Latter Day Pamphlets
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Thomas Carlyle >> Latter Day Pamphlets
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Meanwhile, that our one reforming Statesman may have free command
of what Intellect there is among us, and room to try all means
for awakening and inviting ever more of it, there has one small
Project of Improvement been suggested; which finds a certain
degree of favor wherever I hear it talked of, and which seems to
merit much more consideration than it has yet received.
Practical men themselves approve of it hitherto, so far as it
goes; the one objection being that the world is not yet prepared
to insist on it,--which of course the world can never be, till
once the world consider it, and in the first place hear tell of
it! I have, for my own part, a good opinion of this project.
The old unreformed Parliament of rotten boroughs _had_ one
advantage; but that is hereby, in a far more fruitful and
effectual manner, secured to the new.
The Proposal is, That Secretaries under and upper, that all
manner of changeable or permanent servants in the Government
Offices shall be selected without reference to their power of
getting into Parliament;--that, in short, the Queen shall have
power of nominating the half-dozen or half-score Officers of the
Administration, whose presence is thought necessary in
Parliament, to official seats there, without reference to any
constituency but her own only, which of course will mean her
Prime Minister's. A very small encroachment on the present
constitution of Parliament; offering the minimum of change in
present methods, and I almost think a maximum in results to be
derived therefrom.--The Queen nominates John Thomas (the fittest
man she, much inquiring, can hear tell of in her three kingdoms)
President of the Poor-Law Board, Under Secretary of the
Colonies, Under, or perhaps even Upper Secretary of what she and
her Premier find suitablest for a working head so eminent, a
talent so precious; and grants him, by her direct authority, seat
and vote in Parliament so long as he holds that office. Upper
Secretaries, having more to do in Parliament, and being so bound
to be in favor there, would, I suppose, at least till new times
and habits come, be expected to be chosen from among the
_People's_ Members as at present. But whether the Prime
Minister himself is, in all times, bound to be first a People's
Member; and which, or how many, of his Secretaries and
subordinates he might be allowed to take as _Queen's_ Members, my
authority does not say,--perhaps has not himself settled; the
project being yet in mere outline or foreshadow, the practical
embodiment in all details to be fixed by authorities much more
competent than he. The soul of his project is, That the Crown
also have power to elect a few members to Parliament.
From which project, however wisely it were embodied, there could
probably, at first or all at once, no great "accession of
intellect" to the Government Offices ensue; though a little
might, even at first, and a little is always precious: but in
its ulterior operation, were that faithfully developed, and
wisely presided over, I fancy an immense accession of intellect
might ensue;--nay a natural ingress might thereby be opened to
all manner of accessions, and the actual flower of whatever
intellect the British Nation had might be attracted towards
Downing Street, and continue flowing steadily thither! For, let
us see a little what effects this simple change carries in it the
possibilities of. Here are beneficent germs, which the presence
of one truly wise man as Chief Minister, steadily fostering them
for even a few years, with the sacred fidelity and vigilance that
would beseem him, might ripen into living practices and habitual
facts, invaluable to us all.
What it is that Secretaries of State, Managers of Colonial
Establishments, of Home and Foreign Government interests, have
really and truly to do in Parliament, might admit of various
estimate in these times. An apt debater in Parliament is by no
means certain to be an able administrator of Colonies, of Home or
Foreign Affairs; nay, rather quite the contrary is to be presumed
of him; for in order to become a "brilliant speaker," if that is
his character, considerable portions of his natural internal
endowment must have gone to the surface, in order to make a
shining figure there, and precisely so much the less (few men in
these days know how much less!) must remain available in the
internal silent state, or as faculty for thinking, for devising
and acting, which latter and which alone is the function
essential for him in his Secretaryship. Not to tell a good story
for himself "in Parliament and to the twenty-seven millions, many
of them fools;" not that, but to do good administration, to know
with sure eye, and decide with just and resolute heart, what is
what in the _things_ committed to his charge: this and not that
is the service which poor England, whatever it may think and
maunder, does require and want of the Official Man in Downing
Street. Given a good Official Man or Secretary, he really ought,
as far as it is possible, to be left working in the silent state.
No mortal can both work, and do good talking in Parliament, or
out of it: the feat is impossible as that of serving two hostile
masters.
Nor would I, if it could be helped, much trouble my good
Secretary with addressing Parliament: needful explanations; yes,
in a free country, surely;--but not to every frivolous and
vexatious person, in or out of Parliament, who chooses to apply
for them. There should be demands for explanation too which were
reckoned frivolous and vexatious, and censured as such. These, I
should say, are the not needful explanations: and if my poor
Secretary is to be called out from his workshop to answer every
one of these,--his workshop will become (what we at present see
it, deservedly or not) little other than a pillory; the poor
Secretary a kind of talking-machine, exposed to dead cats and
rotten eggs; and the "work" got out of him or of it will, as
heretofore, be very inconsiderable indeed!--Alas, on this side
also, important improvements are conceivable; and will even, I
imagine, get them whence we may, be found indispensable one day.
The honorable gentleman whom you interrupt here, he, in his
official capacity, is not an individual now, but the embodiment
of a Nation; he is the "People of England" engaged in the work of
Secretaryship, this one; and cannot forever afford to let the
three Tailors of Tooley Street break in upon him at all hours!--
But leaving this, let us remark one thing which is very plain:
That whatever be the uses and duties, real or supposed, of a
Secretary in Parliament, his faculty to accomplish these is a
point entirely unconnected with his ability to get elected into
Parliament, and has no relation or proportion to it, and no
concern with it whatever. Lord Tommy and the Honorable John are
not a whit better qualified for Parliamentary duties, to say
nothing of Secretary duties, than plain Tom and Jack; they are
merely better qualified, as matters stand, for getting admitted
to try them. Which state of matters a reforming Premier, much in
want of abler men to help him, now proposes altering. Tom and
Jack, once admitted by the Queen's writ, there is every reason to
suppose will do quite as well there as Lord Tommy and the
Honorable John. In Parliament quite as well: and elsewhere, in
the other infinitely more important duties of a Government
Office, which indeed are and remain the essential, vital and
intrinsic duties of such a personage, is there the faintest
reason to surmise that Tom and Jack, if well chosen, will fall
short of Lord Tommy and the Honorable John? No shadow of a
reason. Were the intrinsic genius of the men exactly equal,
there is no shadow of a reason: but rather there is quite the
reverse; for Tom and Jack have been at least workers all their
days, not idlers, game-preservers and mere human clothes-horses,
at any period of their lives; and have gained a schooling
_thereby_, of which Lord Tommy and the Honorable John, unhappily
strangers to it for most part, can form no conception! Tom and
Jack have already, on this most narrow hypothesis, a decided
_superiority_ of likelihood over Lord Tommy and the Honorable
John.
But the hypothesis is very narrow, and the fact is very wide; the
hypothesis counts by units, the fact by millions. Consider how
many Toms and Jacks there are to choose from, well or ill! The
aristocratic class from whom Members of Parliament can be elected
extends only to certain thousands; from these you are to choose
your Secretary, if a seat in Parliament is the primary condition.
But the general population is of Twenty-seven Millions; from all
sections of which you can choose, if the seat in Parliament is
not to be primary. Make it ultimate instead of primary, a last
investiture instead of a first indispensable condition, and the
whole British Nation, learned, unlearned, professional,
practical, speculative and miscellaneous, is at your disposal!
In the lowest broad strata of the population, equally as in the
highest and narrowest, are produced men of every kind of genius;
man for man., your chance of genius is as good among the millions
as among the units;--and class for class, what must it be! From
all classes, not from certain hundreds now but from several
millions, whatsoever man the gods had gifted with intellect and
nobleness, and power to help his country, could be chosen: O
Heavens, could,--if not by Tenpound Constituencies and the force
of beer, then by a Reforming Premier with eyes in his head, who I
think might do it quite infinitely better. Infinitely better.
For ignobleness cannot, by the nature of it, choose the noble:
no, there needs a seeing man who is himself noble, cognizant by
internal experience of the symptoms of nobleness. Shall we never
think of this; shall we never more remember this, then? It is
forever true; and Nature and Fact, however we may rattle our
ballot-boxes, do at no time forget it.
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 got 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 valor, of intelligence and heroic nobleness; fit
for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean
mortals, gauging beer! Him no Tenpound Constituency chose, nor
did any Reforming Premier: in the deep-sunk British Nation,
overwhelmed in foggy stupor, with the loadstars all gone out for
it, there was no whisper of a notion that it could be desirable
to choose him,--except to come and dine with you, and in the
interim to gauge. And yet heaven-born Mr. Pitt, at that period,
was by no means without need of Heroic Intellect, for other
purposes than gauging! But sorrowful strangulation by red-tape,
much _tighter_ then than it now is when so many revolutionary
earthquakes have tussled it, quite tied up the meagre Pitt; and
he said, on hearing of this Burns and his sad hampered case,
"Literature will take care of itself."--"Yes, and of you too, if
you don't mind it!" answers one.
And so, like Apollo taken for a Neat-herd, and perhaps for none
of the best on the Admetus establishment, this new Norse Thor had
to put up with what was going; to gauge ale, and be thankful;
pouring his celestial sunlight through Scottish
Song-writing,--the narrowest chink ever offered to a Thunder-god
before! 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. No;
they "had done very well without" such; did not see the use of
such; went along "very well" without such; well presided over by
a singular Heroic Intellect called George the Third: and the
Thunder-god, as was rather fit of him, departed early, still in
the noon of life, somewhat weary of gauging ale!--O Peter, what a
scandalous torpid element of yellow London fog, favorable to owls
only and their mousing operations, has blotted out the stars of
Heaven for us these several generations back,--which, I rejoice
to see, is now visibly about to take itself away again, or
perhaps to be _dispelled_ in a very tremendous manner!
For the sake of my Democratic friends, one other observation. Is
not this Proposal the very essence of whatever truth there is in
"Democracy;" this, that the able man be chosen, in whatever rank
be is found? That he be searched for as hidden treasure is; be
trained, supervised, set to the work which he alone is fit for.
All Democracy lies in this; this, I think, is worth all the
ballot-boxes and suffrage-movements now going. Not that the
noble soul, born poor, should be set to spout in Parliament, but
that he should be set to assist in governing men: this is our
grand Democratic interest. With this we can be saved; without
this, were there a Parliament spouting in every parish, and
Hansard Debates to stem the Thames, we perish,--die
constitutionally drowned, in mere oceans of palaver.
All reformers, constitutional persons, and men capable of
reflection, are invited to reflect on these things. Let us brush
the cobwebs from our eyes; let us bid the inane traditions be
silent for a moment; and ask ourselves, like men dreadfully
intent on having it _done_, "By what method or methods can the
able men from every rank of life be gathered, as diamond-grains
from the general mass of sand: the able men, not the
sham-able;--and set to do the work of governing, contriving,
administering and guiding for us!" It is the question of
questions. All that Democracy ever meant lies there: the
attainment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, or Government again
by the _Best_.
Reformed Parliaments have lamentably failed to attain it for us;
and I believe will and must forever fail. One true Reforming
Statesman, one noble worshipper and knower of human intellect,
with the quality of an experienced Politician too; he, backed by
such a Parliament as England, once recognizing him, would loyally
send, and at liberty to choose his working subalterns from all
the Englishmen alive; he surely might do something? Something,
by one means or another, is becoming fearfully necessary to be
done! He, I think, might accomplish more for us in ten years,
than the best conceivable Reformed Parliament, and utmost
extension of the suffrage, in twice or ten times ten.
What is extremely important too, you could try this method with
safety; extension of the suffrage you cannot so try. With even
an approximately heroic Prime Minister, you could get nothing but
good from prescribing to him thus, to choose the fittest man,
under penalties; to choose, not the fittest of the four or the
three men that were in Parliament, but the fittest from the whole
Twenty-seven Millions that he could hear of,--at his peril.
Nothing but good from this. From extension of the suffrage, some
think, you might get quite other than good. From extension of
the suffrage, till it became a universal counting of heads, one
sees not in the least what wisdom could be extracted. A
Parliament of the Paris pattern, such as we see just now, might
be extracted: and from that? Solution into universal slush;
drownage of all interests divine and human, in a Noah's-Deluge of
Parliamentary eloquence,--such as we hope our sins, heavy and
manifold though they are, have not yet quite deserved!
Who, then, is to be the Reforming Statesman, and begin the noble
work for us? He is the preliminary; one such; with him we may
prosecute the enterprise to length after length; without him we
cannot stir in it at all. A true _king_, temporary king, that
dare undertake the government of Britain, on condition of
beginning in sacred earnest to "reform" it, not at this or that
extremity, but at the heart and centre. That will expurgate
Downing Street, and the practical Administration of our Affairs;
clear out its accumulated mountains of pendantries and cobwebs;
bid the Pedants and the Dullards depart, bid the Gifted and the
Seeing enter and inhabit. So that henceforth there be Heavenly
light there, instead of Stygian dusk; that God's vivifying light
instead of Satan's deadening and killing dusk, may radiate
therefrom, and visit with healing all regions of this British
Empire,--which now writhes through every limb of it, in dire
agony as if of death! The enterprise is great, the enterprise
may be called formidable and even awful; but there is none nobler
among the sublunary affairs of mankind just now. Nay tacitly it
is the enterprise of every man who undertakes to be British
Premier in these times;--and I cannot esteem him an enviable
Premier who, because the engagement is _tacit_, flatters himself
that it does not exist! "Show it me in the bond," he says. Your
Lordship, it actually exists: and I think you will see it yet,
in another kind of "bond" than that sheepskin one!
But truly, in any time, what a strange feeling, enough to alarm a
very big Lordship, this: that he, of the size he is, has got to
the apex of English affairs! Smallest wrens, we know, by
training and the aid of machinery, are capable of many things.
For this world abounds in miraculous combinations, far
transcending anything they do at Drury Lane in the melodramatic
way. A world which, as solid as it looks, is made all of aerial
and even of spiritual stuff; permeated all by incalculable
sleeping forces and electricities; and liable to go off, at any
time, into the hugest developments, upon a scratch thoughtfully
or thoughtlessly given on the right point:--Nay, for every one of
us, could not the sputter of a poor pistol-shot shrivel the
Immensities together like a burnt scroll, and make the Heavens
and the Earth pass away with a great noise? Smallest wrens, and
canary-birds of some dexterity, can be trained to handle
lucifer-matches; and have, before now, fired off whole
powder-magazines and parks of artillery. Perhaps without much
astonishment to the canary-bird. The canary-bird can hold only
its own quantity of astonishment; and may possibly enough retain
its presence of mind, were even Doomsday to come. It is on this
principle that I explain to myself the equanimity of some men and
Premiers whom we have known.
This and the other Premier seems to take it with perfect
coolness. And yet, I say, what a strange feeling, to find
himself Chief Governor of England; girding on, upon his
moderately sized new soul, the old battle-harness of an Oliver
Cromwell, an Edward Longshanks, a William Conqueror. "I, then,
am the Ablest of English attainable Men? This English People,
which has spread itself over all lands and seas, and achieved
such works in the ages,--which has done America, India, the
Lancashire Cotton-trade, Bromwicham Iron-trade, Newton's
Principia, Shakspeare's Dramas, and the British
Constitution,--the apex of all its intelligences and mighty
instincts and dumb longings: it is I? William Conqueror's big
gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's; Oliver's lightning soul,
noble as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord: these are mine, I
begin to perceive,--to a certain extent. These heroisms have
I,--though rather shy of exhibiting them. These; and something
withal of the huge beaver-faculty of our Arkwrights, Brindleys;
touches too of the phoenix-melodies and _sunny_ heroisms of our
Shakspeares, of our Singers, Sages and inspired Thinkers all this
is in me, I will hope,--though rather shy of exhibiting it on
common occasions. The Pattern Englishman, raised by solemn
acclamation upon the bucklers of the English People, and saluted
with universal 'God save THEE!'--has now the honor to announce
himself. After fifteen hundred years of constitutional study as
to methods of raising on the bucklers, which is the operation of
operations, the English People, surely pretty well skilled in it
by this time, has raised--the remarkable individual now
addressing you. The best-combined sample of whatsoever divine
qualities are in this big People, the consummate flower of all
that they have done and been, the ultimate product of the
Destinies, and English man of men, arrived at last in the fulness
of time, is--who think you? Ye worlds, the Ithuriel javelin by
which, with all these heroisms and accumulated energies old and
new, the English People means to smite and pierce, is this poor
tailor's-bodkin, hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole, who now
has the honor to"--Good Heavens, if it were not that men
generally are very much of the canary-bird, here, are
reflections sufficient to annihilate any man, almost before
starting!
But to us also it ought to be a very strange reflection! This,
then, is the length we have brought it to, with our
constitutioning, and ballot-boxing, and incessant talk and effort
in every kind for so many centuries back; this? The golden
flower of our grand alchemical projection, which has set the
world in astonishment so long, and been the envy of surrounding
nations, is--what we here see. To be governed by his Lordship,
and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by this
respectable degree of human faculty. With our utmost soul's
travail we could discover, by the sublimest methods eulogized by
all the world, no abler Englishman than this?
Really it should make us pause upon the said sublime methods, and
ask ourselves very seriously, whether, notwithstanding the eulogy
of all the world, they can be other than extremely astonishing
methods, that require revisal and reconsideration very much
indeed! For the kind of "man" we get to govern us, all
conclusions whatsoever centre there, and likewise all manner of
issues flow infallibly therefrom. "Ask well, who is your Chief
Governor," says one: "for around him men like to him will
infallibly gather, and by degrees all the world will be made in
his image." "He who is himself a noble man, has a chance to know
the nobleness of men; he who is not, has none. And as for the
poor Public,--alas, is not the kind of 'man' you set upon it the
liveliest symbol of its and your veracity and victory and
blessedness, or unveracity and misery and cursedness; the general
summation and practical outcome of all else whatsoever in the
Public and in you?"
Time was when an incompetent Governor could not be permitted
among men. He was, and had to be, by one method or the other,
clutched up from his place at the helm of affairs, and hurled
down into the hold, perhaps even overboard, if he could not
really steer. And we call those ages barbarous, because they
shuddered to see a Phantasm at the helm of their affairs; an
eyeless Pilot with constitutional spectacles, steering by the ear
mainly? And we have changed all that; no-government is now the
best; and a tailor's foreman, who gives no trouble, is preferable
to any other for governing? My friends, such truly is the current
idea; but you dreadfully mistake yourselves, and the fact is not
such. The fact, now beginning to disclose itself again in
distressed Needlewomen, famishing Connaughts, revolting Colonies,
and a general rapid advance towards Social Ruin, remains really
what it always was, and will so remain!
Men have very much forgotten it at present; and only here a man
and there a man begins again to bethink himself of it: but all
men will gradually get reminded of it, perhaps terribly to their
cost; and the sooner they all lay it to heart again, I think it
will be the better. For in spite of our oblivion of it, the
thing remains forever true; nor is there any Constitution or body
of Constitutions, were they clothed with never such
venerabilities and general acceptabilities, that avails to
deliver a Nation from the consequences of forgetting it. Nature,
I assure you, does forevermore remember it; and a hundred British
Constitutions are but as a hundred cobwebs between her and the
penalty she levies for forgetting it. Tell me what kind of man
governs a People, you tell me, with much exactness, what the net
sum-total of social worth in that People has for some time been.
Whether _they_ have loved the phylacteries or the eternal
noblenesses; whether they have been struggling heavenward like
eagles, brothers of the radiances, or groping owl-like with
horn-eyed diligence, catching mice and balances at their
banker's,--poor devils, you will see it all in that one fact. A
fact long prepared beforehand; which, if it is a peaceably
received one, must have been acquiesced in, judged to be "best,"
by the poor mousing owls, intent only to have a large balance at
their banker's and keep a whole skin.
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