Carlyle and Democracy.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 2, 1 May 1903, Page 114

Carlyle and Democracy.

By w. g. McDonald

fARLYLE is often accused of • being the Cassandra of the Nineteenth Century. That j this will be the final verdict on his life's work is daily becoming more uncertain. True, his sentiments and opinions were in startling contrast to those held by any of the great political parties of his time ; his attitude was one of pronounced antagonism to the general movement of his age ; its modes of thought, its aspirations, its pursuits stirred within, what Horace and Burke call " splendid bile '' ; its falsity, its " gignaminity," its respectable shams, its stump-ora-tory, filled his soul with indignant scorn to which he gave expression in biting sarcasm, in bitter disdain, in contemptuous irony.

We are told by critics that he was a mere croaker, a Jeremiah, an unpractical visionary ; that the march of events has falsified his predictions ; that consequently half of what he has written is utterly valueless, except for its weird imagery, its striking metaphors, its rugged Gothic melody and rhythm ; but that his fame will endure as the prophet of duty, the apostle of work.

A decade ago such criticism was considered sound doctrine, though signs were not wanting that the period of its orthodoxy was about to end. It was generally agreed that Carlyle had not understood the conditions of his age, $nd that when he parted company with his early friend, Mill, he stamped himself with the brand of eccentricity, and deliberately closed the door on a career of usefulness. When he laid aside his pen forever, and his voice was stilled in the tomb, Mill's

theory of government was in the ascendant. England, believing that the Land of Promise lay in the direction of the enfranchisement of the masses, was on the eve of granting practically manhood suffrage. From 1884, whether Liberals or Conservatives have held the reins of government, they have been under democratic influence.

Democracy, the " self-government of the multitude by the multitude/ regarded by reformers as the final goal, the winning post of progress, has been reached, and we seem no nearer a solution of life's Droblems than we were before. The poor are still poor, the homeless require to be housed, the worker does not receive the just recompense of his labour, wretchedness and squalor abound in the midst of plenty, .Ireland is still in a state of chronic rebellion ; and, if we can trust the conclusions of competent observers, the House of Commons has failed to preserve its high level of intelligence and administrative ability, with the consequence that the power of the Cabinet is constantly increasing. Skill in debate is valued above real governing power, and an able parliamentarian is but a euphemism for an artful dodger. Outside of English-speaking peoples democracy is an acknowledged failure. Quite recently Italy, France, and Belgium have each enjoyed the luxury of riots ; parliamentary government in Austria is at a deadlock, revolution being prevented only by the personality of the Emperor, and Germany is being skillfully engineered by the Kaiser back to medieval ideals and conceptions.

All this was foretold years ago by Carlyle, when the movement to-

wards democracy was in its infancy. He assured us in " Chartism " that " in democracy can lie no finality, that in the completest winning of democracy there is nothing yet Avon, that, by its nature, it is a self-cancelling business, and gives in the long run a net result of zero." We are in a position to-day to appreciate this criticism. On every hand evidences of the dissatisfaction with the existing state of things are rapidly multiplying. Lord Rasebery in his famous Chesterfield speech arraigned the whole administration of the affairs cxf the Empire at the bar of common sense; and public opinion has brought in a verdict of guilty. His plea for efficiency and the campaign in its favour are admissions of the truth of Carlyle's prophecy. The " business - principle - management-of-the-Empire " agitation, set going by the editor of the " Nineteenth Century and After/* is a further recognition of the breakdown of democracy. And what else can we call the searching discussion as to whether we are a nation of amateurs ? It seems as if after all we are still in the wilderness, that we have been travelling, in a circle, and have not yet reached the Promised Land. Mr. Arthur Sherwell has lately published the result of an inquiry, conducted by a band of skilled investigators, into the condition of the working classes of England The poverty, the wretchedness, the glaring inequalities of wealth that exist in London have been so often depicted that repetition becomes monotonous. The conclusions reached by Mr. Charles Booth have been robbed of their startling character by familiarity. The conditions prevalent in the capital of the Empire have been regarded as exceptional and as inapplicable to other large cities. Mr. Sherwell, to arrive at the truth of the matter, selected a city as unlike London in every respect as possible, and where private philanthropy might be expected to mitigate to a larger extent the aw-

ful wretchedness of the masses. The Cathedral city of York was the scene of his investigations, and the results are, in all conscience, gloomy enough to justify the most pessimistic of Carlyle's denunciations of democracy as the final end of progress, the goal of human endeavour. If York is typical of English city life, his inquiry reveals that one quarter of the population of the country live in constant dread or in actual presence of hunger, are insufficiently fed and clothed, and are housed in crowded tenements utterly contrary to all principles of sanitation and morality. And this, after sixty years of progress and reform, and the growth of democracy ! England still awaits the advent of the Moses of industrialism who shall lead her out of the bondage of Egypt into the land of Canaan. Facts are stronger than any theory however elaborately constructed, however subtly woven, however symmetrically balanced ; and the fact of facts is, as Carlyle proclaimed it, that in democracy there is no finality. The doctrines of " laissez faire," of expediency, of government by the count of heads, of rights of man, were to him merely moonshine. He had looked at life calmly and dispassionately, he had sought knowledge, not in a supposed revelation, but in the experienced facts of the world's history interpreted by man's intelligence, and possessing, as Goethe said, within himself an originating principle of conviction, he felt bound to utter with all the earnestness of which he was possessed, and in a form which is neither prose nor verse, but which is in a class apart, the " poor message," as he sometimes called it, which he had to deliver to his contemporaries.

With the religious side of that message we are not concerned at present, further than to remark that it was Calvanistic in character, " Calvanism," as Froude remarks, "without the theology." But his political and social message grew

out of his religious convictions. The world was divinely governed by forces, " not mechanical but dynamic, interpenetrating and controlling all existing things from the utmost bounds of space to the smallest granule on the earth's surface, from the making of the world to the lightest action of man.'' Divine law was everywhere, and the welfare of man depended on a faithful interpretation of it. Society was an organism, not an organisation, not a fortuitous concourse of individuals living together on conditions they could arrange for themselves, but on conditions that were inexorably laid down " from the beginning." Every step taken was a step in either the right or the wrong direction, every law passed would be successful or the reverse according as it corresponded to, or deviated from, the " divine law." Convenience and expediency, the rights of man, government by majorities, were but a delusion and a snare. When democracy was preached as an end, not a means to an end, when it was asserted that the ills of a country would be remedied by an extension of the suffrage, he poutfed out on all such cant, as he termed it, the vials of his wrath. When " laissez faire " was the political ideal of reformers, when it was the accepted theory that government was to pass a " self-deny-ing ordinance," prohibiting itself from interfering in the affairs of men except to protect property, and the result would be the best of all possible worlds, he thundered against this surrender of authority as the maddest speculation ever conceived by the brain of man. The result would be, he maintained, the worst of all possible worlds — a world in which human life, such a life as human beings ought to live, would become impossible. What captain would dream of sailing his vessel on such principles, of deciding the course, or of calculating the longitude by a vote of the majority of the crew ? What general would

dream of forswearing discipline in his army, and of winning victories by allowing every man to do asl he pleased ? And the government of a nation was infinitely more difficult and more complex than the art of navigation or the art of strategy. It was simply inconceivable that a nation could " progress " anywhere but down to Tophet that gave Judas Iscariot and St. Paul an equal voice in shaping its destinies. Men had " rights " certainly : their rights consisted in finding out the wisest and the best among them, or in Lord Rosebery's phrase, the most efficient, and setting them to rule. He recognized, however, the great central truth of democracy — that it was an effort to get rid of sham-rulers, that no rulers were better than bad ones, and that at heart it was an endeavour after the heroic. " When a nation/ he says in ' Past and Present/ " not yet doomed to death, is rushing down to ever deeper Baseness and Confusion, it is a dire necessity of Nature's to bring in her Aristocracies, her Best, even by forcible methods. When their representatives cease entirely to be the Best, Nature's poor world will very soon rush down again to Baseness ; and it becomes a dire necessity of Nature's to cast them out. Hence French Revolutions, Five - point Charters, Democracies, and a mournful list of Etceteras in these our afflicted times/

Carlyle had not reached these conclusions without deep meditation and profound thought. He had been born and bred a Radical ; the misery that had existed after the Great War had burned into his soul an indelible impress. In his youthful enthusiasm he had hoped great things from the Reform Bill of 1832, which was to be the trumpet peal heralding the dawn of the millenium ; but he had been bitterly disappointed. The Reform Bill had become law, and the poor were none the better off : the power in the State had been shifted from' the aristocracy to the middle classes.

That was all. The handicraftsman remained exactly where he was—in a worse position than that of a slave. He had liberty, true ; but the liberty to starve did not appear to Carlyle the divine thing that Bentham and Mill and Macaulay proclaimed it on the house-tops to be. Disgusted with the " Edinburgh style of mockery, its hard withering influence, its momentary solaoement, fataller than any pain," he had retired to the lonely farm house of Craigemputtock to think out for himself a scheme of the universe in which he could believe, to adjust his beliefs, religious and social and political, to the facts of life, and to meditate on the divine-diabolical nature of man. He studied history, not to read a theory into it, but to deduce rules of conduct from its lessons. The Past contained the answer to the Sphinx of the Present — an answer which must be found under penalty of death.

The nature and character of his intellectual life turned his attention to the French Eevolution ; his studies on " heroes and the heroic in history " to Oliver Cromwell. His " History of the French Revolution/ written in the years immediately following the first Reform Bill, contained his " poor message" to the rulers of England : bis " Cromwell " was his answer to the democratization of the institutions of the country.

It is impossible in a few words to sum up the two books that have left a deeper impress on the thought of the Nineteenth Century than any other productions of that . prolific period. Briefly, however, t3ic French Revolution was the last and most signal example of " God's revenue " overtaking the government of a nation that had failed to preserve justice between man and man, that had led the people in the worship of shams and speciosities, and that had lived for pleasure instead of for duty. The heart of Nature is just, sternly inexorable as ever, and inflicts its penalties for transgression of its laws without fear or

favour. From the sentence of the Court of Destiny there is no appeal. Execution may be delayed; for a year, for a century ; but outraged justice is avenged at last. The Israelites were punished for their sins by the Philistines, by the Babylonians, by the Assyrians. Hordos of barbarians swept away the Roman sensualists. Modern nations, although they may be secure from raids by savages, breed in their own hearts the instruments of their punishment. The outraged millions may endure injustice for centuries ; but at last will turn and rend their oppressors.

That to Cariyle was the interpretation of the greatest event of the eighteenth century ; and the deductions he drew from his studies of the Commonwealth were corollaries from this proposition. Many people held, and indeed still hold, that had not the Ironsides pushed the quarrel with Charles to extremities, had the Parliament been allowed to conclude its treaty with the King, England would have secured the fruits of that ever-memorable struggle without suffering the violent reaction produced by the execution of Charles. Cromwell, however, judged differently, and his great biographer agreed with him. The Protector could see that wearied England, content with having secured the control of the purse, would have handed the Puritans over to the vengeance of Charles, and that all he had fought for would have been inevitably lost. Cariyle, from this, drew two practical inferences. Taking the Long Parliament as a whole it was ihe finest representative body ever gathered together. Its members were men of ability and statesmanship,) imbued with lofty ideals of patriotism, and with a love of that righteousness that exalteth a nation. Yet they failed and had^to be

prevented by force from ruining 1 themselves and the real interests of the country. Would it be reasonable, then, to expect any similar body to be more successful ? As

long as the wind was fair and the waters smooth a council of pilots could be entrusted with the ship of state. But when storms arose, when the breakers were in sight, Parliaments would be worse than useless. They could talk only ; action would be half-hearted, or else a compromise. Injustice would still reign and bring the inevitable disaster. But the world at heart, Carlyle held, was just. The strong were its natural rulers, not because they were strong ; but because might in the long run was right. Force and justice were really synonymous terms. A good cause begat in its defenders superior strength, and this virtue, in the old Roman sense, this valour would triumph over evil. They would submit, as long as submission was possible, to any government that approximated to their ideals ; hut when submission became intolerable, when driven to the alternative of seeing justice perish or of trying other methods, they would prove, to use Froude's lucid phrase, " that though they might be outvoted in the count of heads, they were not outvoted in the count of destiny." Behind all constitutions ever so democratic lay an ultimate appeal to force. Majorities could be as tyrannous as kings or oligarchies, and had no more claim to rule by divine right than they " Who ever turned upon his heel to hear My warning that the tyranny of one Was prelude to the tyranny of all ? My counsel that the tyranny of all Led backward to the tyranny of one ? " The practical questions we have to answer are— was Carlyle right ? Is his interpretation of the lessons of history correct ? Is the end and aim of government to free man from the shackles of authority, and allow each to become a law unto himself ? Is industry to be left to the guidance of " free competition"? Are we to " muddle through " all national affairs somehow or other ? Have we no room in our midst for the expert ?

To say that events have proved Carlyle wrong as we have suffered no revolution, is to mistake his position utterly. The repeal of the Corn Laws alone, he maintained, would give England thirty years at least in which to set her house/ in order. But Democracy did not stop there : it did more than repeal the Corn Laws. It freed industry from unjust restrictions ; it attempted, if it did not entirely succeed, in opening the road to talent ; it discovered the use of the Colonies ; it developed, and is still developing, the Imperial domain. Nor is that all. It declared war to the knife against Carlyle's pet abomination, the doctrine of " laissez faire.'' And the result has been the extension of the powers of the State, and the imposition of checks and restraints on human cupidity, and greed, and cunning. The sub-con-scious impetus behind such legislation as factory acts, education acts, land acts, adulteration acts, arbitration acts, is derived from the idea that in the interests of the state organism we cannot allow production to brutal ise the workers and through them the consumers. And of " free competition " can we not truly say that its death warranty is signed, and that even now it is awaiting its quietus by the hands of the trusts. Had we but followed the teaching of our prophet, had we not been blinded by the professors of political economy we might have seen, as George D. Herron says, "that industrial progress _ would arise in spite of competition, rather than because of it, through various forms of modified or unconscious co-operation by which competition was qualified or avoided/ "At its best/ he further states, in a passage of singular vividness, " competition is always a moral evil, though under certain imagined conditions it appears to be moral and social vigour. It is profane in theory, when judged by the teachings of Christianity, or by the moral reason, and causes the worst

instincts of life to triumph. It makes the average life a struggle for bread, and a degrading game of chance. It brings the people into wretched economic subjection, with political, intellectual, and even religious subjection logically following. It involves the whole human ■organism in a strife corrupting from height to depth, cursing ideas and practices alike, poisoning every motive, and perverting every action/ The cry for men of efficiency, that is for the expert, is it not a call for the " heroes " of the Empire, in the Carlylean sense, to reveal themselves, to assume the direction of affairs, to lead us out of the Slough of Despond into which reliance on " expediency," " government by ■majorities/ " the rights of man *' have brought us ? We want men, ■not formulas to rule us. And at the back of this there is arising a new conception of demo■cracy — a democracy that will enlist in its service its greatest and wise>est men, that will apportion tasks and rewards according to ability, "that will rescue industry from the of competition, and that

will afford each opportunity to develop his talents and to use them for the general good. " Progress is The law of life, man is not man as yet, Nor shall I deem his object served, his end Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, While only here and there a star dispels The darkness, here and there a towering mind O'er looks its prostrate fellows." So says Browning in " Paracelsus/ and strong in this faith, we may discern a new world forming, shaking itself free from the cant and hypocrisies so hated by Carlyle, discern the new man rising from the struggle, the 'agony, the fear, and the dust. Prometheus is unbinding himself. Of the dominion of quacks, of speciosities, of so-called economic laws, we are to have an end. Man is rising stronger than the superstitions that power is other than right, and that only self-in-terest can summon to the highest effort. He is entering an epock when in Mazzini's formula, " the progress of all " shall be " through all, under the leadership of the best and wisest/