Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
who could put everything to rights, if he were only allowed to do so. Who that man is we may possibly discover hereafter. At present we are hardly entitled to venture beyond the boundaries of dim conjecture. Nor is it very clear in what way the Unknown, or rather the Undeveloped, is to set about his exalted mission. Is he to be minister – or something more? Perhaps Mr Carlyle did not like to be altogether explicit on such a topic as this; but we may possibly gain a little light from indirect and suggestive passages. Take this for example:
"Alas, it is sad enough that anarchy is here; that we are not permitted to regret its being here, – for who that had, for this divine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could wish that shams of any kind, especially that Sham Kings should continue? No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, when this to many a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a man it does seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seems strange exceedingly, a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial, – what you in your iconoclast humour call shams, – all his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, did not scrip continue saleable, and the banker pay in bullion, or paper with a metallic basis? 'The greatest sham, I have always thought, is he that would destroy shams.'
"Even so. To such depth have I, the poor knowing person of this epoch, got; – almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly set forth among the sons of Adam; never before did the creature called man believe generally in his heart that this was the rule in this Earth; that in deliberate long-established lying could there be help or salvation for him, could there be at length other than hindrance and destruction for him."
We have been sorely tempted to mark with italics certain portions of the above extract, but on second thoughts we shall leave it intact. After applying ourselves most diligently to the text, with the view of eliciting its meaning, we have arrived at the conclusion, that it is either downright nonsense, or something a great deal worse. Observe what he says. It is to be prayed for by all men that Shams may cease – more especially Sham Kings. But certain solid Englishmen are not prepared for this. They have been "used to decent forms long since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial, – what you in your iconoclast humour call shams." They thought no harm of them. "Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated," &c. And those who differ in their estimate of these things from Mr Carlyle are "almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood: " – and their belief is a "scandalous blasphemy." So then, the Monarchy is a sham, and so are the laws, the Church, and the Constitution! They are all lies, and in deliberate long-established lying there can be no help or salvation for the subject! This may not be Mr Carlyle's meaning, and we are very willing to suppose so; but he has no title to be angry, were we to accept his words according to their evident sense. If men, through conceit or affectation, will write in this absurd and reckless fashion, they must be prepared to stand the consequences. The first impression on the mind of every one who peruses the above passage must be, that the author is opposed to the form of government which is unalterably established in these kingdoms. If this be so, we should like to know in what respect such doctrines differ from the pestilential revolutionary trash which has inundated France and Germany? What kind of overturn does Mr Carlyle contemplate, for overturn there must be, and that of the most extensive kind, if his views are ever destined to be realised? Is it not, perhaps, as melancholy a spectacle as may be, to find a man of some genius, and considerable learning, attempting to unsettle the minds of the young and enthusiastic, upon points distinctly identified with all that is great and glorious in our past history; and insinuating doctrines which are all the more dangerous on account of the oblique and uncertain language in which they are conveyed? Fear God and honour the King, are precepts not acknowledged by Mr Carlyle as the rudiment and foundation of his faith. He does not recognise them as inseparably linked together. He would set up instead some wretched phantom of his own imagination, framed out of the materials which he fondly supposes to be the attributes of the heroic character, and he would exalt that above all other authority, human and divine. He is, if we do not entirely misconstrue the tenor of these pamphlets, possessed at this moment with the notion of the advent of another Cromwell, the sole event which, as he thinks, can save England from being swallowed up by the evils which now beset her. What these evils are, we shall shortly endeavour to ascertain; in the mean time, let us keep our attention fixed on this primary matter of authority.
Cromwellism, then, if we may use the term, is Mr Carlyle's secret and theory. Cromwellism, is, we know, but another phrase for despotism; and we shall not put so harsh a construction on the term as to suppose that it necessarily involves extinguishment of the royal function. The example of Richelieu is sufficient to save us from such a violent interpretation, and therefore we may fairly assume that our author contemplates nothing more than the lodgment of the executive power in the hands of some stern and inexorable minister. To this the whole of his multitudinous political ravings, when melted into intelligible speech, would seem to tend. He has little regard for Kings, despises Lords, contemns Bishops, scouts the House of Commons, sneers at Chartists, repudiates the political economists, spurns the mob, and laughs at the Ten-pounders. There is here a tolerably extensive range of scorn – we doubt whether it could have been equalled by the reflective philosopher of the tub. Now, lest we should be thought harsh in our judgment of Mr Carlyle, or uncharitable in our method of construing him, let us hear what he has to say with regard to popular representation. Let us suppose that monarchy is cleared away as a Sham, or at all events placed in respectable abeyance, and that there is no farther debate as to hereditary right or even constitutional sovereignty. Also that we have got rid of Peers and Bishops. Now, then, as to Congress: —
"To examine this recipe of a Parliament, how fit it is for governing Nations, nay, how fit it may now be, in these new times, for governing England itself where we are used to it so long: this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which all thinking men, and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for the small still voices and eternal intimations, across the temporary clamours and loud blaring proclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorous fact itself; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, demand practical decision, or redecision of it from us, – with enormous penalty if we decide it wrong. I think we shall all have to consider this question, one day; better perhaps now than later, when the leisure may be less. If a Parliament, with suffrages and universal or any conceivable kind of suffrages, is the method, then certainly let us set about discovering the kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. But it is possible a Parliament may not be the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at all, if taken as the whole? If a Parliament with never such suffrages is not the method settled by this latter authority, then it will urgently behove us to become aware of that fact, and to quit such method; – we may depend upon it, however unanimous we be, every step taken in that direction will, by the Eternal Law of things, be a step from improvement, not towards it."
Was there ever so tantalising a fellow? We only know of one parallel instance. Sancho, after a judicial hearing at Barrataria, sits down to dinner, but every dish upon which he sets his fancy is whisked away at the command of a gaunt personage stationed on one side of his chair, having a wholesome rod in his hand. Fruit, meat, partridges, stewed rabbits, veal, and olla-podrida, vanish in succession, and for the removal of each some learned reason is assigned by the representative of Esculapius. We give the remainder of the anecdote in the words of Cervantes. "Sancho, hearing this, threw himself backward in his chair, and, looking at the doctor from head to foot, very seriously, asked him his name, and where he had studied. To which he answered: 'My Lord Governor, my name is Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero; I am a native of a place called Tirteafuera, lying between Caraquel and Almoddobar del Campo