Thomas Carlyle and His "Latter-Day Pamphlets" (review) [pp. 330-340]

Thomas Carly/ md his " Latter-Day amphlet8s."
seated themselves, but some objection, we imagine, would have been urged to taking the Lieutenlants' and the Brewers' estimate of themselves.
Thi is plainly ridiculous. But for fear the reader
may think that the ballot-box is Carlyle's method
of discovering the heroes, hear what he says of
voting and Democracy in general:
.'Democracy they consider to be a kind of
Government.' The - old model, formed long
since and brought to perfection in England now
two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself to
all Nations as the new healing for every woe:
Set up a Parliament,' the Nations every where
say, when the old King is detected to be a ShamKing, and hunted out or not;'set up a Parliament; let us have suffrages, universal suffrages;
and all either at once or by due degrees will be
right, and a real Millennium come!' Such is
their way of construing the matter.
"Such, alas! is by no means my way of construing the matter; if it were, I should have had
the happiness of remaining silent, and been without call to speak here. It is because the contrary of all this is deeply manifest to me, and appears to be forgotten by multitudes of my cotemtemporaries, that I have had to undertake addressing a word to them.
" Unanimity of voting-that will do nothing for
us if so80. Your ship can not double Cape Horn
by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may
vote this and that, above decks and below, in the
most harmonious, exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find
a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed
with adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental
Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote.
If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to
them, you will get round the Cape; if you can
not, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back
again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-coun1selors from Chaos, will nudge you with most
chaotic'admonition;' you will be flung halffrozen on the Patagonian clilfs, or admonished
into shivers by your iceberg counselors, and sent
sheer down to Davy Jones, and will -never get
round Cape Horn at all! Unanimity on board
ship! Yes, indeed-,-th ship's crew may be very
unanimous, which doubtless, for the time being,
will be very comfortable to the ship's crew, and
to their Phantasm Captain, if they have one;
but if the tack they unanimously steer upon is
guiding them into the belly of the Abyss, it will
not profit them much! Ships, accordingly do
not use the ballot-box at all; and-they reject the
Phantasm species of Captains: one wishes much
some other Entities-since all other entities lie
under the same rigorous set of laws-could be
brought to show as much wisdom, and sense at
least of self-preservation, the- first command of
Nature. Phantasm Captains with unanimous
votings-this is considered to be all the law and
all the prophets, at present.
If a man could shake out of his mind the universal noiseof political doctors in this generation and in the last generation or two, and consider the matterface to face, with his own sin
"Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as
well, that fateful Hebrew Prophecy, I thinkl the
fatefullest of all, which sounds daily through the
streets,'Ou' clo! Ou' lo!' A certain People
once upon a time, clamorously voted by ovqrwhelming majority,'Not he; B arabbas, not he!
Him, and what he is. and what he deserves, we
know well enough-a reviler of the Chief Priests
and sacred Chancery wigs; a seditious Heretic,
physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and mankind-to the gallows and the cro8'
with him! Barabbas is Our man; Barabbas, we
are for Barabbas!' They got Barabbas: have
you well considered what a fund of pur-blind
obduracy, of opaque flunkeyism grown truculent
and transcendent; what an eye for the phyhteries, and want of eye for the eternal noblenesses; sordid loyalty to the prosperous Semblanes,
and high treason against the Supreme Fact, such
a vote betokens in these natures? for it was the
consummation of a long series of such; they and
their fathers had long kept voting so. A singular People, who could both produce such diviune
men, and then could so stone and crucify theina People terrible from the beginning! Well,
they got Bai-abbas; and they got, of course, such
guidance as Baral)bas and the like of him could
give them; and, of course, they stumbled ever
downward and devil-ward in their truculent,
stiff-necked way; and-at this hour, after eighteen centuries of sad fortune, they prophetically
sing'On' CIo!' in all the cities of tbhe world.
Might the world at this late hour, but,take note
of-them, and understand their song a little!"
cere intelligence looking at it, I venture to may
he would find this a very extraordinary method
of navigating, whether in the Straits of Magllan or the undiscovered Sea of Time."'
And what particular instance does the reader
imagine is adduced in support of the theory that
the people are not be trusted to vote? Nothing
less than the rejection of our Saviour in favor of
Barabbas!
So that such communities as are trusted to
vote and select the men who are to administer
their affairs, will "get such guidance as Barab.
bas and the like of him can give," and so "stumble ever downward and devilward!''
Not content with this convincing illustration
of the evils of Democracy, the author runs his
eye over the list of ancient Republics and Empires and declares that true Republics, like Democracy in any form, were and are "forever
impossible."
One instance of successful Democracy we
might have thought would interfere with this
general principle. AMERICA! But America in
the author's words " need not brag"-her amount
of cotton and industrial resources he confesses
to be " almost unspeakable," but in the matter
of government, in the great endeavor to convince the world that her institutions are the long
,?V
1850.]