The Nigger Question 315
and-demand the all-sufficient substitute for command and
obedience among two-legged animals of the unfeathered
class: accomplish all those remarkable convictions in your
thinking department; and then in your practical, as is fit,
decide by count of heads, the vote of a Demerara Nigger equal
and no more to that of a Chancellor Bacon: this, I perceive,
will (so soon as it is fairly under way, and all obstructions
left behihd) give the minimum of wisdom in your proceedings.
and-demand the all-sufficient substitute for command and
obedience among two-legged animals of the unfeathered
class: accomplish all those remarkable convictions in your
thinking department; and then in your practical, as is fit,
decide by count of heads, the vote of a Demerara Nigger equal
and no more to that of a Chancellor Bacon: this, I perceive,
will (so soon as it is fairly under way, and all obstructions
left behihd) give the minimum of wisdom in your proceedings.
Thomas Carlyle
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? The Nigger Question 307
? f it with such a man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis,
ich soil in those unpeopled or half-peopled regions almost
;ratis; these are his "supply;" and half-an-hour a-day,
lirected upon these, will produce pumpkin, which is his
'demand. " The fortunate Black man, very swiftly does he
ettle his account with supply and demand:--not so swiftly
he less fortunate White man of those tropical localities.
bad case, his, just now. He himself cannot work; and his
jlack neighbour, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him.
Junk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and
nuch at his ease in the Creation, he can listen to the less
brtunate white man's " demand " and take his own time in
supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane-
:rop cannot wait; still higher,--till no conceivable opulence
if cane-crop will cover such wages. In Demerara, as I read
in the Blue-book of last year, the cane-crop, far and wide,
stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen, strong in
their pumpkins, having all struck till the "demand" rise
a little. Sweet blighted lilies, now getting-up their heads
again!
Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand
is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate (equal in fact to
nothing in some places, as appears), increase the supply;
bring more Blacks into the labour-market, then will the rate
tall, says science. Not the least surprising part of our West-
Indian policy is this recipe of "immigration;" of keeping-
down the labour-market in those islands by importing new
'Africans to labour and live there. If the Africans that are'
already there could be made to lay-down their pumpkins, and
labour for their living, there are already Africans enough. If
;the new Africans, after labouring a little, take to pumpkins
like the others, what remedy is there? To bring-in new and
ever new Africans, say you, till pumpkins themselves grow
dear; till the country is crowded with Africans; and black
men there, like white men here, are forced by hunger to
labour for their living? That will be a consummation. To
have " emancipated " the West Indies into a Black Ireland;
"free " indeed, but an Ireland, and Black! The world may
'yet see prodigies; and reality be stranger than a nightmare
dream.
Our own white or sallow Ireland, sluttishly starving from
age to age on its act-of-parliament " freedom," was hitherto
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? 308 Carlyle's Essays
the flower of mismanagement among the nations: but wha
will this be to a Negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselve
fallen scarce like potatoes! Imagination cannot fathom sucl
an object; the belly of Chaos never held the like. Thehuma:
mind, in its wide wanderings, has not dreamt yet of such;
"freedom" as that will be. Towards that, if Exeter Hal
and science of supply-and-demand are to continue our guide
in the matter, we are daily travelling, and even struggling
with loans of half - a - million and suchlike, to accelerat
ourselves.
Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter-Hall Philanthrop
is wonderful. And the Social Science,--not a " gay science,
but a rueful,--which finds the secret of this Universe i
"supply and demand," and reduces the duty of huma
governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderfu
Not a " gay science," I should say, like some we have heard o'i
no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressin
one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the disma
science. These two, Exeter-Hall Philanthropy and the Dis
mal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation
or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it,--wii
give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon
calves, unnamable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, suo
as the world has not seen hitherto! [Increased emotion
again suppressed by the Chairman. ]'
In fact, it will behove us of this English nation to overhau
our West-Indian procedure from top to bottom, and ascertaii
a little better what it is that Fact and Nature demand of u;
and what only Exeter Hall wedded to the Dismal Scieno
demands. To the former set of demands we will endeavour
at our peril,--and worse peril than our purse's, at our soul'
peril,--to give all obedience. To the latter we will ver
frequently demur, and try if we cannot stop short where the;
contradict the former,--and especially before arriving at th
black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be leading us
Alas, in many other provinces besides the West Indian, tha
unhappy wedlock of Philanthropic Liberalism and the Disma
Science has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of th1
moon-calf sort, and wrought huge woe for us, and for the poo
civilised world, in these days! And sore will be the battlf
with said moon-calves; and terrible the struggle to returr
out of our delusions, floating rapidly on which, not the West
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? The Nigger Question 309
Indies alone, but Europe generally, is nearing the Niagara
Falls. [Here various persons, in an agitated manner, with an
%ir of indignation, left the room ; especially one very tall gentle-
nan in white trousers, whose boots creaked much. The Presi-
dent, in a resolved voice, with a look of official rigour, whatever
his own private feelings might be, enjoined " Silence, Silence! "
The meeting again sat motionless. ]
My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed head-
lands in this wide-weltering deluge, of benevolent twaddle
rnd revolutionary grape-shot, that has burst-forth on us; no
jure bearings at all? Fact and Nature, it seems to me, say
1 few words to us, if happily we have still an ear for Fact and
Nature. Let us listen a little and try.
And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid-
Jown as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or
Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except
[or a short time only, That no Black man who will not work
iccording to what ability the gods have given him for working,
ias the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of
and that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land
nay be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be
impelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do com-
petent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all
nen, black or white, who are born into this world. To do
X>mpetent work, to labour honestly according to the ability
>>iven them; for that and for no other purpose was each one of
is sent into this world; and woe is to every man who, by
Hend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this the end of
lis being. That is the " unhappy " lot: lot equally unhappy
mnnot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoever prohibits
Dr prevents a man from this his sacred appointment to labour
vhile he lives on earth,--that, I say, is the man's deadliest
;nemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their
power or opportunity towards delivering him from that. If
it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him,
then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered
from: and the first "right" he has,--poor indolent block-
bead, black or white,--is, That every wwprohibited man,
whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing
that way, shall endeavour to "emancipate" him from his
indolence, and by some wise means, as I said, compel him,
since inducing will not serve, to do the work he is fit for.
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? 310 Carlylc's Essays
Induce him, if you can: yes, sure enough, by all means try
what inducement will do; and indeed every coachman and
carman knows that secret, without our preaching, and applies
it to his very horses as the true method:--but if your Nigger
will not be induced? In that case, it is full certain, he must
be compelled; should and must; and the tacit prayer he
makes (unconsciously he, poor blockhead,) to you, and to me,
and to all the world who are wiser than himself, is " Compel
me! " For indeed he must, or else do and suffer worse-
he as well as we. It were better the work did come out of
him! It was the meaning of the gods with him and with us,
that his gift should turn to use in this Creation, and not lie
poisoning the thoroughfares, as a rotten mass of idleness,
agreeable to neither heaven nor earth. For idleness does, in
all cases, inevitably rot, and become putrescent;--and I sa\
deliberately, the very Devil is in it.
None of you, my friends, have been in Demerara lately, I
apprehend? May none of you go till matters mend there a
little! Under the sky there are uglier sights than perhaps
were seen hitherto! Dead corpses, the rotting body of a
brother man, whom fate or unjust men have killed, this is not
a pleasant spectacle; but what say you to the dead soul of
a man,--in a body which still pretends to be vigorously alive,
and can drink rum? An idle White gentleman is not pleasant
to me; though I confess the real work for him is not easy te
find, in these our epochs; and perhaps he is seeking, poor
soul, and may find at last. But what say you to an idle
Black gentleman, with his rum-bottle in his hand (for a littli
additional pumpkin you can have red-herrings and rum,
in Demerara),--rum-bottle in his hand, no breeches on his
body, pumpkin at discretion, and the fruitfulest region of the
earth going back to jungle round him? Such things the sun
looks-down upon in our fine times; and I, for one, would
rather have no hand in them.
Yes, this is the eternal law of Nature for a man, my bene-
ficent Exeter-Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted,
encouraged, and if need be, compelled to do what work the
Maker of him has intended by the making of him for this
world! Not that he should eat pumpkin with never sucb
felicity in the West-India Islands is, or can be, the blessedness
of our Black friend; but that he should do useful work there,
according as the gifts have been bestowed on him fox that-
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? The Nigger Question
? And his own happiness, and that of others round him, will
alone be possible by his and their getting into such a relation
that this can be permitted him, and in case of need, that this
? can be compelled him. I beg you to understand this; for
you seem to have a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand
inferences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at present.
. The idle Black man in the West Indies had, not long since,
the right, and will again under better form, if it please Heaven,
have the right (actually the first "right of man" for an
indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to
do the Maker's will who had constructed him with such and
such capabilities, and prefigurements of capability. And I
incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike and the
blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the
'world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine
right of being compelled (if "permitted" will not answer)
to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle
another minute, in a life which is so short, and where idleness
so soon runs to putrescence! Alas, we had then a perfect
world; and the Millennium, and true "Organisation of
Labour," and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers
and men, had then arrived,--which in these our own poor
districts of the Planet, as we all lament to know, it is very
far from having yet done. [More withdrawals; but the rest
sitting with increased attention. ]
Do I, then, hate the Negro? No; except when the soul is
killed out of him, I decidedly like poor Quashee; and find
him a pretty kind of man. With a pennyworth of oil, you can
make a handsome glossy thing of Quashee, when the soul
is not killed in him! A swift, supple fellow; a merry-hearted,
grinning, dancing, singing, affectionate kind of creature, with
a great deal of melody and amenability in his composition.
This certainly is a notable fact: The black African, alone of
wild-men, can live among men civilised. While all manner
of Caribs and others pine into annihilation in presence of the
pale faces, he contrives to continue; does not die of sullen
irreconcilable rage, of rum, of brutish laziness and darkness,
,and fated incompatibility with his new place; but lives and
multiplies, and evidently means to abide among us, if we can
find the right regulation for him. We shall have to find
it; we are now engaged in the search; and have at least
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? 312 Carlyle's Essays
discovered that of two methods, the old Demerara method,
and the new Demerara method, neither will answer.
Alas, my friends, I understand well your rage against the
poor Negro's slavery; what said rage proceeds from; and
have a perfect sympathy with it, and even know it by experi-
ence. Can the oppressor of my black fellow-man be of any
use to me, in particular? Am I gratified in my mind by the
ill-usage of any two- or four-legged thing; of any horse 01
any dog? Not so, I assure you. In me too the natural
sources of human rage exist more or less, and the capability
of flying out into "fiery wrath against oppression," and of
signing petitions; both of which things can be done very
cheap. Good heavens, if signing petitions would do it, if
hopping to Rome on one leg would do it, think you it were
long undone!
Frightful things are continually told us of Negro slavery,
of the hardships, bodily and spiritual, suffered by slaves.
Much exaggerated, and mere exceptional cases, say the
opponents. Exceptional cases, I answer; yes, and universa)
ones! On the whole, hardships, and even oppressions and
injustices are not unknown in this world; I myself have
suffered such, and have not you? It is said, Man, of what-
ever colour, is born to such, even as the sparks fly upwards!
For in fact labour, and this is properly what we call hardship,
misery, etc. (meaning mere ugly labour not yet done), labouz
is not joyous but grievous; and we have a good deal of it to
do among us here. We have, simply, to carry the whole
world and its businesses upon our backs, we poor unitejj
Human Species; to carry it, and shove it forward, from daj
to day, somehow or other, among us, or else be ground to
powder under it, one and all. No light task, let me tell you.
even if each did his part honestly, which each doesn't
any means. No, only the noble lift willingly with their
whole strength, at the general burden; and in such a crowd,
after all your drillings, regulatings, and attempts at equitable
distribution, and compulsion, what deceptions are still prac
ticable, what errors are inevitable! Many cunning ignoble
fellows shirk the labour altogether; and instead of faithfully
lifting at the immeasurable universal handbarrow with its
thousand-million handles, contrive to get on some ledge of it,
and be lifted!
What a story we have heard about all that, not from vague
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? The Nigger Question
rumour since yesterday, but from inspired prophets, speakers
and seers, ever since speech began! How the giant willing
spirit, among white masters, and in the best-regulated families,
is so often not loaded only but overloaded, crushed-down like
an Enceladus; and, all his life, has to have armies of pigmies
building tabernacles on his chest; marching composedly over
his neck, as if it were a highway; and much amazed if, when
they run their straw spear into his nostril, he is betrayed into
sudden sneezing, and oversets some of them. [Some laughter,
the speaker himself looking terribly serious. ] My friends, I a
have come to the sad conclusion that slavery, whether
established by law, or by law abrogated, exists very exten-
sively in this world, in and out of the West Indies; and, in
fact, that you cannot abolish slavery by act of parliament, but
* can only abolish the name of it, which is very little!
In the West Indies itself, if you chance to abolish Slavery
to Men, and in return establish Slavery to the Devil (as we
see in Demerara), what good is it? To save men's bodies, and
fill them with pumpkins and rum, is a poor task for human
benevolence, if you have to kill their soul, what soul there
was, in the business! Slavery is not so easy to be abolished;
I it will long continue, in spite of acts of parliament. And
shall I tell you whicb is the one intolerable sort of slavery;
the slavery over which the very gods weep? That sort is not
rif est in the West Indies; but, with all its sad fruits, prevails
in nobler countries. It is the slavery of the strong to the
weak; of the great and noble-minded to the small and mean!
. The slavery of Wisdom to Folly. When Folly all " emanci- v.
pated," and become supreme, armed with ballot-boxes,
universal suffrages, and appealing to what Dismal Sciences,
Statistics, Constitutional Philosophies, and other Fool
Gospels it has got devised for itself, can say to Wisdom: "Be
silent, or thou shalt repent it! Suppress thyself, I advise
thee; canst thou not contrive to cease, then? " ,That also,
in some anarchic-constitutional epochs, has been seen. When,
"of high and noble objects, there remained, in the market-
place of human things, at length none; and he that could not
make guineas his pursuit, and the applause of flunkies his
? reward, found himself in such a minority as seldom was before.
Minority, I know, there always was: but there are degrees
of it, down to minority of one,--down to suppression of the
unfortunate minority, and reducing it to zero, that the flunky
H 704 x
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? 314 Carlyle's Essays
world may have peace from it henceforth. The flunky-world
has peace; and descends, manipulating its ballot-boxes,
Coppock suffrages, and divine constitutional apparatus;
quoting its Dismal Sciences, Statistics, and other satisfactory
Gospels and Talmuds,--into the throat of the Devil; not
bothered by the importunate minority on the road. Did
you never hear of " Crucify him! Crucify him! " That was
a considerable feat in the suppressing of minorities; and is
still talked-of on Sundays,--with very little understanding,
when I last heard of it. My friends, my friends, I fear we
are a stupid people; and stuffed with such delusions, above
all with such immense hypocrisies and self-delusions, from
our birth upwards, as no people were before; God help us!
--Emancipated? Yes, indeed, we are emancipated out of
several things, and into several things. No man, wise or
foolish, any longer can control you for good or for evil.
Foolish Tomkins, foolish Jobson, cannot now singly oppress
you: but if the Universal Company of the Tomkinses and
Jobsons, as by law established, can more than ever? If,
on all highways and byways, that lead to other than a
Tomkins-Jobson winning-post, you meet, at the second step,
the big, dumb, universal genius of Chaos, and are so placidly
yet peremptorily taught, " Halt here! " There is properly
but one slavery in the world. One slavery, in which all
other slaveries and miseries that afflict the earth are included;
compared with which the worst West-Indian, white, or black,
or yellow slaveries are a small matter. One slavery over
which the very gods weep. Other slaveries, women and.
children and stump-orators weep over; but this is for men
and gods! [Sensation; some, however, took snuff. ]
If precisely the Wisest Man were at the top of society, and
the next-wisest next, and so on till we reached the Demerara"
Nigger (from whom downwards, through the horse, etc. ,
there is no question hitherto), then were this a perfect world,
the extreme maximum of wisdom produced in it. That is
how you might produce your maximum, would some god
assist. And I can tell you also how the minimum were
producible. Let no man in particular be put at the top; let
all men be accounted equally wise and worthy, and the notion
get abroad that anybody or nobody will do well enough at
the top; that money (to which may be added success in
stump-oratory) is the real symbol of wisdom, and supply-
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?
The Nigger Question 315
and-demand the all-sufficient substitute for command and
obedience among two-legged animals of the unfeathered
class: accomplish all those remarkable convictions in your
thinking department; and then in your practical, as is fit,
decide by count of heads, the vote of a Demerara Nigger equal
and no more to that of a Chancellor Bacon: this, I perceive,
will (so soon as it is fairly under way, and all obstructions
left behihd) give the minimum of wisdom in your proceedings.
Thus were your minimum producible,--with no God needed
to assist, nor any Demon even, except the general Demon of
Ignavia (Unvalour), lazy Indifference to the production or
non-production of such things, which runs in our own blood.
Were it beautiful, think you? Folly in such millionfold
majority, at length peaceably supreme in this earth. Advanc-
ing on you as the huge buffalo-phalanx does in the Western
Deserts; or as, on a smaller scale, those bristly creatures did
in the Country of the Gadarenes. Rushing, namely, in wild
stampede (the Devil being in them, some small fry having
stung them), boundless,--one wing on that edge of your
horizon, the other wing on that, and rearward whole tides
and oceans of them:--so could Folly rush; the enlightened
public one huge Gadarenes-swinery, tail cocked, snout in
airrwith joyful animating short squeak; fast and ever faster;
down steep places,--to the sea of Tiberias, and the bottom-
less cloacas of Nature: quenched there, since nowhere sooner.
My friends, such sight is too sublime, if you are out in it, and
are not of it! --
Well, except by Mastership and Servantship, there is no
conceivable deliverance from Tyranny and Slavery. Cosmos
is not Chaos, simply by this one quality, That it is governed.
Where wisdom, even approximately, can contrive to govern,
all is right, or is ever striving to become so; where folly is
"emancipated," and gets to govern, as it soon will, all is
wrong. That is the sad fact; and in other places than
Demerara, and in regard to other interests than those of
sugar-making, we sorrowfully experience the same.
I have to complain that, in these days, the relation of
master to servant, and of superior to inferior, in all stages of it,
is fallen sadly out of joint. As may well be, when the very
highest stage and form of it, which should be the summary of
all and the keystone of all, is got to such a pass. Kings them-
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? 316 Carlyle's Essays
selves are grown sham-kings; and their subjects very natur-
ally are sham-subjects; with mere lip-homage, insincere to
their sham-kings;--sincere chiefly when they get into the
streets (as is now our desperate case generally in Europe) to
shoot them down as nuisances. Royalty is terribly gone;
and loyalty in consequence has had to go. No man rever-
ences another; at the best, each man slaps the other good-
humouredly on the shoulder, with, " Hail, fellow; well met:"
--at the worst (which is sure enough to follow such unreason-
able good-humour, in a world like ours) clutches him by the
throat, with, "Tyrannous son of perdition, shall I endure
thee, then, and thy injustices forever? " We are not yet got
to the worst extreme, we here in these Isles; but we are well
half-way towards it, I often think.
Certainly, by any ballot-box, Jesus Christ goes just as far
as Judas Iscariot; and with reason, according to the New
Gospels, Talmuds and Dismal Sciences of these days. Judas
looks him in the face; asks proudly, "Am not I as good
as thou? Better, perhaps! " slapping his breeches-pocket,
in which is audible the cheerful jingle of thirty pieces of
silver. "Thirty of them here, thou cowering pauper! "
My philanthropic friends, if there be a state of matters under
the stars which deserves the name of damnable and damned,
this I perceive is it! Alas, I know well whence it came, and
how it could not help coming;--and I continually pray the
gods its errand were done, and it had begun to go its ways
again. Vain hope, at least for a century to come! And
there will be such a sediment of Egyptian mud to sweep
away, and to fish all human things out of again, once this
most sad though salutary deluge is well over, as the human
species seldom had before. Patience, patience! --
In fact, without real masters you cannot have servants;
and a master is not made by thirty pieces or thirty-million
pieces of silver; only a sham-master is so made. The Dismal
Science of this epoch defines him to be master good enough;
but he is not such: you can see what kind of master he proves,
what kind of servants he manages to have. Accordingly, the
state of British servantship, of American helpship--I confess
to you, my friends, if looking out for what was least human
and heroic, least lovely to the Supreme Powers, I should not
go to Carolina at this time; I should sorrowfully stay at home!
Austere philosophers, possessed even of cash, have talked to
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? The Nigger Question 3 17
me about the possibility of doing without servants; of trying
somehow to serve yourself (boot-cleaning, etc. , done by con-
tract), and so escaping from a never-ending welter, dirtier for
your mind than boot-cleaning itself. Of which the perpetual
fluctuation, and change from month to month, is probably the
most inhuman element; the fruitful parent of all else that is
evil, unendurable and inhuman. A poor Negro overworked
on the Cuba sugar-grounds, he is sad to look upon; yet he
inspires me with sacred pity, and a kind of human respect is
not denied him; him, the hapless brother mortal, performing
something useful in his day, and only suffering inhumanity,
not doing it or being it. But with what feelings can I look
upon an over-fed White Flunky, if I know his ways? Dis-
loyal, unheroic, this one; mhuman in his character, and his
work, and his position; more so no creature ever was. Pity is
not for him, or not a soft kind of it; nor is any remedy visible,
except abolition at no distant date! He is the flower of
nomadic servitude, proceeding by month's warning, and free
supply-and-demand; if obedience is not in his heart, if chiefly
gluttony and mutiny are in his heart, and he has to be bribed
by high feeding to do the shows of obedience,--what can
await him, or be prayed for him, among men, except even
"abolition"?
The Duke of Trumps, who sometimes does me the honour
of a little conversation, owned that the state of his domestic
service was by no means satisfactory to the human mind.
"Five-and-forty of them," said his Grace; "really, I sup-
pose, the cleverest in the market, for there is no limit to the
wages: I often think how many quiet families, all down to
the basis of society, I have disturbed, in attracting gradually,
by higher and higher offers, that set of fellows to me; and
what the use of them is when here! I feed them like alder-
men, pay them as if they were sages and heroes:--Samuel
Johnson's wages, at the very last and best, as I have heard
you say, were ? 300 or ? 500 a year; and Jellysnob, my butler,
who indeed is clever, gets, I believe, more than the highest
of these sums. And, shall I own it to you? In my young
days, with one valet, I had more trouble saved me, more
help afforded me to live,--actually more of my will accom-
plished,--than from these forty-five I now get, or ever shall.
It is all a serious comedy; what you call a melancholy sham.
Most civil, obsequious, and indeed expert fellows these; but
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? 3 18 Carlyle's Essays
bid one of them step-out of his regulated sphere on your be-
half! An iron law presses on us all here; on them and on
me. In my own house, how much of my will can I have
done, dare I propose to have done? Prudence, on my side,
is prescribed by a jealous and ridiculous point-of-honour
attitude on theirs. They lie here more like a troop of foreign
soldiers that had invaded me, than a body of servants I had
hired. At free quarters; we have strict laws of war estab-
lished between us; they make their salutes, and do certain
bits of specified work, with many becks and scrapings; but
as to service, properly so called--! --I lead the life of a ser-
vant, sir; it is I that am a slave; and often I think of pack-
ing the whole brotherhood of them out of doors one good day,
and retiring to furnished lodgings; but have never done it
yet! "--Such was the confession of his Grace.
For, indeed, in the long run, it is not possible to buy obedi-
ence with money. You may buy work done with money: from
cleaning boots to building houses, and to far higher functions,
there is much work bought with money, and got done in a
supportable manner. But, mark withal, that is only from a
class of supportably wise human creatures: from a huge and
ever-increasing insupportably foolish class of human creatures
you cannot buy work in that way; and the attempt in London
itself, much more in Demerara, turns out a very "serious
comedy" indeed! Who has not heard of the Distressed
Needlewomen in these days? We have thirty-thousand
Distressed Needlewomen,--the most of whom cannot sew a
reasonable stitch; for they are, in fact, Mutinous Serving-
maids, who, instead of learning to work and to obey, learned
to give warning: "Then suit yourself, Ma'am! " Hapless
enfranchised White Women, who took the "freedom" to
serve the Devil with their faculties, instead of serving God
or man; hapless souls, they were " enfranchised " to a most
high degree, and had not the wisdom for so ticklish a predica-
ment,--" Then suit yourself, Ma'am;"--and so have tumbled
from one stage of folly to the other stage; and at last are on
the street, with five hungry senses, and no available faculty
whatever. Having finger and thumb, they do procure a
needle, and call themselves Distressed Needlewomen, but
cannot sew at all. I have inquired in the proper places, and
find a quite passionate demand for women that can sew,--
such being unattainable just now. "As well call them
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? The Nigger Question 319
Distressed Astronomers as Distressed Needlewomen! " said
a lady to me: "I myself will take three sewing Needlewomen,
if you can get them for me to-day. " Is not that a sight to
set before the curious?
Distressed enough, God knows;--but it will require quite
other remedies to get at the bottom of their complaint, I am
afraid. 0 Brothers! 0 Sisters! It is for these White Women
that my heart bleeds and my soul is heavy; it is for the
sight of such mad notions and such unblessed doings now all-
prevalent among mankind,--alas, it is for such life-theories
and such life-practices, and ghastly clearstarched life-hypo-
crisies, playing their part under high Heaven, as render these
inevitable and unaidable,--that the world of to-day looks
black and vile to me, and with all its guineas, in the nostril
smells badly! It is not to the West Indies that I run first
of all; and not thither with " enfranchisement " first of all,
when I discern what " enfranchisement " has led to in hope-
fuler localities. I tell you again and again, he or she that
will not work, and in the anger of the gods cannot be com-
pelled to work, shall die! And not he or she only: alas, alas,
were it the guilty only! -- But as yet we cannot help it;
as yet, for a long while, we must be patient, and let the
Exeter-Hallery and other tragic Tomfoolery rave itself out.
[Deep silence in the small remnant of audience;--the gentleman
in white trousers came in again, his creaking painfully audible
in spite of efforts. ]
My friends, it is not good to be without a servant in this
world; but to be without master, it appears, is a still fataler
predicament for some. Without a master, in certain cases,
you become a Distressed Needlewoman, and cannot so much
as live. Happy he who has found his master, I will say; if
not a good master, then some supportable approximation to
a good one; for the worst, it appears, in some cases, is prefer-
able to none!
Happy he who has found a master;--and now, farther I
will say, having found, let him well keep him. In all human
relations permanency is what I advocate; nomadism, con-
tinual change, is what I perceive to be prohibitory of any good
whatsoever. Two men that have got to cooperate will do
well not to quarrel at the first cause of offence, and throw-up
the concern in disgust, hoping to suit themselves better else-
where. For the most part such hope is fallacious; and they
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? 320 Carlyle's Essays
will, on the average, not suit themselves better, but only
about as well,--and have to begin again bare, which loss
often repeated becomes immense, and is finally the loss of
everything, and of their joint enterprise itself. For no
mutual relation while it continues " bare," is yet a human
one, or can bring blessedness, but is only waiting to become
such,--mere new-piled crags, which, if you leave them, will
at last " gather moss," and yield some verdure and pasture.
O my friends, what a remedy is this we have fallen upon, for
everything that goes wrong between one man and another:
"Go, then; I give you a month's warning! " What would
you think of a sacrament of marriage constructed on such
principles? Marriage by the month,--why this too has been
tried, and is still extensively practised in spite of Law and
Gospel; but it is not found to do! The legislator, the
preacher, all rational mortals, answer, "No, no! " You
must marry for longer than a month, and the contract not
so easily revocable, even should mistakes occur, as they
sometimes do.
I am prepared to maintain against all comers, That in every
human relation, from that of husband and wife down to that
of master and servant, nomadism is the bad plan, and continu-
ance the good. A thousand times, since I first had servants,
it has occurred to me, How much better had I servants that
were bound to me, and to whom I were bound! Doubtless
it were not easy; doubtless it is now impossible: but if it
could be done! I say, if the Black gentleman is born to be a
servant, and, in fact, is useful in God's creation only as a
servant, then let him hire not by the month, but by a very
much longer term. That he be " hired for life,"--really here
is the essence of the position he now holds! Consider that
matter. All else is abuse in it, and this only is essence;--
and the abuses must be cleared away. They must and shall!
Yes; and the thing itself seems to offer (its abuses once
cleared away) a possibility of the most precious kind for the
Black man and for us. Servants hired for life, or by a con-
tract for a long period, and not easily dissoluble; so and not
otherwise would all reasonable mortals, Black and White,
wish to hire and to be hired! I invite you to reflect on that;
for you will find it true. And if true, it is important for us, in
reference to this Negro Question and some others. The
Germans say, "You must empty-out the bathing-tub, but
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? The Nigger Question 321
not the baby along with it. " Fling-out your dirty water
with all zeal, and set it careering down the kennels; but try
if you can keep the little child!
How to abolish the abuses of slavery, and save the precious
thing in it: alas, I do not pretend that this is easy, that it can
be done in a day, or a single generation, or a single century:
but I do surmise or perceive that it will, by straight methods
or by circuitous, need to be done (not in the West-Indian
regions alone); and that the one way of helping the Negro
at present (Distressed Needlewomen, etc. , being quite out of
our reach) were, by piously and strenuously beginning it.
Begun it must be, I perceive; and carried on in all regions
where servants are born and masters; and are not prepared
to become Distressed Needlewomen, or Demerara Niggers,
'but to live in some human manner with one another. And
"truly, my friends, with regard to this world-famous Nigger
Question,--which perhaps is louder than it is big, after all,--
I would advise you to attack it on that side. Try against the
dirty water, with an eye to save the baby! That will be a
quite new point of attack; where, it seems to me, some real
benefit and victory for the poor Negro, might before long be
K. accomplished; and something else than Demerara freedom
(with its rum-bottle and no breeches,--" baby" quite gone
down into the kennels! ) or than American stump-oratory,
with mutual exasperation fast rising to the desperate pitch,
might be possible for philanthropic men and women of the
Anglo-Saxon type. Try this; perhaps the very Carolina
, planter will cooperate with you; he will, if he has any wisdom
left in this exasperation! If he do not, he will do worse;
and go a strange road with those Niggers of his.
By one means or another these enormities we hear of from
the Slave States,--though I think they are hardly so hideous,
any of them, as the sight our own Demerara now offers,--
must be heard of no more. Men will and must summon
. "indignation-meetings " about them; and simple persons,--
'like Wilhelm Meister's Felix flying at the cook's throat for
plucking pigeons, yet himself seen shortly after pelting frogs
to death with pebbles that lay handy,--will agitate their
-caucuses, ballot-boxes, dissever the Union, and, in short,
play the very devil, if these things are not abated, and do not
go on abating more and more towards perfect abolition.
Unjust master over servant hired for life is, once for all, and
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? 322 Carlyle's Essays
shall be, unendurable to human souls. To cut the tie, and
"fling Farmer Hodge's horses quite loose "' upon the supply-
and-demand principle: that, I will believe, is not the method!
But by some method, by hundredfold restrictions, responsi-
bilities, laws, conditions, cunning methods, Hodge must be got
to treat his horses justly, for we cannot stand it longer. And
let Hodge think well of it,--I mean the American two-footed
Hodge,--for there is no other salvation for him. And if he
would avoid a consummation like our Demerara one, I would
advise him to know this secret; which our poor Hodge did not
know, or would not practise, and so is come to such a pass! --
Here is part of my answer to the Hon. Hickory Buckskin, a
senator in those Southern States, and man of really respectable
attainments and dimensions, who in his despair appears to
be entertaining very violent projects now and then, as to
uniting with our West Indies (under a New Downing Street),
forming a West-Indian empire, etc. etc.
"The New Downing Street, I take it, is at a great distance
here; and we shall wait yet awhile for it, and run good risk
of losing all our Colonies before we can discover the way of
managing them. On that side do not reckon upon help.
At the same time, I can well understand you should ' publicly
discuss the propriety of severing the Union/ and that the
resolution should be general 'you will rather die,' etc. A
man, having certified himself about his trade and post under
the sun, is actually called upon to ' die ' in vindication of it,
if needful; in defending the possibilities he has of carrying
it on, and eschewing with it the belly of Perdition, when
extraneous Insanity is pushing it thither. All this I pre-
suppose of you, of men born of your lineage; and have not a
word to say against it.
"Meanwhile suffer me to say this other thing. You will
not find Negro Slavery defensible by the mere resolution,
never so extensive, to defend it. No, there is another con-
dition wanted: That your relation to the Negroes, in this
thing called Slavery (with such an emphasis upon the word)
be actually fair, just and according to the facts;--fair, I say,
not in the sight of New-England platforms, but of God
Almighty the Maker of both Negroes and you. That is the
one ground on which men can take their stand; in the long-
run all human causes, and this cause too, will come to be
settled there. Forgive me for saying that I do not think you
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? The Nigger Question 323
have yet got to that point of perfection with your Negro
relations; that there is probably much in them not fair, nor
agreeable to the Maker of us, and to the eternal laws of fact
as written in the Negro's being and in ours.
"The advice of advices, therefore, to men so circumstanced
were, With all diligence make them so! Otherwise than so,
they are doomed by Earth and by Heaven. Demerara may
be the maddest remedy, as I think it is a very mad one: but
some remedy we must have; or if none, then destruction and
annihilation, by the Demerara or a worse method. These
things it would behove you of the Southern States, above all
men, to be now thinking of. How to make the Negro's
position among his White fellow-creatures a just one,--the
real and genuine expression of what commandment the Maker
has given to both of you, by making the one of you thus and
the other so, and putting you in juxtaposition on this Earth
of His?
? The Nigger Question 307
? f it with such a man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis,
ich soil in those unpeopled or half-peopled regions almost
;ratis; these are his "supply;" and half-an-hour a-day,
lirected upon these, will produce pumpkin, which is his
'demand. " The fortunate Black man, very swiftly does he
ettle his account with supply and demand:--not so swiftly
he less fortunate White man of those tropical localities.
bad case, his, just now. He himself cannot work; and his
jlack neighbour, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him.
Junk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and
nuch at his ease in the Creation, he can listen to the less
brtunate white man's " demand " and take his own time in
supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane-
:rop cannot wait; still higher,--till no conceivable opulence
if cane-crop will cover such wages. In Demerara, as I read
in the Blue-book of last year, the cane-crop, far and wide,
stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen, strong in
their pumpkins, having all struck till the "demand" rise
a little. Sweet blighted lilies, now getting-up their heads
again!
Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand
is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate (equal in fact to
nothing in some places, as appears), increase the supply;
bring more Blacks into the labour-market, then will the rate
tall, says science. Not the least surprising part of our West-
Indian policy is this recipe of "immigration;" of keeping-
down the labour-market in those islands by importing new
'Africans to labour and live there. If the Africans that are'
already there could be made to lay-down their pumpkins, and
labour for their living, there are already Africans enough. If
;the new Africans, after labouring a little, take to pumpkins
like the others, what remedy is there? To bring-in new and
ever new Africans, say you, till pumpkins themselves grow
dear; till the country is crowded with Africans; and black
men there, like white men here, are forced by hunger to
labour for their living? That will be a consummation. To
have " emancipated " the West Indies into a Black Ireland;
"free " indeed, but an Ireland, and Black! The world may
'yet see prodigies; and reality be stranger than a nightmare
dream.
Our own white or sallow Ireland, sluttishly starving from
age to age on its act-of-parliament " freedom," was hitherto
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? 308 Carlyle's Essays
the flower of mismanagement among the nations: but wha
will this be to a Negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselve
fallen scarce like potatoes! Imagination cannot fathom sucl
an object; the belly of Chaos never held the like. Thehuma:
mind, in its wide wanderings, has not dreamt yet of such;
"freedom" as that will be. Towards that, if Exeter Hal
and science of supply-and-demand are to continue our guide
in the matter, we are daily travelling, and even struggling
with loans of half - a - million and suchlike, to accelerat
ourselves.
Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter-Hall Philanthrop
is wonderful. And the Social Science,--not a " gay science,
but a rueful,--which finds the secret of this Universe i
"supply and demand," and reduces the duty of huma
governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderfu
Not a " gay science," I should say, like some we have heard o'i
no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressin
one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the disma
science. These two, Exeter-Hall Philanthropy and the Dis
mal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation
or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it,--wii
give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon
calves, unnamable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, suo
as the world has not seen hitherto! [Increased emotion
again suppressed by the Chairman. ]'
In fact, it will behove us of this English nation to overhau
our West-Indian procedure from top to bottom, and ascertaii
a little better what it is that Fact and Nature demand of u;
and what only Exeter Hall wedded to the Dismal Scieno
demands. To the former set of demands we will endeavour
at our peril,--and worse peril than our purse's, at our soul'
peril,--to give all obedience. To the latter we will ver
frequently demur, and try if we cannot stop short where the;
contradict the former,--and especially before arriving at th
black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be leading us
Alas, in many other provinces besides the West Indian, tha
unhappy wedlock of Philanthropic Liberalism and the Disma
Science has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of th1
moon-calf sort, and wrought huge woe for us, and for the poo
civilised world, in these days! And sore will be the battlf
with said moon-calves; and terrible the struggle to returr
out of our delusions, floating rapidly on which, not the West
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? The Nigger Question 309
Indies alone, but Europe generally, is nearing the Niagara
Falls. [Here various persons, in an agitated manner, with an
%ir of indignation, left the room ; especially one very tall gentle-
nan in white trousers, whose boots creaked much. The Presi-
dent, in a resolved voice, with a look of official rigour, whatever
his own private feelings might be, enjoined " Silence, Silence! "
The meeting again sat motionless. ]
My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed head-
lands in this wide-weltering deluge, of benevolent twaddle
rnd revolutionary grape-shot, that has burst-forth on us; no
jure bearings at all? Fact and Nature, it seems to me, say
1 few words to us, if happily we have still an ear for Fact and
Nature. Let us listen a little and try.
And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid-
Jown as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or
Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except
[or a short time only, That no Black man who will not work
iccording to what ability the gods have given him for working,
ias the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of
and that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land
nay be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be
impelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do com-
petent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all
nen, black or white, who are born into this world. To do
X>mpetent work, to labour honestly according to the ability
>>iven them; for that and for no other purpose was each one of
is sent into this world; and woe is to every man who, by
Hend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this the end of
lis being. That is the " unhappy " lot: lot equally unhappy
mnnot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoever prohibits
Dr prevents a man from this his sacred appointment to labour
vhile he lives on earth,--that, I say, is the man's deadliest
;nemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their
power or opportunity towards delivering him from that. If
it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him,
then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered
from: and the first "right" he has,--poor indolent block-
bead, black or white,--is, That every wwprohibited man,
whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing
that way, shall endeavour to "emancipate" him from his
indolence, and by some wise means, as I said, compel him,
since inducing will not serve, to do the work he is fit for.
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? 310 Carlylc's Essays
Induce him, if you can: yes, sure enough, by all means try
what inducement will do; and indeed every coachman and
carman knows that secret, without our preaching, and applies
it to his very horses as the true method:--but if your Nigger
will not be induced? In that case, it is full certain, he must
be compelled; should and must; and the tacit prayer he
makes (unconsciously he, poor blockhead,) to you, and to me,
and to all the world who are wiser than himself, is " Compel
me! " For indeed he must, or else do and suffer worse-
he as well as we. It were better the work did come out of
him! It was the meaning of the gods with him and with us,
that his gift should turn to use in this Creation, and not lie
poisoning the thoroughfares, as a rotten mass of idleness,
agreeable to neither heaven nor earth. For idleness does, in
all cases, inevitably rot, and become putrescent;--and I sa\
deliberately, the very Devil is in it.
None of you, my friends, have been in Demerara lately, I
apprehend? May none of you go till matters mend there a
little! Under the sky there are uglier sights than perhaps
were seen hitherto! Dead corpses, the rotting body of a
brother man, whom fate or unjust men have killed, this is not
a pleasant spectacle; but what say you to the dead soul of
a man,--in a body which still pretends to be vigorously alive,
and can drink rum? An idle White gentleman is not pleasant
to me; though I confess the real work for him is not easy te
find, in these our epochs; and perhaps he is seeking, poor
soul, and may find at last. But what say you to an idle
Black gentleman, with his rum-bottle in his hand (for a littli
additional pumpkin you can have red-herrings and rum,
in Demerara),--rum-bottle in his hand, no breeches on his
body, pumpkin at discretion, and the fruitfulest region of the
earth going back to jungle round him? Such things the sun
looks-down upon in our fine times; and I, for one, would
rather have no hand in them.
Yes, this is the eternal law of Nature for a man, my bene-
ficent Exeter-Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted,
encouraged, and if need be, compelled to do what work the
Maker of him has intended by the making of him for this
world! Not that he should eat pumpkin with never sucb
felicity in the West-India Islands is, or can be, the blessedness
of our Black friend; but that he should do useful work there,
according as the gifts have been bestowed on him fox that-
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? The Nigger Question
? And his own happiness, and that of others round him, will
alone be possible by his and their getting into such a relation
that this can be permitted him, and in case of need, that this
? can be compelled him. I beg you to understand this; for
you seem to have a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand
inferences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at present.
. The idle Black man in the West Indies had, not long since,
the right, and will again under better form, if it please Heaven,
have the right (actually the first "right of man" for an
indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to
do the Maker's will who had constructed him with such and
such capabilities, and prefigurements of capability. And I
incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike and the
blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the
'world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine
right of being compelled (if "permitted" will not answer)
to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle
another minute, in a life which is so short, and where idleness
so soon runs to putrescence! Alas, we had then a perfect
world; and the Millennium, and true "Organisation of
Labour," and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers
and men, had then arrived,--which in these our own poor
districts of the Planet, as we all lament to know, it is very
far from having yet done. [More withdrawals; but the rest
sitting with increased attention. ]
Do I, then, hate the Negro? No; except when the soul is
killed out of him, I decidedly like poor Quashee; and find
him a pretty kind of man. With a pennyworth of oil, you can
make a handsome glossy thing of Quashee, when the soul
is not killed in him! A swift, supple fellow; a merry-hearted,
grinning, dancing, singing, affectionate kind of creature, with
a great deal of melody and amenability in his composition.
This certainly is a notable fact: The black African, alone of
wild-men, can live among men civilised. While all manner
of Caribs and others pine into annihilation in presence of the
pale faces, he contrives to continue; does not die of sullen
irreconcilable rage, of rum, of brutish laziness and darkness,
,and fated incompatibility with his new place; but lives and
multiplies, and evidently means to abide among us, if we can
find the right regulation for him. We shall have to find
it; we are now engaged in the search; and have at least
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? 312 Carlyle's Essays
discovered that of two methods, the old Demerara method,
and the new Demerara method, neither will answer.
Alas, my friends, I understand well your rage against the
poor Negro's slavery; what said rage proceeds from; and
have a perfect sympathy with it, and even know it by experi-
ence. Can the oppressor of my black fellow-man be of any
use to me, in particular? Am I gratified in my mind by the
ill-usage of any two- or four-legged thing; of any horse 01
any dog? Not so, I assure you. In me too the natural
sources of human rage exist more or less, and the capability
of flying out into "fiery wrath against oppression," and of
signing petitions; both of which things can be done very
cheap. Good heavens, if signing petitions would do it, if
hopping to Rome on one leg would do it, think you it were
long undone!
Frightful things are continually told us of Negro slavery,
of the hardships, bodily and spiritual, suffered by slaves.
Much exaggerated, and mere exceptional cases, say the
opponents. Exceptional cases, I answer; yes, and universa)
ones! On the whole, hardships, and even oppressions and
injustices are not unknown in this world; I myself have
suffered such, and have not you? It is said, Man, of what-
ever colour, is born to such, even as the sparks fly upwards!
For in fact labour, and this is properly what we call hardship,
misery, etc. (meaning mere ugly labour not yet done), labouz
is not joyous but grievous; and we have a good deal of it to
do among us here. We have, simply, to carry the whole
world and its businesses upon our backs, we poor unitejj
Human Species; to carry it, and shove it forward, from daj
to day, somehow or other, among us, or else be ground to
powder under it, one and all. No light task, let me tell you.
even if each did his part honestly, which each doesn't
any means. No, only the noble lift willingly with their
whole strength, at the general burden; and in such a crowd,
after all your drillings, regulatings, and attempts at equitable
distribution, and compulsion, what deceptions are still prac
ticable, what errors are inevitable! Many cunning ignoble
fellows shirk the labour altogether; and instead of faithfully
lifting at the immeasurable universal handbarrow with its
thousand-million handles, contrive to get on some ledge of it,
and be lifted!
What a story we have heard about all that, not from vague
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? The Nigger Question
rumour since yesterday, but from inspired prophets, speakers
and seers, ever since speech began! How the giant willing
spirit, among white masters, and in the best-regulated families,
is so often not loaded only but overloaded, crushed-down like
an Enceladus; and, all his life, has to have armies of pigmies
building tabernacles on his chest; marching composedly over
his neck, as if it were a highway; and much amazed if, when
they run their straw spear into his nostril, he is betrayed into
sudden sneezing, and oversets some of them. [Some laughter,
the speaker himself looking terribly serious. ] My friends, I a
have come to the sad conclusion that slavery, whether
established by law, or by law abrogated, exists very exten-
sively in this world, in and out of the West Indies; and, in
fact, that you cannot abolish slavery by act of parliament, but
* can only abolish the name of it, which is very little!
In the West Indies itself, if you chance to abolish Slavery
to Men, and in return establish Slavery to the Devil (as we
see in Demerara), what good is it? To save men's bodies, and
fill them with pumpkins and rum, is a poor task for human
benevolence, if you have to kill their soul, what soul there
was, in the business! Slavery is not so easy to be abolished;
I it will long continue, in spite of acts of parliament. And
shall I tell you whicb is the one intolerable sort of slavery;
the slavery over which the very gods weep? That sort is not
rif est in the West Indies; but, with all its sad fruits, prevails
in nobler countries. It is the slavery of the strong to the
weak; of the great and noble-minded to the small and mean!
. The slavery of Wisdom to Folly. When Folly all " emanci- v.
pated," and become supreme, armed with ballot-boxes,
universal suffrages, and appealing to what Dismal Sciences,
Statistics, Constitutional Philosophies, and other Fool
Gospels it has got devised for itself, can say to Wisdom: "Be
silent, or thou shalt repent it! Suppress thyself, I advise
thee; canst thou not contrive to cease, then? " ,That also,
in some anarchic-constitutional epochs, has been seen. When,
"of high and noble objects, there remained, in the market-
place of human things, at length none; and he that could not
make guineas his pursuit, and the applause of flunkies his
? reward, found himself in such a minority as seldom was before.
Minority, I know, there always was: but there are degrees
of it, down to minority of one,--down to suppression of the
unfortunate minority, and reducing it to zero, that the flunky
H 704 x
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? 314 Carlyle's Essays
world may have peace from it henceforth. The flunky-world
has peace; and descends, manipulating its ballot-boxes,
Coppock suffrages, and divine constitutional apparatus;
quoting its Dismal Sciences, Statistics, and other satisfactory
Gospels and Talmuds,--into the throat of the Devil; not
bothered by the importunate minority on the road. Did
you never hear of " Crucify him! Crucify him! " That was
a considerable feat in the suppressing of minorities; and is
still talked-of on Sundays,--with very little understanding,
when I last heard of it. My friends, my friends, I fear we
are a stupid people; and stuffed with such delusions, above
all with such immense hypocrisies and self-delusions, from
our birth upwards, as no people were before; God help us!
--Emancipated? Yes, indeed, we are emancipated out of
several things, and into several things. No man, wise or
foolish, any longer can control you for good or for evil.
Foolish Tomkins, foolish Jobson, cannot now singly oppress
you: but if the Universal Company of the Tomkinses and
Jobsons, as by law established, can more than ever? If,
on all highways and byways, that lead to other than a
Tomkins-Jobson winning-post, you meet, at the second step,
the big, dumb, universal genius of Chaos, and are so placidly
yet peremptorily taught, " Halt here! " There is properly
but one slavery in the world. One slavery, in which all
other slaveries and miseries that afflict the earth are included;
compared with which the worst West-Indian, white, or black,
or yellow slaveries are a small matter. One slavery over
which the very gods weep. Other slaveries, women and.
children and stump-orators weep over; but this is for men
and gods! [Sensation; some, however, took snuff. ]
If precisely the Wisest Man were at the top of society, and
the next-wisest next, and so on till we reached the Demerara"
Nigger (from whom downwards, through the horse, etc. ,
there is no question hitherto), then were this a perfect world,
the extreme maximum of wisdom produced in it. That is
how you might produce your maximum, would some god
assist. And I can tell you also how the minimum were
producible. Let no man in particular be put at the top; let
all men be accounted equally wise and worthy, and the notion
get abroad that anybody or nobody will do well enough at
the top; that money (to which may be added success in
stump-oratory) is the real symbol of wisdom, and supply-
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?
The Nigger Question 315
and-demand the all-sufficient substitute for command and
obedience among two-legged animals of the unfeathered
class: accomplish all those remarkable convictions in your
thinking department; and then in your practical, as is fit,
decide by count of heads, the vote of a Demerara Nigger equal
and no more to that of a Chancellor Bacon: this, I perceive,
will (so soon as it is fairly under way, and all obstructions
left behihd) give the minimum of wisdom in your proceedings.
Thus were your minimum producible,--with no God needed
to assist, nor any Demon even, except the general Demon of
Ignavia (Unvalour), lazy Indifference to the production or
non-production of such things, which runs in our own blood.
Were it beautiful, think you? Folly in such millionfold
majority, at length peaceably supreme in this earth. Advanc-
ing on you as the huge buffalo-phalanx does in the Western
Deserts; or as, on a smaller scale, those bristly creatures did
in the Country of the Gadarenes. Rushing, namely, in wild
stampede (the Devil being in them, some small fry having
stung them), boundless,--one wing on that edge of your
horizon, the other wing on that, and rearward whole tides
and oceans of them:--so could Folly rush; the enlightened
public one huge Gadarenes-swinery, tail cocked, snout in
airrwith joyful animating short squeak; fast and ever faster;
down steep places,--to the sea of Tiberias, and the bottom-
less cloacas of Nature: quenched there, since nowhere sooner.
My friends, such sight is too sublime, if you are out in it, and
are not of it! --
Well, except by Mastership and Servantship, there is no
conceivable deliverance from Tyranny and Slavery. Cosmos
is not Chaos, simply by this one quality, That it is governed.
Where wisdom, even approximately, can contrive to govern,
all is right, or is ever striving to become so; where folly is
"emancipated," and gets to govern, as it soon will, all is
wrong. That is the sad fact; and in other places than
Demerara, and in regard to other interests than those of
sugar-making, we sorrowfully experience the same.
I have to complain that, in these days, the relation of
master to servant, and of superior to inferior, in all stages of it,
is fallen sadly out of joint. As may well be, when the very
highest stage and form of it, which should be the summary of
all and the keystone of all, is got to such a pass. Kings them-
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? 316 Carlyle's Essays
selves are grown sham-kings; and their subjects very natur-
ally are sham-subjects; with mere lip-homage, insincere to
their sham-kings;--sincere chiefly when they get into the
streets (as is now our desperate case generally in Europe) to
shoot them down as nuisances. Royalty is terribly gone;
and loyalty in consequence has had to go. No man rever-
ences another; at the best, each man slaps the other good-
humouredly on the shoulder, with, " Hail, fellow; well met:"
--at the worst (which is sure enough to follow such unreason-
able good-humour, in a world like ours) clutches him by the
throat, with, "Tyrannous son of perdition, shall I endure
thee, then, and thy injustices forever? " We are not yet got
to the worst extreme, we here in these Isles; but we are well
half-way towards it, I often think.
Certainly, by any ballot-box, Jesus Christ goes just as far
as Judas Iscariot; and with reason, according to the New
Gospels, Talmuds and Dismal Sciences of these days. Judas
looks him in the face; asks proudly, "Am not I as good
as thou? Better, perhaps! " slapping his breeches-pocket,
in which is audible the cheerful jingle of thirty pieces of
silver. "Thirty of them here, thou cowering pauper! "
My philanthropic friends, if there be a state of matters under
the stars which deserves the name of damnable and damned,
this I perceive is it! Alas, I know well whence it came, and
how it could not help coming;--and I continually pray the
gods its errand were done, and it had begun to go its ways
again. Vain hope, at least for a century to come! And
there will be such a sediment of Egyptian mud to sweep
away, and to fish all human things out of again, once this
most sad though salutary deluge is well over, as the human
species seldom had before. Patience, patience! --
In fact, without real masters you cannot have servants;
and a master is not made by thirty pieces or thirty-million
pieces of silver; only a sham-master is so made. The Dismal
Science of this epoch defines him to be master good enough;
but he is not such: you can see what kind of master he proves,
what kind of servants he manages to have. Accordingly, the
state of British servantship, of American helpship--I confess
to you, my friends, if looking out for what was least human
and heroic, least lovely to the Supreme Powers, I should not
go to Carolina at this time; I should sorrowfully stay at home!
Austere philosophers, possessed even of cash, have talked to
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? The Nigger Question 3 17
me about the possibility of doing without servants; of trying
somehow to serve yourself (boot-cleaning, etc. , done by con-
tract), and so escaping from a never-ending welter, dirtier for
your mind than boot-cleaning itself. Of which the perpetual
fluctuation, and change from month to month, is probably the
most inhuman element; the fruitful parent of all else that is
evil, unendurable and inhuman. A poor Negro overworked
on the Cuba sugar-grounds, he is sad to look upon; yet he
inspires me with sacred pity, and a kind of human respect is
not denied him; him, the hapless brother mortal, performing
something useful in his day, and only suffering inhumanity,
not doing it or being it. But with what feelings can I look
upon an over-fed White Flunky, if I know his ways? Dis-
loyal, unheroic, this one; mhuman in his character, and his
work, and his position; more so no creature ever was. Pity is
not for him, or not a soft kind of it; nor is any remedy visible,
except abolition at no distant date! He is the flower of
nomadic servitude, proceeding by month's warning, and free
supply-and-demand; if obedience is not in his heart, if chiefly
gluttony and mutiny are in his heart, and he has to be bribed
by high feeding to do the shows of obedience,--what can
await him, or be prayed for him, among men, except even
"abolition"?
The Duke of Trumps, who sometimes does me the honour
of a little conversation, owned that the state of his domestic
service was by no means satisfactory to the human mind.
"Five-and-forty of them," said his Grace; "really, I sup-
pose, the cleverest in the market, for there is no limit to the
wages: I often think how many quiet families, all down to
the basis of society, I have disturbed, in attracting gradually,
by higher and higher offers, that set of fellows to me; and
what the use of them is when here! I feed them like alder-
men, pay them as if they were sages and heroes:--Samuel
Johnson's wages, at the very last and best, as I have heard
you say, were ? 300 or ? 500 a year; and Jellysnob, my butler,
who indeed is clever, gets, I believe, more than the highest
of these sums. And, shall I own it to you? In my young
days, with one valet, I had more trouble saved me, more
help afforded me to live,--actually more of my will accom-
plished,--than from these forty-five I now get, or ever shall.
It is all a serious comedy; what you call a melancholy sham.
Most civil, obsequious, and indeed expert fellows these; but
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? 3 18 Carlyle's Essays
bid one of them step-out of his regulated sphere on your be-
half! An iron law presses on us all here; on them and on
me. In my own house, how much of my will can I have
done, dare I propose to have done? Prudence, on my side,
is prescribed by a jealous and ridiculous point-of-honour
attitude on theirs. They lie here more like a troop of foreign
soldiers that had invaded me, than a body of servants I had
hired. At free quarters; we have strict laws of war estab-
lished between us; they make their salutes, and do certain
bits of specified work, with many becks and scrapings; but
as to service, properly so called--! --I lead the life of a ser-
vant, sir; it is I that am a slave; and often I think of pack-
ing the whole brotherhood of them out of doors one good day,
and retiring to furnished lodgings; but have never done it
yet! "--Such was the confession of his Grace.
For, indeed, in the long run, it is not possible to buy obedi-
ence with money. You may buy work done with money: from
cleaning boots to building houses, and to far higher functions,
there is much work bought with money, and got done in a
supportable manner. But, mark withal, that is only from a
class of supportably wise human creatures: from a huge and
ever-increasing insupportably foolish class of human creatures
you cannot buy work in that way; and the attempt in London
itself, much more in Demerara, turns out a very "serious
comedy" indeed! Who has not heard of the Distressed
Needlewomen in these days? We have thirty-thousand
Distressed Needlewomen,--the most of whom cannot sew a
reasonable stitch; for they are, in fact, Mutinous Serving-
maids, who, instead of learning to work and to obey, learned
to give warning: "Then suit yourself, Ma'am! " Hapless
enfranchised White Women, who took the "freedom" to
serve the Devil with their faculties, instead of serving God
or man; hapless souls, they were " enfranchised " to a most
high degree, and had not the wisdom for so ticklish a predica-
ment,--" Then suit yourself, Ma'am;"--and so have tumbled
from one stage of folly to the other stage; and at last are on
the street, with five hungry senses, and no available faculty
whatever. Having finger and thumb, they do procure a
needle, and call themselves Distressed Needlewomen, but
cannot sew at all. I have inquired in the proper places, and
find a quite passionate demand for women that can sew,--
such being unattainable just now. "As well call them
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? The Nigger Question 319
Distressed Astronomers as Distressed Needlewomen! " said
a lady to me: "I myself will take three sewing Needlewomen,
if you can get them for me to-day. " Is not that a sight to
set before the curious?
Distressed enough, God knows;--but it will require quite
other remedies to get at the bottom of their complaint, I am
afraid. 0 Brothers! 0 Sisters! It is for these White Women
that my heart bleeds and my soul is heavy; it is for the
sight of such mad notions and such unblessed doings now all-
prevalent among mankind,--alas, it is for such life-theories
and such life-practices, and ghastly clearstarched life-hypo-
crisies, playing their part under high Heaven, as render these
inevitable and unaidable,--that the world of to-day looks
black and vile to me, and with all its guineas, in the nostril
smells badly! It is not to the West Indies that I run first
of all; and not thither with " enfranchisement " first of all,
when I discern what " enfranchisement " has led to in hope-
fuler localities. I tell you again and again, he or she that
will not work, and in the anger of the gods cannot be com-
pelled to work, shall die! And not he or she only: alas, alas,
were it the guilty only! -- But as yet we cannot help it;
as yet, for a long while, we must be patient, and let the
Exeter-Hallery and other tragic Tomfoolery rave itself out.
[Deep silence in the small remnant of audience;--the gentleman
in white trousers came in again, his creaking painfully audible
in spite of efforts. ]
My friends, it is not good to be without a servant in this
world; but to be without master, it appears, is a still fataler
predicament for some. Without a master, in certain cases,
you become a Distressed Needlewoman, and cannot so much
as live. Happy he who has found his master, I will say; if
not a good master, then some supportable approximation to
a good one; for the worst, it appears, in some cases, is prefer-
able to none!
Happy he who has found a master;--and now, farther I
will say, having found, let him well keep him. In all human
relations permanency is what I advocate; nomadism, con-
tinual change, is what I perceive to be prohibitory of any good
whatsoever. Two men that have got to cooperate will do
well not to quarrel at the first cause of offence, and throw-up
the concern in disgust, hoping to suit themselves better else-
where. For the most part such hope is fallacious; and they
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? 320 Carlyle's Essays
will, on the average, not suit themselves better, but only
about as well,--and have to begin again bare, which loss
often repeated becomes immense, and is finally the loss of
everything, and of their joint enterprise itself. For no
mutual relation while it continues " bare," is yet a human
one, or can bring blessedness, but is only waiting to become
such,--mere new-piled crags, which, if you leave them, will
at last " gather moss," and yield some verdure and pasture.
O my friends, what a remedy is this we have fallen upon, for
everything that goes wrong between one man and another:
"Go, then; I give you a month's warning! " What would
you think of a sacrament of marriage constructed on such
principles? Marriage by the month,--why this too has been
tried, and is still extensively practised in spite of Law and
Gospel; but it is not found to do! The legislator, the
preacher, all rational mortals, answer, "No, no! " You
must marry for longer than a month, and the contract not
so easily revocable, even should mistakes occur, as they
sometimes do.
I am prepared to maintain against all comers, That in every
human relation, from that of husband and wife down to that
of master and servant, nomadism is the bad plan, and continu-
ance the good. A thousand times, since I first had servants,
it has occurred to me, How much better had I servants that
were bound to me, and to whom I were bound! Doubtless
it were not easy; doubtless it is now impossible: but if it
could be done! I say, if the Black gentleman is born to be a
servant, and, in fact, is useful in God's creation only as a
servant, then let him hire not by the month, but by a very
much longer term. That he be " hired for life,"--really here
is the essence of the position he now holds! Consider that
matter. All else is abuse in it, and this only is essence;--
and the abuses must be cleared away. They must and shall!
Yes; and the thing itself seems to offer (its abuses once
cleared away) a possibility of the most precious kind for the
Black man and for us. Servants hired for life, or by a con-
tract for a long period, and not easily dissoluble; so and not
otherwise would all reasonable mortals, Black and White,
wish to hire and to be hired! I invite you to reflect on that;
for you will find it true. And if true, it is important for us, in
reference to this Negro Question and some others. The
Germans say, "You must empty-out the bathing-tub, but
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? The Nigger Question 321
not the baby along with it. " Fling-out your dirty water
with all zeal, and set it careering down the kennels; but try
if you can keep the little child!
How to abolish the abuses of slavery, and save the precious
thing in it: alas, I do not pretend that this is easy, that it can
be done in a day, or a single generation, or a single century:
but I do surmise or perceive that it will, by straight methods
or by circuitous, need to be done (not in the West-Indian
regions alone); and that the one way of helping the Negro
at present (Distressed Needlewomen, etc. , being quite out of
our reach) were, by piously and strenuously beginning it.
Begun it must be, I perceive; and carried on in all regions
where servants are born and masters; and are not prepared
to become Distressed Needlewomen, or Demerara Niggers,
'but to live in some human manner with one another. And
"truly, my friends, with regard to this world-famous Nigger
Question,--which perhaps is louder than it is big, after all,--
I would advise you to attack it on that side. Try against the
dirty water, with an eye to save the baby! That will be a
quite new point of attack; where, it seems to me, some real
benefit and victory for the poor Negro, might before long be
K. accomplished; and something else than Demerara freedom
(with its rum-bottle and no breeches,--" baby" quite gone
down into the kennels! ) or than American stump-oratory,
with mutual exasperation fast rising to the desperate pitch,
might be possible for philanthropic men and women of the
Anglo-Saxon type. Try this; perhaps the very Carolina
, planter will cooperate with you; he will, if he has any wisdom
left in this exasperation! If he do not, he will do worse;
and go a strange road with those Niggers of his.
By one means or another these enormities we hear of from
the Slave States,--though I think they are hardly so hideous,
any of them, as the sight our own Demerara now offers,--
must be heard of no more. Men will and must summon
. "indignation-meetings " about them; and simple persons,--
'like Wilhelm Meister's Felix flying at the cook's throat for
plucking pigeons, yet himself seen shortly after pelting frogs
to death with pebbles that lay handy,--will agitate their
-caucuses, ballot-boxes, dissever the Union, and, in short,
play the very devil, if these things are not abated, and do not
go on abating more and more towards perfect abolition.
Unjust master over servant hired for life is, once for all, and
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? 322 Carlyle's Essays
shall be, unendurable to human souls. To cut the tie, and
"fling Farmer Hodge's horses quite loose "' upon the supply-
and-demand principle: that, I will believe, is not the method!
But by some method, by hundredfold restrictions, responsi-
bilities, laws, conditions, cunning methods, Hodge must be got
to treat his horses justly, for we cannot stand it longer. And
let Hodge think well of it,--I mean the American two-footed
Hodge,--for there is no other salvation for him. And if he
would avoid a consummation like our Demerara one, I would
advise him to know this secret; which our poor Hodge did not
know, or would not practise, and so is come to such a pass! --
Here is part of my answer to the Hon. Hickory Buckskin, a
senator in those Southern States, and man of really respectable
attainments and dimensions, who in his despair appears to
be entertaining very violent projects now and then, as to
uniting with our West Indies (under a New Downing Street),
forming a West-Indian empire, etc. etc.
"The New Downing Street, I take it, is at a great distance
here; and we shall wait yet awhile for it, and run good risk
of losing all our Colonies before we can discover the way of
managing them. On that side do not reckon upon help.
At the same time, I can well understand you should ' publicly
discuss the propriety of severing the Union/ and that the
resolution should be general 'you will rather die,' etc. A
man, having certified himself about his trade and post under
the sun, is actually called upon to ' die ' in vindication of it,
if needful; in defending the possibilities he has of carrying
it on, and eschewing with it the belly of Perdition, when
extraneous Insanity is pushing it thither. All this I pre-
suppose of you, of men born of your lineage; and have not a
word to say against it.
"Meanwhile suffer me to say this other thing. You will
not find Negro Slavery defensible by the mere resolution,
never so extensive, to defend it. No, there is another con-
dition wanted: That your relation to the Negroes, in this
thing called Slavery (with such an emphasis upon the word)
be actually fair, just and according to the facts;--fair, I say,
not in the sight of New-England platforms, but of God
Almighty the Maker of both Negroes and you. That is the
one ground on which men can take their stand; in the long-
run all human causes, and this cause too, will come to be
settled there. Forgive me for saying that I do not think you
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:23 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? The Nigger Question 323
have yet got to that point of perfection with your Negro
relations; that there is probably much in them not fair, nor
agreeable to the Maker of us, and to the eternal laws of fact
as written in the Negro's being and in ours.
"The advice of advices, therefore, to men so circumstanced
were, With all diligence make them so! Otherwise than so,
they are doomed by Earth and by Heaven. Demerara may
be the maddest remedy, as I think it is a very mad one: but
some remedy we must have; or if none, then destruction and
annihilation, by the Demerara or a worse method. These
things it would behove you of the Southern States, above all
men, to be now thinking of. How to make the Negro's
position among his White fellow-creatures a just one,--the
real and genuine expression of what commandment the Maker
has given to both of you, by making the one of you thus and
the other so, and putting you in juxtaposition on this Earth
of His?
