door relief refused.
Poor-Law,
ciple,
we
fact, if
we
look at the old
that Fortune's awards are not those of Justice,
shall find
able,
In
in its assertion of the opposite social prin-
it
become still more unsupportEngland was not destined for
to have
demanding,
if
speedy anarchy, to be done away with.
Any
law,
however well meant
as
a law, which
has become a bounty on unthrift, idleness, bastardy
and beer-drinking, must be put an end to. In all
ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle
in this
England of
ours.
He
man
there
is
no place
that will not work, and
CHARTISM.
20
him go elsewhither
him the Law has made no soft
provision, but a hard and stern one that by the Law
of Nature, which the Law .of England would vainly
contend against in the long-run, he is doomed either
to quit these habits, or miserably be extruded from
save according to his means, let
him know
let
that for
;
made on principles
work according
this Earth, M'hich is
He
these.
let
him perish according
law juster than
preach
it
ters of
Adam,
bring
it
is
it
:
sons and daugh-
all
a law applicable to
all
and
;
to bear, with practical obligation strict as the
Poor-Law
a
truth,
there is no
Heaven one could
to
abroad into the hearts of
for
to his faculty,
to his necessity
Would
that.
from
different
that will not
'
Bastille,
on
all
We
!
had then,
perfect constitution of society
;'
in
good
'
God's
and
Earth and Task-garden, where whosoever is not
working must be begging or stealing,' were then actually what always, through so many changes and
fair
struggles,
That
of
first
endeavouring to become.
it is
this
all
law of
No work
no recompense, should
be enforced on the manual worker, and
brought stringently home to him and
while so
class,
from
loose
it,
many
his
numerous
other classes and persons
was natural
enforced there, and rigidly
to the
case.
made good.
It
not by such simple methods as
door
too,
relief,'
'
behoves to
is
we
stand their convulsions and confusions),
Work
is
the mission of
man
;
which
not unfurnished
with, nor, in these latter generations (if
apply.
;
refusal of out-
but by far other and costlier ones
however, a bountiful Providence
be
it
be enforced everywhere, and rigidly made good
alas,
go
still
Let
in
will
under-
sparing to
this
Earth.
CHAP.
A
day
is
NEW POOR-LAW.
III.
21
ever struggling forward, a day will arrive in
some approximate degree, when he who has no work
to do, by whatever name he may be named, will not
find it good to shew himself in our quarter of the
Solar System
If there be
may go and
but
;
look out elsewhere,
any Idle Planet discoverable?
man
honest working
of Nature, has been made good on him
that,
by and by,
beginning of
to be withal
against
the
all else will
We
all.
a
'
—Let
;
and hope
be made good.
It is the
define the harsh
of the thrifty labourer
protection
and dissolute
thriftless
New Poor-Law
;'
a thing inex-
pressibly important; a half-res\x\t, detestable, if
will,
when looked upon
as the
out which the whole result
Let wastefulness,
their opposites
whole result
is
God
may
improvidence
has appointed them; that
have a chance for their
also
you
yet with-
;
forever unattainable.
idleness, drunkenness,
take the fate which
the
rejoice that such law, the first
fate.
Let the Poor-Law Administrators be considered as
useful labourers whom Nature has furnished with a
whole theory of the universe, that they might accomplish
an indispensable fractional practice there, and
prosper in
We
it
in spite of
much
New
will praise the
contradiction.
Poor-Law,
farther, as the
probable preliminary of some general charge to be
taken of the lowest classes by the higher.
ral
Any
gene-
charge whatsoever, rather than a conflict of charges,
varying from parish to parish; the emblem of darkness,
of unreadable confusion.
government, in what
visal
from a centre.
come
clearer, as
it is
Supervisal by the central
spirit
By
at
soever executed,
is
super-
degrees the object will be-
once made thereby universally
22
CHARTISM.
By
conspicuous.
attainable,
degrees true vision of
it
be universally attained
will
order regarding
just and wise, as
it is
;
will
become
whatsoever
grounded on the
Let
welcome the New Poor-Law as the harsh beginning
of much, the harsh ending of much
Most harsh and
truth of
be capable of being taken.
will then
it,
us
I
barren
the
lies
new
ploughers' fallow-field, the crude
subsoil all turned up,
as yet
grows no herb
one.
Yet patience
;
:
which never saw the sun which
which has 'out-door relief for no
innumerable weeds and corrup;
down and extinguished under
same crude subsoil is the first step of all true
husbandry by Heaven's blessing and the skyey influ-
tions lie safely turned
it
this
;
;
ences, fruits that are
of
good and blessed
come
will yet
:""
h^ ^/
^^-C::''
For, in truth, the claim oi the poor labourer
it.
;.''<
something quite other than that
'
'
-
is
Statute of the Forty-
third of Elizabeth' will ever fulfil for him.
Not
to
be supported by roundsmen systems, by never so
liberal parish doles, or
houses when
however
distress
lodged in free and easy workovertakes
him
words he may clamour for
in
;
not for
it
;
this,
not for
this,
but for something far different does the heart of him
Jtjs_*_for justice' that he struggles
struggle.
just wages,'
— not
in
money
alone!
An
;
for
ever-toiling
he would fain (though as yet he knows
it
not)
find for himself a superior that should lovingly
and
inferior,
wisely govern
service done ?
in this
is
not that too the 'just wages' of his
It is for
a manlike place and relation,
world where he sees himself a man, that he
At bottom may we not say, it is even for
That guidance and government, which he cannot
struggles.
this,
:
CHAP.
NEW POOR-LAW.
III.
23
give himself, which in our so complex world he can
no longer do
Avithout,
Elizabeth
is
in
might be afforded him
The
?
one which no Forty-third of
any condition to furnish him, to put
thing he struggles for
is
him on the road towards
getting.
Forty-third of Elizabeth altogether
Let him quit the
;
and
rejoice that
the Poor-Law Amendment Act has, even by harsh
methods and against his own will, forced him away
from
it.
That was a broken reed to lean on, if there
and did but run into his lamed rightLet him cast it far from him, that broken reed,
ever was one
hand.
;
and look to quite the opposite point of the heavens for
His unlamed right-hand, with the cunning
help.
industry that lies in it, is not this defined to be the
He that can work is a born
sceptre of our Planet' ?
'
king of something
;
is
in
communion with Nature,
master of a thing or things, is a priest and king of
He that can work at nothing is but a
l^ature so far.
is
may
usurping king, be his trappings what they
the born slave of
all
things.
craftmanship, his can-do
;
man have no concern at
Elizabeth.
and know that
all
;
he
Let a man honour
is
his
his rights of
with the Forty-third of
24.
CHAPTER
IV.
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD.
The New Poor-Law
distinct, that
Can
the poor
work,
is
whosoever
man
aiTd'TTve"
by
that
an announcement,
is
Statistic Inquiry, as
we
Legislation presupposes
saw, has no answer to give.
—
A large postuto be in the affirmative.
which should have been made a proposition of
the answer
late
to live.
willing to work, always find
work?
his
sufficiently
work ought not
will not
;
which should have been demonstrated, made indubitable to all persons
A man willing to work, and
1
unable to find work,
is
perhaps the saddest sight that
Burns
Fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.
expresses feelingly what thoughts
man
it
gave him
a poor
:
seeking work; seeking leave to
be fed and sheltered
toil that he might
That he might but be put on
!
a level with the four-footed workers of the Planet which
is
his
I
There
is
not a horse willing to work but can
get food and shelter in requital
worker has to seek
He
is
is
a thing this two-footed
nobody's two-footed worker
And
yet he
is
currently reported there
is
anybody's slave.
it
;
for, to solicit occasionally in vain.
him, sent
down out of Heaven
beholds him seeking for this
Legislature say,
if it
!
;
he
is
not even
a two-hoied worker
into the Earth
—Nay what
;
and one
will a wise
turn out that he cannot find
that the answer to their postulate proposition
affirmative but negative ?
;
an immortal soul in
is
it
not
CHAP.
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD.
IV.
There
one fact which
is
Statistic Science has
municated, and a most astonishing one
from which
pregnant as to
is
;
25
com-
the inference
this matter.
Ireland has
near seven millions of working people, the third unit
of whom,
thirty
it appears by Statistic Science, has not for
weeks each year as many third-rate potatoes as
will suffice
him. It
is
a fact perhaps the most eloquent
down
that was ever written
tion
needed in Ireland
and guided
in
any language,
Was
date of the world's history.
at
any
change and reforma-
Has Ireland been governed
and loving' manner? A go-
?
in a 'wise
vernment and guidance of white European men which
has issued in perennial hunger of potatoes to the third
—
man extant, ought to drop a veil over its face, and
walk out of court under conduct of proper officers
;
saying no word
;
now of a surety sentence
All men, we must repeat,
expecting
either to change or die.
were made by God, and have immortal souls
in them.
The Sanspotatoe is of the selfsame stuff as the superfinest Lord Lieutenant. Not an individual Sanspotatoe
human scarecrow but had a Life given hira out of
Heaven, with Eternities depending on it for once and
no second time. With Immensities in him, over him
and round him with feelings which a Shakspeare's
;
;
speech would not utter
Autocrat's of
all
;
with desires illimitable as the
the Russias
!
honoured persons, things and
Him
various thrice-
have long
been teaching, long been guiding, governing and it
institutions
:
to perpetual scarcity of third-rate potatoes,
and to
what depends thereon, that he has been taught and
is
guided.
Figure thyself,
O
high-minded, clear-headed,
clean-burnished reader, clapt by enchantment into the
c
CHARTISM.
26
torn coat and waste hunger-lair of that same root-
devouring brother
man
!
Social anomalies are things to be defended, things
amended
to be
the Pit
Room
good.
And
yet
when
and
;
there
itself,
and things, short of
some admixture of worth and
in all places
is
for extenuation, for pity, for patience
has come
the general result
I
to the length
of perennial starvation, argument, extenuating logic,
pity and patience on that subject may be considered as
drawing to a
it
has
men
just
all
may be
It
close.
arrangement of things
for
its
considered that such
That
have to terminate.
will
That
natural enemies.
all
what outward colour soever in Politics
or otherwise, will say: This cannot last. Heaven disowns it. Earth is against it Ireland will be burnt into
just men, of
;
a black unpeopled field of ashes rather than this should
last.
—The woes of
not the chapter
Ireland, or 'justice to Ireland,'
we have
to write at present.
It is
is
a
deep matter, an abyssmal one, which no plummet of
For the oppression has gone far
ours will sound.
farther than into the economics of Ireland ; inwards to
her very heart and soul.
The
ter is degradedv disordered;
is
violent,
mendacious
wretched Irishman
?
:
what can you
"A
they
do
generally
these"
—
truth,
and to act the
I
A
from even the
itself,
njJike
of the
finer people never lived,"
as the Irish lady said to us
faults,,
recover
this
Immethodic, headlong,
recovered.
yet
nothing
Irish National charactill
;
lie
" only they have two
and
steal
:
barring
people that knows not to speak the
truth,
such people has departed
possibility of well-being.
Such people
works no longer on Nature and Reality; works now
CHAP.
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD. 27
IV.
on Fantasm, Simulation, Nonentity
rives at
even of potatoes.
the result
—
it
dis-
Such a people
there.
ar-
defect
Scarcity, futility, confusion,
must be perennial
traction
;
naturally not a thing but no-thing,
is
cir-
culates not order but disorder, through every vein of
it
;
—and the
the heart
:
cure, if
to be a cure,
it is
must begin
must the Patient be
all
despair by reason of
Poor Ireland
changed.
yet let no true Irishman,
who
believes and sees
And
!
all this,
Cannot he too do something
it.
to withstand the unproductive falsehood, there as
accursed around him, and change
lies
which
sliall
fruitful
is
at
not in his condition only but in himself
and blessed
himself be a true
man
it
into truth,
Every mortal can and
?
:
it
is
it
a great thing, and
—
as from a single acorn the
p arent of great things
whole eartli might in the end be peopled with oaks
t he
;
Every mortal can do something this let him faithfully
and leave with assured heart the issue to a Higher
:
do,
Power
We
English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long
centuries of injustice to our neighbour Island.
tice,
doubt
not,
it
abounds
The Earth
miserable.
and increase
if
;
is
;
Injus-
or Ireland would not be
good, bountifully sends food
man^s unwisdom did not intervene
It was an evil day when Strigul first
He could not extirpate
meddled with that people.
them could they but have agreed together, and exViolent men there have been, and
tirpated him
and forbid.
:
!
merciful
;
unjust rulers, and just
;
conflicting in a great
now and
and we are come
element of violence, these five wild centuries
the violent and unjust have carried
to this.
L
England
is
it,
guilty towards Ireland
;
;
and reaps
CHARTISM.
28
at last, in full measure, the fruit of fifteen generations
of wrong-doing.
But the thing we had
was our
to state here
infer-
ence from that mournful fact of the third Sanspotatoe,
—coupled with
well-known fact that the
this other
Irish speak a partially intelligible dialect of English,
and their
fare across
Crowds of miserable
•^ild
by steam
Irish
four-pence sterling
is
darken
all
our towns.
!
The
Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restless-
ness, unreason, misery
and mockery, salute you on
highways and byways.
The English coachman,
all
as he
whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses
him with
tongue
his
;
the Milesian
is
holding out his
hat to beg.
He
strive with.
In his rags and laughing savagery, he
is
there to undertake
the sorest evil this country has to
all
work
strength of hand and back
chase him potatoes.
ment
;
He
that can be done
;
he lodges to his mind
hutch, roosts in outhouses
wages that
for
needs only
;
in
salt
will pur-
for condi-
any pighutch or dog-
and wears a
the getting off and on of which
is
by mere
is
suit of tatters,
said to be a difficult
operation, transacted only in festivals and the hightides
The Saxon man
of the calendar.
on these terms, finds no work.
He
if
he cannot work
may be
too
rant; but he has not sunk from decent
squalid apehood
can forests
lie
:
he cannot continue there.
untilled across the ocean
;
igno-
manhood
to
Ameri-
the uncivilised
Irishman, not by his strength but by the opposite of
Saxon native, takes possesThere abides he, in his squalor
and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as
the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder.
strength, drives out the
sion in his room.
CHAP.
Whosoever
now
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD. 29
IV.
struggles,
swimming with
not swimming but sunk.
men
worst of
;
Let him sink
lence like that
It
;
;
and against
it
;
but there
not the
is
is
We
have
no
pesti-
what quarantine
This
lamentable to look upon.
is
he
not worse than this man.
quarantines against pestilence
sible ?
may
difficulty,
an example how the human being can exist
find
pos-
is
soil
of
Saxon men have cleared it, made it
fertile and a home for them
they and their
have done that Under the sky there exists
Britain, these
arable,
;
fathers
no force of men who with arms in their hands could
them out of it all force of men with arms these
drive
;
Saxons would
seize,
in
their
grim way, and
fling
(Heaven's justice and their own Saxon humour aiding
them)
But behold, a
swiftly into the sea.
men armed
force of
only with rags, ignorance and nakedness
;
and the Saxon owners, paralysed by invisible magic
of paper formula, have to fly far, and hide themselves
in Transatlantic forests.
God,"
Ireland,
miles
Dutch William
as
—there
is
it
three thousand
it
They cannot stay at home^^ and
and natural that they come hither as
Alas, for them too it is not a luxury.
it?
not a straight or joyful
wrongs
it is,
to repeal
It is just
a curse to us.
It
"
yet these poor Celtiberian Irish brothers, what
can_^gy, help
starve.
?' " Would to
You were King of
Irish repeal
and could take yourself and
off","
And
«
said,
this
;
and an
way of avenging
but a most sad circuitous one.
effectual
way.
The time
has
their sore
Yet a way
come when
the Irish population must either be improved a
or else exterminated.
little,
Plausible management, adapted
to this hollow outcry or to that, will
no longer do
;
it
CHARTISM.
30
must be management grounded on
to wliich
tlie
sincerity
truth of things will respond
and
—by an
fact,
actual
beginning of improvement to these wretched brother-
men.
In a state of perennial ultra-savage famine, in
For
the midst of civilisation, they cannot continue.
Saxon British
that the
with them to such a
There
is
state,
in these latter,
is
not false
;
well-doing;
submit to sink along
will ever
a methodic
we assume
spirit,
of insight, of perseverant
and veracity which Nature
a rationality
with her truth does not disown
'
as impossible.
thank God, an ingenuity which
;
—withal
there
is
a
Berserkir-rage' in the heart of them, which will prefer
all
and self-destruction,
Let no man awaken it, this same BerserkirDeep-hidden it lies, far down in the centre,
things, including destruction
to that.
rage
!
like genial central -fire, with stratum after stratum of
arrangement, traditionary method, composed productiveness, all built
by
it
above
vivified
it,
and rendered
fertile
justice, clearness, silence, perseverance, unhast-
:
ing unresting diligence, hatred of disorder, hatred of
which
injustice,
people
;
their
should be,
is
is
the worst disorder, characterise this
inward
fire
we
say,
hidden at the centre.
—
as all
such
Deep-hidden
fire
;
no man awaken
but
awakenable, but immeasurable
;
With
this strong silent people
have the noisy vehement
Irish
now
now
at length got
common
let
cause made.
it
Ireland,
for the first time, in such strange circuitous way,
does find
itself
embarked
in the
same boat with Eng-
land, to sail together, or to sink together
;
the wretch-
edness of Ireland, slowly but inevitably, has crept over
to us,
and become our own wretchedness.
population must get
itself
The
Irish
redressed and saved, for the
CHAP.
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD.
IV.
sake of the English
nothing
if for
31
Alas, that
else.
it
j
men
should, on both sides, be poor toiling
that pay the
smart for unruly Striguls, Henrys, Macdermots, and
O'Donoghues
The
!
strong have eaten sour grapes,
and the teeth of the weak are
says the Proverb,
'
on edge.
set
Curses,'
'
are like chickens, they return
al-
ways home.'
But now on the whole,
Statistic Science,
it
seems to
the world streaming in on us daily,
;
may
ma tter
fold
up her
of the
Working
and conclude, what every man who
will take
Danaides reticulations on
Classes
English
us,
with floods of the finest peasantry in
the statistic spectacles
ofi"
cern in town or country
t his
his nose,
:
and look, may
dis-
That the condition of the
lower multitude of English labourers approximates
m^ore and
them
mere
will
in all
more
to that of the Irish
markets
strength with
;
little skill will suffice, is
be done not at the English
proximation to the Irish price
yet to the Irish, that
is,
:
at a price superior as
weeks yearly
hourly, with the arrival of every
handloom weavers, working
coarsest food
and at seven
who,
'
;
;
superior, yet
new steamboat,
ing nearer to an equality with that.
inability to
fifteen
sink-
Half-a-million
hours a-day, in per-
procure thereby enough of the
English farm-labourers at nine shillings
shillings
a week
in districts the half of
;
Scotch farm-labourers
whose husbandry
of cows, taste no milk, can procure no milk
:'
is
all
that
these
several of them are known
by the best evidence, by eye-sight. With all this
things are credible to us
to us
to be done,
but at an ap-
price,
superior to scarcity of third-
rate potatoes for thirty
petual
competing with
that whatsoever labour, to which
;
\
i/f^^^t
CHARTISM.
32
consistent that the
it is
is
ever were
Nation
tion of labour
skilless,
skilled labour,' as it
here create violent demand for labour, and
will there annihilate
be
*
cases be higher than they
the giant Steamengine in a giant English
:
will
wages of
many
called, should in
is
demand. But,
not skilled
:
where strength alone
delvers, borers
;
alas,
the great por-
the millions are and must
is
wanted
;
ploughers,
hewers of wood and drawers of water
menials of the Steamengine, only the chief menials
and immediate 6orf^-servants of M'hich require skilL
Commerce
English
earth
;
stretches
sensitive literally,
its
fibres over the
nay quivering
whole
in convulsion,
of the earth.
The huge
demon of Mechanism smokes and thunders, panting
to the farthest influences
at
his
great task, in
changing his shape
all
sections of English
very Proteus
like a
;
and
land
infallibly
change of shape, oversetting whole multitudes
at every
if with the waving of his shadow
them asunder, this way and that, in
their crowded march and course of work or traffic ;
so that the wisest no longer knows bis whereabout.
of workmen, and as
from
afar, hurling
With an
Ireland pouring daily in on us, in these cir-
cumstances
sion,
tell
;
deluging us
down
outward and inward,
it
to its
own waste confu-
seems a cruel mockery to
poor drudges that their condition
is
improving.
NewPoor-Law! Laissez-faire, laissez-passer ! The
master of horses, when the summer labour is done,
If he said
has to feed his horses through the winter.
" Quadrupeds, I have no longer work
:
to his horses
you but work exists abundantly over the world
you ignorant (or must I read you Political-Economy Lectures) that the Steamengine always in the
for
are
;
CHAP.
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD.
IV.
long-run creates additional work
33
Railways are form-
?_
ing in one quarter of this earth, canals in another,
much
cartage
wanted; somewhere
is
Africa or America, doubt
not,
it
ye
in
Europe, Asia,
will find cartage
go and seek cartage, and good go with you
!"
with protrusive upper
signifying
snort dubious;
lip,
They,
America lie somewhat
what cartage may be wanted
not too well known to them.
They can find
that Europe, Asia, Africa and
out of their beat
there
is
They
no cartage.
gallop distracted along highways,
and to the
to the right
feJiced in
all
that
;
left:
finally,
under pains of hunger, they take to leaping fences
eating foreign property, and
it
not a joyful mirth,
is
laugh Humanity
to
is
it
forced
—we know the
is
rest.
Ah,
sadder than tears, the
Laissez-faire applied
to, at
poor peasants, in a world like our Europe of the
year 18391
So much can observation altogether
unstatistic,
looking only at a Drogheda or Dublin steamboat, ascertain for
itself.
Another
thing, likewise ascertain-
able on this vast obscure matter, excites a superficial
surprise, but only a superficial
workmen who, by
paid
ism,
and the
The
best-paid
plain
!
like,
How
the day that
however,
it is
the best-
No
doubt of
it
com-
handloom weaver, who
in
passing over him has to find food for
work ?
within the week.
itself,
That
are they alone that can so
shall he, the
the day, strike
:
complain the most.
workmen
is
one
Strikes, Ti*ades-unions, Chart-
is
He
If he strike work, he starves
is
past complaint
one which,
if
we
!
—The
consider
it,
fact
leads
us into still deeper regions of the malady. Wages, it
would appear, are no index of well-being to the^workc 2
CHARTISM.
34
iiig
man
being
without proper wages there can be no well-
:
but with them also there
;
of w^orking
men
country
this
vary in the ratio of not
employed
we
and children
humane
inquirer, they
than three to one.
less
Cotton-
learn, are generally well paid, while
their wages, one
;
Wages
none.
according to the researches or the guess
;
of Mr. Symmons, an intelligent
spinners, as
may be
differ greatly in different quarters of
all
week with
another, wives
working, amount to sums which,,
if
well laid out, were fully adequate to comfortable living.
And
seems
yet, alas, there
or reasonable well-being
is
At
households as in any.
little
as
question that comfort
much
a stranger in these
the cold hearth of the ever-
ever-hungering weaver, dwells at least some
jtoiling
equability, fixation as if in perennial ice
comes
;
but also irregular impatience
is
:
hope never
absent.
Of
outward things these others have or might have enough,
but of
inward things there
all
Economy
does not exist
is
the fatallest lack.
among them;
their trade
now
anon extenuated into inanition
of the nature of gambling they
in plethoric prosperity,
and
short-time,'
'
live
by
now
in starvation.
them
;
is
;
like gamblers,
it
now
in luxurious superfluity,
Black mutinous discontent devours
simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit
the heart of man.
English
Commerce with
wide convulsive fluctuations, with
Proteus Steam-demon, makes
all
its
its
world-
immeasurable
paths uncertain for
Ibem, all life a bewilderment: sobriety, steadfastness,
peaceable continuance, the
not
Glasgow among that
It is in
'
first
blessings of
man, are
theirs.
Number
60,'
in his
class of operatives that
dark room, pays down the price
CHAP.
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD.
IV.
Be
of blood.
35
with reason or with unreason, too
it
surely they do in verity find the time
all
out of joint;
this world for them no home, but a dingy prison-
house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indig-
nation against
it
themselves and against
men.
all
Is
a green flowery world, with azure everlasting sky
stretched over
it,
the
work and government of a God
murky-simmering Tophet, of copperas-fumes,
cotton-fuz, gin-riot, wrath and toil, created by a
or a
Demon, governed by
Demon ?
a
The sum of
their
wretchedness merited and unmerited welters, huge,
dark and baleful, like a Dantean Hell, visible there
in the statistics of
Gin
Gin
:
justly
named
the most
authentic incarnation of the Infernal Principle in our
times, too indisputable an incarnation
;
Gin the black
which wretchedness of every sort, consummating itself by calling on delirium to help it,
abdication of the power to think or
whirls down
thro_at
into
;
now, on the part of men whose
would require thought and resolution
resolve, as too painful
lot of all others
;
Madness sold at ten-pence the quartern, all the
products of which are and must be, like its origin,
If from this
mad, miserable, ruinous, and that only
black unluminous unheeded Inferno, and Prisonhouse
of souls in pain, there do flash up from time to time,
liquid
!
some dismal wide-spread
notable to
regard
all,
as
it
glare of Chartism or the like,
claiming remedy from
more
baleful than
rather as not so baleful
?
Ireland
the
is
all,
—are we
quiet
state,
in chronic
to
or
atrophy
these five centuries; the disease of nobler England,
identified
crises,
now with
and
will
that of Ireland,
be cured or
kill.
becomes acute, has
36
CHAPTER
V.
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
It
is
man
not what a
outwardly has or wants that
Naked-
constitutes the happiness or misery of him.
ness,
hunger, distress of
have
kinds, death itself
when
the heart was right.
It
the feeling of injustice that
insupportable to
all
been cheerfully
is
all
The
men.
suffered,
is
brutallest black African cannot bear that
he should be used unjustly.
ought to bear
A
it.
No man
can bear
or
it,
deeper law than any parchment-
law whatsoever, a law written direct by the hand of
God
inmost being of man, incessantly protests
in the
against
What
it.
disov&eT,
for
is
injustice ?
unveracity,
Another name for
a thing which
unreality
;
it is not Chaos
and a waste-whirling baseless Phantasm, rejects and
disowns. It is not the outward pain of injustice
veracious created Nature, even because
that,
were
it
even the flaying of the back with knotted
scourges, the severing of the head with guillotines,
comparatively a small matter.
soul's pain
self.
The
The
real
smart
is
the
and stigma, the hurt inflicted on the moral
rudest clown must draw himself up into
attitude of battle,
and resistance to the death,
be offered him.
He
soul aloud, and
all
cannot
live
beckonings, says. It cannot be.
meum may
under
it;
if
such
his
own
the universe with silent continual
himself; revancher himself,
that so
is
He
must revenge
make himself good
again,
be nnne,tuum thine, and each party
CHAP.
V.
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
standing clear on his
There
something
is
we may
own
stamp of manhood vindicating
is
order be restored.
basis,
and
infinitely respectable in this,
say universally respected
basis of whatever
37
worthy
it
;
is
itself in all
in all of us,
common
the
of us, the
and through
same in all.
by the nature of it, is the
hatefuUest of things to man, who lives by sanity and
order, ~so" fnjustice is the worst evil, some call it the
superficial diversities, the
As
only
disorder,
evil, in
insane
this world.
All
men submit
disappointment, to unhappiness;
but in
all hearts,
voice intimating that
wild, waste, incoherent as
it
that
;
it
is
to toil, to
their lot here;
inextinguishable by sceptic logic,
sorrow, perversion or despair
still
is
it
it
it is
itself,
there
is
not the final lot
looks, a
God
by
a small
;
that
presides over
not an injustice but a justice.
Force
the hopelessness of resistance, has doubtless a
composing effect;
against inanimate Simooms, and
itself,
—
much
it
other infliction of the like sort,
we have found
produce complete composure. Yet, one
a permanent Injustice even from an Infinite
suffice to
would
say,
Power would prove unendurable by men. Jf men had
a God, their only resource against a blind
No-God, of Necessity and Mechanism, that held them
lost belief in
like
a hideous World-Steamengine, like a hideous PhaBull, imprisoned in ita_own iron belly, would be,
laris'
with or without hope,—^revolt.
They could, as Novalis
simultaneous Imiversal act of suicide," depart out of the World-Steamengine; and end, if not
in victory, yet in invincibility, and unsubduable prosays,
by a
test that
'
such World-Steamengine was a failure and
a stupidity.
CHARTISM.
38
Conquest, indeed,
quest,
is
a fact often witnessed
which seems mere wrong and
among men.
force,
asserts itself as a right
con-
;
everywhere
Yet if we exano conquest
mine, we
could ever become permanent, which did not withal
shall find that, in this world,
shew
the conquered as well as to
itself beneficial to
come now
Mithridates King of Pontus,
conquerors.
to extremity,
'
appealed to the patriotism of his peo-
but, says the history, he had squeezed them,
and fleeced and plundered them, for long years his
ple
'
;'
;'
requisitions,
devastative,
irregular,
flying
whirlwind, were less supportable than
like
Roman
the
strict-
ness and method, regular though never so rigorous
:
he therefore appealed to their patriotism in vain. The
Romans conquered Mithridates. The Romans, having
conquered the world, held
could best govern the world
it
nowise
afflicted
pressing to revolt
more or
were better
off"
long ago, the
less,
conquered, because they
it
;
;
the mass of
men found
their fancy
might be
but in their solid interests they
So too in this England
Saxon Nobles, disunited among
than before.
old
themselves, and in power too nearly equal, could not
have governed the country well
their last chance of governing
and
civil
war, was over
:
;
Harold being
it,
slain,
except in anarchy
a new class of strong
Norman
Nobles, entering with a strong man, with a succession
of strong
men
at the
but united by many
head of them, and not disunited,
ties,
by
their very
community of
language and interest, had there been no other, were
and did govern it, we can
in a condition to govern it
manner, or they would
tolerable
rather
believe, in some
;
not have continued there.
They
acted,
little
conscious
CHAP.
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
V.
89
of such function on their part, as an immense volunteer
Police Force, stationed everywhere, united, disciplined,
feudally regimented, ready for action
men
;
who on the whole proved
drilled this wild
strong Teutonic
;
effective
men, and
Teutonic people into unity and peace-
able co-operation better than others could have done
How
can-do,
with shall-do
we will well
among mortals
interpret
if
as the right-arm of justice;
it,
how s trength acts ever
how might and jight, so
;
^frigKt fu lly di screpant at first, are ever in
one and the same,
—
!
unites itself
thelong-run
a cheering consideration, which
is
always in the black tempestuous vortices of this world's
on
history, will shine out
an everlasting polar
us, like
star.
Of conquest we may
say that
brute force and compulsion
;
never yet went by
it
conquest of that kind
Conquest, along with
does not endure.
compulsion, an essential universally in
must
l)ring benefit along with
nary: strength of
man, what
the
man
is
he
men,
if
with the
we
it,
power of
human
society,
or men, of the ordi-
The strong
The wise man
will fling it out.
will consider ?
gift of
;
method, of faithfulness and
which are of the basis of wisdom who
is what, into what will follow
out of what, the eye to see and the hand to do who is
Jit to administer, to direct, and guidingly command
valour, all of
;
has insight into what
;
he
is
the strong man.
stronger than ours
is
wiser, clearer,
—
;
is
His muscles and bones are no
but his soul
is
been, and ever will be the root of
of such a name.
stronger, his soul
better and nobler, for that
Beautiful
it
is,
all
clearness
is,
has
worthy
and a gleam from
the same eternal pole-star visible amid the destinies of
40
CHARTISM.
men,
that
moral
;
talent, all
all
intellect
— what a world were
is
in the first place
this otherwise
I
But^it
is
the heart alway-s that sees, before the head can see
l
know
et us
alone
and
that; and
know
therefore that the
deathless and victorious, that
is
steadfast, in all phases of this
'
Shiftiness, quirk, attorney-cunning
that fancies
but
is
what
is
called
general succeed,
stupidity
:
men
if
sure
is
Place of Hope.'
is
a kind of thing
often fancied, to be talent;
Succeed truly
luckily mistaken in that.
is
it
does,
and
itself,
Hope
:
Good
succeeding
;
and even must
it
in
the dispensers of success be of due
of due stupidity will needs say to
it,
"
Thou art wisdom, rule thou !" Whereupon it rules.
But Nature answers, " No, this ruling of thine is not
according to my laws
thy wisdom was not wise
;
Dost thou take me too for a Quackery ?
For a Conventionality and Attorneyism ? This chaff
that thou sowest into my bosom, though it pass at the
enough
!
poll-booth and elsewhere for seed-corn,
wheat out of
But
it,
for
it is
/ will
not grow
chaff I"
and
Injustice^ infidelity to truth
to return.
and Nature's order, being properly the one evil
under the sun, and the feeling of injustice the one in-
_fect
__tolerable pain
under the
^sun,
our grand question as to
men would be:
the condition of these working
And
jjiat?
first
of
all.
What
belief
Is it
have they them-
8eli^_ formed about the justice of it? The words
they promulgate are notable by way of answer their
;
actions
pikes,
are
still
Swin^ with
though
more
Chartism with
notable.
his tinder-box,
inarticulate
language.
speaks aloud too, in a language
its
speak a most loud
Glasgow Thuggery
we may mcU call in-
CHAP.
What
fernal.
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
V.
kind of 'wild-justice' must
men
hearts of these
be
it
in the
that prompts them, with cold deli-
beration, in conclave assembled, to
workman,
41
doom
cause, to die as a traitor
their brother
and
as the deserter of his order
and deserter
;
his order's
and have him
executed, since not by any public judge and hangman,
then by a private one
guise
;
—
like
your old Chivalry Fem-
and Secret-Tribunal, suddenly
gericht,
become new
;
in this strange
suddenly rising once more on the
astonished eye, dressed
now
not in mail-shirts but in
fustian jackets, meeting not in Westphalian forests but
in the
paved Gallowgate of Glasgow
!
Not
loyal loving
obedience to those placed over them, but a far other
must animate these men
temper,
It
I
is
frightful
Such temper must be wide-spread, virulent
among the many, when even in its worst acme, it can
take such a form in a few. But indeed decay of
enough.
loyalty in
faith,
senses, disobedience,
all
decay of religious
has long been noticeable and lamentable in this
largest class, as in other smaller ones.
revengeful
humour of
Revolt, sullen
revolt against the upper classes,
decreasing respect for what their temporal superiors
comman d,
for what tlieir spiritual
more and more the universal spirit
of the lower classes.
Such spirit may be blamed, may
be vindicated but all men must recognise it as extant
decreasing faith
..superiors teach,
is
;
there, all
altered
it
may know
will
be
that
fatal.
it
is
mournful, that unless
Of lower
upper, happy nations are not
classes so related to
made
I
To whatever
other griefs the lower classes labour under, this bitterest
and sorest grief now superadds
itself:
the un-
endurable conviction that they are unfairly dealt with,
CHARTISM.
4-2
that their lot in this world
not founded on right,
is
not even on necessity and might,
should be, nor what
Or why do we
it
is
neither what
it
shall be.
ask of Chartism, Glasgow Trades-
unions, and such like
?
Has not broad Europe heard
the question put, and answered, on the great scale
;
French Revolution been ? Since the year
there is now half-a-'century complete; and a
has not a
1789,
Whosoever
Phenomenon may find
French Revolution not yet complete
look at that enormous
will
many meanings
of
That
all:
one
it, but this meaning as the ground
was a revolt of the oppressed lower
in
against the
classes
classes
it
:
!
oppressing or neglecting
not a French revolt only
;
upper
European
no, a
full of stern monition to all countries of Europe.
These Chartisms, Radicalisms, Reform Bill, Tithe Bill,
and infinite other discrepancy, and acrid argument
and jargon that there is yet to be, are our French
;
God
may be
Revolution
methods,
alone
:
grant
able
that
to
our better
we, with
transact
by argument
it
I
The French
Revolution,
ficiently execrated its horrors
now
we have
that
and crimes,
is
suf-
found to
have had withal a great meaning in it. As indeed,
what great thing ever happened in this world, a world
understood always to be made and governed by a
Providence and Wisdom, not by an Unwisdom, without meaning somewhat?
voice of proclamation,
It was a tolerably audible
and universal oyez ! to all
people, this of three-and-twenty years' close fighting,
sieging, conflagrating, with a million or
shot dead
:
the world ought to
know by
two of men
this
time that
CHAP.
it
was verily meant
and had
its
own
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
V.
in earnest, that
is
same Phenomenon,
Which
The French
reasons for appearing there
accordingly the world begins
Revolution
43
now
to do.
!
everywhere to be seen,
seen, or begins
crowning phenomenon of our Modern Time
'
as the
'
the inevitable stern end of
also wonderful,
much
;
;'
the fearful, but
indispensable and sternly beneficent
He who would
beginning of much.'
understand the
European
struggling convulsive unrest of
society, in
any and every country, at this day, may read it in
broad glaring lines there, in that the most convulsive
phenomenon of the
pining, obstructed,
den,
—
is
last thousand years.
Europe lay
moribund; quack-ridden, hag-rid-
there a hag, or spectre of the Pit, so baleful,
hideous as your accredited quack, were he never so
close -shaven, mild -spoken, plausible to himself
others
Quack-ridden
?
sery whatsoever.
the
place
:
in that
Speciosity in
one word
all
is
mi-
departments usurps
of reality, thrusts reality
of performance, there
and
lies all
away
;
instead
appearance of performance.
The quack is a Falsehood Incarnate ; and speaks,
and makes and does mere falsehoods, which Nature
with her veracity has to disown.
As
chief priest, as
chief governor, he stands there, intrusted with much.
The husbandman of 'Time's
Seedfield;'
he
is
the
world's hired sower, hired and solemnly appointed to
sow the kind true earth with wheat
year
men may have
this year, that
next
He, miserable mortal,
deceiving and self-deceiving, sows it, as we said, not
all
with corn but with
harrows
blessing,
it
in,
and
bread.
chaflf;
the world nothing doubting,
pays him his wages, dismisses him with
— next
year there has no corn sprung.
44
CHARTISM.
Nature has disowned the
and behold now there
sary, in such case, to
is
chafF, declined
no bread
do several things
growing
chaff,
becomes neces-
It
I
;
not soft things
some of them, but hard.
Nay we will add that the very circumstance of
quacks in unusual quantity getting domination,
cates that the heart of the world
The impostor
gether true
all,
is
— himself
false
namely
indi-
already wrong.
but neither are his dupes
;
not his
is
:
is
grand dupe the
first
Sincere
?
alto-
falsest
of
men, of never so
limited intellect, have an instinct for discriminating
sincerity.
The cunningest Mephistopheles cannot
ceive a simple Margaret of honest heart
written on his brow.'
'
;
de-
stands
it
Masses of people capable of
being led away by quacks are themselves of partially
untrue
Alas, in such times
spirit.
it
grows
to
be the
universal belief, sole accredited knowingness, and the
contrary of
it
accounted puerile enthusiasm,
rowfuUest disheWei that there
truth in the world
is
this sor-
properly speaking any
that the world was, has been, or
;
ever can be guided, except by simulation, dissimulation,
and the
tence.
in its
The
sufficiently dexterous practice
men
dead
trundling before
it,
is
:
in
they can believe
;
in
of these things they cannot believe.
true and false
true or false.
is
lost
there
;
It is the
blance recognising
is
what has none
Sense for the
properly no longer any
heyday of Imposture of Semand getting itself recog;
itself,
nised, for Substance.
Gaping multitudes
listening multitudes see not but that
in the
of pre-
what has guineas
pocket, beefeaters riding behind it, and cannons
faith of
order of Nature.
listen; un-
it is all
right,
and
Earnest men, one of a mil-
CHAP.
lion,
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
V.
shut their lips
suppressing thoughts, which there
;
To them
are no words to utter.
spiritual life has departecl
soever figure of
them
it is
too visible that
that material
;
life,
what-
in
To
cannot long remain behind.
it,
seems as
it
45
our Europe of the Eighteenth
if
Century, long hag-ridden, vexed with foul enchanters,
to the length
and
cerfs
'
now of gorgeous Domdaniel Parcs-aux-
Peasants living on meal-husks and boiled
had verily sunk down to die and dissolve
grass,'
were now, with
its
French Philosophisms,
deliration
;
with
writhing,
its
Seven-years
robber-wars, in the final agony.
Europe was not
frenzied giant
shook
;
under foot
;
wider
rose
that poisonous
ma-
trampling
it
only, but for
life
no wonder that
Phoenix
it
;
so the
storm-
new and
it
;
there
and healing
was not a gentle process
fearful process, this
But the
!'
the merciful
their severity, sent us
And
it
was a
fire-consummation
or death
lay strength
all,
Heaven knows,
for him.
it
God, our
to
Our Europe
!
Antaeus-like the giant had struck
life.
only, if in this universe at
was
left,
final
Silesian
once more upon Reality and the Earth
his foot
'
all
and
and declared aloud that there was
strength in him, not for
infinitely
Glory
to die but to live
gician trumpery to right and
fully
;
Scep-
Diderot Atheisms, maundering in the
ticisms,
like a
Hume
same
alternative
Heavens, merciful in
rather.
'rights of man' were to be written
down on paper; and experimentally wrought upon
towards elaboration,
ment
earth,
in
huge
conflicting with element,
for
battle
and wrestle,
ele-
from
side to side of this
three-and-twenty years.
Rights of man,
wrongs of man?
It
is
a question which has swal-
CHARTISM.
46
lowed whole nations and generations
which we
will not
Logic has small business with
;
a question
Far be
enter here.
—on
from us
it
I
this question at present
logic has no plummet that will sound it at any time.
But indeed the rights of man, as has been not unaptly
remarked, are
little
to the mights of
worth ascertaining
man,
—
to
in
comparison
what portion of
his rights
he has any chance of being able to make good
accurate final rights of
Ideal,
where
'
man
The
!
the far deeps of the
the Ideal weds itself to the Possible,'
as the Philosophers say.
man vary not a
They are known
rights of
time.
lie in
The
ascertainable temporary
little,
according to place and
depend much on what a
to
man's convictions of them
The Highland
are.
wife,
with her husband at the foot of the gallows, patted him
on the shoulder (if there be historical truth in Joseph
Miller), and said amid her tears " Go up, Donald, my
:
man
;
the Laird bids ye."
To
her
of lairds were great, the rights of
Deputy Lapoule,
acquiesced.
it
seemed the rights
men
small
;
and she
in the Salle des
Menus
on the 4th of August, 1789, demanded
(he did actually demand,' and by unanimous vote
at Versailles,
*
obtain) that the
'
obsolete law' authorizing a Seig-
neur, on his return from the chase or other needful
fatigue, to slaughter not
refresh his feet in their
be
'
abrogated.'
dition
above two of
warm
From such
his vassals,
and
blood and bowels, should
obsolete law, or
mad
tra-
and phantasm of an obsolete law, down to any
corn-law, game-law, rotten-borough law, or other law
or practice clamoured of in this time of ours, the dis-
tance travelled over
men?
All
men
is
great
!
—What
are justified in
are the rights of
demanding and search-
CHAP.
RIGHTS AND MIGHTS.
V.
ing for their rights
do
will
it
surely are right
is
most
true,
and who
w^
*
:
!'
All good
truth.
;
and act accordingly.
of the surface only
;
not less true than
is
The
contradiction
dualism of a
we
life
Between these two extremes. Society and
is
same
as in opposite sides of the
universal in this
:
These two things,
men know always and
each for himself, that the one
the other
saying
to his rights,
both true; and both are essential to make
up the whole
feel,
this other
Use every man according
whipping
Rights
they have.
on the other hand,
shall escape
say, are
fact
moreover, justified or not, they
;
by Chartisms, Radicalisms, French Revo-
:
or whatsoever methods
lutions,
47
have.
human
all
things must fluctuatingly adjust themselves the best
they can.
And
yet that there
no mortal doubt.
men,
men
in all
it
:
is
veloping
that
An
verily a
'
rights of
more and more demore and more approximated to,
Society for ever tends and struggles.
the one or the other.
this,
of
the
all
first, last
faith
it lies,
To which
article of faith, the
We
unjust or else
times,
more or
frightfully
infallibly
let
less forgotten in
A
it
enough,
us add only
alpha and
among men, That nothing which
can hope to continue in this world.
all
is
however obscure the arguings and stragglings on
be, the thing in itself there as
is
let
arrangements, pactions and procedures of
say also that any given thing either
just;
man'
to this ideal of right,
itself as it is
human
is
ideal of right does dwell in all
is
omega
unjust
faith true in
most, but altogether
brought to remembrance again in ours
!
Lyons fusilladings, Nantes noyadings, reigns of terror,
and such other universal battle-thunder and explosion
CHARTISM.
48
these, if
we
will
understand them, were but a new
irre-
would appear
that Speciosities which are not Realities cannot any
longer inhabit this world. It would appear that the
unjust thing has no friend in the Heaven, and a mafragable preaching abroad of that.
jority against
men
all
for
it
on the Earth
enemies
its
and then
this fallacy
fallacy to fallacy
;
in that,
till it
nay that
that
;
find
It
it
has at bottom
it
may
take shelter in
but will be hunted from
no fallacy
to shelter in
more, but must march and go elsewhither
word,
it
it
any
that, in
a
mdecent departure, ignominious drumming
nay savage smiting out and burning
Alas,
!
—
ought to prepare incessantly for decent depar-
ture, before
out,
;
out, overtake
was that such new tidings ?
Is
it
not from
of old indubitable, that Untruth, Injustice which
is
but
acted untruth, has no power to continue in this true
The
universe of ours ?
tidings
as old as the Fall of Lucifer
:
was world-old, or
and yet
in that
older,
epoch
was new tidings, unexpected, incredible
to be such earthquakes and shakings of
the nations before it could be listened to, and laid to
Let us lay it to heart, let us know
heart even slightly
Known and
it well, that new shakings be not needed.
unhappily
it
;
and there had
!
laid to heart
it
must everywhere
convulsed era
is
;
be, before peace can
This seems to us the secret of our
pretend to come.
this
and has been and
which
will
is
so easily written,
which
be so hard to bring to pass.
All true men, high and low, each in his sphere, are
consciously or unconsciously bringing
false
and half-true men are
selves to hinder
it
fruitlessly
from coming to
it
to pass
;
all
spending them-
pass.
H
49
CHAPTER
VI.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
From
which enormous events, with truths old and
all
new embodied
in
them, what innumerable practical in-
ferences are to be
drawn
Events are written lessons,
!
glaring in huge hieroglyphic picture-writing, that
may
know them
read and
inspire
is
but the note of preparation for the truth they
are to teach
learned.
a mere waste of terror
;
Inferences enough
applicable in
all
;
most
this
;
done
its
that be not
if
didactic, practically
departments of English things
inference, but one inclusive of
here
all
the terror and horror they
:
namely
:
all,
That Laissez-faire has
many
part in a great
!
One
shall content us
provinces
;
as
good as
that in the
province of the Working Classes, Laissez-faire having
passed
point,
its
New
and now,
light meetings
Poor-Law, has reached the suicidal
di&
ment of the under
oi Let alone
days.
This
is
is
felo-de-se, lies
and such
like
;
dying there, in torch-
that, in brief,
there can be no acting or doing of any kind,
recognised that there
a thing to be done
is
once recognised, doing
possible.
in
The Working
on without government
and governed
;
a govern-
by the upper on a principle
no longer possible in England in these
For
the one inference inclusive of all.
classes
;
;
till it
be
the thing
a thousand shapes becomes
Classes cannot any longer go
without being actually guided
England cannot
D
subsist in peace
till,
by
CHARTISM.
50
some means or other, some guidance and government
for them is found.
For, alas, on us too the rude truth has come home.
Wrappages and
naked
Are these
worn
speciosities all
Are
fact speaks to us:
We
millions guided?
the haggard
off,
these millions taught?
have a Church, the
embodiment of an idea which may well call
itself divine which our fathers for long ages, feeling it
to be divine, have been embodying as we see it is a
Church well furnished with equipments and appurte-
'^'eiierable
;
:
nances
educated in universities
;
on high places that
noured of all.
it
may be
rich in
;
money
conspicuous to
;
set
ho-
all,
We hav-e-an Aristpcjac^ of landed wealth
and commercial wealth, in \v]io?p hands lies the lawmaking and the law-administering an Aristocracy
;
rich,
powerful, long secure in
its
;
an Aristo-
its
hands than
place
cracy with more faculty put free into
was ever before, in any country or time, put into the
This Church answers:
hands of any class of men.
This Aristocracy, astonish-
Yes, the people are taught.
ment
every feature, answers
in
are guided
Do we
!
are needful
;
as
:
Yes, surely the people
not pass what Acts of Parliament
many
as thirty-nine for the shooting
of the partridges alone
Are
?
there not tread-mills,
New Poor-Law ?
So answers Church so an&wers Aristocracy, astonishment in every feature.—-Fact, in the meanwhile, takes
gibbets
;
even hospitals, poor-rates.
;
-/
\/ his, lucifer-box, sets fire to wheat-stacks
too dismal light
on several things.
his third-rate potatoe, not in the
and-thirty weeks each year
passionately joins Messiah
;
j
sheds an
meekest humour,
and does not find
Thom
ail-
Fact searches for
it.
six-
Fact
of Canterbury, and
CHAP.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
VI.
51
new fifth- monarchy brought in
Fact holds his fustian-jacket Femgericht
in Grasgow City. Fact carts his Petition over London
has himself shot for a
by Bedlam.
streets,
begging that you would simply have the good-
ness to grant hiin universal suffrage, and
points,'
by way of remedy.
'
the five
These are not symptoms of
teaching and guiding.
Nay, at bottom,
is
not a singular thing this of
it
from the
Laissez-faire,
origin of it ?
As good as
an abdication on the part of governors ; an admission
that they are henceforth incompetent to govern, that
first
—
they are not there to govern at all, but to do one
knows not what
The universal demand of Laissezfaire by a people from its governors or upper classes,
!
is
a soft-sounding demand
removed from the
German
sardonic
writer,
require
'
Does
for Laissez-faire 9
no guidance
What
it
none
it
not
only one step
Is
is
this universal cry
mean that human affairs
wisdom and forethought
cannot guide them better than
Alas, does
it
Laissez-faire," exclaims a
'
that
;
but
;
fatallest.
folly
and accident?
mean " Such guidance
is
:
worse than
Leave us alone of your guidance eat your
wages, and sleep !"
And now if guidance have grown
!
;
'
indispensable, and the sleep continue,
the sleep and
its
wages ?
—In
what becomes of
those entirely surprising
circumstances to which the Eighteenth Century had
us, in the time of Adam Smith, Laissez-faire
brought
was a reasonable cry
for a wise
ciple of
it.
what you
;
—
as indeed, in all circumstances,
governor there
To
will,
will
be meaning in the prin-
wise governors you will cry
and
will
not, let alone."
governors, to hungry Greeks throttling
:
" See
To unwise
down hungry
CHARTISM.
52
Greeks on the
floor of a St. Stephens, you will crj'
" Let all things alone for Heaven's sake, meddle ye
;
with nothing
How Laissez-faire may
!"
other provinces
we
say not
and ask whether events everywhere,
parish-history, in all
it.
That
their
manner of
in world-history and
dialects are not saying
lower orders of society, and
in regard to the
governance and guidance, the principle o^ Laissez-
faire has terminated, and
in this
all,
adjust itself in
but we do venture to say,
:
Europe of
no longer applicable at
is
ours,
still
less in this
England
Not misgovernment, nor yet no-government
only government will now serve. What is the meaning of the ' five points,' if we will understand them ?
of ours.
What
are
all
popular commotions and maddest bel-
lowings, from Peterloo to the Place-de-Greve itself?
Bellowings, inarticulate cries as of a
rage and pain
ticulate prayers
dumb
" Guide me, govern
:
creature in
wisdom they are
to the ear of
;
me
I
!
and miserable, and cannot guide myself!"
all
'
am
inar-
mad,
Surely of
rights of man,' this right of the ignorant
man
to be
guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held
the true course by him,
herself ordains
it
the indisputablest.
is
from the
first
;
in
Nature
Society struggles to-
wards perfection by enforcing and accomplishing
it
more and more.
If Freedom have any meaning, it
means enjoyment of this right, wherein all other rights
are enjoyed.
sides
;
It
is
between the two.
hands,
a sacred right and duty, on both
and the summary of
if
the
Why
all
other be not to
weariedly, with heart and head
man
finds
it
social duties
does the one
no
child's
?
play to
whatsoever
toil
with his
more unThe brawny craftsmould his unpliant
toil,
still
CHAP.
rugged masses
tantism
what
:
we may
ism,
LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
VI.
neither
;
guidance of
is
53
men
becomes when treated as a
it
see
The
!
through the wilderness,
but neither does he
wild horse bounds homeless
is
not led to
stall
and manger
you, but for himself only.
toil for
Democracy, we are well aware, what
'
a dilet-
dilettant-
called
is
self-government' of the multitude by the multitude,
is
in
words the thing everywhere passionately
moured
cla-
Democracy makes rapid protimes, and ever more rapid, in
for at present.
gress in these latter
a perilous accelerative ratio
towards democracy, and
;
that only, the progress of things
as to the final goal
is everywhere tending
and winning-post. So think, so
clamour the multitudes everywhere.
And yet all men
may see, whose sight is good for much, that in democracy can lie no finality that with the completest
;
winning of democracy there
nothing yet won,
is
except emptiness, and the free chance to win
mocracy
ness
;
is,
by the nature of
and gives
it,
!
De-
a self-cancelling busi-
long-run a net-result of zero.
in the
Where no government
is
wanted, save that of the
America with its boundless soil,
every man being able to find work and recompense for
himself, democracy may subsist
not elsewhere, exparish-constable, as in
;
cept briefly, as a swift transition towards something
other and
heard
that
of,
Democracy never
farther.
was able
to accomplish
same cancelling of
themes for the schools
pose.
In
Rome and
practically,
we
;
itself.
yet, that we
much work, beyond
Rome and Athens
are
unexceptionable for that pur-
Athens, as elsewhere,
shall find that
it
if
we look
was not by loud voting
and debating of many, but by wise insight and order-
CHARTISM.
54-
ing of a few that the work was done.
will
So
is it
ever, so
The French Convention was a Par-
ever be.
it
liament elected
by the
'
universal suffrages, and
five points,'
what
with ballot-boxes,
not, as perfectly as Par-
liament can hope to be in this world
a pretty spell of
work
to do,
and did
and had indeed
;
The French
it.
Convention had to cease from being a free Parliament,
and become more arbitrary than any Sultan Bajazet,
before it could so much as subsist. It had to purge
out
by the
before
it
it,
and rule
sternest despotism ever seen in Europe,
could rule at
dent of a republic
Napoleon was not presi-
all.
Cromwell
;
hard to rule
tried
that way, but found that he could not.
armed
soldiers of democracy,'
under their
its
into silence
guillotine
tinction all that gainsayed
rally
Supreme
and exand work lite-
argumentative Girondins, elect
its
Committee of Salut,
feet,
had
These,
to chain
'
in
the
democracy
and become despots over
it,
before
they could work out the earnest obscure purpose of
democracy
in
itself
our Europe,
Democracy, take
!
is
and abrogation
rangement of things and
rebellion
;
;
where you
will
it
abrogates the old ar-
we say, zero and
new arrangement It
leaves, as
vacuity for the institution of a
is
it
found but as a regulated method of
the consummation of No-government and Laissez-
may be
Europe at present
Not towards the
self-government' of a multitude by a
impossibility,
multitude
but towards some possibility, government
faire.
It
natural for our
but cannot be the ultimatum of
it.
'
;
by the
wisest, does bewildered
blessedest possibility
faire, but veritable
:
Europe
struggle.
The
not misgovernment, not Laissez-
government
!
Cannot one discern
CHAP.
across
too,
clattering of
democratic turbulence,
all
55
LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
VI.
ballot-boxes and infinite sorrowful jangle, needful or
not, that this at bottona is the
wish and prayer of
all
human hearts, everywhere and at all times " Give
me a leader a true leader, not a false sham-leader a
true leader, that he may guide me on the true way,
that I may be loyal to him, that I may swear fealty to
:
;
;
him and follow him, and
The
relation
me
with
feel that it is well
!"
of the taught to their teacher, of the
loyal subject to his guiding king,
under one shape
is,
or another, the vital element of
human
dispensable to
;
perennial in
it,
a body reft of
soul, it
its
it
Society
;
in-
without which, as
down
falls
into
death,
and with horrid noisome dissolution passes away and
disappears.
But
verily
new
these times, with their
in
stern
Evangel, that Speciosities which are not Realities can
no longer be,
in
all
Aristocracies, Priesthoods, Persons
What
Authority, are called upon to consider.
an
Aristocracy
the Bravest.
men pay
A
?
To
corporation
this joyfully,
with heart-loyalty, do
them high over
all.
to lodge
For
it
is
them
still
honouring them.
it
rules
is
set
of the nature of men, in
to
;
know no
Whatsoever Aristocracy
a corporation of the Best,
the land
palaces,
in
every time, to honour and love their Best
limits in
equip and
the half of their substance, to
decorate their Best,
is
of
of the Best,
is
safe
from
all peril,
is
and
Whatso-
a safe and blessed land.
ever Aristocracy does not even attempt to be that, but
only to wear the clothes of that,
the land
it
rules in safe
!
For
is
this
not safe
now
is
;
neither
our sad
is
lot,
CHARTISM.
56
we must
that
Aristocracy,
quate for us.
find a real Aristocracy, that an apparent
how plausible
One way or
need to be governed
lutely
then by that.
One can
;
if
is
toiling
and
will find governors.
do
The
?'
'
frightful to think of
It has
!
Leave them
Laissez-faire,
thing they will do,
if so
left,
been done once,
of the whole earth, in these generations
:
mul-
must
titudes of this perplexed, over-crowded Europe,
to
not
Cost
effort, will suffice.
may, by one means or another, the
it
Wisdom
nearly ended.
faithful, valiant, ever-zealous,
pleasant but painful, continual
what
not by this class of men,
predict, without gift of pro-
phecy, that the era of routine
and faculty alone,
become inade-
soever, has
other, the world will abso-
can
it
is
too
in sight
need to
be done a second time ?
For a Priesthood,
in like
manner, whatsoever
titles,
possessions, professions, there
Does
it
no
well.
is all
But
if no,
strive earnestly to alter, for as yet there
well
we
Nothing,
1
call
its
but one question
teach and spiritually guide this people, yea or
If yea, then
?
is
spiritual
we
say
:
and indeed
is
then let
is
it
nothing
not this that
guidance properly the soul of the
and eyesight of the whole ? The world
Church in these times, more passionately
than of any other Institution any question, " Canst
thou teach us or not ? " A Priesthood in France, when
Avhole, the life
asks of
its
—
the world asked, "
What
canst thou do for us ?" answered only, aloud and ever louder, " Are we not of
God ?
Invested with
all
power ?"
—
till
at length
France
way
we know. To all men who believed in the Church, to
all men who believed in God and the soul of man, there
cut short this controversy too, in what frightful
GHAP.
was no
issue of the
into destruction
57
French Revolution half so sorrowful
France cast out
as that.
A
LAISSEZ-PAIRE.
VI.
its
benighted blind Priesthood
yet wit> what a loss to France also
;
!
what we may well call such
where continuity is so momentous the New,
solution of continuity,
and
this
:
whatever
it
but
is
lies
wasted
may
be,
cannot
now
grtrw out of the Old,
severed sheer asunder from the Old,
in that
gap
!
—how much
That one whole generation
of thinkers should be without a religion to believe,
or even to contradict
France, should as
;
that Christianity, in thinking
were fade away so long into a
remote extraneous tradition, was one of the saddest
facts connected with the future of that country. Look
at such Political
it
and Moral Philosophies, St.-Simonisms,
Robert-Macairisms,and the 'Literature of Desperation'!
Kingship was perhaps but a cheap waste, compared with
this of the Priestship
under which France
;
unconsciously, labours
;
less
the while. Let others consider
by
it
France
!
is
still, all
but
and may long labour, remediit,
and take warning
a pregnant example in
all
ways.
Aristocracies that do not govern, Priesthoods that do
not teach ; the misery of that, and the miserj' of alter-
ing that,
—are written
in Belshazzar fire-letters
on the
history of France.
Or
that
'
does the British reader, safe in the assurance
England
is
not France,' call
all this
unpleasant
doctrine of ours ideology, perfectibility, and a vacant
dream ?
Does the British reader, resting on the faith
what has been these two generations was from the
beginning, and will be to the end, assert to himself that
that
things are already as they can be, as they must be
that on the whole, no
Upper Classes did ever govern
D 2
'
CHARTISM.
58
the Lower, in this sense of governing?
O
British reader
to
have
'
Man
!
sensible
is
species'
Believe
man everywhere
and
'
;
it
not,
dislikes
ghosts of defunct
bodies' foisted on him, in England even as in France.
How much
Upper
the
Classes did actually, in any the
most perfect Feudal time, return to the Under by way
of recompense, in government, guidance, protection,
we
will not
Balls,
undertake to specify here.
In
Charity-
Soup-Kitchens, in Quarter-Sessions, Prison-Dis-
and Treadmills, we can well believe the old
cipline
Feudal Aristocracy not to have surpassed the new.
Yet we do say that the old Aristocracy were the
governors of the Lower Classes, the guides of the
Lower
as
Classes
;
and even, at bottom, that they existed
an Aristocracy because they were found adequate
Not by Charity-Balls and Soup-Kitchens
But it was their happiness
that, in struggling for their own objects, they had to
govern the Lower Classes, even in this sense of governing.
For, in one word. Cash Payment had not then
grown to be the universal sole nexus of man to man
it was something other than money that the high then
for that.
not so
far otherwise
;
I
expected from the low, and could not live without get-
Not
ting from the low.
land or what else
as soldier
it
as
buyer and
might be, but
and captain,
as
in
seller alone,
many
senses
of
still
clansman and head, as loyal
subject and guiding king, was the low related to the
high.
With
the supreme triumph of Cash, a changed
time has entered
enter.
We
;
there must a changed Aristocracy
invite the British reader to meditate ear-
nestly on these things.
Another thing, which the Biitish reader often reads
4
CHAP.
VI.
and hears
in this time,
moment
That Society
:
To which
property.'
LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
worth
is
'
59
his meditating for
a
exists for the protection of
man
added, that the poor
it is
also has property, namely, his
'
and the
labour,'
fifteen-
pence or three-and-sixpence a-day he can get for
that.
True enough, O friends, for protecting property
most true and indeed if you will once sufficiently enforce that Eighth Commandment, the whole rights of
man' are well cared for; I know no better definition
of the rights of man.
Thou shall not steal, thou shalt
not be stolen from : what a Society were that Plato's
Republic, More's Utopia mere emblems of it
Give
every man what is his, the accurate price of what he
has done and been, no man shall any more complain,
neither shall the earth suffer any more.
For the protection of property, in very truth, and for that alone
And now what is- thy property ? That parchment
'
:
'
;
!
—
title-deed, that purse
pocket ?
Is
most poor insolvent brother,
brother,
ment
thou buttonest in thy breeches-
at
all,
Unhappy
that thy valuable property ?
I
without parch-
with purse oftenest in the flaccid
state,
imponderous, which will not fling against the wind,
have quite other property than that
I
!
have the
miraculous breath of Life in me, breathed into
nostrils
by Almighty God.
I
have
a god-given capability to be and do
fore,
—the
;
rights, there-
right for instance to thy love if I love thee,
to thy guidance if I
whereof
my
affections, thoughts,
in
obey thee
church-pulpits one
:
the strangest rights,
still
though almost unintelligible now
;
hears something,
rights,
high into Immensity, far into Eternity
!
stretching
Fifteen-pence
a-day three-and-sixpence a-day eight hundred pounds
;
;
CHARTISM.
60
and odd a-day, dost thou
I
value that
For
that.
little;
my
that
call
what matters
truly, as is said,
boots, in soft-hung carriages-and-four, a
ways
property?
could purchase with
I
all
little
it ?
In torn
man
gets al-
Socrates walked barefoot,
to his journey's end.
They
or in wooden shoes, and yet arrived happily.
never,
conveyance
?
or
shoes
him,
What
asked
never
What wages hadst thou ? but simply, What work didst
thou
— Property,
?
have but a
mine,
O
brother
As
life-rent.'
?
for
'
Of my
very body I
flaccid
this
purse of
something, nothing; has been the slave of
'tis
pickpockets, cutthroats, Jew-brokers, gold-dust-robbers
'twas his,
But
and what
steal
Me
it.
—
thine, if
soul,
breathed into
mine
'tis
my
;
'tis
capability
will resist the stealing of
thine
it:
I will
;
God
away
Alas,
!
for a great
that,
it
it.
;
that
mine and not
and do what work
my friends. Society exists
it is
mine, and I
is
I call that
T
can with
me, the Devil shall not take
many purposes,
Society,
vent a
keep
has given
there
is
much to
me by God, my
thou care
it
and has existed
not so easy to specify
!
understood, does not in any age, pre-
man from being what he can
A sooty Afri-
be.
can can become a Toussaint L'ouverture, a murderous
Three-fingered Jack,
let
the yellow
West
Indies say
what they will. A Scottish Poet proud of his
name and country,' can apply fervently to Gentlemen
of the Caledonian Hunt,' and become a ganger of
to
'
it
'
beer-barrels,
and tragical immortal broken-hearted
Singer; the stifled echo of his melody audible through
long centuries, one other note
that rises
What
I
up
to
in
Heaven, out of
'
that sacred Miserere'
all
times and lands.
can be thou decidedly wilt not hinder
me from
CHAP.
Nay even
being.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
VI.
for being
strangest claims on thee,
at present
O
what
— not
61
have the
I could he, I
convenient to adjust
Protection of breeches-pocket property
!
what
reader, to
struggling to give
shifts
is
some account of
still
?
poor Society reduced,
herself,
in
epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexu^
of
man
to
men
not to talk at
On
!
the whole,
we
will advise Society
about what she exists for
all
with her whole industry to exist, to try
keep existing
pend upon
That
I
it,
her best plan.
is
perty, she
would
even
and
For the
come
of breeches-pocket pro-
lose very soon the gift of protecting
rest, that in
world on
!
the most perfect Feudal Ages,
of Aristocracy
Ideal
she can
She may de-
find her career in our lower
the point of terminating
the
but rather
she ever, by cruel chance, did
if
to exist only for protection
that,
;
how
nowhere lived
in
vacant
serene purity as an Ideal, but always as a poor imperfect Actual, little
heeding or not knowing at
an Ideal lay in
—
Imperfection,
it
far is the Ideal
far
And
!
it,
is
this too
we
known, cleaves
to
human
owns
it is
at that
it
Not
so,
has no Idea, no soul of Truth any
when they
;
they are obliged to alter or
attain to that.
eases exist on the skin
L
and work
degree of imperfection human things
cannot continue living
expire,
a tolerable business.
Ideal has entirely departed, and the Actual
to itself that
:
things
yet so long as an Ideal (any soul of Truth)
within the Actual,
longer
that
departed from, in most times; very
does, in never so confused a manner, exist
when the
all
will cheerfully admit.
Blotches and dis-
and deeper, the heart continu-
CHARTISM.
62
ing whole
itself
but
;
another matter when the heart
is
it
becomes diseased
when there
;
is
no heart, but a
monstrous gangrene pretending to exist there as heart
On
the whole,
O
reader, thou wilt find everywhere
among men
that things which have had an existence
of all had to have a truth and worth in them,
have
and were not semblances but
first
a reality ever yet got
Look
for long.
at
men
to
realities.
Nothing not
pay bed and board to
Mahometanism
itself!
it
Dalai-La-
maism, even Dalai-Lamaism, one rejoices to discover,
may be worth its victuals in this world ; not a quackery
but a sincerity
;
mistake of those
tice,
not a nothing but a something
who
!
The
believe that fraud, force, injus-
whatsoever untrue thing, howsoever cloaked and
decorated, was ever or can ever be the principle of
man's relations to man,
is
is
the error of the infidel
not.
It is
miseries
by
all
;
;
great,
in
and the
whom
greatest.
the truth as yet
It
is
an error pregnant with mere errors and
an error
fatal,
lamentable, to be abandoned
men.
1
63
CHAPTER
VII.
NOT LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
How
an Aristocracy,
cumstances, could,
in these present times
governing the Under Class
?
What
endeavour or attempt to do
?
That
tion of questions:
solve; which
tell
them,
lies
—the
it is
and
cir-
never so well disposed, set about
if
they should do
is
;
even the quesr
question which they have to
our utmost function at present to
there for solving, and
must and
we cannot fancy
One
will
be
solved.
Insoluble
it.
select
class
Society has furnished with wealth, intelligence, leisure,
means outward and inward for governing
another
huge class, furnished by Society with none of those
things, declares that it must be governed: Negative
;
fronting
stands
cannot unite,
faculty
round
—
Positive; if Negative
will
it
and Positive
be worse for both
and earnest constant
effort
Let the
of England combine
!
matter let it once be recognised as a vital
Innumerable things our Upper Classes and
Lawgivers might
do
but the preliminary of all
things, we must repeat, is to know that a thing
must
this
;
matter.
;'
*
needs be done.
We
them here to the shore of a
ask them. Whether they do not
eyes see it, see strange symptoms of it,
boundless continent
with their
own
lead
;
lying huge, dark, unexplored, inevitable
full of hope,
of difficulty, savagery, almost of despair?
Let them enter; they must enter; Time and Necessity
but also
full
;
CHARTISM.
64
have brought them hither
tinuing
the next will have
become
become
It is
possible.
but for themselves,
On them
chiefly, as the
must and
will
no con-
is
step once taken,
clearer, all future steps will
say,
expected solvers of
One way
fall.
of us
all
more than
for any.
will the
it,
or other there
be a solution.
True, these matters
'
first
a great problem for
we may
failure of a solution first
the
where they are
;
Let them enter ; the
!
lie
very far indeed, from
far,
usual habits of Parliament,' in late times
from
;
the routine course of any Legislative or Administrative
body of men that
And
that
is
Too
among us.
we complain
exists
even the thing
mischief been looked into as
it
of:
gradually rose,
true!
had the
it would
not have attained this magnitude. That self-cancelling
Donothingism and Laissez-faire should have got so
ingrained into our Practice,
miseries.
the source of
is
these
all
It is too true that Parliament, for the
matter
of near a century now, has been able to undertake the
adjustment of almost one thing alone, of
own
interests
very
much
;
itself
and
its
leaving other interests to rub along
as they could
True, this was
and would.
and
the practice of the whole Eighteenth Century
the
Nineteenth,
into
itself
prolong
struggles still to
;
which however
is
no longer the time for
Eighteenth-century Parliaments, one
it
may
!
Those
hope, will
become a curious object one day. Are not these same
Memoires of Horace Walpole, to an unparliamentary
eye,
already a curious object?
sighted
men
Parliamentary observation of
despiser
One
of the clearest-
of the Eighteenth Century writes
it
there
;
down
his
a determined
and merciless dissector of cant
;
a liberal
CHAP.
withal,
one who
and
revolution,'
NOT LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
VII.
will
go
all
lengths for the
Tory
resist
65
he writes, with an indignant elegiac feeling,
who had voted
This,
so
glorious
<
principles to the death
and then voted
how Mr.
so,
and was
the son of this and the brother of that, and had such
claims to the fat appointment, was nevertheless scandalously postponed to
Mr. That
;
—whereupon
the affairs of this nation in a bad
way
are not
How
hungry
Greek meets hungry Greek on the floor of St. Stephens, and wrestles him and throttles him till he has
to cry, Hold the office is thine
of this does Horace
!
I
write
—One must
—
say, the destinies of nations
always rest entirely on Parliament.
it
is
?
a wonderful affair that science of
as practised in the Eighteenth
era,
and
say,
it
do not
One must
'
say,
government,'
Century of the Christian
itself.
One must
was a lucky century that could get it so practised: a century which had inherited richly from its
predecessors
and also which did, not unnaturally,
struggling to practise
still
;
bequeath to
its
successors a French Revolution, general
overturn, and reign of terror;
—
intimating,
in
most
audible thunder, conflagration, guillotinement, cannon-
ading and universal war and earthquake, that such
century with its practices had ended.
Ended;
will
—
for decidedly that course of procedure
no longer serve.
with whatever
effort,
Parliament will absolutely,
have to
deep ruts of donothing routine
lift
itself
out of those
and learn to
say, on
something more edifying than Laissez-faire.
If Parliament cannot learn it, what is to become of
;
all sides,
Parliament ?
The
toiling millions of
their English Parliament foremost of
England ask of
all.
Canst thou
CHARTISM.
66
govern us or not ?
strong
Parliament with
privileges
its
is
but Necessity and the Laws of Nature are
;
stronger than
Parliament
If Parliament cannot
it.
we prophesy
will
do
this thing,
do some other thing and
things which, in the strangest and not the happiest
way,
will
forward
its
being done,
—not
advantage of Parliament probably
or other, the thing must be.
much
to the
Done, one way
!
In these complicated
Cash Payment as the sole nexus between
man and man, the Toiling Classes of mankind declare,
times, with
but most emphatic way, to the Un-
in their confused
toiling, that
they will be governed
that they must,
;
under penalty of Chartisms, Thuggeries, Rick-burnings,
is it
and even blacker things than those.
to think that the misery of
one
class,
Vain
also
of the great
universal under class, can be isolated, and kept apart
and peculiar, down
tagion, evident
Political
Economy
By
that class.
in
enough
;
till
con-
that will reflect, the misery of the
lowest spreads upwards and upwards
very highest
infallible
to reflection, evident even to
all
has
grown
till it
reaches the
miserable, palpably
on
and poor drudges hungering
circuitous
but
by
meal-husks and boiled grass' do,
false
and wrong
'
;
sure methods, bring kings' heads to the block
!
Cash Payment the sole nexus; and there are so
many things which cash will not pay Cash is a great
miracle yet it has not all power in Heaven, nor even
Supply and demand' we will honour also
on Earth.
!
;
'
;
and yet how many demands' are there, entirely indispensable, which have to go elscM'here than to the
'
shops, and produce quite other than cash, before they
can get their supply
!
On
the whole, what astonishing
I
CHAP.
NOT LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
VII.
payments does cash make
in this
Samuel Johnson furnished with
a-day,'
as his
and
complaint
:
it
we do
not speak
on the paved
—not
in the
;
no
better.
perhaps the
;
own uses, had need even of that and of
Nay is not Society, busy with its Talfourd
and the
Bill
own
dustry that his
manufacture,
and
struggling to do some-
like,
thing effectual for that
man
;
—enacting with
is
continue
right there
may become
all
creation be accounted his
on
unstolen,
market-stand, for so long as sixty years?
too
way of
his
Copyright
Society
streets,
a world-old business for the like of
is
him, that same arrangement or a worse
man, for
Of your
!
fourpence halfpenny
'
solid lodging at nights
payment,
world
67
;
for discrepancies
excessive.
All
men
his
in-
own
own
Perhaps
on that side
are not patient
some of them are half-mad inflammable Rousseaus. Such, in peculiar times, you may
drive too far.
Society in France, for example, was not
destitute of cash
Society contrived to pay Philippe
d'Orleans not yet Egalite three hundred thousand
a-year and odd, for driving cabriolets through the
streets of Paris and other work done
but in cash,
docile Johnsons
;
:
:
encouragement, arrangement, recompense or recognition
of any kind,
had nothing to give
it
half-mad Rousseau for his work done
in consequence, too
uttered
'
much
enforced' for a
this same
whose brain
weak
brain,
hasty sparks, Contrat Social and the like,
which proved not so quenchable again
that species of
men
faire itself (which
Bill
;
too,
is
!
In regard to
who knows whether
Laissez-
Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright
continued to eternity instead of sixty years) will
CHARTISM.
68
not turn out
insufficient,
and have
to
cease,
one
day?—
Alas, in regard to so very
many
things. Laissez-
faire ought partly to endeavour to cease
!
But
in
regard to poor Sanspotatoe peasants, Trades-Union
craftsmen, Chartist cotton-spinners, the time has
when
it
begin,
hand
of
—a thing of tinder-boxes,
pistols,
all.
come
must either cease or a worse thing straightway
vitriol-bottles,
second-
a visibly insupportable thing in the eyes
69
CHAPTER
NEW
For
VIII.
ERAS.
new Era a new Practice
it.
One has heard so
often of new eras, new and newest eras, that the word
has grown rather empty of late.
Yet new eras do
come there is no fact surer than that they have come
in
very truth
it
a
is
;'
'
has become indispensable in
;
And
more than once.
always with a change of era,
with a change of intrinsic conditions, there had to be
a change of practice and outward relations brought
about,
—
if
about
it
had to
not peaceably, then by violence
How many
—which
that they
no
be, there could
eras
indeed
come
rest
and epochs, not noted
is
;
brought
for
come
at the
till
then.
moment
the blessedest condition of epochs,
quietly,
making no proclamation of
a Crom-
themselves, and are only visible long after
well Rebellion, a French Revolution,
Horologe of Time,' to
'
:
striking on the
mortals what o'clock
tell all
has become, are too expensive, if one could help
In a strange rhapsodic
*
it
it
I
History of the Teuton
Kindred (^Geschichte der TeutscJien Sippschaft),' not
yet translated into our language, we have found a
Chapter on the Eras of England, which, were there
room
for
it,
would be
instructive in this place.
shall crave leave to excerpt
relief
;
We
partly as a
from the too near vexations of our own rather
sorrowful Era
less
some pages
obliquely,
;
partly as calculated to throw,
some degree of
light
more or
on the meanings
CHARTISM.
70
The Author
of that.
anonymous: but we have
is
heard him called the Herr Professor Sauerteig, and
we know him under
indeed think
'
Who
shall say
has yet to do
was created,
Ocean
name
what work and works
For what purpose
?
set like a
and
;
that
this
England
this land of Britain
jewel in the encircling blue of
Tribe of Saxons, fashioned in the
this
depths of Time, " on the shores of the Black Sea" or
elsewhere, " out
of Harzgebirge
rock" or whatever
No
other material, was sent travelling hitherward?
man
can say
it
:
was
for a work,
and for works, inca-
Thou seest them
them stand done, and visible to the
eye even these thou canst not name : how much less
They live
the others still matter of prophecy only
and labour there, these twenty million Saxon men
pable of announcement in words.
there
part of
;
;
!
—
they have been born into this mystery of
the darkness of Past
the
first
Father and
Time
first
:
life
—how changed
out of
now
Mother of them
since
set forth,
_
quitting the Tribe of Theutk, with passionate farewell,
under questionable auspices; on scanty bullock-cart, if
they had even bullocks and a cart; with axe and huntinp'-spear, to
subdue a portion of our common Planet
This Nation
now
has cities and seedfields, has spring-
vans, dray -waggons. Long-acre carriages, nay railway
trains
;
has coined-money, exchange-bills, laws, books,
war-fleets,
India
spinning -jennies,
Docks
:
see
what
it
warehouses
and West-
has built and done, what
can and will yet build and do
I
it
These umbrageous
pleasure-woods, green meadows, shaven stubble-fields,
smooth-sweeping roads
;
these high-domed
cities,
and
1
CHAP.
NEW
VIII.
what they hold and bear
;
this
ERAS.
71
mild Good-morrow which
the stranger bids thee, equitable, nay forbearant
if
need were, judicially calm and law-observing towards
thee a stranger, what
many brawny
down wearied
life
lasted,
work has
it
How
not cost?
arms, generation after generation, sank
;
how many noble
hearts, toiling while
and wise heads that wore themselves dim
with scanning and discerning, before this waste Whiteits other Cassiterides Tin
became a British Empire
The stream
of World- History has altered its complexion; Romans
are dead out, English are come in.
The red broad
mark of Romanhood, stamped ineifaceably on that
cliff,
Albion so-called, with
Islands,
!
Chart of Time, has disappeared from the present, and
England plays
belongs only to the past.
England too has a mark
none of the
to leave,
Of a
least significant.
and we
truth,
its
part;
will
hope
whosoever
the bodily eye, seen Hengst and Horsa
mooring on the mud-beach of Thanet, on that spring
morning of the Year 449 and then, with the spiritual
had, with
;
eye, looked forward to
New
York, Calcutta, Sidney
Cove, across the ages and the oceans
and thought
what Wellingtons, Washingtons, Shakspears, Miltons,
Watts, Arkwrights, William Pitts and Davie Crocketts
;
had to issue from that business, and do their several
taskworks so, he would have said, those leather-boats
of Hengst's had a kind of cargo in them
logic
My thus
almost any in the old
either,
there,
Hebrew
but every fibre of
and
all
has not yet
!
A
genea-
superior to any in the old Greek, to
it
itself;
fact.
manner of poems
made
;
his appearance.'
and not a
An
Epic
My thus
Poem was
except that the Poet
CHARTISM.
72
'
Six centuries of obscure
endeavour,' continues
you would inmere obscure slaughter, discord, and misendeavour of which all that the human memory, after
a thousand readings, can remember, is that it resembled,
Sauerteig, 'which to read Historians,
cline to call
;
what Milton names
it,
the " flocking and fighting of
and crows :" this, in brief, is the history of the
Heptarchy or Seven Kingdoms. Six centuries
a
stormy spring-time, if there ever was one, for a Nation.
kites
;
Obscure fighting of
not the History of
torians of
felled,
it
laws made, and the
and crows, however, was
but was only what the dim His-
saw good
it
bogs drained,
many ways
kites
;
to record.
made
Thought and
fields
perfected ?
Were
arable,
not forests
towns
Practice of
built,
men
language which he could now not only speak, but
and put on paper: think what
mured by the German
man
manner.
general
Or was
He
tools ?
;
down
set
spell
Bemur-
lies in that.
sea-flood swinging slow with
sullen roar against those hoarse
the venerable
in
Venerable Bede had got a
Northumbrian rocks,
several things in a legible
the smith idle,
hammering only war-
had learned metallurgy, stithy-work
in
and made ploughshares withal, and adzes and
mason-hammers.
Castra, Caesters or Chesters, Dons,
Tons (^Zauns, Inclosures or Towns), not a
they not stand there
;
few, did
of burnt brick, of timber, of
sending up the peaceable smoke of
England had a History then too though
no Historian to write it. Those " flockings and fightings," sad inevitable necessities, were the expensive
lath-and-clay
hearths
;
?
;
tentative steps towards
working
in concert
:
some
capability of living
and
experiments they were, not always
CHAP.
VIII.
who had
conclusive, to ascertain
the right over
*
NEW
ERAS.
73
whom,
the might over
whom.
M. Thierry
has written an ingenious Book, cele-
brating with considerable pathos the fate of the Saxons
fallen
under that fierce-hearted Conquistator, Acquirer
or Conqueror, as he
is
M. Thierry
named.
professes
to have a turn for looking at that side of things
fate of the
Welsh too moves him
:
the
of the Celts gener-
;
whom a fiercer race swept before them into the
mountainous nooks of the West, whither they were
not worth following. Noble deeds, according to M.
Thierry, were done by these unsuccessful men, heroic
ally,
sufferings
undergone
which
;
rescue from forgetfulness.
least is
due
unhappy
to the
there should be a
man
it
a pious duty to
is
True, surely
:
it is
A
!
right and
tear at
fit
that
to assert that lost cause too,
and see what can still be made of it. Most right
and yet, on the whole, taking matters on that great
:
scale,
what can we say but that the cause which pleased
the gods has in the end to please Cato also?
cannot alter
it
wish to alter
from hour
in,
to
;
Cato
it.
will find that
Might and Right do differ frightfully
but give them centuries to try it
hour
;
they are found to be identical.
this of Britain?
other's
it
God's who made
was and
right to live in it?
they
Cato
he cannot at bottom
is.
Who
Whose
it.
land
was
His and no
of God's creatures had
The wolves and bisons?
Yes
one with a better right shewed himself. The
Celt, " aboriginal savage of Europe," as a snarling anti;
till
CHARTISM.
74<
quary names him, arrived, pretending to have a better
and did accordingly, not without pain to the
make good the same. He had a better right
namely a better might to
to that piece of God's land
a might to settle himself there, at
turn it to use
right
;
bisons,
;
—
;
least,
and try what use he could turn
disappeared
;
Forever, was
Celts took
the
it
to be ?
it to.
possession,
Alas, Forever
is
The bisons
and
tilled.
not a category
that can establish itself in this world of Time.
A
world of Time, by the very definition of it, is a world
of mortality and mutability, of Beginning and Ending.
No
property
eternal but
is
Heaven permits
God
Heaven's sanction
is
such permission,
Why
nothing more can be said.
grow
the Maker's
—while
sufficiently
not hitherto prevent
By
its
it lasts
:
does that hyssop
Because the
there, in the chink of the wall?
whole universe,
whom
:
to take possession, his is the right;
occupied otherwise, could
growing
It has the
!
might
Roman
the same great law do
and the
right.
Empires
establish themselves, Christian Religions pro-
mulgate themselves, and
The
strong thing
is
all
extant Powers bear rule.
the just thing
—
:
this
thou wilt find
was God and
throughout
Truth the Maker of our world, or was Satan and
in
Falsehood
'
One
our world
;
as indeed
?
proposition widely current as to this
Norman
That the conConquest is of a Physiologic sort
querors and conquered here were of different races
nay that the Nobility of England is still, to this hour,
of a somewhat different blood from the commonalty,
:
their fine
Norman
features contrasting so pleasantly
with the coarse Saxon ones of the others.
God
knows,
I
CHAP.
NEW
VIII.
ERAS.
there are coarse enough features to be seen
commonalty of that country
Normanhood
not their
finer, it is
but
;
if
75
among
the
the Nobility's be
that can be the rea-
Does the aboye Physiologist reflect who those
Baltic
same Normans, Northmen, originally were ?
Saxons, and what other miscellany of Lurdanes, Jutes
and Deutsch Pirates from the East-sea marshes would
If living three cenjoin them in plunder of France
turies longer in Heathenism, sea-robbery, and the
unlucrative fishing of ambergris could ennoble them
son.
I
beyond the others, then were they ennobled. The
Normans were Saxons who had learned to speak
French. No by Thor and Wodan, the Saxons were
:
all
as noble as
needful;
— shaped,
says the
Myth us,
from the rock of the Harzgebirge ;" brother-tribes
being made of clay, wood, water, or what other mate'*
might be going
rial
!
A
stubborn, taciturn, sulky,
indomitable rock-made race of
cut in
men
;
as the figure they
quarters, in the cane-brake of Arkansas, in
all
the Ghauts of the Himmalayha, no less than in
City,
in
Warwick
or Lancaster
London
County, does
still
abundantly manifest.'
'
To
this
English People in World-History, there
Two grand tasks assigned ?
Huge-looming through the dim tumult of the always
have been,
shall I prophesy,
incommensurable Present Time, outlines of two tasks
the grand Industrial task of con-
disclose themselves
:
quering some half or more of this Terraqueous Planet
for the use of
man
;
then secondly, the grand Consti-
tutional task of sharing,
in
some
pacific endurable
CHARTISM.
76
manner, the
people
two
how
and shewing
fruit of said conquest,
it
These
might be done.
tasks, discernible hitherto
in
all
I will call their
World-History
:
in
both of these they have made respectable though unSteamengines, ploughshares, pick-
equal progress.
what is meant by conquering this Planet, they
partly know.
Elective franchise, ballot-box, represenaxes
;
tative assembly
;
how
to accomplish sharing of that
Europe knows
conquest, they do not so well know.
Europe vehemently asks in these days, but receives no answer, no credible answer.
For as to the
partial Delolmish, Benthamee, or other French or
English answers, current in the proper quarters and
highly beneficial and indispensable there, thy disbelief
not
in
;
them
'
as final answers, I take
Succession of rebellions
it, is
complete.'
Successive clippings
?
away of the Supreme Authority class after class rising
in revolt to say, " We will no more be governed so" ?
That is not the history of the English Constitution
;
;
not altogether that.
Rebellion
the means, but
The motive
not the motive cause.
secret of the matter,
is
were always
it is
cause,
and true
The
necessity
this
:
there was for rebelling ?
*
Rights I will permit thee to
" correctly-articulated mights."
to
articulate correctly
Runnymead
volting men
mented
fifty
on,
years
;
;
consider
call
by
battle
everywhere
dreadful business
Consider those Barons of
manner of
successfully re-
Your Great Charter has
!
is
I
all
A
to be experi-
and debate, for a hundred-and-
then found to be correct
;
and stands as
CHAP.
Magna
true
Cluirta,
NEW
VIII.
—nigh
ERAS.
7?
cut in pieces by a tailor,
short of measures, in later generations.
Mights,
are a dreadful business to articulate correctly
articulated they have to be
need comes for
experimenting
of rebellions
;
the time comes for
;
and with enormous
it,
got done.
I say,
Yet
!
it,
the
and
difficulty
it
not succession
call it rather succession
of expansions,
it is
Call
of enlightenments, gift of articulate utterance descending ever lower.
utterance,
dumb man,
the
Class after class acquires faculty of
— Necessity
teaching and compelling
suddenly acquired speech
after
class
what
its
might
space, there
is,
And
is
not only
;
new
so that always, after a
gift
of articulating, but
among
Constitutional
men.'
so now, the Barons all settled
a new class hitherto
Middle
class
but likewise grows in might, ac-
epochs will never cease
'
how
Consider too
!
something new to articulate.
is
as
not only acquires faculty of articulating
quires might or loses might
there
;
seeing the knife at his father's throat,
silent
Class, namely.
and
satisfied,
had begun to speak
In the time of James
;
First,
the
not
only Knights of the Shire but Parliamentary Burgesses
assemble
;
a real House of
sively into play,
We
First.
sities
*
call it
Commons
has
come deciJames
to the astonishment of
a growth of mights,
if also
of neces-
a growth of power to articulate mights, and
;
make
—much
rights of them.
In those past silent centuries,
classes,
much had been going
on.
among those silent
Not only had red-
CHARTISM.
78
deer in the
and shot
;
New and other Forests been got preserved
and treacheries of Simon de Montfort, wars
Red and White Roses, Battles of Crecy, Battles of
Bosworth and many other battles been got transacted
and adjusted; but England wholly, not without sore
toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and the
of
millions of sons these eighteen generations,
got drained and
beautiful
and
tilled,
rich
had been
covered with yellow harvests,
possessions
Caesters and Chesters had
;
become
the
mud -wooden
steepled tile-roofed
had taken to the manufacWorstead could from wool
spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings
or breeches for men. England had property valuable
compact Towns.
Sheffield
ture of Sheffield whittles
to the auctioneer
but the accumulate manufacturing,
skill which lay impalpably
economic
commercial,
warehoused
;
;
in
English hands and heads, what auc-
tioneer could estimate ?
'
Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could
some cunninger thing than break his
do something
;
fellow-creature's head with
battle-axes.
The seven
incorporated trades, with their million guild-brethren,
with their hammers, their shuttles and tools, what an
army
;
—
fit
to
and to hold
it
conquer the land of England, as we say,
conquered
I
Nay, strangest of
all,
the
English people had acquired the faculty and habit of
—
individual conscience
even of believing
had unfolded itself among them Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid. Ideas of innumerable kinds were
circulating among these men witness one Shakspeare,
thinking,
:
;
:
a woolcomber, poacher, or whatever else at Stratford
in
Warwickshire,
who happened
to write books
!
The
CHAP.
human
finest
NEW
VIII.
figure, as I
ERAS.
79
apprehend, that Nature has
make of our widely diflPused Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt or Sarmat, I find no
human soul so beautiful, these fifteen hundred known
years;
our supreme modern European man. Him
hitherto seen
to
fit
—
England had contrived to
'
realise
Shakspeare
;
Oliver Cromwell.
hard as
sion,
that a
own
man
—
that had to seek
England had got her
but was now about to get her Milton and
utterance in the notablest
This too
might be
it
way
I
we
will call a
to articulate
new expan-
and adjust
adjust
!
It
is
One
down
not adjusted
much
to this hour.
" Glorious Re-
call
as a reasonable truce can be
made, and the war proceed by logic mainly.
war, and no peace, unless
peace.
But
it
to take
of the hardest things
onwards to the time they
volution" before so
it is
this,
that his
;
be who he might, would henceforth have
that fact along with him.
It lasts
;
could actually have a Conscience for his
behoof, and not for his Priest's only
Priest,
to
were there not ideas?
:
Ideas poetic and also Puritanic,
we
And
still
waste vacancy
call
needed to be adjusted, as the others
Nobility at Runnyothers will do.
mead cannot endure foul-play grown palpable no
more can Gentry in Long Parliament no more can
Commonalty in Parliament they name Reformed.
had done,
as
still
;
;
Prynne's bloody ears were as a testimony and question
England " Englishmen, is this fair ?" England,
to all
:
no longer continent of
with the voice of lions
herself,
:
" No,
answered, bellowing as
it is
'But now on the Industrial
not fair !'"
side,
while this great
CHARTISM.
80
Constitutional controversy, and revolt of the Middle
Class had not ended, had yet but begun, what a shoot
was that that England,
quest of other
carelessly, in
objects, struck out across the Ocean, into the waste
named New England
land which
it
poor
ship
little
Hail to thee,
1
Mayflower, of Delft-Haven
poor
:
by common charterparty
for coined dollars; caulked with mere oakum and
tar; provisioned with vulgarest biscuit and bacon;
yet what ship Argo, or miraculous epic ship built by
common-looking
ship, hired
the Sea-gods, was not a foolish
son
Golden
I
bumbarge
in compari-
fleeces or the like these sailed for, with
or without effect; thou
little
Mayflower hadst
in thee
a veritable Promethean spark; the life-spark of the
largest
Nation on our Earth,
— so we may already name
They went seeking
own method, these May-
the Transatlantic Saxon Nation.
leave to hear sermon in their
flower Puritans
and
yet, like
;
a most honest indispensable search
Saul the son of Kish, seeking a small
thing, they found this unexpected great thing
!
Ho-
nour to the brave and true they verily, we say, carry
fire from Heaven, and have a power that themselves
dream not of. Let all men honour Puritanism, since
;
God
has so honoured
heartfelt "
Allah akbar,
noured?
There
is
Islam
it.
God
is
itself,
great,"
with
was
it
its
wild
not ho-
but one thing without honour;
smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or be
Insincerity, Unbelief.
He who
believes
believes only the shows of things,
with Nature and Fact at
all.
is
thing,
who
Nature denies him;
him at his earliest convenience
Let him disappear from her domains,
orders
no
not in relation
to disappear.
— into
those of
CHAP.
NEW
VIII.
ERAS.
81
Chaos, Hypothesis and Simulacrum, or wherever else
his parish
'
the
As
may
be.'
to the Third Constitutional controversy, that of
Working
where these
which now debates
Classes,
fifty years,
in
France
1789, in England too since 1831,
hardest of
all
reasonable truce on
dreary, boundless
this, is
is
it
doubtless the
a thing I have
;
worse arguing, by
Waterloo, to Peterloo
steel
little
it
yet but ballot-
not to speak of
;
pro-
Dark, wild-weltering,
nothing heard on
boxes. Parliamentary arguing
'
every-
to get articulated : finis of peace, or even
spect of for several generations.
far
itself
specifically since
and
much
from Valmy to
lead,
! '
And yet of Representative
Assemblies
may not
this
good be said That contending parties in a country
do thereby ascertain one another's strength ? They
:
fight there, since fight they must,
by
petition. Parlia-
mentary eloquence, not by sword, bayonet and bursts
of military cannon.
Why
do men fight at
all, if it
be
not that they are yet unacquainted with one another's
strength, and
must
fight
and ascertain
it ?
Knowing
that thou canst compel
that thou art stronger than
I,
me, I will submit to thee
unless I chance to prefer
:
extermination, and slightly circuitous suicide, there
no other course
for
me.
That
in
is
England, by public
meetings, by petitions, by elections, leading-articles,
and other jangling hubbub and tongue-fence which
perpetually goes on everywhere in that country, people ascertain one another's strength,
and the most ob-
durate House of Lords has to yield and give in before
e2
CHARTISM.
82
it
come
to cannonading
and guillotinement
this
:
is
Nay, at bottom,
saving characteristic of England.
not this the celebrated English Constitution
a
is
itself?
This Mwspoken Constitution, whereof Privilege of Parliament, Money-Bill, Mutiny-Bill, and
be spoken and enacted hitherto,
is
is,
that could
Such Constitu-
body, but only the shape and skin?
tion
all
not the essence and
our times, verily invaluable.'
in
'Long stormy
spring-time, wet contentious April,
winter chilling the lap of very
May
;
but at length the
summer does come.
So long the tree stood
naked angry wiry naked boughs moaning and creaking in the wind you would say. Cut it down, why
cumbereth it the ground ? Not so we must wait
season of
;
:
;
all
things will have their time.
speare,
and
his Elizabethan
Raleighs, Bacons, what could
spiritual flower-time.
— Of the
Era, with
we
say ?
man Shak-
its
Sydneys,
That
it
was a
Suddenly, as with the breath of
June, your rude naked tree
is
touched
;
bursts into
leaves and flowers, such leaves and flowers.
The
past
long ages of nakedness, and wintry fermentation and
elaboration, have done their part, though seeming to
The
do nothing.
more
past silence has got a voice,
significant the longer
it
had continued
In trees, men, institutions, creeds, nations, in
extant and growing in this universe,
vicissitudes,
spiritual
sical,
'
and budding-times.
budding-times
;
we may
all
all
the
silent.
things
note such
Moreover there are
and then also there are phy-
appointed to nations.
Thus
in
the
middle of that poor calumniated
1
CHAP.
NEW
VIII.
03
ERAS.
Eighteenth Century, see once more
Long
!
winter
again past, the dead-seeming tree proves to be living,
have been always living
to
every
bough
strangely:
—
land was
shoots
;
after motionless times,
on
forth
very
sudden,
the
Eng-
now. turns out that this favoured
it
only to have had
not
Shakspeares,
her
Bacons, Sydneys, but to have her Watts, Arkwrights,
Brindleys
We will honour greatness
!
The
in all kinds.
Prospero evoked the singing of Ariel, and took captive
the same Prospero
the world with those melodies:
can send his Fire-demons panting across
all
oceans
shooting with the speed of meteors, on cunning high-
ways, from end to end of kingdoms
and make Iron
;
his missionary, preaching its evangel to the brute Pri-
meval Powers, which
and obey
listen
Manchester, with
small,
its
:
cotton-fuz,
neither
its
this
is
smoke and
tumult and contentious squalor, is hideous to
Think not so a precious substance, beautiful
as magic dreams and yet no dream but a reality, lies
hidden in that noisome wrappage;
a wrappage strugdust, its
thee ?
:
—
gling indeed (look at Chartisms and such like) to cast
and leave the beauty free and visible there
Hast thou heard, with sound ears, the awakening of a
itself off,
Manchester, on
the clock
the
;
boom
Monday morning,
the rushing off of
perhaps,
or
more
naked
in its
it;
at half-past five
thousand
by
mills, like
of an Atlantic tide, ten thousand times ten
thousand spools and spindles
is
its
if
so.
thou knew
all set
;
humming
well, sublime as
Cotton-spinning
in its result
means.
it
is
there,
—
it
a Niagara,
the clothing of the
the triumph of
man
over matter
Soot and despair are not the essence of
they are divisible from
it,
—
at this hour, are they
CHARTISM.
84)
not crying fiercely to be divided
?
The
great Goethe,
looking at cotton Switzerland, declared
to
be of
most
in
all
am
I
it,
told,
things that he had seen in this world the
Whereat
poetical.
friend Kanzler von Miiller,
search of the palpable picturesque, could not but
Nevertheless our World-Poet
stare wide-eyed.
well
*
what he was
Richard Arkwright,
beautiful
man
Apollo-lip,
;
knew
saying.'
would seem, was not a
it
no romance-hero with haughty eyes,
and gesture
Mercury
like the herald
;
a
plain almost gross, bag-cheeked, potbellied Lancashire
man, with an
air of painful reflection, yet also
ous free digestion
;
— a man
stationed
of copi-
by the commu-
nity to shave certain dusty beards, in the Northern
parts of England, at a halfpenny each.
we say, by forethought, oversight,
To
such end,
accident and arrange-
ment, had Richard Arkwright been, by the community
of England and his
theless, in strapping
own
consent, set apart.
Never-
of razors, in lathering of dusty
beards, and the contradictions and confusions attend-
ant thereon, the
of his
;
man had
notions in that rough head
spindles, shuttles, wheels
ing ideally within the same
:
and contrivances ply-
rather hopeless-looking
which, however, he did at last bring to bear.
without difficulty
!
His townsfolk rose
him, for threatening to
shorten
in
;
Not
mob round
labour, to
shorten
had to fly, with broken washpots,
scattered household, and seek refuge elsewhere.
Nay
wages
;
so that he
his wife too, as I learn, rebelled; burnt
model of
his spinning-wheel
;
his
wooden
resolute that he should
I
CHAP.
NEW ERAS.
VIII.
stick to his razors rather
;
—
85
for which, however,
decisively, as thou wilt rejoice to understand,
O
her out of doors.
menon
reader,
he
packed
what a Historical Pheno-
that bag-cheeked, potbellied, much-enduring,
is
much-inventing barber
brewing: to
resist the
French Revolutions were
!
same
a-
any measure, imperial
in
Kaisers were impotent without the cotton and cloth of
England
;
and
it
was
this
man
that had to give
Eng-
land the power of cotton.'
'
Neither had Watt of the Steamengine a heroic
The
princes of this world were shooting their par-
tridges
the
this world.
any kindred with the princes of
origin,
;
noisily, in
Parliament or elsewhere, solving
Head
question,
while
or tail?
man with
this
blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out,
in his
was
workshop, the Fire-secret
painfully
wending to and
or,
;
having found
fro in quest of
it,
a " mo-
nied man," as indispensable man-midwife of the same.
Reader, thou shalt admire what
is
dressed in admirable
even when he
;
is
learn to
admirable, not what
know
the British lion
not throne-supporter, and also the
is
British jackass in lion's skin even
when he
couldst thou always, what a world were
the Berlin Royal
Knowledge
was that
Academy
it
Ah,
But has
is.
!
or any English Useful-
who
Society discovered, for instance,
first
scratched earth with a stick
corns, the biggest he could find, into
it
;
;
it
and threw
seedgrains of
a certain grass, which he named tchite or wheat?
Again, what
is
the whole Tees-water and other breed-
ing-world to him
first bison-calf,
milk-cow?
No
who
stole
and bred
it
home from
up
machine of
to be a
all
the forests the
tame
bison, a
they shewed
me
in
86
CHARTISM.
Birmingham can be put
in
comparison for ingenuity
with that figure of the wedge named knife, of the
—
wedges named saw, of the lever named hammer:
nay is it not with the hammer-knife, named sword,
that
men
fight,
and maintain any semblance of consti-
tuted authority that yet survives
steamengine I
nothing to the invention ai fire.
cain,
Triptolemus
Are not our
!
The men
as lost ?
warming us, feeding
mere mythic men.
'
us,
The
but
it
is
men as good
among us, clothing
greatest
walk shrouded
produce revolutions
It is said, ideas
;
Prometheus, Tubal-
that walk daily
us,
they do
among us?
fire-demon and great
call
;
in darkness,
and truly so
not spiritual ideas only, but even mechanical.
;
In this clanging clashing universal Sword-dance that
now dances
the European world
tury, Voltaire
wright
shall
for the last half-cen-
but one choragus, where Richard Ark-
Let
another.
is
Arkwright
we
is
it
dance
shall still spin in peaceable profit
Sword-dance, with
loo waltzes,
that be
'
all its
Moscow
When
itself out.
have become mythic
like
by him
Arachne,
;
and the
sorrowful shufflings, Water-
gallopades,
how
forgotten will
!'
On
the whole, were
unexpected, unforeseen
foreseen
;
especially
Robert Clive
?
these things most
not
all
As
indeed what thing
is
what man, the parent of things
in that
same time went
out, with
!
a de-
veloped gift of penmanship, as writer or superior book-
keeper to a trading factory established in the distant
East.
With
gift of
penmanship developed with other
;
CHAP.
not yet developed, which the
gifts
Not
by and by develope.
man was found
the
NEW ERAS.
VIII.
fit
for conquering
ing kingdoms, Indian Empires
of the case did
calls
book-keeping alone,
for
fit
87
Nawaubs, found-
In a questionable
!
manner, Indian Empire from the other hemisphere
took up
its
abode
in
Leadenhall Street, in the City of
London.
'
Accidental
these things and persons look, un-
all
expected every one of them to man.
every one of them
preme Power
;
Yet inevitable
foreseen, not unexpected,
by Su-
Ad-
prepared, appointed from afar.
;
vancing always through
centuries, in the middle of
all
The Saxon kindred
the eighteenth they arrived.
burst
forth into cotton-spinning, cloth-cropping, iron-forging,
steamengining, railwaying, commercing and careering
towards
all
the winds of Heaven,
manner
noisy
in progress- of-the-species
Most
coal-stratum, and
somewhat.
iron-strata,
Water flowed
minous
how many
coal-strata,
the
in Lancashire
fire lay
bedded
fighting
in this inexplicable
Magazines,
noisy, sudden
quiet since
—
of which,
the noise
;
!
Power-mills,
in
still
The
lay side
creation
deafens us
Staffordshire
by
side with
of the world.
and Lanarkshire
in rocks there too,
Stanleys, black
;
bitu-
—over which
Douglases, and
other the like contentious persons, had fought
their bickerings
hope
I
and
But God
and they were.
broils,
not without result,
we
out
will
said. Let the iron missionaries be
Coal and iron, so long close unre-
gardful neighbours, are
wedded together
ham and Wolverhampton, and
forges, with their fire-throats
hammers, rose into day.
;
Birming-
the hundred Stygian
and never-resting sledge-
Wet Manconium
stretched
88
CHARTISM.
out her hand towards Carolina and the torrid zone,
and plucked cotton there
:
who
could forbid her, her
that had the skill to
weave it ? Fish fled thereupon
from the Mersey River, vexed with innumerable keels.
England, I say, dug out her bitumen-fire, and bade it
work: towns rose, and steeple-chimneys; Chartisms
also, and Parliaments they name Reformed.'
—
Such,
points,
figuratively
given,
are
some prominent
chief mountain-summits, of our English His-
tory past and present, according to the Author of this
strange untranslated
Work, whom we think we recog-
nise to be an old acquaintance.
89
CHAPTER
IX.
PARLIAMENTARY RADICALISM.
To
looking at these matters somewhat in the same
US,
Reform-Bills, French
light,
no longer inexplicable. Where the great mass
not, are
of
Revolutions, Louis-Phi-
Chartisms, Revolts of Three Days, and what
lippes,
men
is
not right,
tolerably right,
all is
wrong.
all
right
is
The speaking
like
complain of
an Enceladus, who
where they are
and
dumb, deep-buried
debate, each for itself; the great
cleiss lies
;
classes speak
in his pain, if
has to produce earthquakes
it,
I
he will
Every-
where, in these countries, in these times, the central
fact
worthy of
this
shape
:
all
raised to a level,
his
consideration forces itself on us in
the claim of the Free
we may
Working-man to be
Working Slave
say, with the
anger and cureless discontent
till
that be done.
Food, shelter, due guidance, in return for his labour
candidly interpreted, Chartism and
that
;
and the madder they
emphatically mean,
given us
project,
!
What
are,
all
such isms mean
do they not the more
" See what guidance
delirium
we
guided by nobody
you have
are brought to talk and
!"
Laissez-faire
part of the Governing Classes,
we
on the
repeat again and
again, will, with whatever difficulty, have to cease
pacific
mutual division of the
no longer suffice.
let alone, will
ance
;
and
it
is
spoil,
A
and a world well
Do-nothing Guid-
a Do-something World
!
Would
to
CHARTISM.
90
God our Ducal
Dxices would
become Leaders indeed
our Aristocracies and Priesthoods discover in some
degree what the world expected of them,
what the world could no longer do without getting
of them
Nameless unmeasured confusions, misery
to themselves and us, might so be spared.
But that
suitable
I
God
too will be as
has appointed.
be well and happy
will
them
stead of
after
will
a long sad
Neither
these times
is
:
if
If they learn,
and must, and once more, though
it will be well and happy.
circuit,
the history of Chartism mysterious in
especially if that of Radicalism be looked
;
All along, for the last five-and-twenty years,
at.
was curious
how
to note
England struggled to
orifice
complains
face,
now
all
sick
it
of
the internal discontent
any
find vent for itself through
the poor patient,
:
it
not they, then others in-
from centre to sur-
of this member,
now
of that
;
corn-laws, currency-laws, free-trade, protection, want
of free-trade
:
the poor patient tossing from side to side,
seeking a sound side to
tor says,
it
is
the liver
lie
;
on, finds none.
that other,
it is
This Doc-
the lungs, the
head, the heart, defective transpiration in the skin.
thoroughgoing Doctor of eminence
boroughs
;
said, it
A
was rotten
the want of extended sufirage to destroy
rotten boroughs.
From
of old, the English patient
himself had a continually recurring notion that this
was
it.
their
The English people
panacea for
all
are used to suffrage
that goes
have a fixed-idea of sufirage.
right to vote for a
one's
'
Member
wrong with them
Singular enough
;
:
;
it is
they
one's
of Parliament, to send
twenty-thousandth part of a master of tongue-
fence to National Palaver,'
—
the Doctors asserted that
CHAP.
this
PARIaIAMENTARY RADICALISM.
IX.
was Freedom,
this
many men,
dible to
and no other.
seemed
It
cre-
The
of high degree and of low.
of remedy grew, the
persuasion
91
Swing's ricks were on
was pressing;
evil
Some
fire.
nine years ago, a
State-surgeon rose, and in peculiar circumstances said:
Let there be extension of the suffrage
let
;
the great
Doctor's nostrum, the patient's old passionate prayer
be
fulfilled
I
Parliamentary Radicalism, while
gave articulate
it
utterance to the discontent of the English people,
could not by
function.
If
worst enemy be said to be without a
its
it
in the natural order
is
there must be discontent, no less so
is it
of things that
that such dis-
content should have an outlet, a Parliamentary voice.
Here the matter
is
debated
of,
demonstiated, contra-
dicted, qualified, reduced to feasibility
;
— can
at lejist
solace itself with hope, and die gently, convinced of
The New, Untried
ttwfeasibility.
fit itself into
how
ascertains
the arrangements of the Old
it
will
whether the
;
Old can be compelled to admit it how in that case it
may, with the minimum of violence, be admitted. Nor
;
let
us count
calism
;
it
it
an easy one,
this function
was one of the most
of Radi-
The
difficult.
pain-
stricken patient does, indeed, without efibrt groan
complain
ascertain
;
but not without
what
it
is
all, if
your patient
whole sick nation
!
is
and
does the physician
wrong with him,
that has gone
how some remedy may be
above
effort
devised
for him.
And
not one sick man, but a
Dingy dumb
millions,
grimed
with dust and sweat, with darkness, rage and sorrow,
stood round these men, saying, or struggling as they
could to say
:
" Behold, our lot
is
unfair
;
our
life is
92
CHARTISM,
not whole but sick;
we cannot
live under injustice;
For whether the poor
Time-bill, Factory-bill, Corn-
go ye and get us justice
operative clamoured for
whatever
for or against
bill,
meant.
All
bills
1"
bill,
this
was what he
plausibly presented might have
some
look of hope in them, might get some clamour of
approval from him
there
no disease
is
in himself some
as,
;
in the
the
for
man
wholly sick,
Nosology but he can trace
symptoms of
it.
Such was the mission
of Parliamentary Radicalism.
How
Parliamentary Radicalism has
mission, entrusted to
known
now,
is
have
sat at
fill
its
management
men.
to all
fulfilled
The expectant
millions
a feast of the Barmecide; been bidden
What
themselves with the imagination of meat.
thing has Radicalism obtained for them
than shadows of things has
them?
this
these eight years
Cheap
it
so
much
;
what other
as asked for
Justice, Justice to Ireland, Irish
Ap-
Ratepaying Clause, Poor- Rate,
Church -Rate, Household Suffrage, Ballot -Question
propriation-Clause,
'
open
'
or shut
:
not things but shadows of things
Benthamee formulas
barren as the east- wind
;
Ultra- radical, not seemingly of the
Benthamee
I
An
species,
The people are at last wearied.
we be ruined in our shops,
thrown out of our farms, voting for these men ?
is
forced to exclaim
They
say,
Why
:
'
should
Ministerial majorities decline; this Ministry has be-
come impotent, had it even the will to do good.
They have called long to us, " We are a Reform
Ministry; will ye not support us?"
ported them
;
We
have sup-
borne them forward indignantly on our
shoulders, time after time,
fall
after
fall,
when they
CHAP.
IX.
PARLIAMENTARY RADICALISM.
had been hurled out into the
helpless, like
dead luggage.
Ministry, not the
street
93
and lay prostrate,
;
of a Reform
we would support
It is the fact
name of one
that
I
Languor, sickness of hope deferred pervades the public
mind; the public mind says
struggle for the
the Tories be Ministry
if
living reality be Ministry
only run backward, he
choose to travel on
worst
is
at last,
Why
all
name of a Reform Ministry?
they will
A
!
rearing horse that will
conceivable horses the
all
Mounted on a
the dead horse.
Let
some
not the horse one would
is
yet of
:
let at least
;
this
rearing horse,
you may back him, spur him, check him, make a
little way even backwards
but seated astride of your
dead horse, what chance is there for you in the
:
chapter of possibilities?
less,
You
sit
motionless, hope-
a spectacle to gods and men.'
There is a class of revolutionists named Girondins,
whose fate in history is remarkable enough
Men
who rebel, and urge the Lower Classes to rebel, ought
!
to have other than Formulas to go upon.
Men who
discern in the misery of the toiling complaining millions not misery, but only a raw-material
which can
be wrought upon, and traded in, for one's own poor
hidebound theories and egoisms ; to whom millions of
living
fellow-creatures, with
beating hearts in their
bosoms, beating, suffering, hoping, are masses,' mere
* explosive
masses for blowing down Bastilles with,'
for voting at hustings for us : such men are of the
'
questionable species
!
No man
is
justified in resisting
by word or deed the Authority he lives under, for a
light cause, be such Authority what it may.
Obedience,
little
as
many may
consider that side of the
CHARTISM.
94
matter,
is
the primary duty of man.
bound indefeasibly, with
all
No man
Parents, teachers, superiors, leaders, these
recognise as deserving obedience.
man has
recognised, a
archy above him
to
Heaven
itself
but
is
force of obligation, to obey.
creatures
all
Recognised or not
his superiors,
a regular hier-
extending up, degree above degree
;
and
God
who made His
the Maker,
and order
world not for anarchy but for rule
!
It is
not a light matter when the just man can recognise in
the powers set over him no longer anything that is
divine when resistance against such becomes a deeper
law of order than obedience to them when the just
;
;
sees himself in the tragical position of a stirrer
man
up of
is
strife
Rebel, without due and most due cause,
I
the ugliest of words
But now
;
the
first
rebel was Satan.
in these circumstances shall
we blame
the unvoting disappointed millions that they turn away
with horror from this name of a Reform Ministry,
name of a Parliamentary Radicalism, and demand a
and reality thereof? That they too, having still
what so many had faith in, still count extension of the suffrage' the one thing needful and say,
in such manner as they can. Let the suffrage be still
fact
'
faith in
;
extended, then
all will
be well
It is the
?
ancient British
by prophets and evanfaith
preached forth from barrel-heads by all manner
gelists
of men. He M'ho is free and blessed has his twenty;
promulgated
in these ages
;
thousandth part of a master of tongue-fence in National
Palaver; whosoever is not blessed but unhappy, the
ailment of him
have
and
it
then
will
?
have
is
that he has
By
it
it
not.
Ought he not
the law of God and of men, yea
withal
I
Chartism, with
its
'
to
;
five
CHAP.
points,'
ings,
is
IX.
PARLIAMENTARY RADICALISM.
95
borne aloft on pikeheads and torchlight meetthere.
phenomena
in
Chartism
should provoke wonder
is
Not
England.
;
one of the most natural
that Chartism
now
exists
but that the invited hungry-
people should have sat eight years at such table of the
Barmecide, patiently expecting somewhat from the
Name
of a
years have
Reform Ministry, and not till after eight
grown hopeless, this is the respectable side
of the miracle.
96
CHAPTER
X.
IMPOSSIBLE.
N *'
But what
are
we
to do ?"
exclaims the practical
" Descend from
man, impatiently on every side
speculation and the safe pulpit, down into the rough
:
market-place, and say what can be done
1
tical
!"
—O
prac-
man, there seem very many things which practice
'and true manlike
Parliament and out of
effort, in
it,
But the first of all things,
as already said, is to gird thyself up for actual doing
to know that thou actually either must do, or, as the
!'
come out of that
Irish say,
It is not a lucky word this same impossible : no
might actually
avail to do.
*
good comes of those that have
mouth.
Who
way ?
way has
numerable
to
be travelled
critics will
into the region
it?
;
is
a lion
it is
1
;
In Art, in Practice, in-
;
that
we
are got, once for
of perennial commonplace, and
must contentedly continue
monstrate
so often in their
demonstrate that most things
are henceforth impossible
all,
it
he that says always, There
Sluggard, thou must slay the lion then
in the
the
is
there.
Let such critics dewhat harm is in
the nature of them
:
Poetry once well demonstrated to be impossible,
arises the Burns, arises the
place being
now
Goethe. Unheroic common-
clearly all
we have
to look for,
comes
the Napoleon, comes the conquest of the world. It was
proved by fluxionary calculus, that steamships could
never get across from the farthest point of Ireland
CHAP.
97
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
to the nearest of Newfoundland: impelling force, re-
maximum
sisting force,
here,
minimum
of Nature, and geometric demonstration
there
:
;
by law
—what could
The Great Western could weigh anchor
be done?
The Great
from Bristol Port; that could be done.
Western, bounding safe through the gullets of the
Hudson, threw her cable out on the capstan of
York, and
dry
our
left
" Impossible ?" cried Mirabeau
itself at leisure.
to his secretary, "
Never name
me
New
moist paper-demonstration to
still
Ne me
dites
jamais
ce bete de mot,
!"
word
"T^here is a phenomenon which one might call
which gauges
Paralytic Radicalism, in these days
to
that blockhead of a
;
with
measuring - reed, sounds with Philo-
Statistic
sophic Politico-Economic
plummet the deep dark sea
and having taught us rightly what an
of troubles;
is, sums up with the pracand use of consolation. That nothing
infinite sea of troubles it
tical inference,
by man, who has simply
to-* time and general
and thereupon, without so much as recommend-
whatever can be done in
to
sit. stillj
laws
;'
andllook
ing suicide, coldly takes
uninstructive
;
it
wistftttty
its
leave of us.
Most
paralytic,
unproductive of any comfort to one
!
They are an unreasonable class who cry, "Peace, peace,"
But what kind of class are
when there is no peace.
they who cry, " Peace, peace, have I not told you that
there
among
no peace
is
afflictive
Paralytic Radicalism, frequent
is
one of the most
phenomena the mind of man can be
to contemplate.
cease.
!"
those Statistic friends of ours,
One
Let Paralysis
dormitories proper for
prays that
it
at least
called
might
retire into secret places,
it
;
and
the public highways ought
F
CHARTISM.
98
not to be occupied by people demonstrating that motion
is
impossible. Paralytic;
entirely false
'
All
and
evil,
instant
speaking, gone.'
not actually so
?
be
is
evil
;
there
thank Heaven,
also,
this evil too, is as
you begin
passive misery
—and
Listen to a thinker of another sort
!
to stir
under
is,
the
;
properly
reader, whether
Consider,
Evil,
a nightmare
the evil
it,
it
be
once manfully fronted, ceases to
generous battle-hope in place of dead
;
the evil itself has
become a kind of
good.
To
we
the practical man, therefore,
that he has, as the
first
thing he can
himself up for actual doing
to
;
know
either there to do, or not there at
girded up,
as doable
how many
dwell,
will repeat
do,' to gird
well that he
Once
all.
is
rightly
things will present themselves
which now are not attemptible
great things,
'
for
thinking heads in England
the
;
last
ten
Two things,
!
years,
in
and are hovering, of
all
late,
With a word on
even on the tongues of not a few.
each of these, we will dismiss the practical man, and
right gladly take ourselves into obscurity and silence
Universal Education
again.
we mean
;
general Emigration
great thing
is
the
is
the second.
first
Who would suppose that Education were a thing
which had to be advocated on the ground of local
expediency, or indeed on any ground
?
As
if it
stood
not on the basis of everlasting duty, as a prime neces-
man.
sity of
cating
gift
;
much
It
as
is
it
a thing that should need no advodoes actually need.
of thinking to those
who could
who cannot
in that case think
:
this,
To
impart the
think,
and yet
one would imagine.
CHAP.
was the
first
X.
IMPOSSIBLE.
99
function a government had to set about
Were
discharging.
it
not a cruel thing to
see, in
province of an empire, the inhabitants living
man
lated in their limbs, each strong
How much
arm lamed ?
soul,
it
with
its
sees not
eyes
still
any
muti-
with his right-
crueller to find the strong
sealed, its eyes extinct so that
Light has come into the world, but
!
come
sand years the Sons of Adam,
poor peasant
this
all
it
has
For
in vain.
to
six thou-
in sleepless effort,
have
been devising, doing, discovering; in mysterious
infi-
nite indissoluble
communion, warring, a
little
band of
brothers, against the great black empire of Necessity
and Night
;
they have accomplished such a conquest
and to this man
The four-and-twenty
and conquests
not been.
bet are
still
;
won conquest
him.
as if
it
had
of the Alpha-
to him.
He passes by on
and that great Spiritual Kingdom, the
of his
brothers have conquered,
it
all
letters
Runic enigmas
the other side
toil
it is
:
own
is
brothers,
all
that his
a thing non-extant for
An invisible empire he knows it not, suspects
And is it not his withal the conquest of his
;
not.
;
own brothers, the lawfully acquired possession of all
men ? Baleful enchantment lies over him, from genegeneration;
ration
to
empire
is his,
are
bills
he knows not that such an
that such an empire
is
at all.
O, what
of rights, emancipations of black slaves into
black apprentices, lawsuits in chancery for some short
usufruct of a bit of land ?
The grand * seedfield of
Time'
and you give it him not. Time's
which includes the Earth and all her seedand pearl-oceans, nay her sowers too and pearlis
this man's,
seedfield,
fields
divers, all that
was wise and heroic and victorious here
CHARTISM.
100
below ; of which the Earth's centuries are but as furit stretches forth from the Beginning onward
rows, for
Day
even into this
'
!
My inheritance,
Time
is
my
Heavier wrong
is
how
lordly wide
fair seedfield, to
and
fair
Time I'm
;
heir
!'
not done under the sun.
It lasts
from century to century; the
blinded sire slaves himself out, and leaves a blinded
son; and men, made in the image of God, continue
from
j'ear
to
year,
as two-legged beasts of labour;
— and
in the largest
empire of the world, it is a debate whether a small
fraction of the Revenue of one Day (30,000/. is but
that) shall, after Thirteen Centuries, be laid out on it,
or not laid out on
it.
Have we Governors, have we
Teachers ; have we had a Church these thirteen hundred years ? What is an Overseer of souls, an Archoverseer, Archiepiscopus ?
him lay
let
thing
his
hand on
Is
his
heart,
If so,
and say what
I
But
quitting
all
that,
of which the
cannot well speak in terms of
now
he something?
that Education
is
human
civility, let
soul
us observe
not only an eternal duty, but
has at length become even a temporary and ephemeral
one, which the necessities of the hour will oblige us to
These Twenty-four million labouring men,
if their affairs remain unregulated, chaotic, will burn
ricks and mills reduce us, themselves and the world
look after.
;
Simply their affairs cannot reruin.
main unregulated, chaotic; but must be regulated,
brought into some kind of order. What intellect
were able to regulate them ? The intellect of a Bacon,
into ashes
and
CHAP.
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
the energy of a Luther, if left to their
might pause
in
101
own
strength,
dismay before such a task; a Bacon
and Luther added together, to be perpetual prime
minister over us, could not do it.
No one great and
greatest intellect can do
it.
What
can
?
Only Twenty-
four million ordinary intellects, once awakened into
action;
presided over, may.
well
these,
insight, is the
Intellect,
discernment of order in disorder
it
;
the discovery of the will of Nature, of God's will
is
the
;
beginning of the capability to walk according to that.
With
perfect intellect, were such possible without per-
fect morality, the
world would be perfect
unerringly correct,
its
its
condition faultless.
results
;
its
efforts
continually successful,
Intellect
is
like
light;
the
Chaos becomes a World under it JiaL lux. These
Twenty-four million intellects are but common in:
tellects
;
but they are
intellects
;
matter, instructed each about his
in earnest
about the
own province of it
labouring each perpetually, with what partial light
can be attained, to bring such province into rationality.
From
the partial determinations and
springs
the
universal.
intellect
was
in
intellect
intellect in the individuals, will the general
clusion
they
of
that quantity
According as there was
and no more.
conflict,
quantity
the Twenty-four millions will be ex-
hibited by the result they arrive at;
no
their
Precisely what
or
con-
make out embody itself as a worldWisdom, or as a baseless fateful
healing Truth and
Hallucination, a Chimsera breathing not fabulous fire
Dissenters call for one scheme of Education, the
Church objects;
and that; there is
by him and by her and by it: a
this party objects,
endless objection,
F 2
102
CHARTISM.
subject encumbered with difficulties
Pity that difficulties exist
should occasion
them
:
;
on every side
that Religion, of
We
difficulties.
I
things,
all
do not extenuate
in their reality they are considerable
in their
;
appearance and pretension, they are insuperable, heartappalling to
all
Secretaries of the
how can
For, in very truth,
Education
ledge
;
An
?
may be
Home
Department.
Religion be divorced from
irreverent knowledge
is
no know-
a development of the logical or other
handicraft faculty inward or outward
ture of the soul of a man.
A
but
;
is
no cul-
knowledge that ends
in
barren self-worship, comparative indifference or con-
tempt for
all
God's Universe except one insignificant
item thereof, what
it?
is
Handicraft development,
and even shallow as handicraft.
craft itself,
Nevertheless
and the habit of the merest
It is already
something
;
it is
logic,
is
handi-
nothing ?
the indispensable begin-
Wise men know it to be an
indispensable something; not yet much; and would
so gladly superadd to it the element whereby it may
become all. Wise men would not quarrel in attempting this they would lovingly co-operate in attemptning of every thing
!
;
ing
it.
'
And now how
teach religion
nant Ultra-radical, cited above
ingly not of the
Benthamee
;
?'
species, with
his dialect is far different, there are
we
hope,
religion ?
dos
;
so asks the indig-
an Ultra-radical seem-
whom, though
sound Churchmen,
How teach
who have some fellow-feeling
By plying with liturgies, catechisms, cre:
'
droning thirty-nine or other articles incessantly
into the infant ear?
Friends
1
In that case,
why
not
apply to Birmingham, and have Machines made, and
CHAP.
set
up
at all street-corners, in
highways and byways,
and vociferate the same, not ceasing night
to repeat
or day
103
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
The genius of Birmingham is adequate to
Magnus had a leather man that could
?
Albertus
that.
articulate
not to speak of Martinus Scriblerus' Niirn-
;
man that could reason as well as we know who
Depend upon it, Birmingham can make machines to
bei'g
!
repeat liturgies and articles
to do whatsoever feat
all
Iron Church
is
schoolmasters, nay
and churches compared with
all priests
ham
;
And what were
mechanical.
this
Birming-
Votes of two millions in aid of
!
You
many thousand
the church were then something.
order, at so
many pounds
iron parsons
a-head, so
as your grant covers
masonry
;
in all quarters
and
fix
there independent of the world.
fares, still
more
argumentative
in
them by
satisfactory
wheresoever wanted, to preach
unawakened
infidelity,
you
In loud thorough-
districts,
make
troubled with
windpipes
the
wider, strengthen the main steam-cylinder
;
your par-
son preaches, to the due pitch, while you give him
no man or thing. Here were a Churchextension
to which I, with my last penny, did I believe in it, would subscribe.
Ye blind leaders of
coal
;
and
fears
'
;'
the blind!
Are we Calmucks,
that pray
by turning
of a rotatory calebash with written prayers in
Mammon
human
it ?
Is
and machinery the means of converting
Is God, as Jean
become verily a Force
the iEther too a Gas
Alas, that Atheism should have
got the length of putting on priests' vestments, and
penetrating into the sanctuary itself!
Can dronings
of articles, repetitions of liturgies, and all the cash and
souls, as of spinning cotton ?
Paul predicted
it
would
!
be,
CHARTISM.
104
Bank of England
human soul, quicken
contrivance of Birmingham and the
united bring ethereal
into a
fire
it
out of earthly darkness into heavenly wisdom ?
is
kindled only by soul.
To
Soul
" teach" religion, the
first
thing needful, and also the last and the only thing,
finding of a
from
has religion.
church-building,
this,
ever else
man who
is
needful follows
;
is
All else follows
church-extension,
what-
without this nothing will
follow.'
From which we
method of teaching
still
far
behindhand
for our part conclude that the
religion to the English people
;
that the wise
well ask themselves in silence wistfully, "
last
priceless
is
that
be superadded?" and the unwise who think
perfect, to
that method," long argue of
But now,
fit official
How
element, by which education becomes
themselves pious, answering aloud, "
By
is
and pious may
it
By
this
method,
to small purpose.
mean time, could not by some
some fit announcement be made, in
in the
person,
words well-weighed,
in plan well-schemed,
adequately
representing the facts of the thing, That after thirteen
centuries of waiting, he the official person, and England
with him, was minded
now
to have the mystery of the
Alphabetic Letters imparted to
all
human
souls in this
Teaching of religion was a thing he could
not undertake to settle this day it would be work for
realm?
;
a day after
this
the alphabet to
;
the work of this day was teaching of
all
people.
The miraculous
art of read-
ing and writing, such seemed to him the needful preliminary of
all
teaching, the
first
corner-stone of what
foundation soever could be laid for what edifice soever,
in
the teaching
kind.
Let pious Churchism make
CHAP.
X.
105
IMPOSSIBLE.
make haste, let all pious
make haste, bestir them-
haste, let pious Dissenterism
preachers and missionaries
selves according to their zeal
and
skill
he the
:
official
person stood up for the Alphabet; and was even impatient for
He
it,
insisted,
having waited thirteen centuries now.
and would take no
denial,
promise, excuse or subterfuge, That
sons should be taught to read.
postponement,
all
He
English per-
appealed to
rational Englishmen, of all creeds, classes
all
and colours,
Whether this was not a fair demand nay whether it
was not an indispensable one in these days. Swing and
Chartism having risen ? For a choice of inoffensive
;
Hornbooks, and Schoolmasters able to teach reading,
he trusted the mere secular sagacity of a National
Collective
found
Wisdom,
sufficient.
He
in
proper committee, might be
purposed to appoint such School-
masters, to venture on the choice of such
to
send a
Hornbooks
;
Schoolmaster and Hornbook into every
township, parish and hamlet of England
ten years hence, an Englishman
who
;
so that, in
could not read
might be acknowledged as the monster, which he
really
is
This
thing
official
lies there,
person's plan
we do
with the facts of
pearances or sham-facts of
it
;
it,
not give.
a plan adequately repre-
senting the facts of the thing could by
be struck out, does
out.
lie
human energy
there for discovery and striking
It is his, the official person's duty,
mature a plan.
We
The
and with the ap-
not ours, to
can believe that Churchism and
Dissenterism would clamour aloud
;
but yet that in
the mere secular W^isdom of Parliament a perspicacity
equal to the choice of Hornbooks might, in very deed,
106
CHARTISM.
be found to reside.
England we believe would,
sulted, resolve to that effect.
if
con-
Alas, grants of a half-
day's revenue once in the thirteen centuries for such
an object, do not
out the voice of England, only
call
the superficial clamour of England
!
Hornbooks unex-
ceptionable to the candid portion of England,
believe,
might be
we
will
Nay, we can conceive that
selected.
fit to teach reading might, by a board of
men, whether from Oxford or Hoxton, or from
Schoolmasters
rational
both or neither of these places, be pitched upon.
We
can conceive even, as in Prussia, that a penalty,
civil
disabilities, that penalties
found
and
till
they were
inflicted
on every
disabilities
might be by law
effectual,
who did not teach his children to
every man who had not been taught to read.
parent
conceive in
there
fine,
such
is
might be found
read,
on
We
can
the vigour of our imagination,
in
England,
at
a dead-lift,
strength enough to perform this miracle, and produce
it
henceforth as a miracle done
land to read
Harder
!
things,
:
the teaching of Eng-
we do know, have been
performed by nations before now, not abler-looking
than England.
there
who
Ah me
should be an
!
if,
by some beneficent chance,
man found in England
official
could and would, with deliberate courage, after
ripe counsel, with candid insight, with patience, practical
sense,
knowing
realities
to
be
real,
clamours to be clamorous and to seem
real,
knowing
propose
this thing,
and the innumerable things springing from
—wo
any Churchism or any Dissenterism that
it,
to
cast itself athwart the path of that
gainsayers
I
is
man
!
Avaunt ye
darkness and ignorance of the Alphabet
necessary for you ?
Reconcile yourselves to the Al-
CHAP.
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
phabet, or depart elsewhither!
such a
man
all
;
realities alone
cant, leave
mentous
is
have strength
it
alone there.
among
:
not
that
all
;
wind-bags are wind; cant
Nor are all clamours mowe find, the loudest
living creatures,
the longest-eared
among lifeless
;
things the loudest
of us, had not eyes to see what was
real,
merely chimerical, and thought or called
How many
is
Alas, that official persons, and
the drum, the emptiest.
all
—Would
England gradually rally round
For
that has strength in England ?
genuineness in
has
is
107
what was
itself real
we
dread minatory Castle-spectres should
and
leave there, with their admonishing right-hand
ghastly-burning saucer-eyes, to do simply whatsoever
they might find themselves able to do
were not real ourselves
;
we
Alas, that
I
we
should otherwise have surer
vision for the real. Castle-spectres, in their utmost ter-
but poor mimicries of that real and most real
which lies in the Life of every Man that, thou
ror, are
terror
:
coward,
is
It
fear.
the thing to be afraid
is
of, if
but the scratch of a bare bodkin
the flight of a few days of time
how
featherbrain,
Eternity:
hast thou heard of that?
is
it
no
Stephens in
fact ?
:
it
not in that
but
is
find
real
it
Is that
a
Are Buckingham House and
that, or
But now we have
thing
wilt
;
and even thou, poor
;
palpitating
or
thou wilt live in
is.
fact,
St.
?
to speak of the second great
Emigration. It was said above,
all
new
epochs,
so convulsed and tumultuous to look upon, are 'expansions,' increase of faculty not yet organised.
It is
eminently true of the confusions of this time of ours.
Disorganic Manchester
afflicts
us with
its
Chartisms
CHARTISM.
108
yet
is
not spinning of clothes for the naked intrinsi-
cally a
most blessed thing?
ganic will bless and not
afflict.
Manchester once
or-
The
we
confusions, if
would understand them, are at bottom mere increase
which we know not yet how to manage
new wealth
which the old coffers will not hold.' How true is this,
'
;
above
all,
population
which
is
of the strange phenomenon called
!'
Over-population
bringing
all
'
over-
the grand anomaly,
is
other anomalies to a
once more, as at the end of the
Now
crisis.
Roman
most confused epoch and yet one of the
Teutonic Countries find themselves too
Empire, a
greatest, the
On
full.
a
certain western rim of our small Europe, there are
more men than were expected.
Heaped up
against
the western shore there, and for a couple of hundred
miles inward, the
and confuses
'
yet, if this small
tide of population
somewhat
itself
it
me
!
were, call to us.
Can
it
be an
there should be
'
swells too high,
Over-population ?
western rim of Europe
pled, does not everywhere
as
!
else a
Come and
evil that in
new Men ?
is
And
overpeo-
whole vacant Earth,
till
me, come and reap
an Earth such
as ours
Considered as mercantile
commodities, as working machines,
is
there in Bir-
mingham or out of it a machine of such value ?
Good Heavens a white European Man, standing on
his two legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his
shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders,
is worth something considerable, one would say
The
stupid black African man brings money in the market;
the much stupider four-footed horse brings money
it is we that have not yet learned the art of managing
our white European man
*
!
!'
:
I
If
CHAP.
The
109
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
controversies on Malthus and the
Principle,'
'
*
Population
Preventive check' and so forth, with which
the public ear has been deafened for a long while, are
indeed sufficiently mournful.
Dreary,
stolid,
without hope for this world or the next,
all
is
dismal,
that of
the preventive check and the denial ef the preventive
check.
Anti-Malthusians quoting their Bible against
On
palpable facts, are not a pleasant spectacle.
how
the
we read in Malthusian
benefactors of the species
The working people have
their condition in their own hands
let them diminish the supply of labourers, and of course the demand
other hand,
often have
:
'
;
and the remuneration
diminish the supply
:
will increase
Yes, let them
!'
who are they ? They are
human individuals, scattered
but
twenty-four millions of
over a hundred and eighteen thousand square miles
and more
of space
joinering
;
;
weaving, delving,
hammering,
each unknown to his neighbour
tinct within his
own
;
each
dis-
They are not a kind of
skin.
character that can take a resolution, and act on
Smart Sally
very readily.
fascinating to brisk
Tom
in
yours
in
:
can
Tom
be called
on to make pause, and calculate the demand for
bour
in the British
Empire
first ?
renounce his highest blessedness of
and conquer
it
profit
like
Nay,
life,
Tom
la-
did
and struggle
him or us
Seven millions of the
?
all
the
finest
more
and with blue-visaged Hibernians instead of
Saxon Tomsons and Sallysons, the latter end of
briskly
;
that country
ful
if
a Saint Francis of Assisi, what would
peasantry do not renounce, but proceed
fair
it,
our alley proves ail-too
is
worse than the beginning.
Malthusian prophets
O wonder-
Millenniums are undoubt-
!
G
CHARTISM.
110
come one way
edly coming, must
will
it
by twenty
be, think you,
oi*
the other
but
:
millions of working
people simultaneously striking work in that depart-
ment
;
pEissing, in universal trades-union,
not to beget any more
;
a resolution
the labour-market
By Day and Night
satisfactory ?
irresistible so
till
!
become
they were indeed
not to be compelled by law or war
might make their own terms with the richer
and defy the world
A
shade more rational
who
factors of the species,
in
some
classes,
!
is
that of those other bene-
counsel that in each parish,
central locality, instead of the Parish Clergy-
man, there might be established some Parish Exterminator
;
or say a Reservoir of Arsenic, kept up at
for
which
Church the rates probably would not be grudged.
—Ah,
the public expense, free to
it is
bitter jesting
all
parishioners
on such a subject.
sick to look at the dreary chaos,
;
One's heart
is
and valley of Jehosa-
phat, scattered with the limbs and souls of one's fellow-
men
;
and no divine
voice, only creaking of
hungry
vultures, inarticulate bodeful ravens, horn-eyed parrots
that do articulate, proclaiming, Let these bones live
Dante's Divina Commedia
is
!
called the mournfullest of
books: transcendent mistemper of the noblest soul; utterance of a boundless, godlike, unspeakable, implacable
sorrow and protest against the world.
well Street, not long ago,
book
still
mournfuller
:
we bought,
But
in
Holy-
for three-pence, a
the Pamphlet of one "Marcus,"
whom his poor Chartist
the "Demon Author."
editor
and republisher
calls
This Marcus Pamphlet was
the book alluded to by Stephens the Preacher Chartist,
in
one of his harangues
:
it
proves to be no fable that
CHAP.
such a book existed; here
'Printed by John Hill,
it lies,
now
Black-horse Court, Fleet Street, and
for the instruction of the labourer,
dale,
tist
Ill
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
reprinted
by William Dug-
Holywell Street, Strand,' the exasperated Charwho sells it you for three-pence. We have
editor
read Marcus
but his sorrow
;
is
not divine.
We
in sport
ah no,
he would turn out to have been
grim earnest with
hini
;
:
hoped
it
is
Marcus
grim as very death.
demon author at all he is a benefactor of the
own kind has looked intensely on the
world's woes, from a Benthamee Malthusian watchtower, under a Heaven dead as iron and does now,
is
not a
:
species in his
;
;
with
much
longwindedness, in a drawling, snuffling,
circuitous, extremely dull, yet at
positive manner,
recommend
that
bottom handfast and
all
children of work-
ing people, after the third, be disposed of by
extinction.'
The mothers would
sent.
for
'
painless
Charcoal-vapour and other methods
consent, might be
Three children might be
made
left living
;
exist.
to con-
or perhaps,
Marcus's calculations are not yet perfect, two and
There might be beautiful cemeteries with
colonnades and flower-plots,' in which the patriot infanticide matrons might delight to take their evening
walk of contemplation and reflect what patriotesses
a half.
'
;
they were, what a cheerful flowery world
is
the scheme of
Marcus
;
this
is
it
what
Such
was.
he,
share, could devise to heal the world's woes.
for his
A bene-
factor of the species, clearly recognisable as such
saddest scientific mortal
fallen in
with
;
we have ever
in this
sadder even than poetic Dante.
a nogod-like sorrow
;
sadder than the godlike.
Chartist editor, dull as he, calls
:
the
world
His
is
The
him demon author,
112
CHARTISM.
and a man
What
set
on by the Poor-Law Commissioners.
a black,
waste-struggling world,
godless,
in
once merry England of ours, do such pamphlets
this
and such editors betoken
!
Laissez-faire and Malthus,
Malthus and Laissez-faire
length to part
ought not these two at
Might we not hope that
:
company?
both of them had as good as delivered their message
now, and were about to go their ways
For
this of the
all
*
?
and the
painless extinction,*
a world where Canadian Forests stand un-
rest, is in
boundless Plains and Prairies unbroken with
felled,
the plough
on the west and on the
;
green desert
east,
spaces never yet
made white with corn
overcrowded
western nook of Europe, our Terres-
little
Planet, nine -tenths of
trial
by nomades,
and reap
means
With
me
is
still
And
!
;
With
yet vacant or tenanted
Come and
till
me, come
no nation ever before had.
with war -ships rotting
bidden move and not
and to the
an England with wealth, and
in
for moving, such as
ships
it
crying,
;
rot,
idle,
might bridge
which, but
all
oceans.
trained men, educated to pen and practise, to
administer and act
;
briefless
Barristers,
Clergy, taskless Scholars, languishing in
chargeless
all
houses, hiding in obscure garrets, besieging
all
courtante-
chambers, in passionate want of simply one thing.
—with
Work
;
vices,
wearing themselves down in wretched tedium,
as
as
many Half-pay
Officers of both Ser-
might lead an Emigrant host larger than Xerxes'
was
!
Laissez-faire and Malthus positively must part
company.
Is
never-resting
it
not as
if this
Europe of ours
swelling, simmering,
stood, once more, on the
verge of an expansion without parallel
;
struggling,
CHAP.
113
IMPOSSIBLE.
X.
struggling like a mighty tree again about to burst in
the embrace of summer, and shoot forth broad frondent
boughs which would
but the noblest of
the whole earth
fill
all,
—
A
?
sore travail, but travails that
is a new Man born
True thou Gold-Hofrath,' exclaims an eloquent
say, Behold, there
and
'
disease
who is in pain and
she may be a mother,
as of her
satirical
German
!
of our acquaintance, in that strange
True thou Gold-Hofrath too crowded
Meanwhile what portion of this inconsiderindeed
able Terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and
How thick stands
delved, till it will grow no more ?
your population in the Pampas and Savannas of
America round ancient Carthage, and in the interior
Book
of his,*
'
:
!
;
of Africa
;
on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the
in Spain, Greece, Turkey,
central Platform of Asia
;
Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man,
in one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him
earth, will feed himself
now
still
and nine
Alas, where
others.
are the Hengsts and Alarics of our
expanding Europe
grown too narrow,
still
glowing,
who, when their home
;
enlist and,
will
like
is
fire-pillars,
guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable
Valour ; equipped, not now with the battle-axe
living
and war-chariot, but with the steamengine and ploughshare
?
Where
are they
?
— Preserving
their
Game
* Sartor Resartus, p. 239.
THE END.
LONDON
:
PRINTED BY KOBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
46 St. Martin's Lhne.
!'
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
1.
Second Edition.
In
3 vols.
12mo,
pritfe 1/. 5s., cloth
and
lettered,
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. A
Vol.
The Bastille.
I.
Vol.
Vol.
III.
II.
History.
—The Constitutiox.
—The Guillotixe.
II.
A
In 3
vols.
new Edition,
12mo,
revised.
cloth
II. 5s.,
and
lettered,
TRANSLATION OF
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER;
CONTAINING
MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP
AND MEISTER'S TRAVELS.
III.
In
vol. small 8vo, price 10*
1
6rf.
SARTOR RESARTUS;
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF HERR TEUFELSDROCKH.
In three Books.
IV.
A
CRITICAL
new Edition
in the Press, of
AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
*^.* The principal contents of these four volumes are
Jean
Paul Friedi-ich Richter
State of German Literature
Werner
Goethe's Helena
Goethe
Bums Heyne German Playwrights
Voltaire
Novalis
Signs of the Times
Jean Paul
Friedrich Richter again
On History SchiUer The Nibellungen Lied
Early German Literature
Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry
Characteristics
Johnson
Death of
Goethe
Goethe's Works
Diderot
On History again Count
Cagliostro
Corn - Law Rhymes
The Diamond Necklace
Mirabeau
French Parliamentary History
Walter Scott
Chartism.
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
JAMES FRASER, LONDON.
—
—
—
—
—
:
—
—
*
#059 -5
£/t
^
DA