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CARLYLE'S CHARTISM.*

THIS is the last work of one of the most extraordinary writers of the age, extraordinary both in his merits and defects, in his habits of thinking and his modes of expression, in the manner of his appearance before the public, and in the singular influence which he exerts over a large number of followers. It is but two or three years since Mr. Carlyle became known extensively, and from that time to this, his reputation as a writer of unusual force and originality has continued to increase. In the beginning, his name was familiar only to the few who were into the secret of the anonymous contributions to the various English periodicals. Some successful translations from German books, and one or two masterly articles on the present state and future prospects of German literature, brought him into the notice of the poet Goethe, who speaks of him, in the conversations which Eckermann has reported, as knowing more of German literature than many of the most accomplished Germans themselves, and secured to him, we believe, the acquaintance and favor of that great man. As an author by name he first arrested attention by the publication in New England by some of his friends, in the form of a book, of certain occasional essays from Frazer's Magazine, under the name of Sartor Resartus. This was a fantastic but entertaining work, which, as a symbolic treatise on the Philosophy of Clothes, gave a criticism of the general spirit of the age. It was followed by the publication of the “French Revolution—a history, in three volumes," and subsequently by four volumes of miscellaneous essays, gathered from the different Quarterlies and Monthlies in which they were originally printed. Our readers, we presume, are already too well acquainted with these works, to require at our hands any account of their contents.

The work before us is more recent, and relates to subjects of more immediate and pressing interest. It purports to be an inquiry into the condition of the working people of England, suggested by the late movements of the Chartists, and written in perfect independence of the political parties which divide that nation. It abounds in all the peculiarities, whether merits or defects, which mark his former productions. It has all the abruptness and irregularity of style, all the strange involutions of sentences, all the fondness for foreign idioms, all the grotesque images, all the unintelligible allusions, all the dark inklings, and vague declamations which make his books so hard to read, and yet all the originality, the eloquence, the fervor, the force, the humor, the picturesque description, the lofty philosophy, and

* Chartism, by Thomas Carlyle. Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown,

1840.

startling boldness both of thought and expression which make them withal so pleasant. Some one has said of Kean's acting, that it was reading Shakspeare by lightning. We may say, with no more exaggeration, of most of Carlyle's writing, that if it is not reading Shakspeare, it is looking at a picture gallery, by lightning. We open a book and find ourselves in black darkness, groping along in distrustfulness and uncertainty; all at once a flash shoots across the sky, and crowds of pictures, some faintly sketched and others boldly and vividly painted, stand revealed. Here, we find a delicate but expressive outline by Retsch, there, a grand and awful group by Rubens, and scattered everywhere, the bold, chaotic, fire and light conglomerations of Martin. Carlyle has, therefore, more of robust strength and spasmodic vigor than of delicacy or clearness. He is full of point, brilliancy, and antithesis, but quite wanting in elegance and simplicity-has more of force than of grace—and is rather impressive and touching than convincing or persuasive: he carries you along by his impetuosity, he startles you by his flashes, fills you with a lofty valor, kindles a sort of heroic love, awakens purposes of noble and generous action, but never, or seldom, starts the unconscious tear by the quiet and subdued expression of the gentle and the humble. As a critic he is better than as a philosopher; a critic, both sympathetic and severe, deeply penetrated by the sufferings of kindred genius, and keenly alive to the ludicrous follies of quackery and pretension; but a philosopher, unsatisfactory and obscure, or one of that sort which Coleridge describes, to follow whom, is like taking a Chamois hunter for your guide, so long as your eye is fixed upon him, he will conduct you safely over precipices, pitfalls, and the eternal glaciers, but when your eye fails, which it is apt to do from the dizzy height, lets you down headlong into the unfathomable abyss. On the whole, it is not too much to say of him, what in the third volume of his German Romance he has himself said so graphically of his great master and model Jean Paul Richter. "They" (his works) "are a tropical wilderness, full of endless tortuosities; but with the fairest flowers and the coolest fountains; now over-arching us with high umbrageous gloom, now opening in long gorgeous vistas. One wanders through them enjoying their wild grandeur; and, by degrees, our half contemptuous wonder at the author passes into reverence and love. His face was long hid from us; but we see him at length in the firm shape of spiritual manhood; a vast and most singular nature, but vindicating his singular nature by the force, and beauty, and benignity which pervade it. In fine, we joyfully accept him, for what he is and was meant to be. The graces,

the polish, the sprightly elegances, which belong to men of lighter make, we cannot look for or demand from him. His movement is essentially slow and cumbrous, for he advances not with one faculty but a whole mind; with intellect and pathos, and humour and indignation, moving on like a mighty host, motley, ponderous, irregular, irre

sistible. He is not airy, sparkling, precise, but deep, billowy, vast. The melody of his nature is not expressed in common note-marks or written down by the critical gamut; for it is wild and manifold; its voice is like the voice of cataracts, and the sounding of primeval forests. To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears that can understand it majestic music."

But it is not our design to write a criticism upon the genius of Mr. Carlyle, or upon the spirit of his writings. We prefer at this time, by paraphrase and extract, to furnish our readers with some idea of the contents of his latest publication. "Chartism" is a short pamphlet in ten chapters, which treat rather rhapsodically of the causes of the present condition of the English working classes, and the best method of applying a remedy. The names of these chapters are― I. Condition of England Question, II. Statistics, III. New Poor Law, IV. Finest Peasantry in the world, V. Rights and Mights, VI. Laissez-Faire, VII. Not Laissez-Faire, VIII. New Eras, IX. Parliamentary Radicalism, X. Impossible. Under these odd-sounding titles Mr. Carlyle has managed to present the matter, in all the aspects of it which most strongly move his own mind. He begins by stating the importance of the question, and the necessity, not only of saying but of doing something in so ominous a matter as the general discontent of the laboring population. When a petition of grievances, so large that it must be carted along the streets in wagons, is borne to the House of Commons, when more than a million and a half of people earnestly demand some action on the part of the government, when popular restlessness "breaks out into brickbats, cheap pikes, and even sputterings of conflagration," he thinks it an evidence that if something be not speedily done, "something will do itself, and that after a fashion that will please nobody." It is true, the newspapers have exclaimed that Chartism is ended, and that a reform ministry have crushed the chimera in the most effectual manner; but, though the temporary embodiment of Chartism may have been put down, the vital essence of it is not extinct. In one form or another, it lives; with a vitality which reform ministries, constabulary forces, and rural polices, will not find it so easy to destroy. Chartism is nothing more nor less than "the wrong condition or wrong disposition of the working classes of England," and until that condition and that disposition are improved, the uneasiness cannot be quelled and will not depart. It is idle to execrate it; to call it mad, incendiary, nefarious; to strive to crush it by armed force, or the vindictive penalties of law; the discontent actually exists, and must be dealt with as a fact, a most grave, complex, and all-important fact.

It may be asked, continues the writer, why Parliament has thrown no light upon the subject, since its members are expressly appointed to inquire and act for the good of the nation; but, he answers, that whoever knows anything of Parliaments, knows that they labor seem

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ingly only for their own sakes, that frivolous questions are their chief topics, and that "lumbering along in the deep ruts of common-place," parliaments have no inclination to travel out of the beaten track. As the Collective Wisdom of the nation, Parliament has availed the nation nothing, and, for all purposes connected with the interest of the great dumb toiling class," might as well not have been. But it is a matter which cannot be left to the Collective Folly of the nation. It remains, therefore, for each thinking man to solve the problem presented by English social existence for himself. "Why are the working classes discontented? what is their condition, economical, moral, in their houses, and in their hearts, as it is in reality, and as they figure it to themselves to be? what do they complain of? what ought they and ought they not to complain of ?"—these are the questions.

In answering the questions, very little aid is to be derived from statistics or tables, "for these," observes the author, "are like cobwebs, like the sieve of the Danjades, beautifully reticulated, orderly to look upon, but hold no conclusion." After all the statistical statements which have been published in respect to the condition of the working classes, one must trust his own eyes as to whether it has advanced. Statements of that sort include but a small portion of what constitutes the well being of a man. The laborer's feelings, his attainments, his social position, his habits, his means of enjoyment, and a thousand other things, necessary to be taken into consideration in estimating his happiness, cannot be set down in figures. Even with the largest amount of wages, his discontent and real misery may be great; instead of accumulating he may be sinking money; day by day, drawing nearer to the lowest point of destitution, or strengthening habits of unthrift and debauchery. Meanwhile, it requires no statistics to show that the government has done little or nothing to inform itself in these matters, or to lessen the sum of general discontent and suffering. To read the reports of the Poor Law Commissioners, one would think that it had done everything, but in reality it has done nothing, unless it were to proclaim, what was long since declared, that "he that will not work shall not eat." A good principle were it rigidly applied to all classes of society, and not confined merely to the manual worker. But there is a higher question-can the poor manual worker always find work? with a willingness to labor, can he always procure employment? This, Legislation answers in the affirmative, but fact too often answers in the negative. Competition, reduced to its extreme limits by the shoals of half starving workmen spawned upon England from the neighboring island, brings the English laborer to a state of idleness and misery. Says the author,

"There is one fact which Statistic Science has communicated, and most astonishing one; the inference from which is pregnant as to this matter. Ireland has near seven millions of working people, the third unit of whom, it appears by Statistic

Science, has not for thirty weeks each year as many third-rate potatoes as will suffice him. It is a fact perhaps the most eloquent that was ever written down in any language, at any date of the world's history. Was change and reformation needed in Ireland? Has Ireland been governed and guided in a 'a wise and loving' manner? A government and guidance of white European men which has issued in perennial hunger of potatoes to the third man extant-ought to drop a veil over its face, and walk out of court under conduct of proper officers; saying no word; expecting now of a surety sentence either to change or die. All men, we must repeat, were made by God, and have immortal souls in them. The Sanspotatoe is of the selfsame stuff as the superfinest Lord Lieutenant. Not an individual Sanspotatoe human scarecrow but had a life given him out of Heaven, with eternities depending on it; for once and no second time. With immensities in him, over him, and round him; with feelings which a Shakspeare's speech would not utter; with desires illimitable as the Autocrat's of all the Russias! Him various thrice-honored persons, things and institutions have long been teaching, long been guiding, governing and it is to perpetual scarcity of third-rate potatoes, and to what depends thereon, that he has been taught and guided. Figure thyself, O̟ high-minded, clearheaded, clean-burnished reader, clapt by enchantment into the torn coat and waste hunger-lair of that same root-devouring brother man !

"But the thing we had to state here was our inference from that mournful fact of the third Sanspotatoe-coupled with this other well-known fact that the Irish speak a partially intelligible dialect of English, and their fare across by steam is four-pence sterling! Crowds of miserable Irish darken all our towns. The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back; for wages that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment; he lodges to his mind in any pighutch or doghutch, roosts in outhouses; and wears a suit of tatters, the getting off and on of which is said to be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the hightides of the calender. The Saxon man, if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. He too may be ignorant; but he has not sunk from decent manhood to squalid apehood: he cannot continue here. American forests lie untilled across the ocean; the uncivilized Irishman, not by his strength but by the opposite of strength, drives out the Saxon native, takes possession in his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder. Whosoever struggles, swimming with difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can exist not swimming but sunk. Let him sink; he is not the worst of men; not worse than this man. We have quarantines against pestilence; but there is no pestilence like that; and against it what quarantine is possible? It is lamentable to look upon. This soil of Britain, these Saxon men have cleared it, made it arable, fertile, and a home for them; they and their fathers have done that. Under the sky there exists no force of men whom with arms these Saxons would not seize, in their grim way, and fling (Heaven's justice and their Saxon humor aiding them) swiftly into the sea. But behold, a force of men armed only with rags, ignorance, and nakedness; and the Saxon owners, paralyzed by invisible magic of paper form.ular, have to fly far, and hide themselves in Transatlantic forests. 'Irish repeal?' 'Would to God,' as Dutch William said, You were King of Ireland, and could take yourself and it three thousand miles off,'-there to repeal it !

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"And yet these poor Celtiberian Irish brothers, what can they help it? They cannot stay at home, and starve. It is just and natural that they come hither as a curse to us. Alas, for them too it is not a luxury. It is not a straight or joyful VOL. VIII. NO. XXXI.-JULY, 1840. B

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