Latter Day Pamphlets

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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
fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humor 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 honorable members perorated; and
to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, did
not scrip continue salable, 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 lies were 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. O Heavyside, my
solid friend, this is the sorrow of sorrows: what on earth can
become of us till this accursed enchantment, the general summary
and consecration of delusions, be cast forth from the heart and
life of one and all! Cast forth it will be; it must, or we are
tending, at all moments, whitherward I do not like to name.
Alas, and the casting of it out, to what heights and what depths
will it lead us, in the sad universe mostly of lies and shams and
hollow phantasms (grown very ghastly now), in which, as in a safe
home, we have lived this century or two! To heights and depths
of social and individual _divorce_ from delusions,--of "reform"
in right sacred earnest, of indispensable amendment, and stern
sorrowful abrogation and order to depart,--such as cannot well be
spoken at present; as dare scarcely be thought at present; which
nevertheless are very inevitable, and perhaps rather imminent
several of them! Truly we have a heavy task of work before us;
and there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin upon
it, before it tumble into an inextricable mass, in which there
will be no working, but only suffering and hopelessly
perishing!

Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, will itself
manage it? Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, furnished
with ballot-boxes and such like, will itself accomplish the
salutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and make a new
blessed world of us by and by?--To the great mass of men, I am
aware, the matter presents itself quite on this hopeful side.
Democracy they consider to _be_ a kind of "Government." The old
model, formed long since, and brought to perfection in England
now two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself to all Nations
as the new healing for every woe: "Set up a Parliament," the
Nations everywhere say, when the old King is detected to be a
Sham-King, and hunted out or not; "set up a Parliament; let us
have suffrages, universal suffrages; and all either at once or by
due degrees will be right, and a real Millennium come!" Such is
their way of construing the matter.

Such, alas, is by no means my way of construing the matter; if it
were, I should have had the happiness of remaining silent, and
been without call to speak here. It is because the contrary of
all this is deeply manifest to me, and appears to be forgotten by
multitudes of my contemporaries, that I have had to undertake
addressing a word to them. The contrary of all this;--and the
farther I look into the roots of all this, the more hateful,
ruinous and dismal does the state of mind all this could have
originated in appear to me. 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 clamors 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! Possible the
inveterate notions of the English People may have settled it as
the method, and the Everlasting Laws of Nature may have settled
it as not the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at
all, if taken as the whole? If a Parliament with never such
suffrages is not the method settled by this latter authority,
then it will urgently behoove 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.

Not towards it, I say, if so! Unanimity of voting,--that will do
nothing for us if so. Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its
excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that,
above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely
constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will
find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with
adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are
entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without
voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to
them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian
Winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs,
dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with most
chaotic "admonition;" you will be flung half frozen on the
Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg
councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never
get round Cape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship;--yes indeed,
the ship's crew may be very unanimous, which doubtless, for the
time being, will be very comfortable to the ship's crew, and to
their Phantasm Captain if they have one: but if the tack they
unanimously steer upon is guiding them into the belly of the
Abyss, it will not profit them much!--Ships accordingly do not
use the ballot-box at all; and they reject the Phantasm species
of Captains: one wishes much some other Entities--since all
entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws--could be
brought to show as much wisdom, and sense at least of
self-preservation, the first command of Nature. Phantasm
Captains with unanimous votings: this is considered to be all
the law and all the prophets, at present.

If a man could shake out of his mind the universal noise of
political doctors in this generation and in the last generation
or two, and consider the matter face to face, with his own
sincere intelligence looking at it, I venture to say he would
find this a very extraordinary method of navigating, whether in
the Straits of Magellan or the undiscovered Sea of Time. To
prosper in this world, to gain felicity, victory and improvement,
either for a man or a nation, there is but one thing requisite,
That the man or nation can discern what the true regulations of
the Universe are in regard to him and his pursuit, and can
faithfully and steadfastly follow these. These will lead him to
victory; whoever it may be that sets him in the way of
these,--were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand
Lama, Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudy
the Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of Political
Economy,--sets him in the sure way to please the Author of this
Universe, and is his friend of friends. And again, whoever does
the contrary is, for a like reason, his enemy of enemies. This
may be taken as fixed.

And now by what method ascertain the monition of the gods in
regard to our affairs? How decipher, with best fidelity, the
eternal regulation of the Universe; and read, from amid such
confused embroilments of human clamor and folly, what the real
Divine Message to us is? 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!

Historically speaking, I believe there was no Nation that could
subsist upon Democracy. Of ancient Republics, and _Demoi_ and
_Populi_, we have heard much; but it is now pretty well admitted
to be nothing to our purpose;--a universal-suffrage republic, or
a general-suffrage one, or any but a most-limited-suffrage one,
never came to light, or dreamed of doing so, in ancient times.
When the mass of the population were slaves, and the voters
intrinsically a kind of _kings_, or men born to rule others; when
the voters were real "aristocrats" and manageable dependents of
such,--then doubtless voting, and confused jumbling of talk and
intrigue, might, without immediate destruction, or the need of a
Cavaignac to intervene with cannon and sweep the streets clear of
it, go on; and beautiful developments of manhood might be
possible beside it, for a season. Beside it; or even, if you
will, by means of it, and in virtue of it, though that is by no
means so certain as is often supposed. Alas, no: the reflective
constitutional mind has misgivings as to the origin of old Greek
and Roman nobleness; and indeed knows not how this or any other
human nobleness could well be "originated," or brought to pass,
by voting or without voting, in this world, except by the grace
of God very mainly;--and remembers, with a sigh, that of the
Seven Sages themselves no fewer than three were bits of Despotic
Kings, [Gr.] _Turannoi_, "Tyrants" so called (such being greatly
wanted there); and that the other four were very far from Red
Republicans, if of any political faith whatever! We may quit the
Ancient Classical concern, and leave it to College-clubs and
speculative debating-societies, in these late days.

Of the various French Republics that have been tried, or that are
still on trial,--of these also it is not needful to say any word.
But there is one modern instance of Democracy nearly perfect, the
Republic of the United States, which has actually subsisted for
threescore years or more, with immense success as is affirmed; to
which many still appeal, as to a sign of hope for all nations,
and a "Model Republic." Is not America an instance in point?
Why should not all Nations subsist and flourish on Democracy, as
America does?

Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as
little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically,
if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and
in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough,
these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy
of their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, if
not yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantly
clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and
refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world;
doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering
feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model
anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is
nothing to be said. Nay the title hitherto to be a Commonwealth
or Nation at all, among the [Gr.] _ethne_ of the world, is,
strictly considered, still a thing they are but striving for, and
indeed have not yet done much towards attaining. Their
Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there; went
over with them from the Old-Puritan English workshop ready-made.
Deduct what they carried with them from England
ready-made,--their common English Language, and that same
Constitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterate
and now, as it were, inborn reverence for the Constable's Staff;
two quite immense attainments, which England had to spend much
blood, and valiant sweat of brow and brain, for centuries long,
in achieving;--and what new elements of polity or nationhood,
what noble new phasis of human arrangement, or social device
worthy of Prometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes to light in
America? Cotton crops and Indian corn and dollars come to light;
and half a world of untilled land, where populations that respect
the constable can live, for the present _without_ Government:
this comes to light; and the profound sorrow of all nobler
hearts, here uttering itself as silent patient unspeakable ennui,
there coming out as vague elegiac wailings, that there is still
next to nothing more. "Anarchy _plus_ a street-constable:" that
also is anarchic to me, and other than quite lovely!

I foresee, too, that, long before the waste lands are full, the
very street-constable, on these poor terms, will have become
impossible: without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I do
not see how he could continue possible many weeks. Cease to brag
to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions.
To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world:
nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing
and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic ancestors,
saying, "It is well, it is well!" Corn and bacon are granted:
not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon moreover
which, on such conditions, cannot last!--No: America too will
have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this; to
crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us
have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons and
mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the gods.
America's battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though
nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New Spiritual
Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were
ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight
Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own
victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of.
Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a very successful
manner; hitherto, in spite of her "roast-goose with apple-sauce,"
she is not much. "Roast-goose with apple-sauce for the poorest
workingman:" well, surely that is something, thanks to your
respect for the street-constable, and to your continents of
fertile waste land;--but that, even if it could continue, is by
no means enough; that is not even an instalment towards what will
be required of you. My friend, brag not yet of our American
cousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and
resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable; but I can by no
means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what
great thought, what great noble thing that one could worship, or
loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None: the American
cousins have yet done none of these things. "What they have
done?" growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject: "They have
doubled their population every twenty years. They have
begotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded example, Eighteen
Millions of the greatest _bores_ ever seen in this world
before,--that hitherto is their feat in History!"--And so we
leave them, for the present; and cannot predict the success of
Democracy, on this side of the Atlantic, from their
example.

Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, we
apprehend, is forever impossible! So much, with certainty of
loud astonished contradiction from all manner of men at present,
but with sure appeal to the Law of Nature and the ever-abiding
Fact, may be suggested and asserted once more. The Universe
itself is a Monarchy and Hierarchy; large liberty of "voting"
there, all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but with
conditions inexorable and immeasurable annexed to every exercise
of the same. A most free commonwealth of "voters;" but with
Eternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced by
Almighty Power! This is the model of "constitutions;" this: nor
in any Nation where there has not yet (in some supportable and
withal some constantly increasing degree) been confided to the
_Noblest_, with his select series of _Nobler_, the divine
everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ignoble, has
the "Kingdom of God," which we all pray for, "come," nor can "His
will" even _tend_ to be "done on Earth as it is in Heaven" till
then. My Christian friends, and indeed my Sham-Christian and
Anti-Christian, and all manner of men, are invited to reflect on
this. They will find it to be the truth of the case. The Noble
in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all times
and in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law.

To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate him by
whatever method, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from old
wont, this, little as we may regard it, is, in all times and
countries, a practical blasphemy, and Nature will in nowise
forget it. Alas, there lies the origin, the fatal necessity, of
modern Democracy everywhere. 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! Penalties deep as death, and at
length terrible as hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend!--Will
the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any
sane man deliberately believe such a thing? That nevertheless is
the indispensable result, attain it how we may: if that is
attained, all is attained; if not that, nothing. He that cannot
believe the ballot-box to be attaining it, will be comparatively
indifferent to the ballot-box. Excellent for keeping the ship's
crew at peace under their Phantasm Captain; but unserviceable,
under such, for getting round Cape Horn. Alas, that there should
be human beings requiring to have these things argued of, at this
late time of day!

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be
governed by the wise; to be guided in the right path by those who
know it better than they. This is the first "right of man;"
compared with which all other rights are as nothing,--mere
superfluities, corollaries which will follow of their own accord
out of this; if they be not contradictions to this, and less than
nothing! To the wise it is not a privilege; far other indeed.
Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it implies
preservation of themselves withal; but intrinsically it is the
harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his
hand. A duty which he would fain enough shirk; which
accordingly, in these sad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, he
has long everywhere been endeavoring to reduce to its minimum,
and has in fact in most cases nearly escaped altogether. It is
an ungoverned world; a world which we flatter ourselves will
henceforth need no governing. On the dust of our heroic
ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is
well, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we
have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil , not
by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English
Existence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field
for us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops
forever,--find it now in a too questionable state; peremptorily
requiring real labor and agriculture again. Real "agriculture"
is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (with
ballot-box or otherwise) than to plough!

Who would govern that can get along without governing? He that
is fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless
constrained. By multifarious devices we have been endeavoring to
dispense with governing; and by very superficial speculations, of
_laissez-faire_, supply-and-demand, &c. &c. to persuade ourselves
that it is best so. 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. The Real Captain undiscoverable;
the Phantasm Captain everywhere very conspicuous:--it is thought
Phantasm Captains, aided by ballot-boxes, are the true method,
after all. They are much the pleasantest for the time being!
And so no _Dux_ or Duke of any sort, in any province of our
affairs, now _leads_: the Duke's Bailiff _leads_, what little
leading is required for getting in the rents; and the Duke merely
rides in the state-coach. It is everywhere so: and now at last
we see a world all rushing towards strange consummations, because
it is and has long been so!

I do not suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in England
at all, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality and the
Revolutionary Millenniums preached by the French Prophets in this
age: but there are many movements here too which tend inevitably
in the like direction; and good men, who would stand aghast at
Red Republic and its adjuncts, seem to me travelling at full
speed towards that or a similar goal! Certainly the notion
everywhere prevails among us too, and preaches itself abroad in
every dialect, uncontradicted anywhere so far as I can hear, That
the grand panacea for social woes is what we call
"enfranchisement," "emancipation;" or, translated into practical
language, the cutting asunder of human relations, wherever they
are found grievous, as is like to be pretty universally the case
at the rate we have been going for some generations past. Let us
all be "free" of one another; we shall then be happy. Free,
without bond or connection except that of cash-payment; fair
day's wages for the fair day's work; bargained for by voluntary
contract, and law of supply-and-demand: this is thought to be
the true solution of all difficulties and injustices that have
occurred between man and man.

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