On this page
- Departments (2)
-
Text (7)
-
X [S fallbut bet the inciles they happet...
-
^ -y- SV* \ 70% o^ Sa-fv • ) ^ HfM ^ I * n\Xrij^ J*v \ * dK s±/* Jj\» & cfi[ (I P T r$ ' /%?** ' "^ ** "^ "^ ** C<lS^\ (JT * \ZJ ^^ W
-
^^ SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1850.
-
pnblit %Mv$.
-
There is nothing so revolutionary, becau...
-
THE NEW CRUSADE. For present abuses the ...
-
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. The election of Euge...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
X [S Fallbut Bet The Inciles They Happet...
130 ©!) * % tK \ ttX + [ Saturday ,
^ -Y- Sv* \ 70% O^ Sa-Fv • ) ^ Hfm ^ I * N\Xrij^ J*V \ * Dk S±/* Jj\» & Cfi[ (I P T R$ ' /%?** ' "^ ** "^ "^ ** C≪Ls^\ (Jt * \Zj ^^ W
OflTi ) ^ fr
^^ Saturday, May 4, 1850.
^^ SATURDAY , MAY 4 , 1850 .
Pnblit %Mv$.
pnblit % Mv $ .
There Is Nothing So Revolutionary, Becau...
There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is SSthfnj ? so uWtural and convulsive , as the strain to k ? epThings fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in us eternal progress .-DB . Aknold .
The New Crusade. For Present Abuses The ...
THE NEW CRUSADE . For present abuses the moral of Cailyle ' s last pamphlet is Despair , —or a rough alternative . He does not , indeed , print that moral ; but fhe description of the inextricable puzzle so overlays the suggestion of the clue out of it , that you give it up . He describes the world amongst us here in England as subject to the overruling tyranny of Talk . For that only is there success ; only in the talking careers of Parliament , Church , and Law , is there preferment . " Of all organs of man is there none held in account it would appear but the
tongue he uses for talking . Premiership , Woolsack , Military , quasi Crown , all is attainable , if you can talk with due ability . " "Do not talk well , only work well and heroically hold your peace , and you have no chance" whatever ; except in the " beaver" line of activity , the industrial . One other outlet remains , however , that of literature , or ' trying to write books "; " in this career there is happily , no impediment that can turn him "—the candidate for employment— " back , but private starvation , which is itself a finis , a kind of goal , "and here , too , the demand is " vocables , still vocables " : " Vox is the God of this universe . "
This is the reflex of Wakefield ' s description of the " uneasy classes , " adding to that , however , the trait of anarchy . Every portal closed against action , talk stands in Parliament , and governs by a veto on every thing active or real . Here are fine natures wasted ; being fine but still not strong enough to resist the infection . One can almost guess at the original of Carlyle ' s sketch : — " While the galleries were all applausive of heart , and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened , as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey , — 'I have sat with reflections too ghastly to be uttered . A
poor human creature and learned friend , once possessed of many fine gifts , possessed of intellect , veracity , and manful conviction on a variety of objects , has he now lost all that ;—converted all that into a glistering phosphorescence which can show itself on the outside ; while within all is dead , chaotic , dark ; a painted sepulchre full of dead men ' s bones ! Discernment , knowledge , intellect , in the human sense of the words , this man has now none . His opinion you do not ask on any matter : on the matter he has no opinion , judgment , or insight ; only on what may be said about the matter , how it may be argued of , what tune may be played upon it to enlighten the eyes of the Fourth Estate . "
Here , then , is difficulty and no extrication . Here is universal want and no supply , but vocal wind . The world is out of joint , and no one seems born to set it right . Society itself can confirm Carlyle ' s jeremiade . You of every class know how the fact is with you . The tradesman , whose starving workmen reproach him with his " successes , " knows that his books show a balance hovering between decency and ruin . He lives a life of uncertainty—a prosperity gained at the cost of opprobrium , not without some twinges to his own conscience , or bankruptcy ; the poor see the
wealth they help to make increase in magnitude and value , while they can touch it not . The modern Tantalus , under a refinement of cruelty in his fate , is doomed togroiu the grapes he cannot reach . Uncertainty and anxiety , those insatiable demons of civilization , are creeping upon the very wealthiest classes . The landlord counts uneasily the fields that are not yet mortgaged . There are exceptions ; but you who read , in whatsoever class you may be , know that if we do not now touch your case , yours is a blessed exception to the general rule .
" Government" is but an arrangement to conduct more happily the affairs of society . We have come to this pass , and we arc to interpret it as showing that our arrangement wants mending . But who shall begin the task of amendment ? Invite the labourer for that work , and you obtain a speech . Wakefield describes the continually
increasing uneasiness of society under the screw of overcrowding in the community and intense competition . Carlyle describes our public men as so far demoralized by self-seeking and the cants of the day , that they are incapable of bestirring themselves truly and actively to guide us out of this condition . The flood is rising , and no one will gird up his loins to mend the dikes or get boats . The flood still rises continually , time and tide waiting for no man , and our ears are deafened unceasingly with admirable speeches about boats
and dikes of every kind , " all most perfect in their plan and constitution . " The extremity visibly approaches , but we have yet no extrication . It is not for want of means that we are at this pass . We are capable of labour , —the earth will yield us its fruits for labour ; we have the faculties of enjoyment . Life might be an apprenticeship to paradise , if its opportunities were diligently and reverentially used . But who shall . that the condition of the harassed shopkeeper watching the beck of his customer , and haunted by the shadow of his books , is Life ? Who Life ?
will call the half-starved toil of the labourer Our arrangements have converted the riches of the universe and the capacities with which we are endowed to mockery . We prefer to do that , rather than improve the arrangements which we call Government . The matter-of-fact man , the practical statesman , and the closet philosopher , agree in this description of our condition . You call for a rescue , and , as Carlyle says , you have a speech . Government is an organized " vanity and vexation of spirit , " and there is no hope that it can become better , its disease being self-productive .
What is the moral of this most gloomy and despairing account ? Its moral is , — Worse and worse for us , until some unimaginable disaster ; or ejse a rough alternative , resentment growing intolerable , and consummated in revolution . Easy , lazy resignation , drifts along the current of time until it comes to that rapid turn . Speaking where no Cromwell is , by these accents of despair the eulogist of Cromwell suggests a desire for some new internal conquest to redeem us from this bondage .
But , in truth , if we read the signs of society aright , Carlyle has not summed them all up . There are others which he ignores , it not suiting his mood or his pride of intellect to know them . They are not achievements as yet , but rather signs of disposition . If you look you may note many a healthy symptom . The working classes , always so oppressed by difficulty and hardship , lately so violent and unsettled in their prospects , are studying in quiet—among other things the art of self-possession . The middle class , awakening
from its dream of mere trade , displays many tokens of a more generous feeling . The movement to make baths and washhouses for the poor has mainly been supported by the middle class . A homely movement , incapable of any very dignified name , and yet possessed by a spirit genuine , refined , philosophic , holy . Even in it 3 dissensions , the clergy shows the signs of an awakening from slumber to a sense that it must go forth and advise , —that it must study its mission anew , and speak more wisely . Among the Dissenters , often
intolerant ultra-Protestants , a new generation has come forward , with a wholly new and liberal spirit . The New Reformation is bringing out men bent on restoring the influence of religion , by setting it perfectly free , and enabling it to work by realities , not forms and pretences . Even the passing efforts of Young England , and new-fangled plans for " protecting British industry , " sanitary reforms—all these are signs that feelings and motives are reawakening with every class ; that it
wants but some general appeal to call them forth in a common council for the common welfaresome inducement to speak openly and to acknowledge the common faith that is in them all . If public men can but make the most of these influences which exist , and are already moving society in every part , they may expedite the revolution which is impending in a prompt and peaceful form . That is the extrication from the slough , out of the nightmare of Talk . To take the lead in it should be the office of the New Reformation , preaching a new crusade for the peaceable chivalry of our day against the monsters of our day—the Shams and Pretences .
Universal Suffrage. The Election Of Euge...
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE . The election of Eugene Sue enables many of our political adversaries to point a sarcasm against universal suffrage , but as the Times truly observes , " in reality the struggle lay not between the men at
Universal Suffrage. The Election Of Euge...
all , but between the principles they happen to represent , " and the triumph is not the triumph of a melodramatic novellist , but of Socialism . The reason why Sue was elected and Leclerc rejected , was that the masses had to choose between one man who openly , unflinchingly espoused their cause , and one man who espoused no cause at all . Because Socialism is so wide-spread , and has so few accredited Leaders of name and character , it is condemned either to be silent and unrepresented , or to choose the most popular man who will represent it . As long as principles deeply affecting the welfare of nations
are denied the right of candid examination , —are met with obloquy , ridicule , and persecution , in lieu of open , temperate discussion , so long will the upholders of these principles be condemned to fight for them instead of arguing . As long as men fitted by intellectual and moral qualifications to be the Leaders of the People hold aloof from them , because they dread obloquy , dread not being " respectable , " dread the turbulence of the People , and d not sympathize with them , so long will the People be condemned to follow demagogues who do sympathize —or pretend to sympathize with them .
To use this as an argument against universal suffrage is trivial . Let the People have a choice , and they will certainly choose the right men . There is a fund of justice , good sense , and instinctive appreciation in the People , sufficient to secure the utmost purity of election , if the field be not , as now , a battle-field . It is often said that an ignorant mob can never properly appreciate the intellectual pretensions of candidates ; and it is thought to be the reductio ad absurdum of universal suffrage to
ask how is the Wisest to be chosen by the Ignorant ? The answer is simple . The Wisest would not be chosen ; he would not be chosen by any body of electors known to us ; he would have quite as little chance with a limited suffrage as with an universal suffrage . What then ? We do not want the Wisest to be chosen ; we protest against him . The philosopher , the thinker has his own sphere . He has to deliberate ; the politician has to act . The spiritual and temporal powers should be carefully distinguished . Let theorists in the " calm air of
delightful studies " analyse , argue , and systematize : their results will be carried out into the world by men of action competent to apply , not competent to originate . The physician who sits at our bedside , and prescribes for us with unerring promptitude , is not the physiologist who detected the laws of organic processes ; and if we had called to our bedside that very physiologist upon whose discoveries our physician is acting—the undertaker might have sent in his bill ! Look at the Frankfort Parliament if you want to see a Parliament of professors , and look at our own if you desire the too
extreme opposite . Intellectual supremacy , therefore , not being the one desirable quality in a Member of Parliament , the objection against universal suffrage falls to the ground !; for , descending from the heights of philosophic capacity into the market-place of talent , no one can doubt but that the most ignorant mob will thoroughly appreciate that : their leaders prove it . More than all will they fitly appreciate the great qualities of manhood—energy , decision , honesty , fearlessness , and activity ; these , which make the man of action , make the true Member ; and these all men understand .
Universal suffrage should be granted even were it pregnant with the evils its opponents foresee . The people will make terrible mistakes ? Be it so . The people can correct them . They will attempt to realize chimeras ? Be it so . The eternal necessities of fact will refute them ; and the lessons tlms learned are fruitful ; whereas all your vaticinations are as empty as wind , which they regard not . Nothing is more curious to our minds than
to hear men who have not deciphered the A . B . C . of social problems talking scornfully of the " effect " of certain measures , and giving , as a specimen of their knowledge of effects , this reason against universal suffrage : — " It would be the prostitution of political power by the artifices of those whose sophisms can impose on the narrow judgment of the populace , or by the more fatal pledges of those who kindle their passions to the height of anarchy and spoliation . "
It is indeed a general belief that universal suffrage would be equivalent to universal spoliation ; a belief which were it not the grossest ignorance would be the grossest infamy . What ! in the face of daily experience can the People be so libelled . Is not the patiently-borne misery of millions in the midst of such wealth , such luxuries , and such temptations , accompanied as it is by
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), May 4, 1850, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04051850/page/10/
-