Latter Day Pamphlets
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Thomas Carlyle >> Latter Day Pamphlets
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For it is the glory of England that she has a turn for fidelity
in practical work; that sham-workers, though very numerous, are
rarer than elsewhere; that a man who undertakes work for you will
still, in various provinces of our affairs, do it, instead of
merely seeming to do it. John Howard, without pay in money,
_did_ this of the Jail-fever, as other Englishmen do work, in a
truly workmanlike manner: his distinction was that he did it
without money. He had not 500 pounds or 5,000 pounds a year of
salary for it; but lived merely on his Bedfordshire estates, and
as Snigsby irreverently expresses it, "by chewing his own cud."
And, sure enough, if any man might chew the cud of placid
reflections, solid Howard, a mournful man otherwise, might at
intervals indulge a little in that luxury.--No money-salary had
he for his work; he had merely the income of his properties, and
what he could derive from within. Is this such a sublime
distinction, then? Well, let it pass at its value. There have
been benefactors of mankind who had more need of money than he,
and got none too. Milton, it is known, did his _Paradise Lost_
at the easy rate of five pounds. Kepler worked out the secret of
the Heavenly Motions in a dreadfully painful manner; "going over
the calculations sixty times;" and having not only no public
money, but no private either; and, in fact, writing almanacs for
his bread-and-water, while he did this of the Heavenly Motions;
having no Bedfordshire estates; nothing but a pension of 18
pounds (which they would not pay him), the valuable faculty of
writing almanacs, and at length the invaluable one of dying, when
the Heavenly bodies were vanquished, and battle's conflagration
had collapsed into cold dark ashes, and the starvation reached
too high a pitch for the poor man.
Howard is not the only benefactor that has worked without money
for us; there have been some more,--and will be, I hope! For the
Destinies are opulent; and send here and there a man into the
world to do work, for which they do not mean to pay him in money.
And they smite him beneficently with sore afflictions, and blight
his world all into grim frozen ruins round him,--and can make a
wandering Exile of their Dante, and not a soft-bedded Podesta of
Florence, if they wish to get a _Divine Comedy_ out of him. Nay
that rather is their way, when they have worthy work for such a
man; they scourge him manifoldly to the due pitch, sometimes
nearly of despair, that he may search desperately for his work,
and find it; they urge him on still with beneficent stripes when
needful, as is constantly the case between whiles; and, in fact,
have privately decided to reward him with beneficent death by and
by, and not with money at all. O my benevolent friend, I honor
Howard very much; but it is on this side idolatry a long way, not
to an infinite, but to a decidedly finite extent! And you,--put
not the modest noble Howard, a truly modest man, to the blush, by
forcing these reflections on us!
Cholera Doctors, hired to dive into black dens of infection and
despair, they, rushing about all day from lane to lane, with
their life in their hand, are found to do their function; which
is a much more rugged one than Howard's. Or what say we, Cholera
Doctors? Ragged losels gathered by beat of drum from the
overcrowded streets of cities, and drilled a little and dressed
in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurable manner; and
handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of a shilling
per day? Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not
so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant
as the light of the sun: raw materials,--O woe, and loss, and
scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated,
and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and
stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting,
festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong
practical virtue! A Mrs. Manning "dying game,"--alas, is not
that the foiled potentiality of a kind of heroine too? Not a
heroic Judith, not a mother of the Gracchi now, but a hideous
murderess, fit to be the mother of hyenas! To such extent can
potentialities be foiled. Education, kingship, command,--where
is it, whither has it fled? Woe a thousand times, that this,
which is the task of all kings, captains, priests, public
speakers, land-owners, book-writers, mill-owners, and persons
possessing or pretending to possess authority among mankind,--is
left neglected among them all; and instead of it so little done
but protocolling, black-or-white surplicing, partridge-shooting,
parliamentary eloquence and popular twaddle-literature; with such
results as we see!--
Howard abated the Jail-fever; but it seems to me he has been the
innocent cause of a far more distressing fever which rages high
just now; what we may call the Benevolent-Platform Fever. Howard
is to be regarded as the unlucky fountain of that tumultuous
frothy ocean-tide of benevolent sentimentality, "abolition of
punishment," all-absorbing "prison-discipline," and general
morbid sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, for scoundrels; which
is threatening to drown human society as in deluges, and leave,
instead of an "edifice of society" fit for the habitation of men,
a continent of fetid ooze inhabitable only by mud-gods and
creatures that walk upon their belly. Few things more distress a
thinking soul at this time.
Most sick am I, O friends, of this sugary disastrous jargon of
philanthropy, the reign of love, new era of universal
brotherhood, and not Paradise to the Well-deserving but Paradise
to All-and-sundry, which possesses the benighted minds of men and
women in our day. My friends, I think you are much mistaken
about Paradise! "No Paradise for anybody: he that cannot do
without Paradise, go his ways:" suppose you tried that for a
while! I reckon that the safer version. Unhappy sugary
brethren, this is all untrue, this other; contrary to the fact;
not a tatter of it will hang together in the wind and weather of
fact. In brotherhood with the base and foolish I, for one, do
not mean to live. Not in brotherhood with them was life hitherto
worth much to me; in pity, in hope not yet quite swallowed of
disgust,--otherwise in enmity that must last through eternity, in
unappeasable aversion shall I have to live with these!
Brotherhood? No, be the thought far from me. They are Adam's
children,--alas yes, I well remember that, and never shall forget
it; hence this rage and sorrow. But they have gone over to the
dragons; they have quitted the Father's house, and set up with
the Old Serpent: till they return, how can they be brothers?
They are enemies, deadly to themselves and to me and to you, till
then; till then, while hope yet lasts, I will treat them as
brothers fallen insane;--when hope has ended, with tears grown
sacred and wrath grown sacred, I will cut them off in the name of
God! It is at my peril if I do not. With the servant of Satan I
dare not continue in partnership. Him I must put away, resolutely
and forever; "lest," as it is written, "I become partaker of his
plagues."
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.
On the whole, what a reflection is it that we cannot bestow on an
unworthy man any particle of our benevolence, our patronage, or
whatever resource is ours,--without withdrawing it, it and all
that will grow of it, from one worthy, to whom it of right
belongs! We cannot, I say; impossible; it is the eternal law of
things. Incompetent Duncan M'Pastehorn, the hapless incompetent
mortal to whom I give the cobbling of my boots,--and cannot find
in my heart to refuse it, the poor drunken wretch having a wife
and ten children; he _withdraws_ the job from sober, plainly
competent, and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generally short of
work too; discourages Sparrowbill; teaches him that he too may as
well drink and loiter and bungle; that this is not a scene for
merit and demerit at all, but for dupery, and whining flattery,
and incompetent cobbling of every description;--clearly tending
to the ruin of poor Sparrowbill! What harm had Sparrowbill done
me that I should so help to ruin him? And I couldn't save the
insalvable M'Pastehorn; I merely yielded him, for insufficient
work, here and there a half-crown,--which he oftenest drank. And
now Sparrowbill also is drinking!
Justice, Justice: woe betides us everywhere when, for this
reason or for that, we fail to do justice! No beneficence,
benevolence, or other virtuous contribution will make good the
want. And in what a rate of terrible geometrical progression,
far beyond our poor computation, any act of Injustice once done
by us grows; rooting itself ever anew, spreading ever anew, like
a banyan-tree,--blasting all life under it, for it is a
poison-tree! There is but one thing needed for the world; but
that one is indispensable. Justice, Justice, in the name of
Heaven; give us Justice, and we live; give us only counterfeits
of it, or succedanea for it, and we die!
Oh, this universal syllabub of philanthropic twaddle! My friend,
it is very sad, now when Christianity is as good as extinct in
all hearts, to meet this ghastly-Phantasm of Christianity
parading through almost all. "I will clean your foul
thoroughfares, and make your Devil's-cloaca of a world into a
garden of Heaven," jabbers this Phantasm, itself a
phosphorescence and unclean! The worst, it is written, comes
from corruption of the best:--Semitic forms now lying putrescent,
dead and still unburied, this phosphorescence rises. I say
sometimes, such a blockhead Idol, and miserable _White_
Mumbo-jumbo, fashioned out of deciduous sticks and cast clothes,
out of extinct cants and modern sentimentalisms, as that which
they sing litanies to at Exeter Hall and extensively elsewhere,
was perhaps never set up by human folly before. Unhappy
creatures, that is not the Maker of the Universe, not that, look
one moment at the Universe, and see! That is a paltry Phantasm,
engendered in your own sick brain; whoever follows that as a
Reality will fall into the ditch.
Reform, reform, all men see and feel, is imperatively needed.
Reform must either be got, and speedily, or else we die: and
nearly all the men that speak, instruct us, saying, "Have you
quite done your interesting Negroes in the Sugar Islands? Rush
to the Jails, then, O ye reformers; snatch up the interesting
scoundrel-population there, to them be nursing-fathers and
nursing-mothers. And oh, wash, and dress, and teach, and recover
to the service of Heaven these poor lost souls: so, we assure
you, will society attain the needful reform, and life be still
possible in this world." Thus sing the oracles everywhere;
nearly all the men that speak, though we doubt not, there are, as
usual, immense majorities consciously or unconsciously wiser who
hold their tongue. But except this of whitewashing the
scoundrel-population, one sees little "reform" going on. There
is perhaps some endeavor to do a little scavengering; and, as the
all-including point, to cheapen the terrible cost of Government:
but neither of these enterprises makes progress, owing to
impediments.
"Whitewash your scoundrel-population; sweep out your abominable
gutters (if not in the name of God, ye brutish slatterns, then in
the name of Cholera and the Royal College of Surgeons): do these
two things;--and observe, much cheaper if you please!"--Well,
here surely is an Evangel of Freedom, and real Program of a new
Era. What surliest misanthrope would not find this world lovely,
were these things done: scoundrels whitewashed; some degree of
scavengering upon the gutters; and at a cheap rate, thirdly?
That surely is an occasion on which, if ever on any, the Genius
of Reform may pipe all hands!--Poor old Genius of Reform; bedrid
this good while; with little but broken ballot-boxes, and
tattered stripes of Benthamee Constitutions lying round him; and
on the walls mere shadows of clothing-colonels, rates-in-aid,
poor-law unions, defunct potato and the Irish difficulty,--he
does not seem long for this world, piping to that effect?
Not the least disgusting feature of this Gospel according to the
Platform is its reference to religion, and even to the Christian
Religion, as an authority and mandate for what it does.
Christian Religion? Does the Christian or any religion prescribe
love of scoundrels, then? I hope it prescribes a healthy hatred
of scoundrels;--otherwise what am I, in Heaven's name, to make of
it? Me, for one, it will not serve as a religion on those
strange terms. Just hatred of scoundrels, I say; fixed,
irreconcilable, inexorable enmity to the enemies of God: this,
and not love for them, and incessant whitewashing, and dressing
and cockering of them, must, if you look into it, be the backbone
of any human religion whatsoever. Christian Religion! In what
words can I address you, ye unfortunates, sunk in the slushy ooze
till the worship of mud-serpents, and unutterable Pythons and
poisonous slimy monstrosities, seems to you the worship of God?
This is the rotten carcass of Christianity; this mal-odorous
phosphorescence of post-mortem sentimentalism. O Heavens, from
the Christianity of Oliver Cromwell, wrestling in grim fight with
Satan and his incarnate Blackguardisms, Hypocrisies, Injustices,
and legion of human and infernal angels, to that of eloquent Mr.
Hesperus Fiddlestring denouncing capital punishments, and
inculcating the benevolence on platforms, what a road have we
travelled!
A foolish stump-orator, perorating on his platform mere
benevolences, seems a pleasant object to many persons; a
harmless or insignificant one to almost all. Look at him,
however; scan him till you discern the nature of him, he is not
pleasant, but ugly and perilous. That beautiful speech of his
takes captive every long ear, and kindles into quasi-sacred
enthusiasm the minds of not a few; but it is quite in the teeth
of the everlasting facts of this Universe, and will come only to
mischief for every party concerned. Consider that little
spouting wretch. Within the paltry skin of him, it is too
probable, he holds few human virtues, beyond those essential for
digesting victual: envious, cowardly, vain, splenetic hungry
soul; what heroism, in word or thought or action, will you ever
get from the like of him? He, in his necessity, has taken into
the benevolent line; warms the cold vacuity of his inner man to
some extent, in a comfortable manner, not by silently doing some
virtue of his own, but by fiercely recommending hearsay
pseudo-virtues and respectable benevolences to other people. Do
you call that a good trade? Long-eared fellow-creatures, more
or less resembling himself, answer, "Hear, hear! Live
Fiddlestring forever!" Wherefrom follow Abolition Congresses,
Odes to the Gallows;--perhaps some dirty little Bill, getting
itself debated next Session in Parliament, to waste certain
nights of our legislative Year, and cause skipping in our Morning
Newspaper, till the abortion can be emptied out again and sent
fairly floating down the gutters.
Not with entire approbation do I, for one, look on that eloquent
individual. Wise benevolence, if it had authority, would order
that individual, I believe, to find some other trade: "Eloquent
individual, pleading here against the Laws of Nature,--for many
reasons, I bid thee close that mouth of thine. Enough of
balderdash these long-eared have now drunk. Depart thou; _do_
some benevolent work; at lowest, be silent. Disappear, I say;
away, and jargon no more in that manner, lest a worst thing
befall thee." _Exeat_ Fiddlestring!--Beneficent men are not they
who appear on platforms, pleading against the Almighty Maker's
Laws; these are the maleficent men, whose lips it is pity that
some authority cannot straightway shut. Pandora's Box is not
more baleful than the gifts these eloquent benefactors are
pressing on us. Close your pedler's pack, my friend; swift, away
with it! Pernicious, fraught with mere woe and sugary poison is
that kind of benevolence and beneficence.
Truly, one of the saddest sights in these times is that of poor
creatures, on platforms, in parliaments and other situations,
making and unmaking "Laws;" in whose soul, full of mere vacant
hearsay and windy babble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law;
whom it never struck that Heaven had a Law, or that the
Earth--could not have what kind of Law you pleased! Human
Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to think of. An
impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that is so made;
all Nature is against it; it will and can do nothing but mischief
wheresoever it shows itself in Nature: and such Laws lie now
like an incubus over this Earth, so innumerable are they. How
long, O Lord, how long!--O ye Eternities, Divine Silences, do you
dwell no more, then, in the hearts of the noble and the true; and
is there no inspiration of the Almighty any more vouchsafed us?
The inspiration of the Morning Newspapers--alas, we have had
enough of that, and are arrived at the gates of death by means of
that!
"Really, one of the most difficult questions this we have in
these times, What to do with our criminals?" blandly observed a
certain Law-dignitary, in my hearing once, taking the cigar from
his mouth, and pensively smiling over a group of us under the
summer beech-tree, as Favonius carried off the tobacco-smoke; and
the group said nothing, only smiled and nodded, answering by new
tobacco-clouds. "What to do with our criminals?" asked the
official Law-dignitary again, as if entirely at a loss.--"I
suppose," said one ancient figure not engaged in smoking, "the
plan would be to treat them according to the real law of the
case; to make the Law of England, in respect of them, correspond
to the Law of the Universe. Criminals, I suppose, would prove
manageable in that way: if we could do approximately as God
Almighty does towards them; in a word, if we could try to do
Justice towards them."--"I'll thank you for a definition of
Justice?" sneered the official person in a cheerily scornful and
triumphant manner, backed by a slight laugh from the honorable
company; which irritated the other speaker.--"Well, I have no
pocket definition of Justice," said he, "to give your Lordship.
It has not quite been my trade to look for such a definition; I
could rather fancy it had been your Lordship's trade, sitting on
your high place this long while. But one thing I can tell you:
Justice always is, whether we define it or not. Everything done,
suffered or proposed, in Parliament or out of it, is either just
or else unjust; either is accepted by the gods and eternal facts,
or is rejected by them. Your Lordship and I, with or without
definition, do a little know Justice, I will hope; if we don't
both know it and do it, we are hourly travelling down
towards--Heavens, must I name such a place! That is the place we
are bound to, with all our trading-pack, and the small or
extensive budgets of human business laid on us; and there, if we
_don't know_ Justice, we, and all our budgets and Acts of
Parliament, shall find lodging when the day is done!"--The
official person, a polite man otherwise, grinned as he best
could some semblance of a laugh, mirthful as that of the ass
eating thistles, and ended in "Hah, oh, ah!"--
Indeed, it is wonderful to hear what account we at present give
ourselves of the punishment of criminals. No "revenge"--O
Heavens, no; all preachers on Sunday strictly forbid that; and
even (at least on Sundays) prescribe the contrary of that. It is
for the sake of "example," that you punish; to "protect society"
and its purse and skin; to deter the innocent from falling into
crime; and especially withal, for the purpose of improving the
poor criminal himself,--or at lowest, of hanging and ending him,
that he may not grow worse. For the poor criminal is, to be
"improved" if possible: against him no "revenge" even on
week-days; nothing but love for him, and pity and help; poor
fellow, is he not miserable enough? Very miserable,--though much
less so than the Master of him, called Satan, is understood (on
Sundays) to have long deservedly been!
My friends, will you permit me to say that all this, to one poor
judgment among your number, is the mournfulest twaddle that human
tongues could shake from them; that it has no solid foundation in
the nature of things; and to a healthy human heart no credibility
whatever. Permit me to say, only to hearts long drowned in dead
Tradition, and for themselves neither believing nor disbelieving,
could this seem credible. Think, and ask yourselves, in spite of
all this preaching and perorating from the teeth outward! Hearts
that are quite strangers to eternal Fact, and acquainted only at
all hours with temporary Semblances parading about in a
prosperous and persuasive condition; hearts that from their first
appearance in this world have breathed since birth, in all
spiritual matters, which means in all matters not pecuniary, the
poisonous atmosphere of universal Cant, could believe such a
thing. Cant moral, Cant religious, Cant political; an atmosphere
which envelops all things for us unfortunates, and has long done;
which goes beyond the Zenith and below the Nadir for us, and has
as good as choked the spiritual life out of all of us,--God pity
such wretches, with little or nothing _real_ about them but their
purse and their abdominal department! Hearts, alas, which
everywhere except in the metallurgic and cotton-spinning
provinces, have communed with no Reality, or awful Presence of a
Fact, godlike or diabolic, in this Universe or this unfathomable
Life at all. Hunger-stricken asphyxied hearts, which have
nourished themselves on what they call religions, Christian
religions. Good Heaven, once more fancy the Christian religion of
Oliver Cromwell; or of some noble Christian man, whom you
yourself may have been blessed enough, once, long since, in your
life, to know! These are not _untrue_ religions; they are the
putrescences and foul residues of religions that are extinct,
that have plainly to every honest nostril been dead some time,
and the remains of which--O ye eternal Heavens, will the nostril
never be delivered from them!--Such hearts, when they get upon
platforms, and into questions not involving money, can "believe"
many things!--
I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason,
and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this
world; one reason, which ancient piety could well define: That
you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him;
that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in
respect of him; aim thitherward, with all your heart and all your
strength and all your soul, thitherward, and not elsewhither at
all! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights
and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims
are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry you
beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves
incapable of maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law
of God is with regard to a man; make that your human law, or I
say it will be ill with you, and not well! If you love your
thief or murderer, if Nature and eternal Fact love him, then do
as you are now doing. But if Nature and Fact do _not_ love him?
If they have set inexorable penalties upon him, and planted
natural wrath against him in every god-created human
heart,--then I advise you, cease, and change your hand.
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