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on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl.
Thomas Carlyle
Will our Rhymer consider himself, then; and decide
for what is actually best? Rhyme, up to this hour, never
seems altogether obedient to him; and disobedient Rhyme,
--who would ride on it that had once learned walking!
He takes amiss that some friends have admonished him to
quit Politics: we will not repeat that admonition. Let him,
on this as on all other matters, take solemn counsel with his
own Socrates'-Demon; such as dwells in every mortal; such
as he is a happy mortal who can hear the voice of, follow the
behests of, like an unalterable law. At the same time, we
could truly wish to see such a mind as his engaged rather in
considering what, in his own sphere, could be done, than
what, in his own or other spheres, ought to be destroyed;
rather in producing or preserving the True, than in mangling
and slashing asunder the False. Let him be at ease: the
False is already dead, or lives only with a mock life. The
death-sentence of the False was of old, from the first beginning
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? 164 Carlyle's Essays
of it, written in Heaven; and is now proclaimed in the Earth,
and read aloud at all market-crosses; nor are innumerable
volunteer tipstaves and headsmen wanting, to execute the
same: for which needful service men inferior to him may
suffice. Why should the heart of the Corn-Law Rhymer
be troubled? Spite of "Bread-tax," he and his brave
children, who will emulate their sire, have yet bread: the
Workhouse, as we rejoice to fancy, has receded into the safe
distance; and is now quite shut-out from his poetic pleasure-
ground. Why should he afflict himself with devices of
"Boroughmongering gowls," or the rage of the Heathen
imagining a vain thing? This matter, which he calls Corn-
Law, will not have completed itself, adjusted itself into
clearness, for the space of a century or two: nay after
twenty centuries, what will there, or can there be for the son
of Adam but Work, Work, two hands quite full of Work!
Meanwhile, is not the Corn-Law Rhymer already a king,
though a belligerent one; king of his own mind and faculty;
and what man in the long-run is king of more? Not one in
the thousand, even among sceptred kings, is king of so much.
Be diligent in business, then; fervent in spirit. Above all
things, lay aside anger, uncharitableness, hatred, noisy
tumult; avoid them, as worse than Pestilence, worse than
"Bread-tax" itself:
For it well beseemeth kings, all mortals it beseemeth well,
To possess their souls in patience, and await what can betide.
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? CHARTISM
"It never smokes but there is fire. "--Old Proverb.
[1839)
? CHAPTER I
CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION
A feeling very generally exists that the condition and
disposition of the Working Classes is a rather ominous matter
at present; that something ought to be said, something ought
to be done, in regard to it. And surely, at an epoch of history
when the "National Petition" carts itself in wagons along
the streets, and is presented "bound with iron hoops, four
men bearing it," to a Reformed House of Commons; and
Chartism numbered by the million and half, taking nothing
by its iron-hooped Petition, breaks out into brickbats, cheap
pikes, and even into sputterings of conflagration, such very
general feeling cannot be considered unnatural! To us
individually this matter appears, and has for many years
appeared, to be the most ominous of all practical matters
whatever; a matter in regard to which if something be not
done, something will do itself one day, and in a fashion that
will please nobody. The time is verily come for acting in it;
how much more for consultation about acting in it, for
speech and articulate inquiry about it!
We are aware that, according to the newspapers, Chartism
is extinct; that a Reform Ministry has'' put down the chimera
of Chartism" in the most felicitous effectual manner. So
say the newspapers;--and yet, alas, most readers of news-
papers know withal that it is indeed the "chimera" of
Chartism, not the reality, which has been put down. The
distracted incoherent embodiment of Chartism, whereby in
late months it took shape and became visible, this has been
put down; or rather has fallen down and gone asunder by
gravitation and law of nature: but the living essence of
. Chartism has not been put down. Chartism means the bitter
16. 5
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? 166 Carlylc's Essays
discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition there-
fore or the wrong disposition, of the Working Classes of
England. It is a new name for a thing which has had many
names, which will yet have many. The matter of Chartism
is weighty, deep-rooted, far-extending; did not begin yester-
day; will by no means end this day or to-morrow. Reform
Ministry, constabulary rural police, new levy of soldiers,
grants of money to Birmingham; all this is well, or is not
well; all this will put down only the embodiment or
"chimera" of Chartism. The essence continuing, new and
ever new embodiments, chimeras madder or less mad, have
to continue. The melancholy fact remains, that this thing
known at present by the name of Chartism does exist; has
existed; and, either "put down," into secret treason, with
rusty pistols, vitriol-bottle and match-box, or openly bran-
dishing pike and torch (one knows not in which case more
fatal-looking), is like to exist till quite other methods have
been tried with it. What means this bitter discontent of
i the Working Classes? Whence comes it, whither goes it?
Above all, at what price, on what terms, will it probably
consent to depart from us and die into rest? These are
questions.
To say that it is mad, incendiary, nefarious, is no answer.
To say all this, in never so many dialects, is saying little.
"Glasgow Thuggery," "Glasgow Thugs;" it is a witty
nickname: the practice of " Number 60 " entering his dark
room, to contract for and settle the price of blood with
operative assassins, in a Christian city, once distinguished,
by its rigorous Christianism, is doubtless a fact worthy of all
horror: but what will horror do for it? What will execration;
nay at bottom, what will condemnation and banishment to
Botany Bay do for it? Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-
meetings, Birmingham riots, Swing conflagrations, are so
many symptoms on the surface; you abolish the symptom to
? ? / no purpose, if the disease is left untouched. Boils oh the
surface are curable or incurable,--small matter which, while
the virulent humour festers deep within; poisoning the
sources of life; and certain enough to find for itself ever new
boils and sore issues; ways of announcing that it continues
there, that it would fain not continue there.
Delirious Chartism will not have raged entirely to no pur-
pose, as indeed no earthly thing does so, if it have forced all
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? Chartism
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thinking men of the community to think of this vital matter,
too apt to be overlooked otherwise. Is the condition of the
English working people wrong; so wrong that rational
working men cannot, will not, and even should not rest
quiet under it? A most grave case, complex beyond all
others in the world; a case wherein Botany Bay, constabulary
rural police, and suchlike, will avail but little. Or is the
discontent itself mad, like the shape it took? Not the
condition of the working people that is wrong; but then-
disposition, their own thoughts, beliefs and feelings that are
wrong? This too were a most grave case, little less alarming,
little less complex than the former one. In this case too,
where constabulary police and mere rigour of coercion seems
more at home, coercion will by no means do all, coercion by
itself will not even do much. If there do exist general mad-
ness of discontent, then sanity and some measure of content
must be brought about again,--not by constabulary police
alone. When the thoughts of a people, in the great mass of
it, have grown mad, the combined issue of that people's
workings will be a madness, an incoherency and ruin! Sanity
will have to be recovered for the general mass; coercion
itself will otherwise cease to be able to coerce.
We have heard it asked, Why Parliament throws no light
on this question of the Working Classes, and the condition or
disposition they are in? Truly to a remote observer of
Parliamentary procedure it seems surprising, especially in
late Reformed times, to see what space this question occupies
. in the Debates of the Nation. Can any other business
whatsoever be so pressing on legislators? A Reformed
Parliament, one would think, should inquire into popular
discontents before they get the length of pikes and torches!
For what end at all are men, Honourable Members and Reform
Members, sent to St. Stephen's with clamour and effort;
kept talking, struggling, motioning and counter-motioning?
The condition of the great body of people in a country is the ?
condition of the country itself: this you would say is a truism
in all times; a truism rather pressing to get recognised as a
truth now, and be acted upon, in these times. Yet read
Hansard's Debates, or the Morning Papers, if. you have
nothing to do! The old grand question, whether A is to be
in office or B, with the innumerable subsidiary questions
growing out of that, courting paragraphs and suffrages for
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? 168 Carlyle's Essays
a blessed solution of that: Canada question, Irish Appropria-
tion question, West-India question, Queen's Bedchamber
question; Game Laws, Usury Laws; African Blacks, Hill
Coolies, Smithfield cattle, and Dog-carts,--all manner of
questions and subjects, except simply this the alpha and
omega of all! Surely Honourable Members ought to speak
of the Condition-of-England question too. Radical Members,
above all; friends of the people; chosen with effort, by the
people, to interpret and articulate the dumb deep want
of the people! To a remote observer they seem oblivious of
their duty. Are they not there, by trade, mission, and express
appointment of themselves and others, to speak for the good
of the British Nation? Whatsoever great British interest
can the least speak for itself, for that beyond all they are
called to speak. They are either speakers for that great
dumb toiling class which cannot speak, or they are nothing
that one can well specify.
Alas, the remote observer knows not the nature of Parlia-
ments: how Parliaments, extant there for the British Nation's
sake, find that they are extant withal for their own sake;
how Parliaments travel so naturally in their deep-rutted
routine, commonplace worn into ruts axle-deep, from which
only strength, insight and courageous generous exertion can
lift any Parliament or vehicle; how in Parliaments, Reformed
or Unreformed, there may chance to be a strong man, an
original, clear-sighted, great-hearted, patient and valiant
man, or to be none such;--how, on the whole, Parliaments,
lumbering along in their deep ruts of commonplace, find, as ?
so many of us otherwise do, that the ruts are axle-deep, and
the travelling very toilsome of itself, and for the day the evil
thereof sufficient! What Parliaments ought to have done
in this business, what they will, can or cannot yet do, and
where the limits of their faculty and culpability may lie, in
regard to it, were a long investigation; into which we need
not enter at this moment. What they have done is unhappily
plain enough. Hitherto, on this most national of questions,
the Collective Wisdom of the Nation has availed us as good
as nothing whatever.
And yet, as we say, it is a question which cannot be left
to the Collective Folly of the Nation! In or out of Parlia-
ment, darkness, neglect, hallucination must contrive to
cease in regard to it; true insight into it must be had. How
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? Chartism
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inexpressibly useful were true insight into it; a genuine
understanding by the upper classes of society what it is that
the under classes intrinsically mean; a clear interpretation
> of the thought which at heart torments these wild inarticulate
souls, struggling there, with inarticulate uproar, like dumb
creatures in pain, unable to speak what is in them! Some-
thing they do mean; some true thing withal, in the centre
of their confused hearts,--for they are hearts created by
Heaven too: to the Heaven it is clear what thing; to us not
clear. Would that it were! Perfect clearness on it were
equivalent to remedy of it. For, as is well said, all battle
is misunderstanding y did the parties know one another, the
battle would cease. /. . No man at bottom means injustice;
it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that
he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in
the wonderfulest way, by natural dimness and selfishness;
getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest,
till at length it become all but irrecognisable; yet still the
image of a right. j, Could a man own to himself that the thing
he fought for was wrong, contrary to fairness and the law of
reason, he would own also that it thereby stood condemned
and hopeless; he could fight for it no longer. Nay inde-
pendently of right, could the contending parties get but
accurately to discern one another's might and strength to
contend, the one would peaceably yield to the other and
to Necessity; the contest in this case too were over. No
African expedition now, as in the days of Herodotus, is
fitted out against the South-wind. One expedition was satis-
factory in that department. The South-wind Simoom con-
tinues blowing occasionally, hatefcil as ever, maddening as
ever; but one expedition was enough. Do we not all submit
to Death? The highest sentence of the law, sentence of
death, is passed on all of us by the fact of birth; yet we live
patiently under it, patiently undergo it when the hour comes.
Clear undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of
these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a
confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
What are the rights, what are the mights of the discon-
tented Working Classes in England at this epoch? He were
an CEdipus, and deliverer from sad social pestilence, who could
resolve us fully! For we may say beforehand, The struggle
that divides the upper and lower in society over Europe, and
II 704 M
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? 170 Carlyle's Essays
more painfully and notably in England than elsewhere, this
too is a struggle which will end and adjust itself as all other
struggles do and have done, by making the right clear and
the might clear; not otherwise than by that. Meantime, the
questions, Why are the Working Classes discontented; what
is their condition, economical, moral, in their houses and
their hearts, as it is in reality and as they figure it to them-
selves to be; what do they complain of; what ought they,
and ought they not to complain of? --these are measurable
questions; on some of these any common mortal, did he but
turn his eyes to them, might throw some light. Certain
researches and considerations of ours on the matter, since
no one else will undertake it, are now to be made public. The
researches have yielded us little, almost nothing; but the
considerations are of old date, and press to have utterance.
We are not without hope that our general notion of the
business, if we can get it uttered at all, will meet some assent
from many candid men.
CHAPTER II
STATISTICS
A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.
We have looked into various statistic works, Statistic-
Society Reports, Poor-Law Reports, Reports and Pamphlets
not a few, with a sedulous eye to this question of the Working
Classes and their general condition in England; we grieve .
to say, with as good as no result whatever. Assertion swal-
lows assertion; according to the old Proverb, " as the statist
thinks, the bell clinks "! Tables are like cobwebs, like the
sieve of the Danaides; beautifully reticulated, orderly to
look upon, but which will hold no conclusion. Tables are
abstractions, and the object a most concrete one, so difficult
to read the essence of. There are innumerable circumstances;
and one circumstance left out may be the vital one on which
all turned. Statistics is a science which ought to be honour-
able, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is
not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than
others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. Con-
clusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a
head that already understands and knows. Vain to send
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? Chartism
the purblind and blind to the shore of a Pactolus never so
golden: these find only gravel; the seer and finder alone
picks up gold grains there. And now the purblind offering
* you, with asseveration and protrusive importunity, his
basket of gravel as gold, what steps are to be taken with
him? --Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually,
and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be
feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go:
"A judicious man," says he, " looks at Statistics, not to get
knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance
- foisted on him. " With what serene conclusiveness a member
of some Useful-Knowledge Society stops your mouth with
a figure of arithmetic! To him it seems he has there ex-
tracted the elixir of the matter, on which now nothing more
can be said. It is needful that you look into his said ex-
tracted elixir; and ascertain, alas, too probably, not without
a sigh, that it is wash and vapidity, good only for the gutters.
Twice or three times have we heard the lamentations and
prophecies of a humane Jeremiah, mourner for the poor,
cut short by a statistic fact of the most decisive nature:
How can the condition of the poor be other than good, be
other than better; has not the average duration of life in
England, and therefore among the most numerous class in
England, been proved to have increased? Our Jeremiah had
to admit that, if so, it was an astounding fact; whereby all
that ever he, for his part, had observed on other sides of the
matter, was overset without remedy. If life last longer, life
) must be less worn upon, by outward suffering, by inward
discontent, by hardship of any kind; the general condition of
the poor must be bettering instead of worsening. So was our
Jeremiah cut short. And now for the "proof "? Readers
who are curious in statistic proofs may see it drawn out with
all solemnity, in a Pamphlet" published by Charles Knight and
Company," 1--and perhaps himself draw inferences from it.
> Northampton Tables, compiled by Dr. Price " from registers
of the Parish of All Saints from 1735 to 1780;" Carlisle
Tables, ? collected by Dr. Heysham from observation of
Carlisle City for eight years, "the calculations founded on
them " conducted by another Doctor; incredible " document
considered satisfactory by men of science in France: ",--alas,
1 An Essay on the Means of Insurance against the Casualties of, etc. ,
etc. London, Charles Knight and Company, 1836. Price 2s.
? ?
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? 172 Carlyle's Essays
is it not as if some zealous scientific son of Adam had proved
the deepening of the Ocean, by survey, accurate or cursory,
of two mud-plashes on the coast of the Isle of Dogs? "Not
to get knowledge, but to save yourself from having ignorance
foisted on you "!
The condition of the working-man in this country, what it
is and has been, whether it is improving or retrograding,--
is a question to which from statistics hitherto no solution
can be got. Hitherto, after many tables and statements, one
is still left mainly to what he can ascertain by his own eyes,
looking at the concrete phenomenon for himself. There is
no other method; and yet it is a most imperfect method.
Each man expands his own hand-breadth of observation to
the limits of the general whole; more or less, each man must
take what he himself has seen and ascertained for a sample
of all that is seeable and ascertainable. Hence discrepancies,
controversies wide-spread, long-continued; which there is
at present no means or hope of satisfactorily ending. When
Parliament takes up " the Condition-of-England question,"
as it will have to do one day, then indeed much may be
amended! Inquiries wisely gone into, even on this most
complex matter, will yield results worth something, not
nothing. But it is a most complex matter; on which,
whether for the past or the present, Statistic Inquiry, with
its limited means, with its short vision and headlong extensive
dogmatism, as yet too often throws not light, but error worse
than darkness.
What constitutes the well-being of a man? Many things;'
of which the wages he gets, and the bread he buys with them,
are but one preliminary item. Grant, however, that the
wages were the whole; that once knowing the wages and
the price of bread, we know all; then what are the wages?
Statistic Inquiry, in its present unguided condition, cannot
tell. The average rate of day's wages is not correctly
ascertained for any portion of this country; not only not
for half-centuries, it is not even ascertained anywhere for
decades or years: far from instituting comparisons with the
past, the present itself is unknown to us. And then, given
the average of wages, what is the constancy of employment;
what is the difficulty of finding employment; the fluctuation
from season to season, from year to year? Is it constant,
calculable wages; or fluctuating, incalculable, more or less
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of the nature of gambling? This secondary circumstance,
of quality in wages, is perhaps even more important than the
primary one of quantity. Farther we ask, Can the labourer,
by thrift and industry, hope to rise to mastership; or is
such hope cut off from him? How is he related to his em-
ployer; by bonds of friendliness and mutual help; or by
hostility, opposition, and chains of mutual necessity alone?
In a word, what degree of contentment can a human creature
be supposed to enjoy in that position? With hunger preying
on him, his contentment is likely to be small! But even with
abundance, his discontent, his real misery may be great.
The labourer's feelings, his notion of being justly dealt with
or unjustly; his wholesome composure, frugality, prosperity
in the one case, his acrid unrest, recklessness, gin-drinking,
and gradual ruin in the other,--how shall figures of arith-
metic represent all this? So much is still to be ascertained;
much of it by no means easy to ascertain! Till, among the
"Hill Cooly" and "Dog-cart" questions, there arise in
Parliament and extensively out of it" a Condition-of-England
question," and quite a new set of inquirers and methods,
little of it is likely to be ascertained.
One fact on this subject, a fact which arithmetic is capable
of representing, we have often considered would be worth
all the rest: Whether the labourer, whatever his wages are,
is saving money? Laying up money, he proves that his
condition, painful as it may be without and within, is not yet
desperate; that he looks forward to a better day coming, and
is still resolutely steering towards the same; that all the
lights and darknesses of his lot are united under a blessed
radiance of hope,--the last, first, nay one may say the sole
blessedness of man. Is the habit of saving increased and
increasing, or the contrary? Where the present writer has
been able to look with his own eyes, it is decreasing, and in
many quarters all but disappearing. Statistic science turns
up her Savings-Bank Accounts, and answers, "Increasing
rapidly. " Would that one could believe it! But the Danaides'-
sieve character of such statistic reticulated documents is
too manifest. A few years ago, in regions where thrift, to
one's own knowledge, still was, Savings-Banks were not; the
labourer lent his money to some farmer, of capital, or supposed
to be of capital,--and has too often lost it since; or he bought
a cow with it, bought a cottage with it; nay hid it under his
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? 174 Carlyle's Essays
thatch: the Savings-Banks books then exhibited mere blank
and zero. That they swell yearly now, if such be the fact,
indicates that what thrift exists does gradually resort more
and more thither rather than else-whither; but the question,
Is thrift increasing? runs through the reticulation, and is as
water spilt on the ground, not to be gathered here.
These are inquiries on which, had there been a proper
"Condition-of-England question," some light would have
been thrown, before "torch-meetings" arose to illustrate
them! Far as they lie out of the course of Parliamentary
routine, they should have been gone into, should have been
glanced at, in one or the other fashion. A Legislature making
laws for the Working Classes, in total uncertainty as to these
things, is legislating in the dark; not wisely, nor to good
issues. The simple fundamental question, Can the labouring
man in this England of ours, who is willing to labour, find
work, and subsistence by his work? is matter of mere con-
jecture and assertion hitherto; not ascertainable by authentic
evidence: the Legislature, satisfied to legislate in the dark,
has not yet sought any evidence on it. They pass their
New Poor-Law Bill, without evidence as to all this. Perhaps
their New Poor-Law Bill is itself only intended as an experi-
mentum cruets to ascertain all this? Chartism is an answer,
seemingly not in the affirmative.
CHAPTER III
NEW POOR-LAW
To read the Reports of the Poor-Law Commissioners, if
one had faith enough, would be a pleasure to the friend of
humanity. One sole recipe seems to have been needful for
the woes of England: "refusal of out-door relief. " England
lay in sick discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed,
dark, nigh desperate, in wastefulness, want, improvidence,
and eating care, till like Hyperion down the eastern steeps,
the Poor-Law Commissioners arose, and said, Let there be
workhouses, and bread of affliction and water of affliction
there! It was a simple invention; as all truly great inven-
tions are. And see, in any quarter, instantly as the walls of
the workhouse arise, misery and necessity fly away, out of
sight,--out of being, as is fondly hoped, and dissolve into
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the inane; industry, frugality, fertility, rise of wages,
peace on earth and goodwill towards men do,--in the Poor-
Law Commissioners' Reports,--infallibly, rapidly or not so
rapidly, to the joy of all parties, supervene. It was a con-
summation devoutly to be wished. We have looked over
these four annual Poor-Law Reports with a variety of re-
flections; with no thought that our Poor-Law Commissioners
are the inhuman men their enemies accuse them of being;
with a feeling of thankfulness rather that there do exist men
of that structure too; with a persuasion deeper and deeper
that Nature, who makes nothing to no purpose, has not
made either them or their Poor-Law Amendment Act in vain.
We7 hope to prove that they and it were an indispensable
element, harsh but salutary, in the progress of things.
That this Poor-law Amendment Act meanwhile should be,
as we sometimes hear it named, the "chief glory" of a
Reform Cabinet, betokens, one would imagine, rather a
scarcity of glory there. To say to the poor, Ye shall eat the
bread of affliction and drink the water of affliction, and be
very miserable while here, required not so much a stretch of /
heroic faculty in any sense, as due toughness of bowels. If
paupers are made miserable, paupers will needs 'decline in
multitude. It is a secret known to all rat-catchers: stop up
the granary-crevices, afflict with continual mewing, alarm,
and going-off of traps, your " chargeable labourers " disappear,
and cease from the establishment. A still briefer method
is that of arsenic; perhaps even a milder, where otherwise
permissible. Rats and paupers can be abolished; the human s
faculty was from of old adequate to grind them down, slowly
or at once, and needed no ghost or Reform Ministry to teach
it. Furthermore when one hears of "all the labour of the
country being absorbed into employment" by this new
system of affliction, when labour complaining of want can
find no audience, one cannot but pause. That misery and
unemployed labour should " disappear " in that case is natural
enough; should go out of sight,--but out of existence?
What we do know is, that " the rates are diminished," as they
cannot well help being; that no statistic tables as yet report
much increase of deaths by starvation: this we do know,
and not very conclusively anything mors than this. If this
be absorption of all the labour of the country, then all the
labour of the country is absorbed.
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? 176 Carlyle's Essays
To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here
only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some
permissible manner made away with, and swept out of sight,
is not an amiable faith. That the arrangements of good and
ill success in this perplexed scramble of a world, which a
blind goddess was always thought to preside over, are in fact
the work of a seeing goddess or god, and require only not to
be meddled with: what stretch of heroic faculty or inspiration
of genius was needed to teach one that? To button your
pockets and stand still, is no complex recipe. Laissez faire,
laissez passer I Whatever goes on, ought it not to go on;
"the widow picking nettles for her children's dinner; and
the perfumed seigneur delicately lounging in the CEil-de-
Bceuf, who has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her
the third nettle, and name it rent and law "? What is
written and enacted, has it not black-on-white to show for
itself? Justice is justice; but all attorney's parchment is of
the nature of Targum or sacred-parchment. In brief, ours
is a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble
along, thou insane scramble of a world, with thy pope's
tiaras, king's mantles and beggar's gabardines, chivalry-
ribbons and plebeian gallows-ropes, where a Paul shall die
on the gibbet and a Nero sit fiddling as imperial Caesar; thou
art all right, and shalt scramble even so; and whoever in the
press is trodden down, has only to lie there and be trampled
broad:--Such at bottom seems to be the chief social principle,
if principle it haye, which the Poor-Law Amendment Act has
the merit of courageously asserting, in opposition to many
things. A chief social principle which this present writer,
for one, will by no manner of means believe in, but pronounce
at all fit times to be false, heretical and damnable, if ever
aught was!
And yet, as we said, Nature makes nothing in. vain i_ not
even a Poor-Law Amendment Act. For withal we are far
from joining in the outcry raised against these poor Poor-
Law Commissioners, as if they were tigers in men's shape;
as if their Amendment Act were a mere monstrosity and
horror, deserving instant abrogation. They are not tigers;
they are men filled with an idea of a theory: their Amend-
ment Act, heretical and damnable as a whole truth, is ortho-
dox and laudable as a half-truth; and was imperatively
required to be put in practice. To create men filled with a
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? Chartism
177
theory, that refusal of outdoor-relief was the one thing needful:
Nature had no readier way of getting out-door relief refused.
In fact, if we look at the old Poor-Law, in its assertion of the
opposite social principle, that Fortune's awards are not those
of Justice, we shall find it to have become still more unsup-
portable, demanding, if England was not destined for speedy
anarchy, to be done away with.
Any law, however well meant as a law, which has become
a bounty on unthrift, idleness, bastardy and beer-drinking,
must be put an end to. In all ways it needs, especially in
? these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man
there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not
work, and save according to his means, let him go else-
whither; let him know that for him the law has made no soft
provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the Law of Nature,
which the Law of England would vainly contend against
in the long-run, he is doomed either to quit these habits, or
miserably be extruded from this Earth, which is made on
principles different from these. He that will not work
according to his faculty, let him perish according to his
necessity: there is no law juster than that. Would to Heaven
one could preach it abroad into the hearts of all sons and
daughters of Adam, for it is a law applicable to all; and
bring it to bear, with practical obligation strict as the Poor-
Law Bastille, on all! We had then, in good truth, a " perfect
constitution of society; " and " God's fair Earth and Task-
garden, where whosoever is not working must be begging or
stealing," were then actually what always, through so many
changes and struggles, it is endeavouring to become.
That this law of " No work no recompense" should first
of all be enforced on the manual worker, and brought strin-
gently home to him and his numerous class, while so many
other classes and persons still go loose from it, was natural to
the case. Let it be enforced there, and rigidly made good.
It behoves to be enforced everywhere, and rigidly made good;
--alas, not by such simple methods as "refusal of out-door
relief," but by far other and costlier ones; which too, however,
a bountiful Providence is not unfurnished with, nor, in these
latter generations (if we will understand their convulsions and
confusions), sparing to apply. Work is the mission of man
in this Earth. A day is ever struggling forward, a day will
arrive in some approximate degree, when he who has no work
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? 178 Carlyle's Essays
to do, by whatever name he may be named, will not find it
good to show himself in our quarter of the Solar System; but
may go and look out elsewhere, If there be any Idle Planet
discoverable? --Let the honest working man rejoice that such
law, the first of Nature, has been made good on him; and
hope that, by and by, all else will be made good. It is the
beginning of all. We define the harsh New Poor-Law to be
withal a "protection of the thrifty labourer against the
thriftless and dissolute;" a thing inexpressibly important;
a AaZ/-result, detestable, if you will, when looked upon as
the whole result; yet without which the whole result is for-
ever unattainable. Let wastefulness, idleness, drunkenness,
improvidence take the fate which God has appointed them;
that their opposites may also have a chance for their fate.
Let the Poor-Law Administrators be considered as useful
labourers whom Nature has furnished with a whole theory
of the universe, that they might accomplish an indispensable
fractional practice there, and prosper in it in spite of much
contradiction.
We will praise the New Poor-Law, farther, as the probable
preliminary of some general charge to be taken of the lowest
classes by the higher. Any general charge whatsoever,,
rather than a conflict of charges, varying from parish to
parish; the emblem of darkness, of unreadable confusion.
Supervisal by the central government, in what spirit soever
executed, is supervisal from a centre. By degrees the object
will become clearer, as it is at once made thereby universally
conspicuous. By degrees true vision of it will become
attainable, will be universally attained; whatsoever order
regarding it is just and wise, as grounded on the truth of it,
will then be capable of being taken. Let us welcome the
New Poor-Law as the harsh beginning of much, the harsh
ending of much! Most harsh and barren lies the new
ploughers' fallow-field, the crude subsoil all turned up, which
never saw the sun; which as yet grows no herb; which has
"out-door relief" for no one. Yet patience: innumerable
weeds and corruptions lie safely turned down and extin-
guished under it; this same crude subsoil is the first step
of all true husbandry; by Heaven's blessing and the skyey
influences, fruits that are good and blessed will yet come of it.
For, in truth, the claim of the poor labourer is something
quite other than that'' Statute of the Forty-third of Elizabeth"
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? Chartism
179
will ever fulfil for him. Not to be supported by roundsmen
systems, by never so liberal parish doles, or lodged in free
and easy workhouses when distress overtakes him; not for
'this, however in words he may clamour for it; not for this,
but for something far different does the heart of him struggle.
It is "for justice" that he struggles; for " just wages,"--
not in money alone! An ever-toiling inferior, he would fain
(though as yet he knows it not) find for himself a superior
that should lovingly and wisely govern: is not that too the
"just wages " of his service done? It is for a manlike place
? and relation, in this world where he sees himself a man, that
he struggles. At bottom, may we not say, it is even for this,
That guidance and government, which he cannot give himself,
which in our so complex world he can no longer do without,
might be afforded him? The thing he struggles for is one
which no Forty-third of Elizabeth is in any condition to
furnish him, to put him on the road towards getting. Let
him quit the Forty-third of Elizabeth altogether; and rejoice
that the Poor-Law Amendment Act has, even by harsh
methods and against his own will, forced him away from it.
That was a broken reed to lean on, if there ever was one; and
did but run into his lamed right-hand. Let him cast it far
from him, that broken reed, and look to quite the opposite
point of the heavens for help. His unlamed right-hand, with
the cunning industry that lies in it, is not this defined to be
"the sceptre of our Planet"? He that can work is a born
king of something; is in communion with Nature, is master
of a thing or things, is a priest and king of Nature so far. He
that can work at nothing is but a usurping king, be his
trappings what they may; he is the born slave of all things.
Let a man honour his craftmanship, his can-do; and know
that his rights of man have no concern at all with the Forty-
third of Elizabeth.
CHAPTER IV
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD
The New Poor-Law is an announcement, sufficiently distinct,
that whosoever will not work ought not to live. Can the poor
man that is willing to work, always find work, and live by
his work? Statistic Inquiry, as we say, has no answer to
give. Legislation presupposes the answer--to be in the
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? 180 Carlyle's Essays
affirmative. A large- postulate; which should have been
made a proposition of; which should have been demonstrated,
made indubitable to all persons! A man willing to work,
and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that
Fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. Burns ex-
presses feelingly what thoughts it gave him: a poor man
seeking work; seeking leave to toil that he might be fed and
sheltered! That he might but be put on a level with the
four-footed workers of the Planet which is his! There is not
a horse willing to work but can get food and shelter in re-
quital; a thing this two-footed worker has to seek for, to
solicit occasionally in vain. He is nobody's two-footed
worker; he is not even anybody's slave. And yet he is a
too-footed worker; it is currently reported there is an
immortal soul in him, sent down out of Heaven into the
Earth; and one beholds him seeking for this! --Nay what will
a wise Legislature say, if it turn out that he cannot find it;
that the answer to their postulate proposition is not affirmative
but negative?
There is one fact which Statistic Science has communicated,
and a most astonishing one; the inference from which is
pregnant as to this matter. Ireland has near seven millions
of working people, the third unit of whom, it appears by
Statistic Science, has not for thirty weeks each year as many
third-rate potatoes as will suffice him.
for what is actually best? Rhyme, up to this hour, never
seems altogether obedient to him; and disobedient Rhyme,
--who would ride on it that had once learned walking!
He takes amiss that some friends have admonished him to
quit Politics: we will not repeat that admonition. Let him,
on this as on all other matters, take solemn counsel with his
own Socrates'-Demon; such as dwells in every mortal; such
as he is a happy mortal who can hear the voice of, follow the
behests of, like an unalterable law. At the same time, we
could truly wish to see such a mind as his engaged rather in
considering what, in his own sphere, could be done, than
what, in his own or other spheres, ought to be destroyed;
rather in producing or preserving the True, than in mangling
and slashing asunder the False. Let him be at ease: the
False is already dead, or lives only with a mock life. The
death-sentence of the False was of old, from the first beginning
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? 164 Carlyle's Essays
of it, written in Heaven; and is now proclaimed in the Earth,
and read aloud at all market-crosses; nor are innumerable
volunteer tipstaves and headsmen wanting, to execute the
same: for which needful service men inferior to him may
suffice. Why should the heart of the Corn-Law Rhymer
be troubled? Spite of "Bread-tax," he and his brave
children, who will emulate their sire, have yet bread: the
Workhouse, as we rejoice to fancy, has receded into the safe
distance; and is now quite shut-out from his poetic pleasure-
ground. Why should he afflict himself with devices of
"Boroughmongering gowls," or the rage of the Heathen
imagining a vain thing? This matter, which he calls Corn-
Law, will not have completed itself, adjusted itself into
clearness, for the space of a century or two: nay after
twenty centuries, what will there, or can there be for the son
of Adam but Work, Work, two hands quite full of Work!
Meanwhile, is not the Corn-Law Rhymer already a king,
though a belligerent one; king of his own mind and faculty;
and what man in the long-run is king of more? Not one in
the thousand, even among sceptred kings, is king of so much.
Be diligent in business, then; fervent in spirit. Above all
things, lay aside anger, uncharitableness, hatred, noisy
tumult; avoid them, as worse than Pestilence, worse than
"Bread-tax" itself:
For it well beseemeth kings, all mortals it beseemeth well,
To possess their souls in patience, and await what can betide.
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? CHARTISM
"It never smokes but there is fire. "--Old Proverb.
[1839)
? CHAPTER I
CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION
A feeling very generally exists that the condition and
disposition of the Working Classes is a rather ominous matter
at present; that something ought to be said, something ought
to be done, in regard to it. And surely, at an epoch of history
when the "National Petition" carts itself in wagons along
the streets, and is presented "bound with iron hoops, four
men bearing it," to a Reformed House of Commons; and
Chartism numbered by the million and half, taking nothing
by its iron-hooped Petition, breaks out into brickbats, cheap
pikes, and even into sputterings of conflagration, such very
general feeling cannot be considered unnatural! To us
individually this matter appears, and has for many years
appeared, to be the most ominous of all practical matters
whatever; a matter in regard to which if something be not
done, something will do itself one day, and in a fashion that
will please nobody. The time is verily come for acting in it;
how much more for consultation about acting in it, for
speech and articulate inquiry about it!
We are aware that, according to the newspapers, Chartism
is extinct; that a Reform Ministry has'' put down the chimera
of Chartism" in the most felicitous effectual manner. So
say the newspapers;--and yet, alas, most readers of news-
papers know withal that it is indeed the "chimera" of
Chartism, not the reality, which has been put down. The
distracted incoherent embodiment of Chartism, whereby in
late months it took shape and became visible, this has been
put down; or rather has fallen down and gone asunder by
gravitation and law of nature: but the living essence of
. Chartism has not been put down. Chartism means the bitter
16. 5
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? 166 Carlylc's Essays
discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition there-
fore or the wrong disposition, of the Working Classes of
England. It is a new name for a thing which has had many
names, which will yet have many. The matter of Chartism
is weighty, deep-rooted, far-extending; did not begin yester-
day; will by no means end this day or to-morrow. Reform
Ministry, constabulary rural police, new levy of soldiers,
grants of money to Birmingham; all this is well, or is not
well; all this will put down only the embodiment or
"chimera" of Chartism. The essence continuing, new and
ever new embodiments, chimeras madder or less mad, have
to continue. The melancholy fact remains, that this thing
known at present by the name of Chartism does exist; has
existed; and, either "put down," into secret treason, with
rusty pistols, vitriol-bottle and match-box, or openly bran-
dishing pike and torch (one knows not in which case more
fatal-looking), is like to exist till quite other methods have
been tried with it. What means this bitter discontent of
i the Working Classes? Whence comes it, whither goes it?
Above all, at what price, on what terms, will it probably
consent to depart from us and die into rest? These are
questions.
To say that it is mad, incendiary, nefarious, is no answer.
To say all this, in never so many dialects, is saying little.
"Glasgow Thuggery," "Glasgow Thugs;" it is a witty
nickname: the practice of " Number 60 " entering his dark
room, to contract for and settle the price of blood with
operative assassins, in a Christian city, once distinguished,
by its rigorous Christianism, is doubtless a fact worthy of all
horror: but what will horror do for it? What will execration;
nay at bottom, what will condemnation and banishment to
Botany Bay do for it? Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-
meetings, Birmingham riots, Swing conflagrations, are so
many symptoms on the surface; you abolish the symptom to
? ? / no purpose, if the disease is left untouched. Boils oh the
surface are curable or incurable,--small matter which, while
the virulent humour festers deep within; poisoning the
sources of life; and certain enough to find for itself ever new
boils and sore issues; ways of announcing that it continues
there, that it would fain not continue there.
Delirious Chartism will not have raged entirely to no pur-
pose, as indeed no earthly thing does so, if it have forced all
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? Chartism
167
thinking men of the community to think of this vital matter,
too apt to be overlooked otherwise. Is the condition of the
English working people wrong; so wrong that rational
working men cannot, will not, and even should not rest
quiet under it? A most grave case, complex beyond all
others in the world; a case wherein Botany Bay, constabulary
rural police, and suchlike, will avail but little. Or is the
discontent itself mad, like the shape it took? Not the
condition of the working people that is wrong; but then-
disposition, their own thoughts, beliefs and feelings that are
wrong? This too were a most grave case, little less alarming,
little less complex than the former one. In this case too,
where constabulary police and mere rigour of coercion seems
more at home, coercion will by no means do all, coercion by
itself will not even do much. If there do exist general mad-
ness of discontent, then sanity and some measure of content
must be brought about again,--not by constabulary police
alone. When the thoughts of a people, in the great mass of
it, have grown mad, the combined issue of that people's
workings will be a madness, an incoherency and ruin! Sanity
will have to be recovered for the general mass; coercion
itself will otherwise cease to be able to coerce.
We have heard it asked, Why Parliament throws no light
on this question of the Working Classes, and the condition or
disposition they are in? Truly to a remote observer of
Parliamentary procedure it seems surprising, especially in
late Reformed times, to see what space this question occupies
. in the Debates of the Nation. Can any other business
whatsoever be so pressing on legislators? A Reformed
Parliament, one would think, should inquire into popular
discontents before they get the length of pikes and torches!
For what end at all are men, Honourable Members and Reform
Members, sent to St. Stephen's with clamour and effort;
kept talking, struggling, motioning and counter-motioning?
The condition of the great body of people in a country is the ?
condition of the country itself: this you would say is a truism
in all times; a truism rather pressing to get recognised as a
truth now, and be acted upon, in these times. Yet read
Hansard's Debates, or the Morning Papers, if. you have
nothing to do! The old grand question, whether A is to be
in office or B, with the innumerable subsidiary questions
growing out of that, courting paragraphs and suffrages for
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? 168 Carlyle's Essays
a blessed solution of that: Canada question, Irish Appropria-
tion question, West-India question, Queen's Bedchamber
question; Game Laws, Usury Laws; African Blacks, Hill
Coolies, Smithfield cattle, and Dog-carts,--all manner of
questions and subjects, except simply this the alpha and
omega of all! Surely Honourable Members ought to speak
of the Condition-of-England question too. Radical Members,
above all; friends of the people; chosen with effort, by the
people, to interpret and articulate the dumb deep want
of the people! To a remote observer they seem oblivious of
their duty. Are they not there, by trade, mission, and express
appointment of themselves and others, to speak for the good
of the British Nation? Whatsoever great British interest
can the least speak for itself, for that beyond all they are
called to speak. They are either speakers for that great
dumb toiling class which cannot speak, or they are nothing
that one can well specify.
Alas, the remote observer knows not the nature of Parlia-
ments: how Parliaments, extant there for the British Nation's
sake, find that they are extant withal for their own sake;
how Parliaments travel so naturally in their deep-rutted
routine, commonplace worn into ruts axle-deep, from which
only strength, insight and courageous generous exertion can
lift any Parliament or vehicle; how in Parliaments, Reformed
or Unreformed, there may chance to be a strong man, an
original, clear-sighted, great-hearted, patient and valiant
man, or to be none such;--how, on the whole, Parliaments,
lumbering along in their deep ruts of commonplace, find, as ?
so many of us otherwise do, that the ruts are axle-deep, and
the travelling very toilsome of itself, and for the day the evil
thereof sufficient! What Parliaments ought to have done
in this business, what they will, can or cannot yet do, and
where the limits of their faculty and culpability may lie, in
regard to it, were a long investigation; into which we need
not enter at this moment. What they have done is unhappily
plain enough. Hitherto, on this most national of questions,
the Collective Wisdom of the Nation has availed us as good
as nothing whatever.
And yet, as we say, it is a question which cannot be left
to the Collective Folly of the Nation! In or out of Parlia-
ment, darkness, neglect, hallucination must contrive to
cease in regard to it; true insight into it must be had. How
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? Chartism
169
inexpressibly useful were true insight into it; a genuine
understanding by the upper classes of society what it is that
the under classes intrinsically mean; a clear interpretation
> of the thought which at heart torments these wild inarticulate
souls, struggling there, with inarticulate uproar, like dumb
creatures in pain, unable to speak what is in them! Some-
thing they do mean; some true thing withal, in the centre
of their confused hearts,--for they are hearts created by
Heaven too: to the Heaven it is clear what thing; to us not
clear. Would that it were! Perfect clearness on it were
equivalent to remedy of it. For, as is well said, all battle
is misunderstanding y did the parties know one another, the
battle would cease. /. . No man at bottom means injustice;
it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that
he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in
the wonderfulest way, by natural dimness and selfishness;
getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest,
till at length it become all but irrecognisable; yet still the
image of a right. j, Could a man own to himself that the thing
he fought for was wrong, contrary to fairness and the law of
reason, he would own also that it thereby stood condemned
and hopeless; he could fight for it no longer. Nay inde-
pendently of right, could the contending parties get but
accurately to discern one another's might and strength to
contend, the one would peaceably yield to the other and
to Necessity; the contest in this case too were over. No
African expedition now, as in the days of Herodotus, is
fitted out against the South-wind. One expedition was satis-
factory in that department. The South-wind Simoom con-
tinues blowing occasionally, hatefcil as ever, maddening as
ever; but one expedition was enough. Do we not all submit
to Death? The highest sentence of the law, sentence of
death, is passed on all of us by the fact of birth; yet we live
patiently under it, patiently undergo it when the hour comes.
Clear undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of
these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a
confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
What are the rights, what are the mights of the discon-
tented Working Classes in England at this epoch? He were
an CEdipus, and deliverer from sad social pestilence, who could
resolve us fully! For we may say beforehand, The struggle
that divides the upper and lower in society over Europe, and
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? 170 Carlyle's Essays
more painfully and notably in England than elsewhere, this
too is a struggle which will end and adjust itself as all other
struggles do and have done, by making the right clear and
the might clear; not otherwise than by that. Meantime, the
questions, Why are the Working Classes discontented; what
is their condition, economical, moral, in their houses and
their hearts, as it is in reality and as they figure it to them-
selves to be; what do they complain of; what ought they,
and ought they not to complain of? --these are measurable
questions; on some of these any common mortal, did he but
turn his eyes to them, might throw some light. Certain
researches and considerations of ours on the matter, since
no one else will undertake it, are now to be made public. The
researches have yielded us little, almost nothing; but the
considerations are of old date, and press to have utterance.
We are not without hope that our general notion of the
business, if we can get it uttered at all, will meet some assent
from many candid men.
CHAPTER II
STATISTICS
A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.
We have looked into various statistic works, Statistic-
Society Reports, Poor-Law Reports, Reports and Pamphlets
not a few, with a sedulous eye to this question of the Working
Classes and their general condition in England; we grieve .
to say, with as good as no result whatever. Assertion swal-
lows assertion; according to the old Proverb, " as the statist
thinks, the bell clinks "! Tables are like cobwebs, like the
sieve of the Danaides; beautifully reticulated, orderly to
look upon, but which will hold no conclusion. Tables are
abstractions, and the object a most concrete one, so difficult
to read the essence of. There are innumerable circumstances;
and one circumstance left out may be the vital one on which
all turned. Statistics is a science which ought to be honour-
able, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is
not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than
others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. Con-
clusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a
head that already understands and knows. Vain to send
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? Chartism
the purblind and blind to the shore of a Pactolus never so
golden: these find only gravel; the seer and finder alone
picks up gold grains there. And now the purblind offering
* you, with asseveration and protrusive importunity, his
basket of gravel as gold, what steps are to be taken with
him? --Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually,
and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be
feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go:
"A judicious man," says he, " looks at Statistics, not to get
knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance
- foisted on him. " With what serene conclusiveness a member
of some Useful-Knowledge Society stops your mouth with
a figure of arithmetic! To him it seems he has there ex-
tracted the elixir of the matter, on which now nothing more
can be said. It is needful that you look into his said ex-
tracted elixir; and ascertain, alas, too probably, not without
a sigh, that it is wash and vapidity, good only for the gutters.
Twice or three times have we heard the lamentations and
prophecies of a humane Jeremiah, mourner for the poor,
cut short by a statistic fact of the most decisive nature:
How can the condition of the poor be other than good, be
other than better; has not the average duration of life in
England, and therefore among the most numerous class in
England, been proved to have increased? Our Jeremiah had
to admit that, if so, it was an astounding fact; whereby all
that ever he, for his part, had observed on other sides of the
matter, was overset without remedy. If life last longer, life
) must be less worn upon, by outward suffering, by inward
discontent, by hardship of any kind; the general condition of
the poor must be bettering instead of worsening. So was our
Jeremiah cut short. And now for the "proof "? Readers
who are curious in statistic proofs may see it drawn out with
all solemnity, in a Pamphlet" published by Charles Knight and
Company," 1--and perhaps himself draw inferences from it.
> Northampton Tables, compiled by Dr. Price " from registers
of the Parish of All Saints from 1735 to 1780;" Carlisle
Tables, ? collected by Dr. Heysham from observation of
Carlisle City for eight years, "the calculations founded on
them " conducted by another Doctor; incredible " document
considered satisfactory by men of science in France: ",--alas,
1 An Essay on the Means of Insurance against the Casualties of, etc. ,
etc. London, Charles Knight and Company, 1836. Price 2s.
? ?
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? 172 Carlyle's Essays
is it not as if some zealous scientific son of Adam had proved
the deepening of the Ocean, by survey, accurate or cursory,
of two mud-plashes on the coast of the Isle of Dogs? "Not
to get knowledge, but to save yourself from having ignorance
foisted on you "!
The condition of the working-man in this country, what it
is and has been, whether it is improving or retrograding,--
is a question to which from statistics hitherto no solution
can be got. Hitherto, after many tables and statements, one
is still left mainly to what he can ascertain by his own eyes,
looking at the concrete phenomenon for himself. There is
no other method; and yet it is a most imperfect method.
Each man expands his own hand-breadth of observation to
the limits of the general whole; more or less, each man must
take what he himself has seen and ascertained for a sample
of all that is seeable and ascertainable. Hence discrepancies,
controversies wide-spread, long-continued; which there is
at present no means or hope of satisfactorily ending. When
Parliament takes up " the Condition-of-England question,"
as it will have to do one day, then indeed much may be
amended! Inquiries wisely gone into, even on this most
complex matter, will yield results worth something, not
nothing. But it is a most complex matter; on which,
whether for the past or the present, Statistic Inquiry, with
its limited means, with its short vision and headlong extensive
dogmatism, as yet too often throws not light, but error worse
than darkness.
What constitutes the well-being of a man? Many things;'
of which the wages he gets, and the bread he buys with them,
are but one preliminary item. Grant, however, that the
wages were the whole; that once knowing the wages and
the price of bread, we know all; then what are the wages?
Statistic Inquiry, in its present unguided condition, cannot
tell. The average rate of day's wages is not correctly
ascertained for any portion of this country; not only not
for half-centuries, it is not even ascertained anywhere for
decades or years: far from instituting comparisons with the
past, the present itself is unknown to us. And then, given
the average of wages, what is the constancy of employment;
what is the difficulty of finding employment; the fluctuation
from season to season, from year to year? Is it constant,
calculable wages; or fluctuating, incalculable, more or less
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of the nature of gambling? This secondary circumstance,
of quality in wages, is perhaps even more important than the
primary one of quantity. Farther we ask, Can the labourer,
by thrift and industry, hope to rise to mastership; or is
such hope cut off from him? How is he related to his em-
ployer; by bonds of friendliness and mutual help; or by
hostility, opposition, and chains of mutual necessity alone?
In a word, what degree of contentment can a human creature
be supposed to enjoy in that position? With hunger preying
on him, his contentment is likely to be small! But even with
abundance, his discontent, his real misery may be great.
The labourer's feelings, his notion of being justly dealt with
or unjustly; his wholesome composure, frugality, prosperity
in the one case, his acrid unrest, recklessness, gin-drinking,
and gradual ruin in the other,--how shall figures of arith-
metic represent all this? So much is still to be ascertained;
much of it by no means easy to ascertain! Till, among the
"Hill Cooly" and "Dog-cart" questions, there arise in
Parliament and extensively out of it" a Condition-of-England
question," and quite a new set of inquirers and methods,
little of it is likely to be ascertained.
One fact on this subject, a fact which arithmetic is capable
of representing, we have often considered would be worth
all the rest: Whether the labourer, whatever his wages are,
is saving money? Laying up money, he proves that his
condition, painful as it may be without and within, is not yet
desperate; that he looks forward to a better day coming, and
is still resolutely steering towards the same; that all the
lights and darknesses of his lot are united under a blessed
radiance of hope,--the last, first, nay one may say the sole
blessedness of man. Is the habit of saving increased and
increasing, or the contrary? Where the present writer has
been able to look with his own eyes, it is decreasing, and in
many quarters all but disappearing. Statistic science turns
up her Savings-Bank Accounts, and answers, "Increasing
rapidly. " Would that one could believe it! But the Danaides'-
sieve character of such statistic reticulated documents is
too manifest. A few years ago, in regions where thrift, to
one's own knowledge, still was, Savings-Banks were not; the
labourer lent his money to some farmer, of capital, or supposed
to be of capital,--and has too often lost it since; or he bought
a cow with it, bought a cottage with it; nay hid it under his
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? 174 Carlyle's Essays
thatch: the Savings-Banks books then exhibited mere blank
and zero. That they swell yearly now, if such be the fact,
indicates that what thrift exists does gradually resort more
and more thither rather than else-whither; but the question,
Is thrift increasing? runs through the reticulation, and is as
water spilt on the ground, not to be gathered here.
These are inquiries on which, had there been a proper
"Condition-of-England question," some light would have
been thrown, before "torch-meetings" arose to illustrate
them! Far as they lie out of the course of Parliamentary
routine, they should have been gone into, should have been
glanced at, in one or the other fashion. A Legislature making
laws for the Working Classes, in total uncertainty as to these
things, is legislating in the dark; not wisely, nor to good
issues. The simple fundamental question, Can the labouring
man in this England of ours, who is willing to labour, find
work, and subsistence by his work? is matter of mere con-
jecture and assertion hitherto; not ascertainable by authentic
evidence: the Legislature, satisfied to legislate in the dark,
has not yet sought any evidence on it. They pass their
New Poor-Law Bill, without evidence as to all this. Perhaps
their New Poor-Law Bill is itself only intended as an experi-
mentum cruets to ascertain all this? Chartism is an answer,
seemingly not in the affirmative.
CHAPTER III
NEW POOR-LAW
To read the Reports of the Poor-Law Commissioners, if
one had faith enough, would be a pleasure to the friend of
humanity. One sole recipe seems to have been needful for
the woes of England: "refusal of out-door relief. " England
lay in sick discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed,
dark, nigh desperate, in wastefulness, want, improvidence,
and eating care, till like Hyperion down the eastern steeps,
the Poor-Law Commissioners arose, and said, Let there be
workhouses, and bread of affliction and water of affliction
there! It was a simple invention; as all truly great inven-
tions are. And see, in any quarter, instantly as the walls of
the workhouse arise, misery and necessity fly away, out of
sight,--out of being, as is fondly hoped, and dissolve into
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the inane; industry, frugality, fertility, rise of wages,
peace on earth and goodwill towards men do,--in the Poor-
Law Commissioners' Reports,--infallibly, rapidly or not so
rapidly, to the joy of all parties, supervene. It was a con-
summation devoutly to be wished. We have looked over
these four annual Poor-Law Reports with a variety of re-
flections; with no thought that our Poor-Law Commissioners
are the inhuman men their enemies accuse them of being;
with a feeling of thankfulness rather that there do exist men
of that structure too; with a persuasion deeper and deeper
that Nature, who makes nothing to no purpose, has not
made either them or their Poor-Law Amendment Act in vain.
We7 hope to prove that they and it were an indispensable
element, harsh but salutary, in the progress of things.
That this Poor-law Amendment Act meanwhile should be,
as we sometimes hear it named, the "chief glory" of a
Reform Cabinet, betokens, one would imagine, rather a
scarcity of glory there. To say to the poor, Ye shall eat the
bread of affliction and drink the water of affliction, and be
very miserable while here, required not so much a stretch of /
heroic faculty in any sense, as due toughness of bowels. If
paupers are made miserable, paupers will needs 'decline in
multitude. It is a secret known to all rat-catchers: stop up
the granary-crevices, afflict with continual mewing, alarm,
and going-off of traps, your " chargeable labourers " disappear,
and cease from the establishment. A still briefer method
is that of arsenic; perhaps even a milder, where otherwise
permissible. Rats and paupers can be abolished; the human s
faculty was from of old adequate to grind them down, slowly
or at once, and needed no ghost or Reform Ministry to teach
it. Furthermore when one hears of "all the labour of the
country being absorbed into employment" by this new
system of affliction, when labour complaining of want can
find no audience, one cannot but pause. That misery and
unemployed labour should " disappear " in that case is natural
enough; should go out of sight,--but out of existence?
What we do know is, that " the rates are diminished," as they
cannot well help being; that no statistic tables as yet report
much increase of deaths by starvation: this we do know,
and not very conclusively anything mors than this. If this
be absorption of all the labour of the country, then all the
labour of the country is absorbed.
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? 176 Carlyle's Essays
To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here
only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some
permissible manner made away with, and swept out of sight,
is not an amiable faith. That the arrangements of good and
ill success in this perplexed scramble of a world, which a
blind goddess was always thought to preside over, are in fact
the work of a seeing goddess or god, and require only not to
be meddled with: what stretch of heroic faculty or inspiration
of genius was needed to teach one that? To button your
pockets and stand still, is no complex recipe. Laissez faire,
laissez passer I Whatever goes on, ought it not to go on;
"the widow picking nettles for her children's dinner; and
the perfumed seigneur delicately lounging in the CEil-de-
Bceuf, who has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her
the third nettle, and name it rent and law "? What is
written and enacted, has it not black-on-white to show for
itself? Justice is justice; but all attorney's parchment is of
the nature of Targum or sacred-parchment. In brief, ours
is a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble
along, thou insane scramble of a world, with thy pope's
tiaras, king's mantles and beggar's gabardines, chivalry-
ribbons and plebeian gallows-ropes, where a Paul shall die
on the gibbet and a Nero sit fiddling as imperial Caesar; thou
art all right, and shalt scramble even so; and whoever in the
press is trodden down, has only to lie there and be trampled
broad:--Such at bottom seems to be the chief social principle,
if principle it haye, which the Poor-Law Amendment Act has
the merit of courageously asserting, in opposition to many
things. A chief social principle which this present writer,
for one, will by no manner of means believe in, but pronounce
at all fit times to be false, heretical and damnable, if ever
aught was!
And yet, as we said, Nature makes nothing in. vain i_ not
even a Poor-Law Amendment Act. For withal we are far
from joining in the outcry raised against these poor Poor-
Law Commissioners, as if they were tigers in men's shape;
as if their Amendment Act were a mere monstrosity and
horror, deserving instant abrogation. They are not tigers;
they are men filled with an idea of a theory: their Amend-
ment Act, heretical and damnable as a whole truth, is ortho-
dox and laudable as a half-truth; and was imperatively
required to be put in practice. To create men filled with a
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177
theory, that refusal of outdoor-relief was the one thing needful:
Nature had no readier way of getting out-door relief refused.
In fact, if we look at the old Poor-Law, in its assertion of the
opposite social principle, that Fortune's awards are not those
of Justice, we shall find it to have become still more unsup-
portable, demanding, if England was not destined for speedy
anarchy, to be done away with.
Any law, however well meant as a law, which has become
a bounty on unthrift, idleness, bastardy and beer-drinking,
must be put an end to. In all ways it needs, especially in
? these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man
there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not
work, and save according to his means, let him go else-
whither; let him know that for him the law has made no soft
provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the Law of Nature,
which the Law of England would vainly contend against
in the long-run, he is doomed either to quit these habits, or
miserably be extruded from this Earth, which is made on
principles different from these. He that will not work
according to his faculty, let him perish according to his
necessity: there is no law juster than that. Would to Heaven
one could preach it abroad into the hearts of all sons and
daughters of Adam, for it is a law applicable to all; and
bring it to bear, with practical obligation strict as the Poor-
Law Bastille, on all! We had then, in good truth, a " perfect
constitution of society; " and " God's fair Earth and Task-
garden, where whosoever is not working must be begging or
stealing," were then actually what always, through so many
changes and struggles, it is endeavouring to become.
That this law of " No work no recompense" should first
of all be enforced on the manual worker, and brought strin-
gently home to him and his numerous class, while so many
other classes and persons still go loose from it, was natural to
the case. Let it be enforced there, and rigidly made good.
It behoves to be enforced everywhere, and rigidly made good;
--alas, not by such simple methods as "refusal of out-door
relief," but by far other and costlier ones; which too, however,
a bountiful Providence is not unfurnished with, nor, in these
latter generations (if we will understand their convulsions and
confusions), sparing to apply. Work is the mission of man
in this Earth. A day is ever struggling forward, a day will
arrive in some approximate degree, when he who has no work
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? 178 Carlyle's Essays
to do, by whatever name he may be named, will not find it
good to show himself in our quarter of the Solar System; but
may go and look out elsewhere, If there be any Idle Planet
discoverable? --Let the honest working man rejoice that such
law, the first of Nature, has been made good on him; and
hope that, by and by, all else will be made good. It is the
beginning of all. We define the harsh New Poor-Law to be
withal a "protection of the thrifty labourer against the
thriftless and dissolute;" a thing inexpressibly important;
a AaZ/-result, detestable, if you will, when looked upon as
the whole result; yet without which the whole result is for-
ever unattainable. Let wastefulness, idleness, drunkenness,
improvidence take the fate which God has appointed them;
that their opposites may also have a chance for their fate.
Let the Poor-Law Administrators be considered as useful
labourers whom Nature has furnished with a whole theory
of the universe, that they might accomplish an indispensable
fractional practice there, and prosper in it in spite of much
contradiction.
We will praise the New Poor-Law, farther, as the probable
preliminary of some general charge to be taken of the lowest
classes by the higher. Any general charge whatsoever,,
rather than a conflict of charges, varying from parish to
parish; the emblem of darkness, of unreadable confusion.
Supervisal by the central government, in what spirit soever
executed, is supervisal from a centre. By degrees the object
will become clearer, as it is at once made thereby universally
conspicuous. By degrees true vision of it will become
attainable, will be universally attained; whatsoever order
regarding it is just and wise, as grounded on the truth of it,
will then be capable of being taken. Let us welcome the
New Poor-Law as the harsh beginning of much, the harsh
ending of much! Most harsh and barren lies the new
ploughers' fallow-field, the crude subsoil all turned up, which
never saw the sun; which as yet grows no herb; which has
"out-door relief" for no one. Yet patience: innumerable
weeds and corruptions lie safely turned down and extin-
guished under it; this same crude subsoil is the first step
of all true husbandry; by Heaven's blessing and the skyey
influences, fruits that are good and blessed will yet come of it.
For, in truth, the claim of the poor labourer is something
quite other than that'' Statute of the Forty-third of Elizabeth"
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179
will ever fulfil for him. Not to be supported by roundsmen
systems, by never so liberal parish doles, or lodged in free
and easy workhouses when distress overtakes him; not for
'this, however in words he may clamour for it; not for this,
but for something far different does the heart of him struggle.
It is "for justice" that he struggles; for " just wages,"--
not in money alone! An ever-toiling inferior, he would fain
(though as yet he knows it not) find for himself a superior
that should lovingly and wisely govern: is not that too the
"just wages " of his service done? It is for a manlike place
? and relation, in this world where he sees himself a man, that
he struggles. At bottom, may we not say, it is even for this,
That guidance and government, which he cannot give himself,
which in our so complex world he can no longer do without,
might be afforded him? The thing he struggles for is one
which no Forty-third of Elizabeth is in any condition to
furnish him, to put him on the road towards getting. Let
him quit the Forty-third of Elizabeth altogether; and rejoice
that the Poor-Law Amendment Act has, even by harsh
methods and against his own will, forced him away from it.
That was a broken reed to lean on, if there ever was one; and
did but run into his lamed right-hand. Let him cast it far
from him, that broken reed, and look to quite the opposite
point of the heavens for help. His unlamed right-hand, with
the cunning industry that lies in it, is not this defined to be
"the sceptre of our Planet"? He that can work is a born
king of something; is in communion with Nature, is master
of a thing or things, is a priest and king of Nature so far. He
that can work at nothing is but a usurping king, be his
trappings what they may; he is the born slave of all things.
Let a man honour his craftmanship, his can-do; and know
that his rights of man have no concern at all with the Forty-
third of Elizabeth.
CHAPTER IV
FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD
The New Poor-Law is an announcement, sufficiently distinct,
that whosoever will not work ought not to live. Can the poor
man that is willing to work, always find work, and live by
his work? Statistic Inquiry, as we say, has no answer to
give. Legislation presupposes the answer--to be in the
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? 180 Carlyle's Essays
affirmative. A large- postulate; which should have been
made a proposition of; which should have been demonstrated,
made indubitable to all persons! A man willing to work,
and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that
Fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. Burns ex-
presses feelingly what thoughts it gave him: a poor man
seeking work; seeking leave to toil that he might be fed and
sheltered! That he might but be put on a level with the
four-footed workers of the Planet which is his! There is not
a horse willing to work but can get food and shelter in re-
quital; a thing this two-footed worker has to seek for, to
solicit occasionally in vain. He is nobody's two-footed
worker; he is not even anybody's slave. And yet he is a
too-footed worker; it is currently reported there is an
immortal soul in him, sent down out of Heaven into the
Earth; and one beholds him seeking for this! --Nay what will
a wise Legislature say, if it turn out that he cannot find it;
that the answer to their postulate proposition is not affirmative
but negative?
There is one fact which Statistic Science has communicated,
and a most astonishing one; the inference from which is
pregnant as to this matter. Ireland has near seven millions
of working people, the third unit of whom, it appears by
Statistic Science, has not for thirty weeks each year as many
third-rate potatoes as will suffice him.
