Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS.[1 - Latter-Day Pamphlets, edited by Thomas Carlyle. No. I. The Present Time. No. II. Model Prisons. No. III. Downing Street. No. IV. The New Downing Street. London: 1850.]

It is nothing unusual, in this wayward world of ours, to find men denouncing, with apparent sincerity, that very fault which is most conspicuous in themselves. How often do we detect the most quarrelsome fellow of our acquaintance, the Hotspur of his immediate circle, uttering a grave homily against intemperance of speech, and rebuking for some casual testiness a friend, whose general demeanour and bearing give token of a lily-liver? What more common than to hear the habitual drunkard railing at the sin of inebriety, and delivering affecting testimony against the crying iniquity of the ginshop? We have listened to discourses on the comeliness of honesty, and the degrading tendencies of mammon-worship, from gentlemen who, a few hours before, had given private instructions to their brokers to rig the market, and who looked upon George Hudson as the greatest ornament of the age. Cobden mounts the platform to propose a motion in favour of universal peace and brotherhood, and, by way of argument, suggests the propriety of crumpling up the empire of the Russias, like the sheet of white paper which trembles in his omnipotent hand. He is seconded by a Quaker.

Mr Thomas Carlyle has, of late years, devoted a good deal of his leisure time to the denunciation of shams. The term, in his mouth, has a most extended significance indeed – he uses it with Catholic application. Loyalty, sovereignty, nobility, the church, the constitution, kings, nobles, priests, the House of Commons, ministers, Courts of Justice, laws, and lawgivers, are all alike, in the eyes of Mr Carlyle, shams. Nor does he consider the system as of purely modern growth. England, he thinks, has been shamming Isaac for several hundred years. Before the Commonwealth it was overridden by the frightful Incubus of Flunkeyism; since then, it has been suffering under Horsehair and Redtapism, two awful monsters that present themselves to Mr Carlyle's diseased imagination, chained at the entrances of Westminster Hall and Downing Street. Cromwell, perhaps, was not a sham, for in the burly regicide brewer Mr Carlyle discerns certain grand inarticulate strivings, which elevate him to the heroic rank. The gentlemen of the present age, however, are all either shams or shamming. The honourable Felix Parvulus, and the right honourable Felicissimus Zero, mounted respectively upon "desperate Sleswick thunder-horses" – M'Crowdy the political economist – Bobus – Flimnap, Sec. Foreign Department – the Right Honourable Minimus, and various other allegorical personages, intended, we presume, to typify carnal realities, are condemned as Solemn Shams, Supreme Quacks, Phantasm Captains, the Elixir of the Infatuated, and Able-Editor's Nobles.

It is natural to suppose that an individual who habitually deals in such wholesale denunciation, and whose avowed wish is to regenerate and reform society upon some entirely novel principle, must be a man of immense practical ability. The exposer of shams and quackeries should be, in his own person, very far indeed above suspicion of resembling those whom he describes, or tries to describe, in language more or less intelligible. If otherwise, he stands in imminent danger of being treated by the rest of the world as an impertinent and egregious impostor. Now, Mr Thomas Carlyle is anything but a man of practical ability. Setting aside his style for the present, let us see whether he has ever, in the course of his life, thrown out a single hint which could be useful to his own generation, or profitable to those who may come after. If he could originate any such hint, he does not possess the power of embodying it in distinct language. He has written a history of the French Revolution, a pamphlet on Chartism, a work on Heroes and Hero-worship, and a sort of political treatise entitled Past and Present. Can any living man point to a single practical passage in any of these volumes? If not, what is the real value of Mr Carlyle's writings? What is Mr Carlyle himself but a Phantasm of the species which he is pleased to denounce?

We have known, ere now, in England, political writers who, single-handed, have waged war with Ministers, and denounced the methods of government. But they were men of strong masculine understanding, capable of comprehending principles, and of exhibiting them in detail. They never attempted to write upon subjects which they did not understand: consequently, what they did write was well worthy of perusal, more especially as their sentiments were conveyed in clear idiomatic English. Perhaps the most remarkable man of this class was the late William Cobbett. Shrewd and practical, a master of figures, and an utter scorner of generalisation, he went at once in whatever he undertook to the root of the matter, and, right or wrong, demonstrated what he thought to be the evil, and what he conceived to be the remedy. There was no slip-slop, burlesque, or indistinctness about William Cobbett. Mr Carlyle, on the other hand, can never stir one inch beyond the merest vague generality. If he were a doctor, and you came to him with a cut finger, he would regale you with a lecture on the heroical qualities of Avicenna, or commence proving that Dr Abernethy was simply a Phantasm-Leech, instead of whipping out his pocket-book, and applying a plaster to the wound. Put him into the House of Commons, and ask him to make a speech on the budget. No baby ever possessed a more indefinite idea of the difference between pounds, shillings, and pence. He would go on maundering about Teufelsdrökh, Sauerteig, and Dryasdust, Sir Jabez Windbag, Fire-horses, Marsh-jötuns, and vulturous Choctaws, until he was coughed down as remorselessly as ever was Sir Joshua Walmsley. And yet this is the gentleman who has the temerity to volunteer his services as a public instructor, and who is now issuing a series of monthly tracts, for the purpose of shedding a new light upon the most intricate and knotty points of the general policy of Great Britain!

Something of this kind we have already witnessed in a neighbouring country, but never in the like degree. France has had her Flocons and her Louis Blancs, small, pert, presumptuous animals, chalking out schemes of social regeneration, organised labour, industrial regiments, and the like. We do not intend to insinuate that either of these scribes is entitled to be ranked, for parity of intellect, with Mr Carlyle, because by doing so we might involve ourselves in a squabble with some of his benighted admirers. But we say, with perfect sincerity, that so far as regards political attainments and information, clear views, and we shall even add common sense, (distant as that attribute is from any of the parties above named,) MM. Flocon and Blanc are at least as capable guides as Mr Carlyle can pretend to be. Something tangible there is, however pernicious to society, in the propositions of the former – the latter does not favour us with propositions at all; he contents himself with abusing men and matters in a barbarous, conceited, uncouth, and mystical dialect.

One peculiarity there is about the Latterday Pamphlets, as contradistinguished from their author's previous lucubrations, which has amused us not a little. Mr Carlyle has hitherto been understood to favour the cause of self-styled Liberalism. His mania, or rather his maunderings, on the subject of the Protector gained him the applause of many who are little less than theoretical republicans, and who regard as a glorious deed the regicide of the unfortunate Charles. Moreover, certain passages in his History of the French Revolution tended to strengthen this idea; he had a kindly side for Danton, and saw evident marks of heroism in the loathsome miscreant whom, in his usual absurd jargon, he styles "the pale sea-green Incorruptible," Robespierre. On this ground, his works were received with approbation by a section of the public press; and we used to hear him lauded and commended as a writer of the profoundest stamp, as a deep original thinker, a thorough-paced philanthropist, the champion of genuine greatness, and the unflinching enemy of delusions. Now, however, things are altered. Mr Carlyle has got a new crochet into his head, and to the utter discomfiture of his former admirers, he manifests a truculent and ultra-tyrannical spirit, abuses the political economists, wants to have a strong coercive government, indicates a decided leaning to the whip and the musket as effectual modes of reasoning, and, in short, abjures democracy! The sensation caused by this extraordinary change of sentiment has been as great as if Joe Hume had declared himself a spendthrift. Only think of such a document as the following, addressed to the sovereign people!

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

"Vagrant Lackalls! foolish most of you, criminal many of you, miserable all; the sight of you fills me with astonishment and despair. What to do with you I know not; long have I been meditating, and it is hard to tell. Here are some three millions of you, as I count; so many of you fallen sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to think, every new unit that falls is loading so much more the chain that drags the other over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncounted millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a-day. They hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, crumping themselves down, holding on with all their strength, but falling, falling one after another; and the chain is getting heavy, so that ever more fall; and who at last will stand! What to do with you? The question, what to do with you? especially since the potato died, is like to break my heart!

"One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered, and now know for some time back: That you cannot be left to roam abroad in this unguided manner, stumbling over the precipices, and loading ever heavier the fatal chain upon those who might be able to stand; that this of locking you up in temporary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble, and subsisting you on Indian meal, till you can sally forth again on fresh roamings, and fresh stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil; – that this is not the plan; and that it never was, or could out of England have been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!

"Vagrant Lackalls! I at last perceive, all this that has been sung and spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement, emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty over the world, is little other than sad temporary jargon, brought upon us by a stern necessity, – but now ordered by a sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad temporary jargon, I say; made up of sense and nonsense, – sense in small quantities, and nonsense in very large; – and, if taken for the whole or permanent truth of human things, it is no better than fatal infinite nonsense eternally untrue. All men, I think, will soon have to quit this, to consider this as a thing pretty well achieved; and to look out towards another thing much more needing achievement at the time that now is."

Flat burglary as ever was committed! O villain! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this – so say the political Dogberrys to the gentleman whom they used to applaud. We are not surprised at their wrath. It is rather hard to be told at this time of day that ballot-boxes and extension of the suffrage are included in Mr Carlyle's catalogue of Shams, and that Messrs Thompson, Fox, and Co., must even submit to the charge of talking unveracities and owlism. Surely there is some mistake here. Not a whit of it. Mr Carlyle is in grim earnest, and lays about him like a man. He has not studied the records of the French Revolution for nothing; and he is not able to discern in the late Continental revolts any ground for general congratulation on the improved prospects of mankind. Such language as the following must sound as a strange rebuke in the ears of divers organs of the public press, who, not long ago, were flinging up their caps in ecstasies at the fall of constitutions, backing up Garibaldi against the Pope, Charles Albert against Radetsky, the Sicilian insurgents against their Sovereign of Naples, Kossuth against the Emperor, Von Gagern against Federalism, Ledru Rollin against Civilisation, and Lamartine against Common-sense.

"Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to arrest the attention of all men simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty – O Heaven! one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody from the universal human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same. The front-wall of your wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by you to no purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallen prostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still hang on by the mere beam-ends and coherency of old carpentry, though in a sloping direction, and depend there till certain poor rusty nails and wormeaten dovetailings give way: – but is it cheering, in such circumstances, that the whole household burst forth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation, liberty and picturesqueness of position, and thank God that now they have got a house to their mind?"

Sham-kings may and do exist, thinks Mr Carlyle, but the greatest unveracity of all is this same Democracy, which people were lately so very willing to applaud. It must be admitted that our author is perfectly impartial in the distribution of his strokes. He has no love for Kings, or Metternichs, or Redtape, or any other fiction or figure of speech whereby he typifies existing governments: he disposes of them in a wholesale manner of Impostors and Impostures. But no more does he regard with affection Chartist Parliament, Force of Public Opinion, or "M'Crowdy the Seraphic Doctor with his last evangel of Political Economy." M'Culloch is, in his eyes, as odious as the First Lord in Waiting, whoever that functionary may be. Clenching both his fists, he delivers a facer to the Trojan on the right, and to the Tyrian on the left. Big with the conviction that all Governments are wrong, as presently or lately constituted, he can see no merit, but the reverse, in any of the schemes of progress, or reform, or financial change, which have yet been devised. Here follow some of his notions with regard to the most popularly prescribed remedies: —

"A divine message, or eternal regulation of the Universe, there verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man: faithfully following this, said procedure or affair will prosper, and have the whole universe to second it, and carry it, across the fluctuating contradictions, towards a victorious goal; not following this, mistaking this, disregarding this, destruction and wreck are certain for every affair. How find it? All the world answers me, 'Count heads'; ask Universal Suffrage by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell! Universal Suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well, – I perceive we have got into strange spiritual latitudes indeed. Within the last half century or so, either the Universe or else the heads of men must have altered very much. Half a century ago, and down from Father Adam's time till then, the Universe, wherever I could hear tell of it, was wont to be of somewhat abstruse nature; by no means carrying its secret written on its face, legible to every passer-by; on the contrary, obstinately hiding its secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons, and partially disclosing it to the wise and noble-minded alone, whose number was not the majority in my time! – Or perhaps the chief end of man being now, in these improved epochs, to make money and spend it, his interests in the Universe have become amazingly simplified of late; capable of being voted on with effect by almost anybody? 'To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest:' truly if that is the summary of his social duties, and the final divine message he has to follow, we may trust him extensively to vote upon that. But if it is not, and never was, or can be? If the Universe will not carry on its divine bosom any commonwealth of mortals that have no higher aim, – being still 'a Temple and Hall of Doom! not a mere Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the unfathomable Universe has decided to reject Human Beavers pretending to be Men; and will abolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their 'markets' and them, unless they think of it? – In that case, it were better to think of it; and the Democracies and Universal Suffrages, I can observe, will require to modify themselves a good deal!"

Now, reader, what do you think of all this? We doubt not you are a good deal puzzled: and an admission to that effect would be no impeachment of your intellect. Well then, let us try to extract from these pamphlets of Mr Carlyle some tendency, if not distinct meaning, which may at least indicate the current of his hopes and aspirations. Putting foreign governments altogether out of the question, we gather that Mr Carlyle considers this realm of Britain as most scandalously misgoverned; that he looks upon Downing Street as an absolute sewer; that he decidedly yields to Mr Hawes in reverence for Lord John Russell; that he regards the Protectionists as humbugs; that he laughs at ballot-boxes, despises extension of the suffrage, and repudiates, as a rule of conduct, the maxim about the markets, which indeed, by this time, stinks in every British nostril as yet unplugged with calico; that he detests the modern brood of political economists with a cordiality which does him credit; and that he is firmly convinced that democracy is a thing forever impossible. This is a tolerably extensive creed, though as yet entirely a negative one – is there no one point upon which Mr Carlyle will condescend to be positive?

Yes, one there is; not apparent perhaps to the casual reader, but detectible by him who studies closely those pages of oracular thought – a point very important at the present moment, for this it is – that there is ONE MAN existing in her Majesty's dominions who could put everything to rights, if he were only allowed to do so. Who that man is we may possibly discover hereafter. At present we are hardly entitled to venture beyond the boundaries of dim conjecture. Nor is it very clear in what way the Unknown, or rather the Undeveloped, is to set about his exalted mission. Is he to be minister – or something more? Perhaps Mr Carlyle did not like to be altogether explicit on such a topic as this; but we may possibly gain a little light from indirect and suggestive passages. Take this for example:

"Alas, it is sad enough that anarchy is here; that we are not permitted to regret its being here, – for who that had, for this divine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could wish that shams of any kind, especially that Sham Kings should continue? No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, when this to many a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a man it does seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seems strange exceedingly, a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial, – what you in your iconoclast humour call shams, – all his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, did not scrip continue saleable, and the banker pay in bullion, or paper with a metallic basis? 'The greatest sham, I have always thought, is he that would destroy shams.'

"Even so. To such depth have I, the poor knowing person of this epoch, got; – almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly set forth among the sons of Adam; never before did the creature called man believe generally in his heart that this was the rule in this Earth; that in deliberate long-established lying could there be help or salvation for him, could there be at length other than hindrance and destruction for him."

We have been sorely tempted to mark with italics certain portions of the above extract, but on second thoughts we shall leave it intact. After applying ourselves most diligently to the text, with the view of eliciting its meaning, we have arrived at the conclusion, that it is either downright nonsense, or something a great deal worse. Observe what he says. It is to be prayed for by all men that Shams may cease – more especially Sham Kings. But certain solid Englishmen are not prepared for this. They have been "used to decent forms long since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial, – what you in your iconoclast humour call shams." They thought no harm of them. "Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated," &c. And those who differ in their estimate of these things from Mr Carlyle are "almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood: " – and their belief is a "scandalous blasphemy." So then, the Monarchy is a sham, and so are the laws, the Church, and the Constitution! They are all lies, and in deliberate long-established lying there can be no help or salvation for the subject! This may not be Mr Carlyle's meaning, and we are very willing to suppose so; but he has no title to be angry, were we to accept his words according to their evident sense. If men, through conceit or affectation, will write in this absurd and reckless fashion, they must be prepared to stand the consequences. The first impression on the mind of every one who peruses the above passage must be, that the author is opposed to the form of government which is unalterably established in these kingdoms. If this be so, we should like to know in what respect such doctrines differ from the pestilential revolutionary trash which has inundated France and Germany? What kind of overturn does Mr Carlyle contemplate, for overturn there must be, and that of the most extensive kind, if his views are ever destined to be realised? Is it not, perhaps, as melancholy a spectacle as may be, to find a man of some genius, and considerable learning, attempting to unsettle the minds of the young and enthusiastic, upon points distinctly identified with all that is great and glorious in our past history; and insinuating doctrines which are all the more dangerous on account of the oblique and uncertain language in which they are conveyed? Fear God and honour the King, are precepts not acknowledged by Mr Carlyle as the rudiment and foundation of his faith. He does not recognise them as inseparably linked together. He would set up instead some wretched phantom of his own imagination, framed out of the materials which he fondly supposes to be the attributes of the heroic character, and he would exalt that above all other authority, human and divine. He is, if we do not entirely misconstrue the tenor of these pamphlets, possessed at this moment with the notion of the advent of another Cromwell, the sole event which, as he thinks, can save England from being swallowed up by the evils which now beset her. What these evils are, we shall shortly endeavour to ascertain; in the mean time, let us keep our attention fixed on this primary matter of authority.

Cromwellism, then, if we may use the term, is Mr Carlyle's secret and theory. Cromwellism, is, we know, but another phrase for despotism; and we shall not put so harsh a construction on the term as to suppose that it necessarily involves extinguishment of the royal function. The example of Richelieu is sufficient to save us from such a violent interpretation, and therefore we may fairly assume that our author contemplates nothing more than the lodgment of the executive power in the hands of some stern and inexorable minister. To this the whole of his multitudinous political ravings, when melted into intelligible speech, would seem to tend. He has little regard for Kings, despises Lords, contemns Bishops, scouts the House of Commons, sneers at Chartists, repudiates the political economists, spurns the mob, and laughs at the Ten-pounders. There is here a tolerably extensive range of scorn – we doubt whether it could have been equalled by the reflective philosopher of the tub. Now, lest we should be thought harsh in our judgment of Mr Carlyle, or uncharitable in our method of construing him, let us hear what he has to say with regard to popular representation. Let us suppose that monarchy is cleared away as a Sham, or at all events placed in respectable abeyance, and that there is no farther debate as to hereditary right or even constitutional sovereignty. Also that we have got rid of Peers and Bishops. Now, then, as to Congress: —

"To examine this recipe of a Parliament, how fit it is for governing Nations, nay, how fit it may now be, in these new times, for governing England itself where we are used to it so long: this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which all thinking men, and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for the small still voices and eternal intimations, across the temporary clamours and loud blaring proclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorous fact itself; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, demand practical decision, or redecision of it from us, – with enormous penalty if we decide it wrong. I think we shall all have to consider this question, one day; better perhaps now than later, when the leisure may be less. If a Parliament, with suffrages and universal or any conceivable kind of suffrages, is the method, then certainly let us set about discovering the kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. But it is possible a Parliament may not be the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at all, if taken as the whole? If a Parliament with never such suffrages is not the method settled by this latter authority, then it will urgently behove us to become aware of that fact, and to quit such method; – we may depend upon it, however unanimous we be, every step taken in that direction will, by the Eternal Law of things, be a step from improvement, not towards it."

Was there ever so tantalising a fellow? We only know of one parallel instance. Sancho, after a judicial hearing at Barrataria, sits down to dinner, but every dish upon which he sets his fancy is whisked away at the command of a gaunt personage stationed on one side of his chair, having a wholesome rod in his hand. Fruit, meat, partridges, stewed rabbits, veal, and olla-podrida, vanish in succession, and for the removal of each some learned reason is assigned by the representative of Esculapius. We give the remainder of the anecdote in the words of Cervantes. "Sancho, hearing this, threw himself backward in his chair, and, looking at the doctor from head to foot, very seriously, asked him his name, and where he had studied. To which he answered: 'My Lord Governor, my name is Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero; I am a native of a place called Tirteafuera, lying between Caraquel and Almoddobar del Campo on the right hand, and I have taken my doctor's degree in the University of Ossuna.' 'Then hark you,' said Sancho in a rage, 'Signor Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero, native of Tirteafuera, lying on the right hand as we go from Caraquel to Almoddobar del Campo, graduate in Ossuna, get out of my sight this instant – or, by the light of heaven! I will take a cudgel, and, beginning with your carcase, will so belabour all the physic-mongers in the island, that not one of the tribe shall be left! – I mean of those like yourself, who are ignorant quacks; for those who are learned and wise I shall make much of, and honour, as so many angels. I say again, Signor Pedro Rezio, begone! or I shall take the chair I sat on, and comb your head with it, to some tune, and, if I am called to an account for it, when I give up my office, I will prove that I have done a good service, in ridding the world of a bad physician, who is a public executioner.'"

Mr Carlyle, though he may not be aware of it, is even such a political doctor. He despises De Lolme on the British Constitution, and peremptorily forbids his patient to have anything to do with that exploded system. "I should like to have," says the pupil placed under his charge, "in the first place, a well-regulated constituted monarchy." "'Tis a sham!" cries Signor Doctor Thomas Carlyle – "Are solemnly constituted Impostors the proper kings of men? Do you think the life of man is a grimacing dance of apes? To be led always by the squeak of a paltry fiddle? Away with it!" The wand is waved, and constitutional monarchy disappears. "Well then," quoth the tyro, "suppose we have an established Church and a House of Peers?" "Avaunt, ye Unveracities – ye Unwisdoms," shrieks the infuriated graduate. "What are ye but iniquities of Horsehair? O my brother! above all, when thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity, Brute-mindedness, – yes, there, with or without Church-tithes and Shovelhat, or were it with mere dungeons, and gibbets, and crosses, attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives! Instead of heavenly or earthly Guidance for the souls of men, you have Black or White Surplice Controversies, stuffed Hair-and-leather Popes; – terrestrial Law-words, Lords, and Lawbringers organising Labour in these years, by passing Corn Laws. Take them away!" "What say you to the House of Commons, doctor?" "Owldom! off with it." "A Democracy?" "On this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, we apprehend, is for ever impossible." "And why will none of these things do?" "Because," quoth the graduate with a solemn aspect, "you perceive we have actually got into the New Era there has been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived at last; – and it is by no means the land flowing with milk and honey we were led to expect! very much the reverse. A terrible new country this: no neighbours in it yet, that I can see, but irrational flabby monsters (philanthropic and other) of the giant species; hyænas, laughing hyænas, predatory wolves; probably devils, blue (or perhaps blue-and-yellow) devils, as St Guthlac found in Croyland long ago. A huge untrodden haggard country, the chaotic battlefield of Frost and Fire, a country of savage glaciers, granite-mountains, of foul jungles, unhewed forests, quaking bogs; – which we shall have our own ados to make arable and habitable, I think!" What wonder if the pupil, hearing this pitiable tirade, should bethink him of certain modes of treatment prescribed by the faculty, in cases of evident delirium, as extremely suitable to the symptoms exhibited by his beloved preceptor?

Let us now see what sort of government Mr Carlyle would propose for our adoption, guidance, and regeneration. Some kind of shapes are traceable even in fog-banks, and the analogy encourages us to persevere in our Latter-day researches.

Mr Carlyle is decidedly of opinion that it is our business to find out the very Noblest possible man to undertake the whole job. What he means by Noblest is explicitly stated. "It is the Noblest, not the Sham-Noblest; it is God Almighty's Noble, not the Court-Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must in some approximate degree be raised to the supreme place; he and not a counterfeit – under penalties." This Noblest, it seems, is to have a select series or staff of Noblers, to whom shall be confided the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ignoble. The mysterious process by means of which "the Noblest" is to be elevated – when he is discovered – is not indicated, but the intervention of ballot-boxes is indignantly disclaimed. "The Real Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in sad isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evil ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself." There are limits to human endurance, and we maintain that we have a right to call upon Mr Carlyle either to produce this remarkable Captain, or to indicate his whereabouts. He tells us that time is pressing – that we are moving in the midst of goblins, and that everything is going to the mischief for want of this Noblest of his. Well, then, we say, where is this Captain of yours? Let us have a look at him – give us at least a guess as to his outward marks and locality – does he live in Chelsea or Whitehall Gardens; or has he been, since the general emigration of the Stags, trying to govern himself in sad isolation and remote obscurity at Boulogne? If you know anything about him, out with it – if not, why pester the public with these sheets of intolerable twaddle?

As to the Nobler gentry, who are to surround the Noblest, whenever that Cromwell Redivivus shall appear, there is, in Mr Carlyle's opinion, no such pitiable uncertainty. They may not, perhaps, be altogether as plentiful as blackberries on an autumnal hedge, yet nevertheless they are to be found. "Who are available to your offices in Downing Street?" quoth he. "All the gifted souls, of every rank, who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the true eternal 'divine right' which will never become obsolete, to be your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them, or neglect to employ them, will your State be favoured of Heaven or disfavoured. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, as your natural enemy: which shall it be?" Now, this we call speaking to the point. We are acquainted, more or less intimately, with some couple of dozen "noble young souls," all very clever fellows in their way, who have not the slightest objections to take permanent quarters in Downing Street, if anybody will make it worth their while; and we undertake to show that the dullest of them is infinitely superior, in point of intellect and education, to the present Secretary of the Board of Control. But are all the noble young souls, without exception, to be provided for at the public expense? Really, in these economical times, such a proposal sounds rather preposterous; yet even Mr Carlyle does not insinuate that the noble young souls will do any work without a respectable modicum of pay. On the contrary, he seems to admit that, without pay, they are likely to be found in the opposition. Various considerations crowd upon us. Would it have been a correct or a creditable thing for M. Guizot to have placed in office all the noble young souls of the National, simply by way of keeping them out of mischief? The young nobility connected with that creditable print certainly did contrive to scramble into office along the ridges of the barricades, and a very nice business they made of it when they came to try their hands at legislation. But perhaps Mr Carlyle would only secure talent of the very highest description. Well, then, what kind of talent? Are we to look out for the best poets, and make them Secretaries of State? The best Secretaries of State we have known in our day, were about as poor poets as could be imagined; and we are rather apprehensive that the converse of the proposition might likewise be found to hold good.

"How sweet an Ovid was in Melbourne lost!"

sighed a Whig critic, commenting with rapture on some of that nobleman's early lucubrations; and yet, after all, we have no reason to think that the roll of British bards has been impoverished by the accidental exclusion. Flesh and blood could not have endured a second tragedy from Lord John Russell, and yet the present Premier, despite of Don Carlos, is thought by some partial friends to cut a tolerably decent figure as a politician. As to that, we shall venture no opinion. Mr Carlyle, however, is clear for the poets. Listen to his instance.

"From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the births are by the million, there was born, almost in our own memory, a Robert Burns; son of one who 'had not capital for his poor moor-farm of twenty pounds a-year.' Robert Burns never had the smallest chance to get into Parliament, much as Robert Burns deserved, for all our sakes, to have been found there. For the man, – it was not known to men purblind, sunk in their poor dim vulgar element, but might have been known to men of insight who had any loyalty, or any royalty of their own, – was a born-king of men: full of valour, of intelligence and heroic nobleness; fit for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean mortals, gauging beer. Him no ten-pound Constituency chose, nor did any Reforming Premier."

Of course they did not, and why should they? If Burns was alive at the present moment, in the full glory of his intellect and strength, would any sensible constituency think of sending him to Parliament? Of all the trash that Mr Carlyle has ever written – and there is a good deal of it, – this about Robert Burns, whom he calls the "new Norse Thor," not being selected as a statesman, is perhaps the most insufferable. The vocation of a poet is, we presume, to sing; to pour forth his heart in noble, animating, or touching strains; not to discuss questions of policy, or to muddle his brains over Blue Books, or the interminable compilations of Mr Porter. Not so thinks Carlyle. He would have shut up Burns in Downing Street, debarred him from the indulgence of verse, and clapped him at the head of a Board of Poor-law Commissioners. "And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses, and red-tape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of) did not in the least know or understand, the impious god-forgetting mortals, that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the one salvation for the world and for them and all of us." Mr Carlyle seems to have most original notions on the subject of nature's gifts. It would be as reasonable to say that, because a nightingale sings more sweetly than its compeers, it ought to be taken to the house and trained as a regular falcon.

We are very far indeed from wishing to maintain that literary men may not be possessed of every quality which is most desirable in a statesman. But instances of this combination are rare, and on the whole we think that our "Heroic Intellects," and "noble young souls," will acquit themselves most creditably by following out the peculiar bent of their own genius. If they have any political tendency, it will develop itself in due season; but we protest, most strenuously, against a Parliament of men of genius, or a cabinet of literateurs. We have seen quite enough of that in other countries. A more laughable spectacle, if it had not also been painful, than the Frankfort chamber, composed very much of suchlike materials, was never given to public gaze. Old Ludwig Uhland, for all the appearance he made, had better have stuck to his ballads. In France, Victor Hugo, whose name is second in literature to none, cuts a most sorry figure. Even Lamartine is sadly out of his place, though a longer experience of the Chamber saves him from incurring that constant ridicule which is the reward of his dramatic brother. Eugene Sue, we observe, is another noble young soul, who is panting for political renown. Far be it from us to anticipate his final destiny: as to his deservings, there can be little difference of opinion.

It cannot be denied that exceptions, and very plausible ones, might be taken to the very best ministry ever formed, on the score of talent. Nay, even that ministry known by the distinguishing title of "all the Talents," could hardly have borne a searching scrutiny. But, upon the whole, we are by no means convinced that a Cabinet of uniform brilliancy is a thing to be desired. One light would be apt to burn emulously beside another. Moreover talent, though an excellent and admirable quality, is not the only requisite for a statesman. Barrington was one of the cleverest fellows of his day; yet it might have been somewhat hazardous to trust him with the keys of the Treasury. There have been in our own time in the House of Commons divers noble young souls, of great and undoubted talent, whose accession to office would by no means have increased the confidence of the public in Ministers. And there are men now in the House of Commons who, to a certain extent, agree with Mr Carlyle, and complain very bitterly that talent is not allowed to occupy its proper place. At a meeting of the National Reform Association held on 23d April last, Mr W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, is reported to have said – "That the great object they had in view was a social revolution, not gained by blood, or disturbing the constitution, but raising the aristocracy of intelligence and morality to a place beside the cliques which had ruled the country merely by the influence of property and wealth… An open career to talent was a favourite maxim of Napoleon, who, so far as he had acted on it, gave the signal for a great change in the public mind. He hoped that responsibility would assume the place now held by the interests and privileges of family cliques, and that talent would thus be made true to its duties and instincts." Here is another Heroic Intellect quite ready to take office if he can get it, and ready, moreover, to put the ballot-box and all manner of extended suffrage into motion, in order that he may attain his object. We have no doubt that Mr Fox is a very clever person, and also that he is fully imbued with the same gratifying impression; nevertheless, we are free to confess that we would rather see him on the outside, than in the interior of the hen-roost of Downing Street. There may be persons within it who might as well, on public considerations, be out; but there are also many without, who, notwithstanding their vaunted breadth of intellect, should be kept from getting in. Will Mr Fox venture to aver that, in Britain, there is not an open career for talent? Now, as ever, talent will not fail in its aim, provided its possessor is endowed with other qualities and virtues which are requisite to command success by securing confidence and esteem.

Let us now suppose that Mr Carlyle has succeeded in his quest after capable men – that he has fairly bolted his Noblest, like an overgrown badger, from the hole in which he lies presently concealed, and has surrounded him with a staff of the Nobler, including, we presume, the author of the Latter-day Pamphlets. Noblest and Nobler must now go to work in serious earnest, taking some order with the flabby monsters, laughing hyænas, predatory wolves, and blue, or blue and yellow devils, which abound in this New Era. What is the first step to be adopted? We find it in No. I.

We have transcribed already the commencement of the speech to be made by the new British Minister to the assembled paupers – let us hear a few sentences —

"But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have to repeat, with sorrow but with perfect clearness, what is plainly undeniable, and is even clamorous to get itself admitted, that you are of the nature of slaves, – or if you prefer the word of nomadic, and now even vagrant and vagabond servants that can find no master on those terms; which seems to me a much uglier word. Emancipation? You have been emancipated with a vengeance! Foolish souls! I say the whole world cannot emancipate you. Fealty to ignorant unruliness, to gluttonous sluggish Improvidence, to the Beerpot and the Devil, who is there that can emancipate a man in that predicament? Not a whole Reform Bill, a whole French Revolution executed for his behoof alone."

In this style, Noblest proceeds for a page or two, haranguing the unlucky paupers upon the principle that poverty is crime; taunting them with previous doles of Indian meal and money, and informing them that the Workhouses are thenceforward inexorably shut. Finally, he announces that they are to be embodied into industrial regiments, with proper officers; and marched off "to the Irish Bogs, to the vacant desolations of Connaught now falling into Cannibalism, to mis-tilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster, I will lead you; to the English fox covers, furze-grown Commons, New Forests, Salisbury Plains; likewise to the Scotch Hillsides, and bare rushy slopes which as yet feed only sheep." All these are to be tilled by the slave regiments under the following penalties for recusancy. "Refuse to strike into it; shirk the heavy labour, disobey the rules – I will admonish and endeavour to incite you; if in vain, I will flog you; if still in vain, I will at last shoot you, – and make God's Earth, and the forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you. Understand it, I advise you!" O rare Thomas Carlyle!

The language in which this significant and notable plan is conveyed, is more original than the plan itself. Other Liberals than Mr Carlyle have propounded the doctrine that the pauper is a slave of the state. A century and a half ago, Fletcher of Saltoun wrote a treatise to that effect, and probably a more determined republican than Fletcher never stepped in upper leathers. But somehow or other, although Scotland was then less scrupulous in matters of personal freedom than the sister kingdom, the scheme was by no means received with acclamation. Heritable jurisdictions were all very well in their way, but the idea of reducing the peasantry to the state of Russian serfdom, was rather more than the free parliament of the Scots Estates could contrive to stomach. It has been very shrewdly remarked that there is a wide circle in politics, whereof the connecting link lies between ultra-liberalism and absolute tyranny. Mr Carlyle, without meaning it, gives us a fair exemplification of this in the present pamphlets. Messrs Cobden and Bright afford us an unmistakeable exemplification of it, in their endeavours to frustrate the operation of the Ten Hours' Bill. M. Ledru Rollin demonstrated it in his circulars, on the occasion of the first French republican election. Liberty is a beautiful term, but its true signification is unknown to the thorough-paced demagogue.

According to the spirit of the British laws, labour can only be enforced as the penalty of crime. Mr Carlyle would change this, and would place the pauper upon precisely the same level as the convict. We are not prepared to say that some important improvements might not be made in the practical operation of the poor-laws. We have read various pamphlets, published in this city and elsewhere, which strenuously recommend the employment of the able-bodied poor in the reclaiming of waste lands, and their immediate removal from the towns. There is, however, much more philanthropy than philosophy in these schemes. In order to discover a proper remedy, we ought in every case to direct our primary attention to the nature and origin of the disease; and this is precisely what our modern philanthropists neglect to do. People do not crowd into towns of their own choice. Give them their free will, and the means of subsistence, and one and all of them will prefer the fresh air, and the sights and sounds of nature, to the stifling atmosphere, the reeking filth, and the discordant cries of the city lanes and courts. But no such free will exists: the balance has not been kept between the country and the towns. No encouragement has been given to the small manufactures, which in former times were the support of villages now rapidly falling into decay. The gigantic power of machinery, set in motion by large capital, has nearly abolished the hand-loom. Worsted knitting, yarn-spinning, straw-plaiting, are now rendered almost profitless occupations. In order to live, the villagers have been forced to migrate to the towns. We need hardly refer to the earliest of the Free-trade measures, which, by substituting Spanish barilla for kelp, threw whole districts of the West Highlands at once into a state of pauperism. At this moment, a new cause is aggravating the evil. The stagnation of agricultural employment occasioned by the abolition of the corn duties, has given a new impetus to rural emigration; and those who cannot afford their passage to foreign parts naturally seek refuge in the towns. In another year – if the experiment should be continued so long – the effects of this last change will become more evident than they are now. The able-bodied ploughman is the last of the agricultural class who will suffer. Those who have already been compelled to change their homes, or to go upon the parish-list, are the cottars, who derived their subsistence from the employment given them by resident proprietors. So long as encouragement to agricultural improvement existed, these poor people never wanted work; but now the calamitous fall in the price of produce, and the prospect of a great diminution of rents, have compelled the landlords to discontinue their improvements, and to reduce the expenses of their establishments to the lowest possible limit. In this way, country labour is lessened, and town labour, by the increasing competition of hands, is cheapened. This is the true secret of all those startling revelations as to the misery, want, and positive oppression of the working classes which have lately appeared in the public journals, and which have engendered in the minds of many a natural despair as to the destiny of a state in which such things are suffered to exist. The remedy undoubtedly is neither an easy nor a speedy one; still, it is by no means to be included in the category of impossibilities. Machinery, which is the first great cause of British pauperism, cannot indeed be checked, but it may very easily be taxed. "An acre of land," says a late eminent writer, "if cultivated, must pay a tithe of its productions to support the religion of the state, and an equal contribution with any other property in respect of the poor, county, and church rates; but mechanical power may exercise its productive faculty ad infinitum, with but a trifling reference or liability to either the one or the other. The building may be rated at £200, £500, or £1000 a-year, but it has a power within it which, as compared with landed property rated at the same amount, will produce a hundredfold as great a return – a principle in legislation as deteriorating in its operation on the masses as it is unjust to individuals." That machinery, which has changed the whole character of our population, and which, in fact, has been the means of creating this stern reality of pauperism, is not taxed upon the principle of its productive power. That it should be so, seems evident upon the smallest reflection. Land is not taxed on the principle of acreage, but on that of value, which again depends entirely on production. Why should not the manufactory be rated in the same manner? It is true that, by such a measure as this, pauperism could not be removed, but it would be materially checked, for the fair proportion of the burden would thus be thrown on the shoulders of those who occasioned it. But nothing effectual can be done until the nation has finally determined what policy it is to pursue for the future, and in all time coming, with respect to native industry. If Free Trade is to go on, pauperism must continue like a Upas tree to spread and overshadow the land. It is not within the range of possibility that this can be otherwise. No church-extension, education, cheap literature, ventilation, sewerage, public baths, or model lodging-houses, can avail to mitigate the evil. It is town competition – made triply worse by the operation of low tariffs – which is driving the working classes to the verge of the pit of despair; and that town competition is increasing, and will increase, so long as a fresh daily supply of hands is driven from country labour. The scheme of the philanthropists to whom we have referred, is to take the surplusage from the towns and to send them to the country. This, in the present state of matters, is about as feasible an undertaking as if we were to try to make a stream of water run up-hill. Why, the misery and indigence which they seek to relieve, is not the result of mere idleness, dissipation, or profligacy – it arises from over-competition in one department of industry, occasioned by the utter want of profitable employment in another. There would be no need of industrial regiments to cultivate the soil, if its cultivation were allowed to be remunerative. But to set our pauper population at work upon anything which will not repay private enterprise is mere delusion. We have said this much upon a topic of the greatest interest, and the utmost importance, because we are convinced that many persons, who are fully impressed with the magnitude of the evil, have mistaken the remedy from the want of a due consideration of the causes from whence that evil has arisen. It is, however, a subject too large for incidental discussion, and we shall probably return to it on a future occasion, when we can state our views without reference to the whimsical vagaries of Mr Carlyle.

So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery, would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is, with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation, and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend. It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening. Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and were able to put his threats into execution.

"Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line, – know that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him? Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this. – And you Quashee, my pumpkin, – (not a bad fellow either, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!) – idle Quashee, I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow, my poor dark friend! In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that you and I can live together. And if you had respectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyond the Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of the world, – behold I, for one individual, do not believe said respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins, except as things which you, till you grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late."

The meaning of this passage is, that the black population of our colonies ought no longer to be permitted to dwell in perfect idleness in their provision grounds, rearing pumpkins for their own consumption, without regard to the cultivation of the sugar-cane. As we have already remarked, this view is somewhat of the latest; nevertheless truth, like repentance, can never come too late to be received. Divorced from the folly of his speech, Mr Carlyle's sentiment is sound. Twenty millions of British money, wrung from the hard-taxed labour of our people, were given – for what? Not only to emancipate the Negroes, but to place them in such a position that they could effectually control their former masters – our own colonists and countrymen, to whom our faith was solemnly plighted for the maintenance of their privileges and commerce. Let it be granted that slavery was a gross sin, was it incumbent upon us to elevate the emancipated Blacks so high, that they could control the labour market – to give them the status of untaxed yoemen, without any security for the slightest manifestation of their gratitude? It was more than preposterous that those whose freedom was purchased should be placed in a better position, and invested with more immunity from labour and want, than the great bulk of the people who made the sacrifice in order to secure that freedom; and the result has amply demonstrated the gross folly of the scheme. There are thousands, nay millions of men in Britain and Ireland, whose lot, compared with that of the emancipated Blacks of Jamaica, is one of speechless misery – and yet their cry to be relieved from a competition which is crushing them down to the dust, is unheard and uncared for amidst the din of contending politicians, and the perpetual hum of the busy proselytes of Mammon.

Here we cannot forbear from quoting a characteristic passage from Mr Carlyle's tracts. The idea is not original, but the handling is worthy of Astley's humourist; and we commend it to the special attention of all free-trading philanthropists.

"Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us, this good while; and has got to such a length as might give rise to reflections in men of a serious turn. West Indian Blacks are emancipated, and it appears refuse to work. Irish Whites have long been entirely emancipated; and nobody asks them to work, or on condition of finding them potatoes (which, of course, is indispensable) permits them to work. Among speculative persons, a question has sometimes risen. In the progress of Emancipation, are we to look for a time when all the Horses also are to be emancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle? Horses too have 'motives;' are acted on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity, ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rude outline of all our human spiritualities, – a rude resemblance to us in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage; no human master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, or recklessly lay on the whip where it is not needed: – I am sure if I could make him 'happy,' I should be willing to grant a small vote (in addition to the late twenty millions) for that object!

"Him, too, you occasionally tyrannise over; and with bad result to yourselves among others; using the leather in a tyrannous, unnecessary manner; withholding, or scantily furnishing, the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times. 'Am I not a horse, and half-brother?' To remedy which, so far as remediable, fancy – the horses all 'emancipated;' restored to their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe; turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So long as grass lasts, I daresay they are very happy, or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring morning, with a sieve of oats in his hand, and agony of eager expectation in his heart, is he happy? Help me to plough this day, Black Dobbin; oats in full measure if thou wilt. 'Hlunh! No – thank!' snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? 'Hlunh!' Gray Joan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare, – O Heaven! she too answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-crops are ended in this world! – For the sake, if not of Hodge, then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might now cease, and a new and a better one try to begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emancipate them! The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in this habitable earth no grass to eat, – in black Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none; – to roam aimless, wasting the seed-fields of the world; and be hunted home to Chaos, by the dire watch-dogs and dire hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were never seen before! These things are not sport; they are terribly true, in this country at this hour."

One other sham, perhaps the greatest which our age has witnessed, Mr Carlyle accidentally denounces – we mean the late Colonial policy. If the Whigs have an official aptitude for anything, it is the coopering up of Constitutions. Is one colony indignant at some outrage or insult proceeding from headquarters – is another dissatisfied with the conduct of the Governor, and urgent for his recall – is a third aggrieved by the commercial vacillation and fiscal measures of a Parliament in which it has neither voice nor power – the universal panacea is, Give them a Constitution! We hope the present Ministry will profit by the following criticism – not volunteered by us, who neither look upon them with affection, nor entertain any sanguine hope of their conversion to a patriotic policy, – but penned by a writer who, not long ago, was considered by their organs as one of the deepest thinkers of the age.

"Constitutions for the Colonies," says Mr Carlyle, "are now on the anvil; the discontented Colonies are all to be cured of their miseries by Constitutions. Whether that will cure their miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's Cordial to stop their whimpering, and in the end worsen all their miseries, may be a sad doubt to us. One thing strikes a remote spectator in these Colonial questions: the singular placidity with which the British Statesman at this time, backed by M'Crowdy and the British moneyed classes, is prepared to surrender whatsoever interest Britain, as foundress of those establishments, might pretend to have in the decision. 'If you want to go from us, go; we by no means want you to stay: you cost us money yearly, which is scarce; desperate quantities of trouble too: why not go, if you wish it?' Such is the humour of the British Statesman at this time. – Men clear for rebellion, 'annexation' as they call it, walk openly abroad in our American Colonies; found newspapers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there comes duly by each mail a regular statistic of Annexationism: increasing fast in this quarter, diminishing in that; – Majesty's Chief Governor seeming to take it as a perfectly open question; Majesty's Chief Governor, in fact, seldom appearing on the scene at all, except to receive the impact of a few rotten eggs on occasion, and then duck in again to his private contemplations. And yet one would think the Majesty's Chief Governor ought to have a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carried to a great length in some portion of her Majesty's dominions. But the question, 'Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty, or start rebelling against her? So many as are here for rebelling, hold up your hands!' Here is a public discussion of a very extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a Governor of Canada? How the Governor of Canada, being a British piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of mere pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivable at first view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It is a constitutional sight like few."