No More Learning

1 Meiners: Briefe iiber die Schweis (as quoted in Mirabeau).
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291
"The new Calchas," says poor Abbe Georgel, "must have
read the entrails of his victim ill; for, on issuing from these
communications with the Angel of Light and of Darkness, he
prophesied to the Cardinal that this happy correspondence,"
with the Queen's Similitude, " would place him at the highest
point of favour; that his influence in the Government would
soon become paramount; that he would use it for the propaga-
tion of good principles, the glory of the Supreme Being, and
the happiness of Frenchmen. " The new Calchas was indeed
at fault: but how could he be otherwise? Let these high
Queen's-favours, and all terrestrial shiftings of the wind,
turn as they will, his reign, he can well see, is appointed to be
temporary; in the mean while, Tokay flows like water;
prophecies of good, not of evil, are the method to keep it
flowing. Thus if, for Circe de La Motte-Valois, the Egyptian
Masonry is but a foolish enchanted cup wherewith to turn her
fat Cardinal into a quadruped, she herself converse-wise, for
the Grand Cophta, is one who must ever fodder said quad-
ruped with Court hopes, and stall-feed him fatter and fatter,
--it is expected, for the knife of both parties. They are
mutually useful; live in peace, and Tokay festivity, though
mutually suspicious, mutually contemptuous. So stand
matters through the spring and summer months of the
year 1785.
But fancy next that--while Tokay is flowing within doors,
and abroad Egyptian Lodges are getting founded, and gold
and glory, from Paris as from other cities, supernaturally
'coming in,--the latter end of August has arrived, and with it
Commissary Chesnon, to lodge the whole unholy Brotherhood,
from Cardinal down to Sham-queen, in separate cells of the
Bastille! There, for nine long months, let them howl and wail,
in bass or in treble; and emit the falsest of false Memoires;
among which that Memoire -pour le Comle de Cagliostro, en
presence des autres Co-Accuses, with its Trebisond Acharats,
Scherifs of Mecca, and Nature's unfortunate Child, all gravely
printed with French types in the year 1786, may well bear
the palm. Fancy that Necklace or Diamonds will nowhere
unearth themselves; that the Tuileries Palace sits struck
'with astonishment and speechless chagrin; that Paris, that
all Europe, is ringing with the wonder. That Count Pront-
of-Brass Pinchbeckostom, confronted, at the judgment-bar,
with a shrill glib Circe de La Motte, has need of all his
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? 292 Carlyle's Essays
eloquence; that nevertheless the Front-of-brass prevails, and
exasperated Circe "throws a candlestick at him. " Finally,
that on the 31st of May 1786, the assembled Parliament of
Paris, "at nine in the evening, after a sitting of eighteen
hours," has solemnly pronounced judgment: and now that
Cardinal Louis is gone "to his estates;" Countess de La
Motte is shaven on the head, branded, with red-hot iron,
"V" (Voleuse) on both shoulders, and confined for life to
the Salpetriere; her Count wandering uncertain, with dia-
monds for sale, over the British Empire; that the Sieur de
Villette, for handling a queen's pen, is banished forever; the
too-queenlike Demoiselle Gay d'Oliva (with her unfathered
infant) " put out of Court; "--and Grand Cophta Cagliostro
liberated indeed, but pillaged, and ordered forthwith to take
himself away. His disciples illuminate their windows; but
what does that avail? Commissary Chesnon, Bastille-
Governor De Launay cannot recollect the least particular
of those priceless effects, those gold-rouleaus, repeating
watches of his: he must even retire to Passy that very night,
and two days afterwards, sees nothing for it but Boulogne
and England. Thus does the miserable pickle - herring
tragedy of the Diamond Necklace wind itself up, and wind
Cagliostro once more to inhospitable shores.
Arrived here, and lodged tolerably in "Sloane Street,
Knightsbridge," by the aid of a certain Mr. Swinton, whilom
broken Wine-merchant, now Apothecary, to whom he carries
introductions, he can drive a small trade in Egyptian pills,
such as one "sells in Paris at thirty-shillings the dram;"
in unctuously discoursing to Egyptian Lodges; in "giving
public audiences as at Strasburg,"--if so be any one will
bite. At all events, he can, by the aid of amanuensis-disciples,
compose and publish his Lettre au Peuple Anglais; setting
forth his unheard-of generosities, unheard-of injustices
suffered, in a world not worthy of him, at the hands of English
Lawyers, Bastille-Governors, French Counts, and others4,
his Lettre aux Francais, singing to the same tune, predicting
too, what many inspired Editors had already boded, that
"the Bastille would be destroyed," and " a King would come
who should govern by States - General. " But, alas, the
shafts of Criticism are busy with him; so many hostile eyes
look towards him; the world, in short, is getting too hot for
him. Mark, nevertheless, how the brow of brass quails not;
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? Count Cagliostro
293
nay a touch of his old poetic Humour, even in this sad crisis,
unexpectedly unfolds itself.
One De Morande, Editor of a Courrier de VEurope published
here at that period, has for some time made it his distinction
to be the foremost of Cagliostro's enemies. Cagliostro, endur-
ing much in silence, happens once, in some " public audience,"
to mention a practice he had witnessed in Arabia the Stony:
the people there, it seems, are in the habit of fattening a few
pigs annually, on provender mixed with arsenic, whereby the
whole pig-carcass by and by becomes, so to speak, arsenical;
the arsenical pigs are then let loose in the woods; eaten by
lions, leopards and other ferocious creatures; which latter
naturally all die in consequence, and so the woods are cleared
af them. This adroit practice the Sieur Morande thought a
proper subject for banter; and accordingly, in his Seven-
teenth and two following Numbers, made merry enough with
it. Whereupon Count Front-of-brass, whose patience has
limits, writes as Advertisement (still to be read in old files of
the Public Advertiser, under date September 3,1786), a French
Letter, not without causticity and aristocratic disdain;
challenging the witty Sieur to breakfast with him, for the
9th of November next, in the face of the world, on an actual
Sucking Pig, fattened by Cagliostro, but cooked, carved and
selected from by the Sieur Morande,--under bet of Five
Thousand Guineas sterling that, next morning thereafter,
he the Sieur Morande shall be dead, and Count Cagliostro be
alive I The poor Sieur durst not cry, Done; and backed-out
of the transaction, making wry faces. Thus does a kind of
red coppery splendour encircle our Archquack's decline; thus
with brow of brass, grim smiling, does he meet his destiny.
But suppose we should now, from these foreign scenes turn
homewards, for a moment, into the native alley in Palermo!
Palermo, with its dinginess, its mud or dust, the old black
Balsamo House, the very beds and chairs, all are still standing
there; and Beppo has altered so strangely, has wandered so
far away. Let us look; for happily we have the fairest
opportunity.
In April 1787, Palermo contained a Traveller of a thousand;
no other than the great Goethe from Weimar. At his Table-
d'h6te he heard much of Cagliostro; at length also of a certain
Palermo Lawyer, who had been engaged by the French
Government to draw up an authentic genealogy and memoir
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? 294 Carlyle's Essays
of him. This Lawyer, and even the rude draft of his Memoir,
he with little difficulty gets to see; inquires next whether it
were not possible to see the actual Balsamo Family, whereof
it appears the mother and a widowed sister still survive. For
this matter, however, the Lawyer can do nothing; only refer
him to his Clerk; who again starts difficulties: To get at
those genealogic Documents he has been obliged to invent
some story of a Government-Pension being in the wind for
those poor Balsamos; and now that the whole matter is
finished, and the Paper sent off to France, has nothing so
much at heart as to keep out of their way:
"So said the Clerk. However, as I could not abandon my
purpose, we after some study concerted that I should give
myself out for an Englishman, and bring the family news of
Cagliostro, who had lately got out of the Bastille, and gone
to London.
"At the appointed hour, it might be three in the afternoon,
we set forth. The house lay in the corner of an Alley, not far
from the main street named II Casaro. We ascended a
miserable staircase, and came straight into the kitchen. A
woman of middle stature, broad and stout, yet not corpulent,
stood busy washing the kitchen-dishes. She was decently
dressed; and, on our entrance, turned-up the one end of her
apron, to hide the soiled side from us. She joyfully recog-
nised my conductor, and said: 'Signor Giovanni, do you
bring us good news? Have you made out anything? '
"He answered: 'In our affair, nothing yet; but here is a
Stranger that brings a salutation from your Brother, and can
tell you how he is at present. '
"The salutation I was to bring stood not in our agreement:
meanwhile, one way or other, the introduction was accom-
plished. 'You know my Brother? ' inquired she. --' AH
Europe knows him,' answered I; 'and I fancied it would
gratify you to hear that he is now in safety and well; as, of
late, no doubt you have been anxious about him. '--' Step
in,' said she; 'I will follow you directly;' and with the
Clerk I entered the room.
"It was large and high; and might, with us, have passed
for a saloon; it seemed, indeed, to be almost the sole lodging
of the family. A single window lighted the large walls, which
had once had colour; and on which were black pictures of
saints, in gilt frames, hanging round. Two large beds, with-
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295
out curtains, stood at one wall; a brown press, in the form
of a writing-desk, at the other. Old rush-bottomed chairs,
the backs of which had once been gilt, stood by; and the tiles
of the floor were in many places worn deep into hollows. For
the rest, all was cleanly; and we approached the family,
which sat assembled at the one window, in the other end of
the apartment.
"Whilst my guide was explaining, to the old Widow
Balsamo, the purpose of our visit, and by reason of her deaf-
ness had to repeat his words several times aloud, I had time
to observe the chamber and the other persons in it. A girl
of about sixteen, well formed, whose features had become
uncertain by small-pox, stood at the window; beside her
a young man, whose disagreeable look, deformed by the
same disease, also struck me. In an easy-chair, right before
the window, sat or rather lay a sick, much misshapen person,
who appeared to labour under a sort of lethargy.
'' My guide having made himself understood, we were
invited to take seats. The old woman put some questions
to me; which, however, I had to get interpreted before I
could answer them, the Sicilian dialect not being quite at
my command.
"Meanwhile I looked at the aged widow with satisfaction.
She was of middle stature, but well shaped; over her regular
features, which age had not deformed, lay that sort of peace
usual with people that have lost their hearing; the tone of
her voice was soft and agreeable.
"I answered her questions; and my answers also had
again to be interpreted for her.
'' The slowness of our conversation gave me leisure to
measure my words. I told her that her son had been ac-
quitted in France, and was at present in England, where he
met with good reception. Her joy, which she testified at
these things, was mixed with expressions of a heartfelt piety;
and as she now spoke a little louder and slower, I could the
better understand her.
"In the mean time the daughter had entered; and taken
her seat beside my conductor, who repeated to her faithfully
what I had been narrating. She had put-on a clean apron;
had set her hair in order under the net-cap. The more I
looked at her, and compared her with her mother, the more
striking became the difference of the two figures. A viva-
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? 296 Carlyle's Essays
cious healthy Sensualism (Sinnlichkeit) beamed forth from the
whole structure of the daughter; she might be a woman of
about forty. With brisk blue eyes she looked sharply round;
yet in her look I could trace no suspicion. When she sat,
her figure promised more height than it showed when she rose:
her posture was determinate, she sat with her body leaned
forwards, the hands resting on the knees. For the rest, hei
physiognomy, more of the snubby than the sharp sort,
reminded me of her Brother's Portrait, familiar to us in
engravings. She asked me several things about my journey,
my purpose to see Sicily; and was sure I would come back,
and celebrate the Feast of Saint Rosalia with them.
'' As the grandmother, meanwhile, had again put some
questions to me, and I was busy answering her, the daughter
kept speaking to my companion half-aloud, yet so that I
could take occasion to ask what it was. He answered:
Signora Capitummino was telling him that her Brother owed
her fourteen gold Ounces; on his sudden departure from
Palermo, she had redeemed several things for him that were
in pawn; but never since that day had either heard from him,
or got money or any other help, though it was said he had
great riches, and made a princely outlay. Now would not I
perhaps undertake on my return, to remind him, in a hand-
some way, of the debt, and procure some assistance for her;
nay would I not carry a Letter with me, or at all events get
it carried? I offered to do so. She asked where I lodged,
whither she must send the Letter to me? I avoided naming
my abode, and offered to call next day towards night, and
receive the Letter myself.
"She thereupon described to me her untoward situation:
how she was a widow with three children, of whom the one
girl was getting educated in a convent, the other was here
present, and her son just gone out to his lesson. How,
beside these three children, she had her mother to maintain;
and moreover out of Christian love had taken the unhappy
sick person there to her house, whereby the burden was
heavier; how all her industry would scarcely suffice to get
necessaries for herself and hers. She knew indeed that God
did not leave good works unrewarded; yet must sigh very
sore under the load she had long borne.
"The young people mixed in the dialogue, and our con-
versation grew livelier. While speaking with the others, I
! I
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? Count Cagliostro 297
could hear the good old widow ask her daughter: If I be-
longed, then, to their holy Religion? I remarked also that
the daughter strove, in a prudent way, to avoid an answer;
signifying to her mother, so far as I could take it up: That
the Stranger seemed to have a kind feeling towards them;
and that it was not well-bred to question any one straightway
on that point.
"As they heard that I was soon to leave Palermo, they
became more pressing, and importuned me to come back;
especially vaunting the paradisaic days of the Rosalia Festival,
the like of which was not to be seen and tasted in all the world.
"My attendant, who had long been anxious to get off, at
last put an end to the interview by his gestures; and I pro-
mised to return on the morrow evening, and take the Letter.
My attendant expressed his joy that all had gone off so well,
and we parted mutually content.
"You may fancy the impression this poor and pious, well-
dispositioned family had made on me. My curiosity was
satisfied; but their natural and worthy bearing had raised an
interest in me, which reflection did but increase.
"Forthwith, however, there arose for me anxieties about
the following day. It was natural that this appearance of
mine, which, at the first moment, had taken them by surprise,
should, after my departure, awaken many reflections. By
the Genealogy I knew that several others of the family were
in life: it was natural that they should call their friends
together, and in the presence of all, get those things repeated
which, the day before, they had heard from me with admira-
tion. My object was attained; there remained nothing more
than, in some good fashion, to end the adventure. I accord-
ingly repaired next day, directly after dinner, alone to their
house. They expressed surprise as I entered. The Letter
was not ready yet, they said; and some of their relations
wished to make my acquaintance, who towards night would
be there.
"I answered, that having to set off to-morrow morning, and
visits still to pay, and packing to transact, I had thought it
better to come early than not at all.
"Meanwhile the son entered, whom yesterday I had not
seen. He resembled his sister in size and figure. He brought
the Letter they were to give me; he had, as is common in
those parts, got it written out of doors, by one of their
II 704 u
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? 298 Carlyle's Essays
Notaries that sit publicly to do such things. The young man
had a still, melancholy and modest aspect; inquired after his
Uncle, asked about his riches and outlays, and added sorrow-
fully, Why had he so forgotten his kindred? ' It were our
greatest fortune,' continued he, 'should he once return
hither, and take notice of us: but,' continued he, 'how
came he to let you know that he had relatives in Palermo?
It is said, he everywhere denies us, and gives himself out for
a man of great birth. ' I answered this question, which had
now arisen by the imprudence of my Guide at our first
entrance, in such sort as to make it seem that the Uncle,
though he might have reason for concealing his birth from the
public, did yet, towards his friends and acquaintance, keep it
no secret.
"The sister, who had come up during this dialogue, and
by the presence of her brother, perhaps also by the absence
of her yesterday's friend, had got more courage, began also
to speak with much grace and liveliness. They begged me
earnestly to recommend them to their Uncle, if I wrote to
him; and not less earnestly, when once I should have made
this journey through the Island, to come back and pass the
Rosalia Festival with them.
"The mother spoke in accordance with her children.
'Sir,' said she, 'though it is not seemly, as I have a grown
daughter, to see stranger gentlemen in my house, and one
has to guard against both danger and evil-speaking, yet shall
you ever be welcome to us, when you return to this city. '
"' O yes,' answered the young ones, 'we will lead the
Gentleman all round the Festival; we will show him every-
thing, get a place on the scaffolds, where the grand sights are
seen best. What will he say to the great Chariot, and more
than all, to the glorious Illumination! '
"Meanwhile the Grandmother had read the Letter and
again read it. Hearing that I was about to take leave, she
arose, and gave me the folded sheet. 'Tell my son,' began
she with a noble vivacity, nay with a sort of inspiration, ' Tell
my son how happy the news have made me, which you
brought from him! Tell him that I clasp him to my heart'--
here she stretched out her arms asunder, and pressed them
again together on her breast --' that I daily beseech God
and our Holy Virgin for him in prayer; that I give him and
his wife my blessing; and that I wish before my end to see
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? Count Cagliostro
299
him again with these eyes, which have shed so many tears
for him. '
"The peculiar grace of the Italian tongue favoured the
choice and noble arrangement of these words, which more-
over were accompanied with lively gestures, wherewith that
nation can add such a charm to spoken words.
"I took my leave, not without emotion. They all gave
me their hands; the children showed me out; and as I went
down stairs, they jumped to the balcony of the kitchen-
window, which projected over the street; called after me,
threw me salutes, and repeated, that I must in no wise forget
to come back. I saw them still on the balcony, when I
turned the corner. " 1
Poor old Felicita, and must thy pious prayers, thy motherly
blessings, and so many tears shed by those old eyes, be all in
vain! To thyself, in any case, they were blessed. --As for
the Signora Capitummino, with her three fatherless children,
shall we not hope at least, that the fourteen gold Ounces were
paid, by a sure hand, and so her heavy burden, for some space,
lightened a little? Alas, no, it would seem; owing to
accidents, not even that! 2
Count Cagliostro, all this while, is rapidly proceeding with
his Fifth Act; the red coppery splendour darkens more
and more into final gloom. Some boiling muddleheads of a
dupeable sort there still are in England: Popish-Riot Lord
George, for instance, will walk with him to Count Barthelemy's
or D'Adhemar's; and, in bad French and worse rhetoric,
abuse the Queen of France: but what does it profit? Lord
George must one day (after noise enough) revisit Newgate
for it; and in the meanwhile, hard words pay no scores.
Apothecary Swinton begins to get wearisome; French spies
look ominously in; Egyptian Pills are slack of sale; the old
vulturous Attorney-host anew scents carrion, is bestirring
itself anew: Count Cagliostro, in the May of 1787, must once
more leave England. But whither? Ah, whither! At Bale,
at Bienne, over Switzerland, the game is up.
At Aix in
Savoy, there are baths, but no gudgeons in them: at Turin,
his Majesty of Sardinia meets you with an order to begone
'on the instant. A like fate from the Emperor Joseph at
Roveredo;--before the Liber memorialis de Caleostro dum
esset Roboretti could extend to many pages! Count Front-of-
1 Goethe's Werke (Italidnische Reise), xxviii. 146. * Ibid.
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? 300 Carlyle's Essays
brass begins confessing himself to priests: yet "at Trent
paints a new hieroglyphic Screen,"--touching last flicker of
a light that once burnt so high! He pawns diamond buckles;
wanders necessitous hither and thither; repents, unrepents;
knows not what to do. For Destiny has her nets round him;
they are straitening, straitening; too soon he will be ginned!
Driven out from Trent, what shall he make of the new
hieroglyphic Screen, what of himself? The wayworn Grand-
Cophtess has begun to blab family secrets; she longs to be
in Rome, by her mother's hearth, by her mother's grave; in
any nook, where so much as the shadow of refuge waits her.
To the desperate Count Front-of-brass all places are nearly
alike: urged by female babble, he will go to Rome, then;
why not? On a May-day, of the year 1789 (when such glori-
ous work had just begun in France, to him all forbidden! ),
he enters the Eternal City; it was his doom-summons that
called him thither. On the 29th of next December, the Holy
Inquisition, long watchful enough, detects him founding some
feeble moneyless ghost of an Egyptian Lodge; "picks him
off," as the military say, and locks him hard and fast in the
Castle of St. Angelo:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che 'ntrate!
Count Cagliostro did not lose all hope: nevertheless a few
words will now suffice for him. In vain, with his mouth of
pinchbeck and his front of brass, does he heap chimera on
chimera; demand religious Books (which are freely given
him); demand clean Linen, and an interview with his Wife
(which are refused him); assert now that the Egyptian
Masonry is a divine system, accommodated to erring and
gullible men, which the Holy Father, when he knows it, will
patronise; anon that there are some four millions of Free-
masons, spread over Europe, all sworn to exterminate Priest
and King, wherever met with: in vain! they will not acquit
him, as misunderstood Theophilanthropist; will not emit
him, in Pope's pay, as renegade Masonic Spy: "he can't get
out. " Donna Lorenza languishes, invisible to him, in a
neighbouring cell; begins at length to confess I Whereupon
he too, in torrents, will emit confessions and forestall her:
these the Inquisition pocket and sift (whence this Life of
Balsamo); but will not let him out. In fine, after some
eighteen months of the weariest hounding, doubling, worrying
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? Count Cagliostro 301
and standing at bay, His Holiness gives sentence: The
Manuscript of Egyptian Masonry is to be burnt by hand of
the common Hangman, and all that intermeddle with such
Masonry are accursed; Giuseppe Balsamo, justly forfeited
of life for being a Freemason, shall nevertheless in mercy be
forgiven; instructed in the duties of penitence, and even
kept safe thenceforth and till death,--in ward of Holy Church.
Ill-starred Acharat, must it so end with thee? This was in
April 1791.
He addressed (how vainly! ) an appeal to the French
Constituent Assembly. As was said, in Heaven, in Earth,
or in Hell there was no Assembly that could well take his
part. For four years more, spent one knows not how,--
most probably in the furor of edacity, with insufficient
cookery, and the stupor of indigestion,--the curtain lazily
falls. There rotted and gave way the cordage of a tough
heart. One summer morning of the year 1795, the Body of
Cagliostro is still found in the prison of St. Leo; but Cagli-
ostro's Self has escaped,--whither no man yet knows. The
brow of brass, behold how it has got all unlacquered; these
pinchbeck lips can lie no more: Cagliostro's work is ended,
and now only his account to present. As the Scherif of
Mecca said, " Nature's unfortunate child, adieu! "
Such, according to our comprehension thereof, is the rise,
progress, grandeur and decadence of the Quack of Quacks.
Does the reader ask, What good was in it; Why occupy his
time and ours with the biography of such a miscreant? We
answer, It was stated on the very threshold of this matter,
in the loftiest terms, by Herr Sauerteig, that the Lives of all
Eminent Persons, miscreant or creant, ought to be written.
Thus has not the very Devil his Life, deservedly written not
by Daniel Defoe only, but by quite other hands than Daniel's?
For the rest, the Thing represented on these pages is no Sham,
but a Reality; thou hast it, O reader, as we have it: Nature
was pleased to produce even such a man, even so, not other-
wise; and the Editor of this Magazine is here mainly to record,
in an adequate manner, what she, of her thousandfold mys-
terious richness and greatness, produces.
But the moral lesson? Where is the moral lesson?
Foolish reader, in every Reality, nay in every genuine Shadow
of a Reality (what we call Poem), there lie a hundred such,
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? 302 Carlyle's Essays
or a million such, according as thou hast the eye to read
them! Of which hundred or million lying here in the present
Reality, couldst not thou, for example, be advised to take
this one, to thee worth all the rest: "Behold, I too have
attained that immeasurable, mysterious glory of being alive;
to me also a Capability has been intrusted; shall I strive
to work it out, manlike, into Faithfulness, and Doing; or,
quacklike, into Eatableness, and Similitude of Doing? Or
why not rather, gigman-like, and following the ' respectable'
countless multitude,--into both? " The decision is of quite
infinite moment; see thou make it aright.
But in fine, look at this matter of Cagliostro, as at all
matters, with thy heart, with thy whole mind; no longer
merely squint at it with the poor side-glance of thy calculative
faculty. Look at it not logically only, but mystically. Thou
shalt in sober truth see it (as Sauerteig asserted) to be a
Pasquillant verse, of most inspired writing in its kind, in that
same " Grand Bible of Universal History; " wondrously and
even indispensably connected with the Heroic portions that
stand there; even as the all-showing Light is with the Dark-
ness wherein nothing can be seen; as the hideous taloned
roots are with the fair boughs, and their leaves and flowers and
fruit; both of which, and not one of which, make the Tree.
Think also whether thou hast known no Public Quacks, on
far higher scale than this, whom a Castle of St. Angelo never
could get hold of; and how, as Emperors, Chancellors (having
found much fitter machinery), they could run their Quack-
career; and make whole kingdoms, whole continents, into
one huge Egyptian Lodge, and squeeze supplies of money or
of blood from it at discretion? Also, whether thou even now
knowest not Private Quacks, innumerable as the sea-sands,
toiling as mere /fay-Cagliostros; imperfect, hybrid-quacks,
of whom Cagliostro is as the unattainable ideal and type-
specimen? Such is the world. Understand it, despise it,
love it; cheerfully hold on thy way through it, with thy eye
on higher load-stars!
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? THE NIGGER QUESTION
[Precursor to Latter-day Pamphlets]
[1849]
OCCASIONAL DISCOURSE ON THE NIGGER
QUESTION1
The following Occasional Discourse, delivered by we know not
whom, and of date seemingly above a year back, may perhaps
be welcome to here and there a speculative reader. It comes to
us,--no speaker named, no time or place assigned, no com-
mentary of any sort given,--in the handwriting of the so-called
"Doctor," properly " Absconded Reporter," Dr. Phelim M'Quirk,
whose singular powers of reporting, and also whose debts, ex-
travagancies and sorrowful insidious finance-operations, now
winded-up by a sudden disappearance, to the grief of many poor
tradespeople, are making too much noise in the police-offices at
present I Of M'Quirk's composition we by no means suppose it
to be; but from M'Quirk, as the last traceable source, it comes
to us;--offered, in fact, by his respectable unfortunate landlady,
desirous to make-up part of her losses in this way.
To absconded reporters who bilk their lodgings, we have of
course no account to give; but if the Speaker be of any eminence
or substantiality, and feel himself aggrieved by the transaction,
let him understand that such, and such only, is our connection
with him or his affairs. As the Colonial and Negro Question is
still alive, and likely to grow livelier for some time, we have
accepted the Article, at a cheap market-rate; and give it
publicity, without in the least committing ourselves to the
strange doctrines and notions shadowed forth in it. Doctrines
and notions which, we rather suspect, are pretty much in a
"minority of one," in the present era of the world! Here, sure
enough, are peculiar views of the Rights of Negroes; involving, it
is probable, peculiar ditto of innumerable other rights, duties,
expectations, wrongs and disappointments, much argued of, by
logic and by grape-shot, in these emancipated epochs of the
human mind! --Silence now, however; and let the Speaker him-
self enter.
My Philanthropic Friends,--It is my painful duty to address
some words to you, this evening, on the Rights of Negroes.
1First printed in Fraser's Magazine, December 1849; reprinted in
the form of a separate Pamphlet, London, 1853.
3<<>3
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? 304 Carlyle's Essays
Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social
affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfulest embroil-
ment, and as it were of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at
present; and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge
upbreak, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to
see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations,
the Universal Abolition-of-Pain Association, which is
meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary
of modern Philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a
universal "Sluggard - and - Scoundrel Protection Society,"
--we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would
be very proper to commune earnestly with one another, and
discourse together on the leading elements of our great
Problem, which surely is one of the greatest. With this
view the Council has decided, both that the Negro Question,
as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and if
possible the first settled; and then also, what was of much
more questionable wisdom, that--that, in short, I was to be
Speaker on the occasion. An honourable duty; yet, as
I said, a painful one! --Well, you shall hear what I have to
say on the matter; and probably you wilj not in the least
like it.
West-Indian affairs, as we all know, and as some of us
know to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this
good while. In regard to West-Indian affairs, however, Lord
John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable
where so many are dubious, That the Negroes are all very
happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable indeed.
West-Indian Whites, it is admitted, are far enough from
happy; West-Indian Colonies not unlike sinking wholly into
ruin: at home too, the British Whites are rather badly off;
several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual
famine; and in single towns, many thousands of them very
sore put to it,at this time,not to live "well" oras a man should,
in any sense temporal or spiritual, but to live at all:--these,
again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are extremely
extensive and important ones. But, thank Heaven, our
interesting Black population,--equalling almost in number
of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth (in
quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available
human valour and value) perhaps one of the streets of Seven
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? The Nigger Question 305
Dials,--are all doing remarkably well. "Sweet blighted
lilies,"--as the American epitaph on the Nigger child has
^it,--sweet blighted lilies, they are holding-up their heads
fcgain! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad,
land dim dreary stagnancy at home, as if for England too
[there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish
united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait with arms
crossed till black Anarchy and Social Death devoured us
ilso, as it has done the others; how pleasant to have always
this fact to fall-back upon: Our beautiful Black darlings are
at last happy; with little labour except to the teeth, which
;urely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!
Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in
jhis matter. The Twenty Millions, a mere trifle despatched
,<<ith a single dash of the pen, are paid; and far over the sea,
we^lave a few black persons rendered extremely "free"
indeed. Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to
the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; the
grinder and incisor teeth ready for ever new work, and the
pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates: while the
sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot
hired, so cheap are the pumpkins;--and at home we are
but required to rasp from the breakfast-loaves of our own
English labourers some slight "differential sugar-duties,"
2nd lend a poor half-million or a few poor millions now and
then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on. A
state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated
epochs of the human mind; which has earned us not only
the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud long-eared hallelujahs of
. audatory psalmody from the Friends of Freedom everywhere,
Hit lasting favour (it is hoped) from the Heavenly Powers
themselves;--and which may, at least, justly appeal to the
Heavenly Powers, and ask them, If ever in terrestrial pro-
cure they saw the match of it? Certainly in the past
? history of the human species it has no parallel: nor, one hopes,
will it have in the future. [Some emotion in the audience;
vhich the Chairman suppressed. ]
Sunk in deep froth-oceans of" Benevolence," " Fraternity,"
v' Emancipation-principle," "Christian Philanthropy," and
other most amiable-looking, but most baseless, and in the
end baleful and all-bewildering jargon,--sad product of a
sceptical Eighteenth Century, and of poor human hearts left
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? 306
Carlyle's Essays
destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that then
ever was any, Christian or Heathen, and reduced to believc
in rosepink Sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the sainc
under its Christian, Antichristian, Broad-brimmed, Brutus-
headed, and other forms,--has not the human species gone
strange roads, during that period? And poor Exeter Hall,
cultivating the Broad-brimmed form of Christian Sentimen-
talism, and long talking and bleating and braying in that
strain, has it not worked-out results'? Our West-Indiai
Legislatings, with their spoutings, anti-spoutings, and inter-
minable jangle and babble; our Twenty millions down or
the nail for Blacks of our own; Thirty gradual millions more,
and many brave British lives to boot, in watching Blacks
of other people's; and now at last our ruined sugar-estates,
differential sugar-duties, " immigration loan," and beautifu'
Blacks sitting there up to the ears in pumpkins, and dolenf!
'Whites sitting here without potatoes to eat: never till now.
I think, did the sun look-down on such a jumble of human
nonsenses;--of which, with the two hot nights of the Missing-
Despatch Debate,1 God grant that the measure might now
at last be full! But no, it is not yet full; we have a long
way to travel back, and terrible flounderings to make, and is,
fact an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor
heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes,
before we get into the road again, and can begin to act a*
serious men that have work to do in this Universe, and no
longer as windy sentimentalists that merely have speeches
to deliver and despatches to write. 0 Heaven, in West*
Indian matters, and in all manner of matters, it is so with
us: the more is the sorrow! --
The West Indies, it appears, are short of labour; as indeed1
is very conceivable in those circumstances. Where a Black
man, by working about half-an-hour a-day (such is the
calculation), can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with
as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff
to raise into hard work! Supply and demand, which, science
says, should be brought to bear on him, have an uphill task
1 Does any reader now remember it? A cloudy reminiscence of
some such thing, and of noise in the Newspapers upon it, remains with
us,--fast hastening to abolition for everybody. (Note of 1849. )--This
Missing-Despatch Debate, what on earth was it? (Note of 1853. )
1
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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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