Latter Day Pamphlets
T >>
Thomas Carlyle >> Latter Day Pamphlets
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17
Such sordid populations, which were long blind to Heaven's light,
are getting themselves burnt up rapidly, in these days, by
street-insurrection and Hell-fire;--as is indeed inevitable, my
esteemed M'Croudy! Light, accept the blessed light, if you will
have it when Heaven vouchsafes. You refuse? You prefer Delolme
on the British Constitution, the Gospel according to M'Croudy,
and a good balance at your banker's? Very well: the "light" is
more and more withdrawn; and for some time you have a general
dusk, very favorable for catching mice; and the opulent owlery is
very "happy," and well-off at its banker's;--and furthermore, by
due sequence, infallible as the foundations of the Universe and
Nature's oldest law, the light _returns_ on you, condensed, this
time, into _lightning_, which there is not any skin whatever too
thick for taking in!
[April 15, 1850.] No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET.
In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European
countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly
elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be
well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive
of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that
the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism,
intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not
adequate,--probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim
helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to
introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and
contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than
tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and
declared before all creatures to be too false.
This is a reflection sad but important to the modern Governments
now fallen anarchic, That they had not spiritual talent enough.
And if this is so, then surely the question, How these
Governments came to sink for _want_ of intellect? is a rather
interesting one. Intellect, in some measure, is born into every
Century; and the Nineteenth flatters itself that it is rather
distinguished that way! What had become of this celebrated
Nineteenth Century's intellect? Surely some of it existed, and
was "developed" withal;--nay in the "undeveloped," unconscious,
or inarticulate state, it is not dead; but alive and at work, if
mutely not less beneficently, some think even more so! And yet
Governments, it would appear, could by no means get enough of it;
almost none of it came their way: what had become of it? Truly
there must be something very questionable, either in the
intellect of this celebrated Century, or in the methods
Governments now have of supplying their wants from the same. One
or other of two grand fundamental shortcomings, in regard to
intellect or human enlightenment, is very visible in this
enlightened Century of ours; for it has now become the most
anarchic of Centuries; that is to say, has fallen practically
into such Egyptian darkness that it cannot grope its way at all!
Nay I rather think both of these shortcomings, fatal deficits
both, are chargeable upon us; and it is the joint harvest of both
that we are now reaping with such havoc to our affairs. I rather
guess, the intellect of the Nineteenth Century, so full of
miracle to Heavyside and others, is itself a mechanical or
_beaver_ intellect rather than a high or eminently human one. A
dim and mean though authentic kind of intellect, this; venerable
only in defect of better. This kind will avail but little in the
higher enterprises of human intellect, especially in that highest
enterprise of guiding men Heavenward, which, after all, is the
one real "governing" of them on this God's-Earth:--an enterprise
not to be achieved by beaver intellect, but by other higher and
highest kinds. This is deficit _first_. And then _secondly_,
Governments have, really to a fatal and extraordinary extent,
neglected in late ages to supply themselves with what intellect
was going; having, as was too natural in the dim time, taken up a
notion that human intellect, or even beaver intellect, was not
necessary to them at all, but that a little of the _vulpine_ sort
(if attainable), supported by routine, red-tape traditions, and
tolerable parliamentary eloquence on occasion, would very well
suffice. A most false and impious notion; leading to fatal
lethargy on the part of Governments, while Nature and Fact were
preparing strange phenomena in contradiction to it.
These are two very fatal deficits;--the remedy of either of which
would be the remedy of both, could we but find it! For indeed
they are vitally connected: one of them is sure to produce the
other; and both once in action together, the advent of darkness,
certain enough to issue in anarchy by and by, goes on with
frightful acceleration. If Governments neglect to invite what
noble intellect there is, then too surely all intellect, not
omnipotent to resist bad influences, will tend to become
beaverish ignoble intellect; and quitting high aims, which seem
shut up from it, will help itself forward in the way of making
money and such like; or will even sink to be sham intellect,
helping itself by methods which are not only beaverish but
vulpine, and so "ignoble" as not to have common honesty. The
Government, taking no thought to choose intellect for itself,
will gradually find that there is less and less of a good quality
to choose from: thus, as in all impieties it does, bad grows
worse at a frightful _double_ rate of progression; and your
impiety is twice cursed. If you are impious enough to tolerate
darkness, you will get ever more darkness to tolerate; and at
that inevitable stage of the account (inevitable in all such
accounts) when actual light or else destruction is the
alternative, you will call to the Heavens and the Earth for
light, and none will come!
Certainly this evil, for one, has _not_ "wrought its own cure;"
but has wrought precisely the reverse, and has been hourly eating
away what possibilities of cure there were. And so, I fear, in
spite of rumors to the contrary, it always is with evils, with
solecisms against Nature, and contradictions to the divine fact
of things: not an evil of them has ever wrought its own cure in
my experience;--but has continually grown worse and wider and
uglier, till some _good_ (generally a good _man_) not able to
endure the abomination longer, rose upon it and cured or else
extinguished it. Evil Governments, divested of God's light
because they have loved darkness rather, are not likelier than
other evils to work their own cure out of that bad plight.
It is urgent upon all Governments to pause in this fatal course;
persisted in, the goal is fearfully evident; every hour's
persistence in it is making return more difficult. Intellect
exists in all countries; and the function appointed it by
Heaven,--Governments had better not attempt to contradict that,
for they cannot! Intellect _has_ to govern in this world and
will do it, if not in alliance with so-called "Governments" of
red-tape and routine, then in divine hostility to such, and
sometimes alas in diabolic hostility to such; and in the end, as
sure as Heaven is higher than Downing Street, and the Laws of
Nature are tougher than red-tape, with entire victory over them
and entire ruin to them. If there is one thinking man among the
Politicians of England, I consider these things extremely well
worth his attention just now.
Who are available to your Offices in Downing Street? 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 favored of Heaven or disfavored.
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? I consider that every
Government convicts itself of infatuation and futility, or
absolves and justifies itself before God and man, according as it
answers this question. With all sublunary entities, this is the
question of questions. What talent is born to you? How do you
employ that? The crop of spiritual talent that is born to you,
of human nobleness and intellect and heroic faculty, this is
infinitely more important than your crops of cotton or corn, or
wine or herrings or whale-oil, which the Newspapers record with
such anxiety every season. This is not quite counted by seasons,
therefore the Newspapers are silent: but by generations and
centuries, I assure you it becomes amazingly sensible; and
surpasses, as Heaven does Earth, all the corn and wine, and
whale-oil and California bullion, or any other crop you grow. If
that crop cease, the other crops--please to take them also, if
you are anxious about them. That once ceasing, we may shut shop;
for no other crop whatever will stay with us, nor is worth having
if it would.
To promote men of talent, to search and sift the whole society in
every class for men of talent, and joyfully promote them, has not
always been found impossible. In many forms of polity they have
done it, and still do it, to a certain degree. The degree to
which they succeed in doing it marks, as I have said, with very
great accuracy the degree of divine and human worth that is in
them, the degree of success or real ultimate victory they can
expect to have in this world.--Think, for example, of the old
Catholic Church, in its merely terrestrial relations to the
State; and see if your reflections, and contrasts with what now
is, are of an exulting character. Progress of the species has
gone on as with seven-league boots, and in various directions has
shot ahead amazingly, with three cheers from all the world; but
in this direction, the most vital and indispensable, it has
lagged terribly, and has even moved backward, till now it is
quite gone out of sight in clouds of cotton-fuzz and
railway-scrip, and has fallen fairly over the horizon to
rearward!
In those most benighted Feudal societies, full of mere tyrannous
steel Barons, and totally destitute of Tenpound Franchises and
Ballot-boxes, there did nevertheless authentically preach itself
everywhere this grandest of gospels, without which no other
gospel can avail us much, to all souls of men, "Awake ye noble
souls; here is a noble career for you!" I say, everywhere a road
towards promotion, for human nobleness, lay wide open to all men.
The pious soul,--which, if you reflect, will mean the ingenuous
and ingenious, the gifted, intelligent and nobly-aspiring
soul,--such a soul, in whatever rank of life it were born, had
one path inviting it; a generous career, whereon, by human worth
and valor, all earthly heights and Heaven itself were attainable.
In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble
soul doomed quite to choke, and die ignobly. The Church, poor
old benighted creature, had at least taken care of that: the
noble aspiring soul, not doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries,
could at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take
refuge. Education awaited it there; strict training not only to
whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading,
but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint,
annihilation of self,--really to human nobleness in many most
essential respects. No questions asked about your birth,
genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one
question was, "Is there some human nobleness in you, or is there
not?" The poor neat-herd's son, if he were a Noble of Nature,
might rise to Priesthood, to High-priesthood, to the top of this
world,--and best of all, he had still high Heaven lying high
enough above him, to keep his head steady, on whatever height or
in whatever depth his way might lie!
A thrice-glorious arrangement, when I reflect on it; most
salutary to all high and low interests; a truly human
arrangement. You made the born noble yours, welcoming him as
what he was, the Sent of Heaven: you did not force him either to
die or become your enemy; idly neglecting or suppressing him as
what he was not, a thing of no worth. You accepted the blessed
_light_; and in the shape of infernal _lightning_ it needed not
to visit you. How, like an immense mine-shaft through the dim
oppressed strata of society, this Institution of the Priesthood
ran; opening, from the lowest depths towards all heights and
towards Heaven itself, a free road of egress and emergence
towards virtuous nobleness, heroism and well-doing, for every
born man. This we may call the living lungs and
blood-circulation of those old Feudalisms. When I think of that
immeasurable all-pervading lungs; present in every corner of
human society, every meanest hut a _cell_ of said lungs; inviting
whatsoever noble pious soul was born there to the path that was
noble for him; and leading thereby sometimes, if he were worthy,
to be the Papa of Christendom, and Commander of all Kings,--I
perceive how the old Christian society continued healthy, vital,
and was strong and heroic. When I contrast this with the noble
aims now held out to noble souls born in remote huts, or beyond
the verge of Palace-Yard; and think of what your Lordship has
done in the way of making priests and papas,--I see a society
without lungs, fast wheezing itself to death, in horrid
convulsions; and deserving to die.
Over Europe generally in these years, I consider that the State
has died, has fairly coughed its last in street musketry, and
fallen down dead, incapable of any but _galvanic_ life
henceforth,--owing to this same fatal want of _lungs_, which
includes all other wants for a State. And furthermore that it
will never come alive again, till it contrive to get such
indispensable vital apparatus; the outlook toward which
consummation is very distant in most communities of Europe. If
you let it come to death or suspended animation in States, the
case is very bad! Vain to call in universal-suffrage parliaments
at that stage: the universal-suffrage parliaments cannot give
you any breath of life, cannot find any _wisdom_ for you; by long
impiety, you have let the supply of noble human wisdom die out;
and the wisdom that now courts your universal suffrages is
beggarly human _attorneyism_ or sham-wisdom, which is _not_ an
insight into the Laws of God's Universe, but into the laws of
hungry Egoism and the Devil's Chicane, and can in the end profit
no community or man.
No; the kind of heroes that come mounted on the shoulders of the
universal suffrage, and install themselves as Prime Ministers and
healing Statesmen by force of able editorship, do not bid very
fair to bring Nations back to the ways of God. Eloquent
high-lacquered _pinchbeck_ specimens these, expert in the arts of
Belial mainly;--fitter to be markers at some exceedingly
expensive billiard-table than sacred chief-priests of men!
"Greeks of the Lower Empire;" with a varnish of parliamentary
rhetoric; and, I suppose, this other great gift, toughness of
character,--proof that they have _persevered_ in their Master's
service. Poor wretches, their industry is mob-worship,
place-worship, parliamentary intrigue, and the multiplex art of
tongue-fence: flung into that bad element, there they swim for
decades long, throttling and wrestling one another according to
their strength,--and the toughest or luckiest gets to land, and
becomes Premier. A more entirely unbeautiful class of Premiers
was never raked out of the ooze, and set on high places, by any
ingenuity of man. Dame Dubarry's petticoat was a better
seine-net for fishing out Premiers than that. Let all Nations
whom necessity is driving towards that method, take warning in
time!
Alas, there is, in a manner, but one Nation that can still take
warning! In England alone of European Countries the State yet
survives; and might help itself by better methods. In England
heroic wisdom is not yet dead, and quite replaced by attorneyism:
the honest beaver faculty yet abounds with us, the heroic manful
faculty shows itself also to the observant eye, not dead but
dangerously sleeping. I said there were many _kings_ in England:
if these can yet be rallied into strenuous activity, and set to
govern England in Downing Street and elsewhere, which their
function always is,--then England can be saved from anarchies and
universal suffrages; and that Apotheosis of Attorneyism, blackest
of terrestrial curses, may be spared us. If these cannot, the
other issue, in such forms as may be appropriate to us, is
inevitable. What escape is there? England must conform to the
eternal laws of life, or England too must die!
England with the largest mass of real living interests ever
intrusted to a Nation; and with a mass of extinct imaginary and
quite dead interests piled upon it to the very Heavens, and
encumbering it from shore to shore,--does reel and stagger
ominously in these years; urged by the Divine Silences and the
Eternal Laws to take practical hold of its living interests and
manage them: and clutching blindly into its venerable extinct
and imaginary interests, as if that were still the way to do it.
England must contrive to manage its living interests, and quit
its dead ones and their methods, or else depart from its place in
this world. Surely England is called as no Nation ever was, to
summon out its _kings_, and set them to that high work!--Huge
inorganic England, nigh choked under the exuviae of a thousand
years, and blindly sprawling amid chartisms, ballot-boxes,
prevenient graces, and bishops' nightmares, must, as the
preliminary and commencement of organization, learn to _breathe_
again,--get "lungs" for herself again, as we defined it. That is
imperative upon her: she too will die, otherwise, and cough her
last upon the streets some day;--how can she continue living? To
enfranchise whatsoever of Wisdom is born in England, and set that
to the sacred task of coercing and amending what of Folly is born
in England: Heaven's blessing is purchasable by that; by not
that, only Heaven's curse is purchasable. The reform
contemplated, my liberal friends perceive, is a truly radical
one; no ballot-box ever went so deep into the roots: a radical,
most painful, slow and difficult, but most indispensable reform
of reforms!
How short and feeble an approximation to these high ulterior
results, the best Reform of Downing Street, presided over by the
fittest Statesman one can imagine to exist at present, would be,
is too apparent to me. A long time yet till we get our living
interests put under due administration, till we get our dead
interests handsomely dismissed. A long time yet till, by
extensive change of habit and ways of thinking and acting, _we_
get living "lungs" for ourselves! Nevertheless, by Reform of
Downing Street, we do begin to breathe: we do start in the way
towards that and all high results. Nor is there visible to me
any other way. Blessed enough were the way once entered on;
could we, in our evil days, but see the noble enterprise begun,
and fairly in progress!
What the "_New_ Downing Street" can grow to, and will and must if
England is to have a Downing Street beyond a few years longer, it
is far from me, in my remote watch-tower, to say with precision.
A Downing Street inhabited by the gifted of the intellects of
England; directing all its energies upon the real and living
interests of England, and silently but incessantly, in the
alembics of the place, burning up the extinct imaginary
interests of England, that we may see God's sky a little plainer
overhead, and have all of us a great accession of "heroic wisdom"
to dispose of: such a Downing Street--to draw the plan of it,
will require architects; many successive architects and builders
will be needed there. Let not editors, and remote unprofessional
persons, interfere too much!--Change in the present edifice,
however, radical change, all men can discern to be inevitable;
and even, if there shall not worse swiftly follow, to be
imminent. Outlines of the future edifice paint themselves
against the sky (to men that still have a sky, and are above the
miserable London fogs of the hour); noble elements of new State
Architecture, foreshadows of a new Downing Street for the New Era
that is come. These with pious hope all men can see; and it is
good that all men, with whatever faculty they have, were
earnestly looking thitherward;--trying to get above the fogs,
that they might look thitherward!
Among practical men the idea prevails that Government can do
nothing but "keep the peace." They say all higher tasks are
unsafe for it, impossible for it,--and in fine not necessary for
it or for us. On this footing a very feeble Downing Street might
serve the turn!--I am well aware that Government, for a long time
past, has taken in hand no other public task, and has professed
to have no other, but that of keeping the peace. This public
task, and the private one of ascertaining whether Dick or Jack
was to do it, have amply filled the capabilities of Government
for several generations now. Hard tasks both, it would appear.
In accomplishing the first, for example, have not heaven-born
Chancellors of the Exchequer had to shear us very bare; and to
leave an overplus of Debt, or of fleeces shorn _before_ they are
grown, justly esteemed among the wonders of the world? Not a
first-rate keeping of the peace, this, we begin to surmise! At
least it seems strange to us.
For we, and the overwhelming majority of all our acquaintances,
in this Parish and Nation and the adjacent Parishes and Nations,
are profoundly conscious to ourselves of being by nature
peaceable persons; following our necessary industries; without
wish, interest or faintest intention to cut the skin of any
mortal, to break feloniously into his industrial premises, or do
any injustice to him at all. Because indeed, independent of
Government, there is a thing called conscience, and we dare not.
So that it cannot but appear to us, "the peace," under dexterous
management, might be very much more easily kept, your Lordship;
nay, we almost think, if well let alone, it would in a measure
keep _itself_ among such a set of persons! And how it happens
that when a poor hardworking creature of us has laboriously
earned sixpence, the Government comes in, and (as some compute)
says, "I will thank you for threepence of that, as per account,
for getting you peace to spend the other threepence," our
amazement begins to be considerable,--and I think results will
follow from it by and by. Not the most dexterous keeping of the
peace, your Lordship, unless it be more difficult to do than
appears!
Our domestic peace, we cannot but perceive, as good as keeps
itself. Here and there a select Equitable Person, appointed by
the Public for that end, clad in ermine, and backed by certain
companies of blue Police, is amply adequate, without immoderate
outlay in money or otherwise, to keep down the few exceptional
individuals of the scoundrel kind; who, we observe, by the nature
of them, are always weak and inconsiderable. And as to foreign
peace, really all Europe, now especially with so many railroads,
public journals, printed books, penny-post, bills of exchange,
and continual intercourse and mutual dependence, is more and more
becoming (so to speak) one Parish; the Parishioners of which
being, as we ourselves are, in immense majority peaceable
hard-working people, could, if they were moderately well guided,
have almost no disposition to quarrel. Their economic interests
are one, "To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the
dearest;" their faith, any _religious_ faith they have, is one,
"To annihilate shams--by all methods, street-barricades
included." Why should they quarrel? The Czar of Russia, in the
Eastern parts of the Parish, may have other notions; but he knows
too well he must keep them to himself. He, if he meddled with the
Western parts, and attempted anywhere to crush or disturb that
sacred Democratic Faith of theirs, is aware there would rise from
a hundred and fifty million human throats such a _Hymn of the
Marseillaise_ as was never heard before; and England, France,
Germany, Poland, Hungary, and the Nine Kingdoms, hurling
themselves upon him in never-imagined fire of vengeance, would
swiftly reduce his Russia and him to a strange situation!
Wherefore he forbears,--and being a person of some sense, will
long forbear. In spite of editorial prophecy, the Czar of Russia
does not disturb our night's rest. And with the other parts of
the Parish our dreams and our thoughts are of anything but of
fighting, or of the smallest need to fight.
For keeping of the peace, a thing highly desirable to us , we
strive to be grateful to your Lordship. Intelligible to us,
also, your Lordship's reluctance to get out of the old routine.
But we beg to say farther, that peace by itself has no feet to
stand upon, and would not suit us even if it had. Keeping of the
peace is the function of a policeman, and but a small fraction of
that of any Government, King or Chief of men. Are not all men
bound, and the Chief of men in the name of all, to do properly
this: To see, so far as human effort under pain of eternal
reprobation can, God's Kingdom incessantly advancing here below,
and His will done on Earth as it is in Heaven? On Sundays your
Lordship knows this well; forgot it not on week-days. I assure
you it is forevermore a fact. That is the immense divine and
never-ending task which is laid on every man, and with
unspeakable increase of emphasis on every Government or
Commonwealth of men. Your Lordship, that is the basis upon which
peace and all else depends! That basis once well lost, there is
no peace capable of being kept,--the only peace that could then
be kept is that of the churchyard. Your Lordship may depend on
it, whatever thing takes upon it the name of Sovereign or
Government in an English Nation such as this will have to get out
of that old routine; and set about keeping something very
different from the peace, in these days!
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17