Latter Day Pamphlets by Thomas Carlyle (1850)
(p.182-215) [av]
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No. VI. PARLIAMENTS
[1st June, 1850.]
By this time it is sufficiently apparent the present Editor is not one of those who expect to see the Country saved by farther 'reforming' the reformed Parliament we have got. On the contrary, he has the sad conviction that from such Parliament never so ingeniously reformed, there can no salvation come, but only a speedy finale far different from salvation. It is his effort and desire to teach this and the other thinking British man that said finale, the advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot be distant, now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued and waxing daily, has got to such a height ; and that the one method of staving-off that fatal consummation, and steering towards the Continents of the Future, lies not in the direction of reforming Parliament, but of what he calls reforming Downing Street; a thing infinitely urgent to be begun, and to be strenuously carried on. To find a Parliament more and more the express image of the People, could, unless the People chanced to be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not this at all; but to find some sort of King, made in the image of God, who could a little achieve for the People, if not their spoken wishes, yet their dumb wants, and what they would at last find to have been their instinctive will, which is a far different matter usually, in this babbling world of ours.
Qualification movement, universal-suffrage movement, Reform Association, and suchlike, this Editor does not enjoin upon his readers; his readers whom (as every crow is known to think her own eggs whitest) he considers to be a select class, the true Aristocracy of England, capable of far better things than these. Which better things, and not the worse, it is his heart's wish to urge them upon doing. And yet, alas, how can he forbid any reader of his, or of other people's, to join such [p.183] suffrage movement, or still more distracted Chartism of Six Points, if it seem hopeful? Where we are, is no continuing. Men say: "The finale must come, ought to come; perhaps the sooner it comes, it will be the lighter to bear. If the foul universal boil is to go on ripening, under mere Leave-alone and Premiers of the Phantasm order, perhaps the sooner it bursts, and declares itself as universal gangrene and social death, the better!" Good Heavens, have men computed what the bursting-out of virtual disguised Anarchy into open undeniable Anarchy, such as they have in the Continental countries just now, amounts to in human affairs ; what a game that of trying for cure in the Medea's-cauldron of Revolution is! Must we also front the Apotheosis of Attorneyism ; and know what the blackest of terrestrial curses means?
But if the captains of the ship are of that scandalous class who refuse to be warned except by iceberg counsellors nudging them, what are the miserable crew to do? Yes, the crew had better consider of that ; they have greatly too little considered it of late. They will find that in Nature there is no such alarming creature as a Chief Governor of that humour, in getting round a Cape Horn like this of ours; that, if pity did not check our rage, there is no such traitor in the ship as this unconscious one! Who, placidly assured, nothing doubting but he is the friend of gods and men, can stand with imperturbable attitude, quietly steering, by his old Whig and other charts of the British Channel (as if we were still there or thereabouts), into the yawning mouth of Chaos, on the other side of the world; and call it passing the Forelands in rough weather, or getting into Cowes, by constitutional methods, and 'remedial measures suited to the occasion.' Our heart's prayer in those circumstances is : From such Chief Governors, good Lord deliver us! And if masses of the desperate common men before the mast do invoke Chartism rather, and invite the iceberg counsellors to nudge him, cannot we too well understand it? I hope, in other quarters of the ship there are men who know wiser courses, and instead of inviting the iceberg counsellors and Six Points, will direct all their strength to fling the Phantasm Captain under hatches. It is with the view of aiding and encouraging these latter that we now institute a few considerations upon Parliaments generally.
[p.184]
Dryasdust in his lumber-masses, which he calls treatises and histories,
has not been explicit about Parliaments : but we need not doubt, the
English Parliament, as windy a palavering and imaginary entity as it has
now grown to be, was at one time a quite solid serious actuality, met
for earnest dispatch of work which, on the King's part and the
Commonwealth's, needed absolutely to be done. Reading in Eadmerus
and the dim old Books, one finds gradually that the Parliament was at
first a most simple Assemblage, quite cognate to the situation; that Red
William, or whoever had taken on him the terrible task of being King in
England, was wont to invite, oftenest about Christmas time, his
subordinate Kinglets, Barons as he called them, to give him the pleasure
of their company for a week or two : there, in earnest conference all
morning, in freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big
royal Hall of Westminster, Winchester, or wherever it might be, with
log-fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking malmsey and
other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the arduous matters
of the kingdom. "You Taillebois, what have you to propose in this
arduous matter ? Frontdeboeuf has another view; thinks, in his
southern counties, they will go with the Protectionist movement, and
repeal the malt-tax, the African Squadron, and the window-duty itself.
Potdevin, what is your opinion of the measure; will it hold in your
parts? So, Fitzurse disagrees, then! Tκte-d'ιtoupes, speak out. And
first, the pleasure of a glass of wine, my infant?" Thus, for a
fortnight's space, they carried on, after a human manner, their grand
National Consult or Parliamentum; intermingling Dinner with it
(as is still the modern method); debating everything, as Tacitus
describes the Ancient Germans to have done, two times : once sober, and
once what he calls 'drunk,' not dead-drunk, but jolly round their big
table; that so both sides of the matter might be seen; and, midway
between rash hope and unreasonable apprehension, the true decision of it
might be hit. To this hour no public matter, with whatever serious
argument, can be settled in England till it have been dined upon,
perhaps repeatedly dined upon.
To King Rufus there could no more natural method present itself, of getting his affairs of sovereignty transacted, than this same. To assemble all his working Sub-kings about him; and gather in a human manner, by the aid of sad speech and [p.185] of cheerful, what their real notions, opinions and determinations were. No way of making a law, or of getting one executed when made, except by even such a General Consult in one form or another. Naturally too, as in all places where men meet, there established themselves modes of proceeding in this Christmas Parliamentum: secretaries from the first were needed there, strict record of the results arrived-at being indispensable : and the methods of arriving, marginally noted or otherwise, would not be forgotten : such methods, with trials of ever new methods, accumulating, and in the course of continual practice getting sifted, rejected, adopted, and committed to record, the vast elaboration, now called Law of Parliament, Privilege, Practice of Parliament, and that huge sheepskin quarry, in which Dryasdust bores and grovels as if the world's or England's secret lay there, grew to be what we see.
So likewise in the time of the Edwards, when Parliament gradually split itself into Two Houses; and Borough Members and Knights of the Shire were summoned up to answer. Whether they could stand such and such an impost? and took upon them to answer, "Yes, your Majesty; but we have such and such grievances greatly in need of redress first," nothing could be more natural and human than such a Parliament still was. And so, granting subsidies, stating grievances, and notably widening its field in that latter direction, accumulating new modes, and practices of Parliament greatly important in world-history, the old Parliament continued an eminently human, veracious, and indispensable entity, achieving real work in the Centuries. Down, we may say, to the Century of Charles First, when being constrained by unforeseen necessity to do so, it took suddenly, like water at the boiling point, a quite immense development of function ; and performed that new function too, to the world's and its own amazement, in an eminently human, authentic and effectual manner, the 'supply' it granted his Majesty, this time (in front of Whitehall, as it ultimately proved), being of a very unexpected yet by no means unessential nature; and the 'grievance' it now stated for redress being the transcendent one of Compulsion towards Spiritual Nightmare, towards Canting Idolatry, and Death Eternal, which I do not wonder that they couldn't endure, and wouldn't! Which transcendent grievance, it is well known, they did get redressed, in a most conspicuous manner, they, for the time being; and [p.186] so have since set all the world upon similar but far less hopeful attempts, by methods which appear the same, and are not the same but different.
This Long Parliament which conquered its King, and even extinguished him, since he would in no way be quiet when conquered; and which thus, the first of such Assemblages, declared that it was Sovereign in the Nation, and more royal than any King who could be there, has set a flaming pattern to all the world, which now after centuries all the world is fruitlessly bent to emulate. This ever-memorable Long Parliament is definable, both in regard to its destinies in History, and to its intrinsic collective and individual worth among Deliberative Assemblies, as the Acme of Parliaments; the highest that it lay in them to be, or to do, in human affairs. The consummation, this, and slow cactus-flowerage of the parliamentary tree among mankind, which blossoms only in thousands of years, and is seen only once by men: the Father, this, of all Congresses, National Conventions and sublunary Parliaments that have since been.
But what I had to remark of this Long Parliament, and of its Enghsh predecessors generally from the times of Rufus downwards, is their perfect veracity of purpose, their exact adaptation to getting the business done that was in hand. Supplies did, in some way, need to be granted; grievances, such as never fail, did in some way need to be stated and redressed. The silent Peoples had their Parliamentum; and spake by it to their Kings who governed them. In all human Government, wherever a man will attempt to govern men, this is a function necessary as the breath of life: and it must be said the old European Populations, and the fortunate English best of all, did this function well. The old Parliaments were authentic entities; came upon indispensable work; and were in earnest to their very finger-ends about getting it done. No conclave of railway directors, met with closed doors upon the sacred cause of scrip and dividends, could be more intent upon the business necessary, or be more appropriate for it, than those old Parliaments were.
In modern Parliaments, again, indeed ever down from the Long Parliament, I note a sad gradual falling-off in this matter of 'veracity' which, alas, means a falling-off in all real [p.187] use, or possible advantage, there can be to mankind in such Institutions. The Parliament, if we examine well, has irrevocably lost certain of its old functions, which it still pretends to do; and has got certain new functions, which it never can do, and yet pretends to be doing: a doubly fatal predicament for the Parliament. Its functions growing ever more confused in this twofold way, the position of the Parliament has become a false, and has gradually been becoming an impossible one, in modern affairs. While on the other hand, the poor Parliament, little conscious of all that, and long dimly struggling to remedy all that, and exist amidst it ; or in later years, still more fatally admitting all that, and quietly consenting to exist beside it without remedy, has had to distort and pervert its poor activity in all manner of ways ; and at length has diffused itself into oceans of windy talk reported in Hansard; has grown, in short, a National Palaver; and is, as I said lately, one of the strangest entities this sun ever looked down upon. For, I think, a National Palaver recognised as Sovereign, a solemn Convocation of all the Stump-Orators in the Nation to come and govern us, was not seen in the earth till recently. I consider it has been reserved for these our Latter Generations; a product long ripening for us from afar; and would fain hope that, like the Long Parliament, or acme and consummate flower in any kind, it can only be a transient phenomenon!
Some functions that are and continue real the Parliament still has; and these it becomes infinitely necessary to dissever, and extricate alive, from the ocean of unreality in which they swim. Unreality is death, to Parliaments and to all things. The real functions whatsoever they are, these, most certainly, are all the good we shall ever get of Parliament; and the question now is, Shall said good be drowned, or not be drowned, in the immeasurable accompaniment of imaginary functions which are evil and falsity, and that only?
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In the way of changed times I note two grand modern facts, omitting many minor, which have, one of them irrevocably, and the other hopelessly for the present, altered from top to bottom the function and position of all Parliaments; and which do now fatally vitiate their procedure everywhere, rendering much of what they do a superfluity, a mere hypocrisy, [p.188] or noxious grimace; and thus infecting even what is real in their function with a windy falsity, lamentable to behold and greatly requiring to be altered : Fact first, the existence of an Unfettered Press, with its perennial ever-increasing torrent of morning newspapers, pamphlets, books: fact second, that there is now no King present in Parliament; no King now there, the King having vanished, in front of Whitehall, long since! Fact first I take to be unalterable. Complete alteration of fact second I discern to be distant, but likewise to be indispensable and inevitable ; and to require urgently here and now (by New Downing Streets or otherwise) a strenuous beginning, from all good citizens who would do any reform in their generation. Both facts together have dislocated every joint of the old arrangement, and made the modern Parliament a new creature; and whosoever means to work reform there, will either open his eyes, and keep them open, to both these facts, or work only mischief and ruin.
In countries that can stand a Free Press, which many cannot, but
which England, thanks to her long good training, still can, it is
evident the National Consult or real Parliamentary Debate goes on
of itself, everywhere, continually. Is not the Times newspaper an
open Forum, open as never Forum was before, where all mortals vent their
opinion, state their grievance, all manner of grievances, from loss of
your umbrella in a railway, to loss of your honour and fortune by unjust
sovereign persons? One grand branch of the Parliament's trade is
evidently dead forever! And the beautiful Elective Parliament itself is
nothing like so living as it used to be. If we will consider it, the
essential truth of the matter is, every British man can now elect
himself to Parliament without consulting the hustings at all. If
there be any vote, idea or notion in him, on any earthly or heavenly
thing, cannot he take a pen, and therewith autocratically pour forth the
same into the ears and hearts of all people, so far as it will go?
Precisely so far; and, what is a great advantage too, no farther. The
discussion of questions goes on, not in St. Stephen's now, but from Dan
to Beersheba by able-editors and articulate-speaking creatures that
can get others to listen to them. This is the fact; and it demands
to be attended to as such, and will produce changes, I think, by and
by.
[p.189]
What is the good of men collected, with effort, to debate on the benches
of St. Stephen's, now when there is a Times Newspaper? Not the
discussion of questions ; only the ultimate voting of them (a very brief
process, I should think!) requires to go on, or can veritably go on, in
St. Stephen's now. The honourable gentleman is oftenest very wearisome
in St. Stephen's now : his and his Constituency's Aye or No,
is all we want of the honourable gentleman there; all we are ever like
to get of him there, could it but be had without admixtures! If your
Lordship will reflect on it, you will find it an obsolete function, this
debating one of his; useless in these new times, as a set of riding
postboys would be, along the line of the Great Western Railway. Loving
my life, and time which is the stuff of life, I read no Parliamentary
Debates, rarely any Parliamentary Speech; but I am told there is not,
once in the seven years, the smallest gleam of new intelligence thrown
on any matter, earthly or divine, by an honourable gentleman on his legs
in Parliament. Nothing offered you but wearisome, dreary, thrice-boiled
colewort; a bad article at first, and served and again served in
Newspapers and Periodical and other Literatures, till even the inferior
animals would recoil from it. Honourable gentlemen have complained to
myself that under the sky there was not such a bore. What is or can be
the use of this, your Lordship?
Let an honourable gentleman who has colewort, or stump-oratory of that kind, send it direct to the Times; perhaps they will print it for him, and then all persons can read it there who hope instruction from it. If the Times refuse to print it, let the honourable gentleman, if still so minded, print it at his own expense; let him advertise it at a penny the gross, distribute it gratis as handbill, or even offer a small reward per head to any citizen that will read it: but if, after all, no body of citizens will read it even for a reward, then let the honourable gentleman retire into himself, and consider what such omens mean! So much I take to be fair, or at least unavoidable in a free country : Let every creature try to get his opinion listened to; and let honourable gentlemen who can print their own stump-oratory, and offer the public a reward for using it, by all means do so. But that, when no human being will incline or even consent to have their said oratory, they can get upon their legs in Parliament and pour it out still, to the bur-[p.190] dening of many Newspapers, to the boring of their fellow-creatures, and generally to the despair of all thinking citizens in the community : this is and remains, I must crave to say, an infatuation, and, whatever respectable old coat you put upon it, is fast growing a nuisance which must be abated.
Still more important for a Parliament is the question: King present there, or no King? Certain it always is, and if forgotten, it much requires to be brought to mind, that a Parliament acting in the character of a body to be consulted by the sovereign ruler, or executive King of a Nation, differs immensely from a Parliament which is itself to enact the sovereign ruler, and to be supreme over all things ; not merely giving its advice, its remonstrance, dissent or assent, and leaving the ruler still to decide with that new illumination ; but deciding of itself, and by its Yes or its No peremptorily ordering all things to be or not to be. These, I say, are two extremely different characters for a Parliament to enact ; and they necessitate all manner of distinctions, of the most vital nature, in our idea of a Parliament ; so that what applies with full force to a Parliament acting the former character, will not apply at all to one enacting the latter : nay what is of the highest benefit in the former kind of Parliament, may not only in the latter kind be of no benefit, but be even of the fatalest detriment, and bring destruction to the poor Parliament itself and to all that depends thereon.
It is first of all, therefore, to be inquired, Whether your Parliament is actually in practice the Adviser of the Sovereign; or is the Sovereign itself? For the distinction is profound; goes down to the very roots of Parliament and of the Body Politic: and if you confound the two kinds of Parliaments, and apply to the one the psalmodyings and celebratings of constitutional doctors (very rife through the eighteenth century), which were meant for the other, and were partly true of the other, but are altogether false of this, you will set forth in a radically wrong course, and will advance incessantly, with whatever psalmodyings of your own or of the world's, to a goal you are like to be much surprised at! Under which of these two descriptions the British Parliament of our time falls, no one can need to be informed. Apart from certain thin fictions, and constitutional cobwebs which it is not expected any one should not see through, our Parliament is the sovereign ruler and real [p.191] executive King of this Empire; and constitutional men, who for a century past have been singing praises to that sublime Institution in its old character, are requested to look at it in this new one, and see what praises it has earned for itself there. Hitherto, in these last fifteen years since it has worked without shackle in that new character, one does not find its praises mount very high! The exercise of English Sovereignty, if that mean governance of the Twenty-seven million British souls and guidance of their temporal and eternal interests towards a good issue, does not seem to stand on the very best footing just at present! Not as a Sovereign Ruler of the Twenty-seven million British men, or heroic guide of their temporal or their eternal interests, has the reformed Parliament distinguished itself as yet, but otherwise only if at all.
In fact, there rises universally the complaint, and expression of surprise. That our reformed Parliament cannot get on with any kind of work, except that of talking, which does not serve much; and the Chief Minister has been heard lamenting, in a pathetic manner, that the Business of the Nation (meaning thereby the voting of the supplies) was dreadfully obstructed; and that it would be difficult for him to accomplish the Business of the Nation (meaning thereby the voting of the supplies), if honourable gentlemen would not please to hold their tongues a little. It is really pathetic, after a sort ; and unless parliamentary eloquence will suffice the British Nation, and its businesses and wants, one sees not what is to become of us in that direction. For, in fine, the tragic experience is dimly but irrepressibly forcing itself on all the world, that our British Parliament does not shine as Sovereign Ruler of the British Nation; that it was excellent only as Adviser of the Sovereign Ruler; and has not, somehow or other, the art of getting work done; but produces talk merely, not of the most instructive sort for most part, and in vortexes of talk is not unlike to submerge itself and the whole of us, if help come not!
My own private notion, which I invite all reformed British citizens to reflect on, is and has for a long time been. That this dim universal experience, which points towards very tragic facts, will more and more rapidly become a clear universal experience, and disclose a tragic law of Nature little dreamt of by constitutional men of these times. That a Parliament, especially a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established [p.192] in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but can do talk only, which at times may be needed, and at other times again may be very needless. Consider, in fact, a body of Six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons set to consult about 'business' with Twenty-seven millions mostly fools assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them: was there ever since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any 'business' accomplished in these circumstances? The beginning of all business everywhere, as all practical persons testify, is decidedly this. That every man shut his mouth, and do not open it again till his thinking and contriving faculty have elaborated something worth articulating. Which rule will much abridge the flow of speech in such assemblies! This, however, is the preliminary fundamental rule for business; and this, alas, is precisely the rule which cannot be attended to in constitutional Parliaments.
Add now another most unfortunate condition, That your Parliamentary Assembly is not very much in earnest, not at all 'dreadfully in earnest,' to do even the best it can; that in general the Nation it represents is no longer an earnest Nation, but a light, sceptical, epicurean one, which for a century has gone along smirking, grimacing, cutting jokes about all things, and has not been bent with dreadful earnestness on anything at all, except on making money each member of it for himself: here, certainly enough, is a Parliament that will do no business except such as can be done in sport ; and unfortunately, it is well known, almost none can be done in that way. To which Parliament, in the centre of such a Nation, introduce now assiduous Newspaper Reporters, and six yards of small type laid on all breakfast-tables every morning: alas, are not the Six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous gentlemen, who sit to do sovereign business in such circumstances, verily a self-contradiction, a solecism in Nature, Nature having appointed that business shall not be done in that way? Incapable they of doing business ; capable of speech only, and this none of the best. Speech which, as we can too well see, whether it be speech to the question and to the wise men near, or 'speech to Buncombe' (as the Americans call it), to the distant constituencies and the twenty-seven millions mostly fools, will yearly grow more worthless as speech, and threaten to finish by becoming burdensome to gods and men!
[p.193]
So that the sad conclusion, which all experience, wherever it has been tried, is fatally making good, appears to be, That Parliaments, admirable as Advising Bodies, and likely to be in future universally useful in that capacity, are, as Ruling and Sovereign Bodies, not useful, but useless or worse. That a Sovereign with nine-hundred or with six-hundred and fifty-eight heads, all set to talk against each other in the presence of thirty-four or twenty-seven or eighteen millions, cannot do the work of sovereignty at all ; but is smitten with eternal incompetence for that function by the law of Nature itself. Such, alas, is the sad conclusion ; and in England, and wherever else it is tried, a sad experience will rapidly make it good.
Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing, every man being at least able to live, and move-off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will, can such a form of so-called 'Government' continue, for any length of time, to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there. For America, as the citizens well know, is an "unparalleled country," with mud soil enough and fierce sun enough in the Mississippi Valley alone to grow Indian corn for all the extant Posterity of Adam at this time; what other country ever stood in such a case? 'Speeches to Buncombe,' and a constitutional battle of the Kilkenny cats, which in other countries are becoming tragical and unendurable, may there still fall under the comical category. If indeed America should ever experience a higher call, as is likely, and begin to feel diviner wants than that of Indian corn with abundant bacon and molasses, and unlimited scope for all citizens to hunt dollars, America too will find that caucuses, division-lists, stump-oratory and speeches to Buncombe will not carry men to the immortal gods; that the Washington Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is, there as here, naught for such objects ; quite incompetent for such; and, in fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will require to be (with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect yet) remodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed ; torn asunder, put together again; not without heroic labour, and effort quite other than that of the Stump-Orator and the Revival Preacher, one day!
Thus if the first grand branch of parliamentary business, that of stating grievances, has fallen to the Unfettered Presses, [p.194] and become quite dead for Parliaments, infecting them with mere hypocrisy when they now try it, the second or new grand branch of business intrusted to them, and passionately expected and demanded of them, is one which they cannot do; the attempt and pretence to do which can only still farther involve them in hypocrisy, in fatal cecity, stump-oratory, futility, and the faster accelerate their doom, and ours if we depend on them.
We may take it as a fact, and should lay it to heart everywhere, That no Sovereign Ruler with six-hundred and fifty-eight heads, set to rule twenty-seven millions, by continually talking in the hearing of them all, can for the life of it make a good figure in that vocation ; but must by nature make a bad figure, and ever a worse and worse, till, some good day, by soft recession or by rude propulsion, as the Omnipotent Beneficence may direct, it get relieved from said vocation.
In the whole course of History I have heard of only two Parliaments of the sovereign sort, that did the work of sovereignty with some effect: the National Convention, in Paris, during the French Revolution; and the Long Parliament, here at London, during our own. Not that the work, in either case, was perfect; far enough from that; but with all imperfections it was got done; and neither of these two workers proved to be quite futile, or a solecism in its place in the world. These two Parliaments succeeded, and did not fail. The conditions, however, were peculiar; not likely to be soon seen again.
In the first place, of both these Parhaments it can be said that they were 'dreadfully in earnest;' in earnest as no Parliaments before or since ever were. Nay indeed, in the end, it had become a matter of life or death with them. But apart from that latter consideration, in the Long Parliament especially, nothing so astonishes a modern man as the serious, solemn, nay devout, religiously earnest spirit in which almost every member had come up to his task. For the English was yet a serious devout Nation, as in fact it intrinsically still is, and ever tends and strives to be ; this its poor modern levity, sceptical knowingness, and sniffing grinning humour, being forced on it, and sitting it very ill: ever a devout Nation, I say; and the Divine Presence yet irradiated this poor Earth and its business to most men ; and to all Englishmen the Par- [p.195] liament, we can observe, was still what their Temple was to the ancient Hebrews; the most august of terrestrial objects, into which when a man entered, he felt that he was standing on holy ground. Literally so; and much is the modern man surprised at it; and only after much reluctance can he admit it to be credible, to be certain and visible among our old fathers there. In which temper alone, is there not sure promise of work being done, under any circumstances whatsoever? Given any lamest Talking Parliament, with its Chartisms or its starving Irish, and a starving world getting all into pike-points round it ; given the saddest natural solecism discoverable in the Earth or under the Earth ; inform it with this noble spirit, it will from the first hour become a less sad solecism; it will, if such divine spirit hold in it, and nerve its continual efforts, cease at last to be a solecism, and by self-sacrifice or otherwise become a veracity, and get itself adopted by Nature.
But secondly, what likewise is of immense significance, the Long Parliament had no Reporters. Very far from that; no Member himself durst so much as whisper to any extraneous mortal, without leave given, what went on within those sacred walls. Solemn reprimand from the Speaker, austere lodgment in the Tower, if he did. If a patriot stranger, coming up on express pilgrimage from the country, chance to gaze in from the Lobby too curiously on the august Assemblage (as once or twice happens), he is instantly seized by the fit usher; led, pale as his shirt, into the floor of the honourable House, Speaker Lenthall's and four hundred other pairs of Olympian eyes transfixing him, that it be there ascertained. Whether the Tower, the Tarpeian rock, or what in Nature or out of it, shall be the doom of such a man! A silent place withal, though a talking one; hermetically sealed; no whisper to be published of it, except what the honourable House itself directs. Let a modern honourable member, with his reporters' gallery, his strangers* gallery, his female ventilator, and twenty-seven millions mostly fools listening to him at Buncombe, while all at hand are asleep, consider what a fact is that old one!
But thirdly, what also is a most important fact in this question, the Long Parliament, after not many months of private debating, split itself fairly into two parties; and the Opposition party fairly rode away, designing to debate in another manner thenceforth. What an abatement of parliamentary eloquence [p.196] in that one fact by itself, is evident enough ! The Long Parliament, for all manner of reasons, for these three and for others that could be given, was an unexampled Parliament properly indeed, as I sometimes define it, the Father of all Parliaments which have sat since in this world!
The French Convention did its work, too; and this under circumstances intrinsically similar, much as they differed outwardly. No Parliament more 'in earnest' ever sat in any country or time ; and indeed it was the Parliament of a Nation all in deadly earnest ; gambling against the world for life or for death. The Convention had indeed Reporters; and encountered much parliamentary eloquence at its starting, and underwent strange handlings and destinies in consequence; but we know how it managed with its parliamentary eloquence, and got that reduced to limits, when once business did behove to be done! The Convention, its Girondins and opposition parties once thrown out, had its Committee of Salut Publique consisting of Twelve, of Nine, or even properly of Three; in whose hands lay all sovereign business, and the whole terrible task of ascertaining what was to be done. Of which latter, the latter being itself so immense, so swift and imperatively needful, all parliamentary eloquence was to be the enforcement and publisher and recorder merely. And whatever eloquent heads chose to obstruct this sovereign Committee, the Convention had its guillotine, and swiftly rid itself of these and of their eloquence. Whereby business went on, without let on that side; and actually got itself done!
These are the only instances I know, of Parliaments that succeeded in the business of Government; and these I think are not inviting instances to the British reformer of this day. Rather what we may call paroxysms of parliamentary life, than instances of what could be continuously expected of any Parliament, or perhaps even transiently wished of any. They were the appropriate, and as it proved, the effectual organism for Periods of a quite transcendent character in National Life; such as it is not either likely or desirable that we should see, except at very long intervals, in human affairs.
The fact is, Parliaments have had two great blows, in modern times; and are now in a manner quite shorn of their real [p.197] strength, and what is still worse, invested with an imaginary. Faust of Mentz, when he invented 'movable types,' inflicted a terrible blow on Parliaments; suddenly, though yet afar off, reducing them to a mere scantling of their former self, and taking all the best business out of their hands. Then again John Bradshaw, when he ordered the hereditary ***King to vanish, in front of Whitehall, and proclaimed that Parliament itself was King, John, little conscious of it, inflicted a still more terrible blow on Parliaments ; appointing them to do (especially with ***Faust too, or the Morning Newspaper, gradually getting in) what Nature and Fact had decided they could never do. In which doubly fatal state, with Faust busier than ever among them, they continue at this moment, working towards strange issues, I do believe!
Or, speaking in less figurative language, our conclusion is, first,
That Parliaments, while they continued, as our English ones long did,
mere Advisers of the Sovereign Ruler, were invaluable institutions; and
did, especially in periods when there was no Times Newspaper, or
other general Forum free to every citizen who had three fingers and a
smattering of grammar, deserve well of mankind, and achieve services
for which we should be always grateful. This is conclusion first. But
then, alas, equally irrefragable comes conclusion second, That
Parliaments when they get to try, as our poor British one now does, the
art of governing by themselves as the Supreme Body in the Nation, make
no figure in that capacity, and can make none, but by the very nature of
the case are unable to do it. Only two instances are on record of
Parliaments having, in any circumstances, succeeded as Governing Bodies;
and it is even hoped, or ought to be, by men generally, that
there may not for another thousand years be a third!
As not only our poor British Parliament of those years and decades, but
all the sudden European Parliaments at Paris, Frankfort, Erfurt and
elsewhere, are Parliaments which undertake that second or impossible
function of governing as Parliaments, and must either do it, or sink in
black anarchy one knows not whitherward, the horoscope of Parliaments
is by no means cheering at present; and good citizens may justly
shudder, if their anticipations point that way, at the prospect of a
Chartist Parliament here. For your Chartist Parliament is properly the
consummation of that fatal tendency, towards [p.198]
the above-mentioned impossible function, on the part of Parliaments. A
tendency not yet consummated with us ; for we still have other fragments
of old Authority lodged elsewhere than in the Parliament, which still
struggle here and there to accomplish a little governing, though under
strange conditions: and to instal a Parliament of the Six Points would
be precisely to extinguish with the utmost rapidity all such fragments,
and solemnly by National Charter and Six Points to bid the Parliament,
"Be supreme King over us, thou, in all respects; and rule us, thou,
since it is impossible for thee!"
These are serious considerations, sufficient to create alarm and astonishment in any constitutional man. But really it grows late in the day with constitutional men ; and it is time for them to look up from their Delolme. If the constitutional man will take the old Delolme-Bentham spectacles off his nose, and look abroad into the Fact itself with such eyes as he may have, I consider he will find that reform in matters social does not now mean, as he has long sleepily fancied, reform in Parliament alone or chiefly or perhaps at all. My alarming message to him is, that the thing we vitally need is not a more and more perfectly elected Parliament, but some reality of a Ruling Sovereign to preside over Parliament; that we have already got the former entity in some measure, but that we are farther than ever from the road towards the latter ; and that if the latter be missed and not got, there is no life possible for us. A New Downing Street, an infinitely reformed Governing Apparatus; there some hope might lie. A Parliament, any conceivable Parliament, continuing to attempt the function of Governor, can lead us only into No-Government which is called Anarchy; and the more 'reformed' or Democratic you make it, the swifter will such consummation be.
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Men's hopes from a Democratic or otherwise reformed Parliament are various, and rather vague at present; but surely this, as the ultimate essence, lies and has always lain in the heart of them all: That hereby we shall succeed better in doing the commandment of Heaven, instead of everywhere violating or ignoring Heaven's commandment, and incurring Hea-[p.199] ven's curse, as now. To ascertain better and better what the will of the Eternal was and is with us, what the Laws of the Eternal are, all Parliaments, Ecumenic Councils, Congresses, and other Collective Wisdoms, have had this for their object. This or else nothing easily conceivable, except to merit damnation for themselves, and to get it too ! Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad ; and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we 'vote' this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. "Who's to decide it?" they all ask, as if the whole or chief question lay there. "Who's to decide it?" asks the irritated British citizen, with a sneer in his tone. "Who's to decide it?" asks he, oftener than any other question of me. Decide it, O irritated British citizen? Why, thou, and I, and each man into whose living soul the Almighty has breathed a gleam of understanding; we are all, and each of us for his own self, to decide it: and woe will befall us, each and all, if we don't decide it aright; according as the Almighty has already ' decided' it, as it has been appointed to be and to continue, before all human decidings and after them all!
Practically men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting; that it is all a study of division-lists, and for the Universe too, depends a little on the activity of the whipper-in. It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by voting! Neither properly, we say, are the Laws of England, or those of any other land never so republican or red-republican, fixable or changeable by that poor foolish process; not at all, O constitutional Peter, much as it may astonish you! Voting is a method we have agreed upon for settling temporary discrepancies of opinion as to what is law or not law, in this small section of the Universe called England: a good temporary method, possessing some advantages; which does settle the discrepancy for the moment. Nay, if the votings were sincere and loyal, we might have some chance withal of being right as to the question, and of settling it blessedly [p.200] forever; though again, if the votings are insincere, selfish, almost professedly disloyal, and given under the influence of beer and balderdash, we have the proportionate sad chance of being wrong, and so settling it under curses, to be fearfully unsettled again!
For I must remark to you, and reiterate to you, that a continued
series of votings transacted incessantly for sessions long, with
three-times-three readings, and royal assents as many as you like,
cannot make a law the thing which is no law. No, that lies beyond
them. They can make it a sheepskin Act of Parliament; and even hang men
(though now with difficulty) for not obeying it : and this they reckon
enough; the idle fools! I tell you and them, it is a miserable blunder,
this self-styled ' law' of theirs ; and I for one will study either to
have no concern with it, or else by all judicious methods to disobey
said blundering impious pretended 'law.' In which sad course of conduct,
very unpleasant to my feelings, but needful at such times, the gods and
all good men, and virtually these idle fools themselves, will be on my
side; and so I shall succeed at length, in spite of obstacles; and the
pretended 'law' will take down its gibbet-ropes, and abrogate itself,
and march, with the town-drum beating in the rear of it, and beadles
scourging the back of it, and ignominious idle clamour escorting it, to
Chaos, one day; and the Prince of Darkness, Father of Delusions, Devil,
or whatever his name be, who is and was always its true
proprietor, will again hold possession of it, much good may it do him!
My friend, do you think, had the united Posterity of Adam voted, and
since the Creation done nothing but vote, that three and three were
seven, would this have altered the laws of arithmetic; or put to the
blush the solitary Cocker who continued to assert privately that three
and three were six ? I consider, not. And is arithmetic, think you, a
thing more fixed by the Eternal, than the laws of justice are, and what
the right is of man towards man ? The builder of this world was Wisdom
and Divine Foresight, not Folly and Chaotic Accident. Eternal Law is
silently present, everywhere and everywhen. By Law the Planets gyrate in
their orbits; by some approach to Law the Street-Cabs ply in their
thoroughfares. No pin's point can you mark within the wide circle of the
All where God's Laws are not. Unknown to you, or known (you had [p.201]
better try to know them a little!) inflexible, righteous, eternal; not
to be questioned by the sons of men. Wretched being, do you hope to
prosper by assembling six-hundred and fifty-eight poor creatures in a
certain apartment, and getting them, after debate, and "Divide, 'vide,
'vide," and report in the Times, to vote that what is not
is? You will carry it, you, by your voting and your eloquencing and
babbling ; and the adamantine basis of the Universe shall bend to your
third reading, and paltry bit of engrossed sheepskin and dog-latin? What
will become of you?
Unless perhaps the Almighty Maker has forgotten this miserable anthill of a Westminster, of an England; and has no Laws in force here which are of moment to him? Not here and now; only in Judea, and distant countries at remote periods of time? Confess it, Peter, you have some cowardly notion to that effect, though ashamed to say so! Miserable soul! Don't you notice gravitation here, the law of birth and of death, and other laws? Peter, do you know why the Age of Miracles is past? Because you are become an enchanted human ass (I grieve to say it) ; and merely bray parliamentary eloquence; rejoice in chewed gorse, scrip coupons, or the like; and have no discernible 'Religion,' except a degraded species of Phallus-Worship, whose liturgy is in the Circulating Libraries!
In Parliaments, Constitutional Conclaves and Collective Wisdoms, it is
too fatally certain there have been many things approved of, which it
was found on trial Nature did not approve but disapprove. Nature told
the individual trying to lead his life by such rule. No; the Nation of
individuals. No. "Not this way, my children, though the wigs that
prescribed it were of great size, and the bowowing they enforced it with
was loud; not by this way is victory and blessedness attainable; by
other ways than this. Only stagnation, degradation, choked sewers, want
of potatoes, uncultivated heaths, overturned mud-cabins, and at length
Chartism, street-barricades, Red Republic, and Chaos come again, will
prove attainable by this!"
Here below there is but one thing needful; one thing; and that one will in nowise consent to be dispensed with! He that can ascertain, in England or elsewhere, what the laws of [p.202] the Eternal are and walk by them voted for or unvoted, with him it will be well; with him that misses said laws, and only gets himself voted for, not well. Voting, in fact, O Peter, is a thing I value but little in any time, and almost at zero in this. Not a divine thing at all, my poor friend, but a human; and in the beer-and-balderdash case, whatever constitutional doctors may say, almost a brutal. Voting, never a divine Apollo, was once a human Bottom the Weaver; and, so long as he continued in the sane and sincere state, was worth consulting about several things. But alas, enveloped now in mere stump-oratory, cecity, mutinous imbecility, and sin and misery, he is now an enchanted Weaver, wooed by the fatuous Queen of constitutional Faλry, and feels his cheek hairy to the scratch. Beer rules him, and the Infinite of Balderdash; and except as a horse might vote for tares or hard beans, he had better, till he grow wise again, hardly vote at all. I will thank thee to take him away, into his own place, which is very low down indeed; and to put in the upper place something infinitely worthier. You ask what thing ; in a triumphant manner, with erect ear and curved tail, O hapless quadruped? How can I tell you what thing? I myself know it, and every soul still human knows it, or may know; but to the soul that has fallen asinine, and thinks the Laws of God are to be voted for, it is unknowable.
'If of ten men nine are recognisable as fools, which is a common calculation,' says our Intermittent Friend, 'how, in the name of wonder, will you ever get a ballot-box to grind you out a wisdom from the votes of these ten men? Never by any conceivable ballot-box, nor by all the machinery in Bromwicham or out of it, will you attain such a result. Not by any method under Heaven, except by suppressing, and in some good way reducing to zero, nine of those votes, can wisdom ever issue from your ten.
'Why men have got so universally into such a fond expectation? The reason might lead us far. The reason, alas, is, men have, to a degree never before exampled, forgotten that there is fixed eternal law in this Universe; that except by coming upon the dictates of that, no success is possible for any nation or creature. That we should have forgotten this, alas, here is an abyss of vacuity in our much-admired opu-[p.203] lence, which the more it is looked at saddens the thinking heart the more.
'And yet,' continues he elsewhere, 'it is unavoidable and' indispensable at present. With voting and ballot-boxing who can quarrel, as the matter stands? I pass it without quarrel; nay say respectfully, "Good speed to you, poor friends: Heaven send you not only a good voting-box, but something worth voting for! Sad function yours, giving plumpers or split-votes for or against such a pair of human beings, and such a set of human causes. Adieu!" '
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And yet surely, not in England only, where the Institution is like a
second nature to us, but in all countries where men have attained any
civilisation, it is good that there be a Parliament. Morning Newspapers,
and other temporary or permanent changes of circumstances, may much
change and almost infinitely abridge its function, but they never can
abolish it. Under whatever reformed Downing Street, or indispensable new
King, of these New Eras, England be governed, its Parliament too will
continue indispensable. And it is much to be desired that all men saw
clearly what the Parliament's real function, in these changed times of
newspaper reporters and imaginary kings, had grown to be. We must set it
to its real function ; and, at our peril and its, restrict it to that!
Its real function is the maximum of all we shall be able to get out of
it. Wrap it in never so many sheepskins, and venerabilities of
use-and-wont, you will not get it persuaded to do what its real function
is not. Endless derangement, spreading into futility on every side, and
ultimate ruin even to its real function, will result to you from setting
it to work against what Nature and Fact have appointed for it. Your
Dray-wagon, excellent for carting beer along the streets, start not
with it from the chimney-tops, as Chariot of the Sun; for it will not
act in that capacity!
As a 'Collective Wisdom' of Nations the talking Parliament, I
discern too well, can never more serve. Wisdom dwells not with
stump-oratory; to the stump-orator Wisdom has waved her sad and
peremptory farewell. A Parliament, speaking through reporters to
Buncombe and the Twenty-seven millions mostly fools, has properly given
up that function; [p.204] that is not now the
function it attempts. But even as the Condensed Folly of Nations ; Folly
bound up into articulate masses, and able to say Yes and No for itself,
it will much avail the Governing Man! To know at what pitch the
widespread Folly of the Nation now stands, what may safely be attempted
with said Folly, and what not safely: this too is very indispensable for
the Governing Man. Below this function, in the maddest times and
with Faust of Mentz reverberating every madness ad infinitum, no
Parliament can fall.
Votes of men are worth collecting, if convenient. True, their opinions
are generally of little wisdom, and can on occasion reach to all
conceivable and inconceivable degrees of folly; but their instincts,
where these can be deciphered, are wise and human; these, hidden under
the noisy utterance of what they call their opinions, are the unspoken
sense of man's heart, and well deserve attending to. Know well what the
people inarticulately feel, for the Law of Heaven itself is dimly
written there; nay do not neglect, if you have opportunity, to ascertain
what they vote and say. One thing the stupidest multitude at a hustings
can do, provided only it be sincere : Inform you how it likes
this man or that, this proposed law or that. "I do not like thee. Dr.
Fell; the reason why I cannot tell," and perhaps indeed there is no
reason; nevertheless let the Governor too be thankful to know the fact,
'full well;' for it may be useful to him. Nay the multitude, even when
its nonsense is not sincere, but produced in great part by beer and
stump-oratory, will yet by the very act of voting feel itself bound in
honour ; and so even in that case it apprises you, "Such a man, such a
law, will I accept, being persuaded thereto by beer and stump-oratory,
and having polled at hustings for the same."
Beyond doubt it will be useful, will be indispensable, for the King or
Governor to know what the mass of men think upon public questions
legislative and administrative ; what they will assent to willingly,
what unwillingly ; what they will resist with superficial discontents
and remonstrances, what with obstinate determination, with riot, perhaps
with armed rebellion. No Governor otherwise can go along with clear
illumination on his path, however plain the loadstar and ulterior goal
be to him; but at every step he must be liable to fall into the ditch ;
to awaken he knows not what nests of hornets, [p.205]
what sleeping dogkennels, better to be avoided. By all manner of means
let the Governor inform himself of all this. To which end, Parliaments,
Free Presses, and suchlike are excellent; they keep the Governor fully
aware of what the People, wisely or foolishly, think. Without in some
way knowing it with moderate exactitude, he has not a possibihty to
govern at all. For example, the Chief Governor of Constantinople, having
no Parliament to tell it him, knows it only by the frequency of
incendiary fires in his capital, the frequency of bakers hanged at their
shop-lintels; a most inferior ex-postfacto method! Profitable
indisputably, essential in all cases where practicable, to know clearly
what and where the obstacles are. Marching with noble aim, with the
heavenly loadstars ever in your eye, you will thus choose your path with
the prudence which is also noble, and reach your aim surely, if more
slowly.
With the real or seeming slowness we do not quarrel. The winding route, on uneven surfaces, may often be the swiftest; that is a point for your own prudences, practical sagacities, and qualities as a King : the indispensable point, for both you and us, is that you do always advance, unresting if unhasting, and know in every fibre of you that arrive you must. Rigidly straight routes find some admiration with the vulgar, and are rather apt to please at hustings ; but we know well enough they are no clear sign of strength of purpose. The Leming-rat, I have been told, travelling in myriads seaward from the hills of Norway, turns not to the right or the left: if these rats meet a haystack, they eat their way through it; if a stone house, they try the same feat, and not being equal to eating the house, climb the walls of it, pour over the roof of it, and push forward on the old line, swimming or ferrying rivers, scaling or rounding precipices; most consistent Leming-rats. And what is strange, too, their errand seaward is properly none. They all perish, before reaching the sea, or of hunger on the sand-beach ; their consistent rigidly straight journey was a journey no-whither! I do not ask your Lordship to imitate the Leming-rat.
But as to universal suffrage, again, can it be proved that, since the beginning of the world, there was ever given a universal vote in favour of the worthiest man or thing ? I have always understood that true worth, in any department, was [p.206] difficult to recognise ; that the worthiest, if he appealed to universal suffrage, would have but a poor chance. John Milton, inquiring of universal England what the worth of Paradise Lost was, received for answer, Five Pounds Sterling. George Hudson, inquiring in like manner what his services on the railways might be worth, received for answer (prompt temporary answer). Fifteen Hundred Thousand ditto. Alas, Jesus Christ asking the Jews what he deserved, was not the answer, Death on the gallows! Will your Lordship believe me, I feel it almost a shame to insist on such truisms. Surely the doctrine of judgment by vote of hustings has sunk now, or should be fast sinking, to the condition of obsolete with all but the commonest of human intelligences. With me, I must own, it has never had any existence. The mass of men consulted at hustings, upon any high matter whatsoever, is as ugly an exhibition of human stupidity as this world sees.
Universal suffrage assembled at hustings, I will consult it about the quality of New-Orleans pork, or the coarser kinds of Irish butter; but as to the character of men, I will if possible ask it no question : or if the question be asked and the answer given, I will generally consider, in cases of any importance, that the said answer is likely to be wrong, that I have to listen to the said answer and receive it as authentic, and for my own share to go, and with whatever strength may lie in me, do the reverse of the same. Even so, your Lordship; for how should I follow a multitude to do evil? There are such things as multitudes all full of beer and nonsense, even of insincere factitious nonsense, who by hypothesis cannot but be wrong. Or what safety will there be in a thousand or ten thousand brawling potwallopers, or blockheads of any rank whatever, if the Fact, namely the whole Universe and the Eternal Destinies, be against me ? These latter I for my share will try to follow, even if alone in doing so. It will be better for me.
Your Lordship, there are fools, cowards, knaves, and gluttonous traitors true only to their own appetite, in immense majority, in every rank of life; and there is nothing frightfuler than to see these voting and deciding! "Not your way, my unhappy brothers, shall it be decided ; no, not while I, and 'a company of poor men' you may have heard of, live in this world. Vote it as you please," my friend Oliver was wont to say or intimate; "vote it so, if you like; there is a com-[p.207] pany of poor men that will spend all their blood before they see it settled so!" Who, in such sad moments, but has to hate the profane vulgar, and feel that he must and will debar it from him! And alas, the vulgarest vulgar, I often find, are not those in ragged coats at this day ; but those in fine, superfine, and superfinest ; the more is the pity! Superfine coat symbolically indicates, like official stamp and signature, Bank-of-England Thousand-Pound Note; and blinkard owls, in city and country, accept it cheerfully as such : but look closer, you may find it mere Bank of Elegance; a flash-note travelling towards the eternal Fire; and will have nothing to do with it, you, I hope!
Clearly enough, the King in constitutional countries would wish to ascertain all men's votes, their opinions, volitions on all manner of matters ; that so his whole scene of operations, to the last cranny of it, might be illuminated for him, and he, wherever he were working, might work with perfect knowledge of the circumstances and materials. But the King, New Downing Street, or whatever the Sovereign's name is, will be a very poor King indeed if he admit all these votes into his system of procedure, and transform them into acts; indeed I think, in that case, he will not be long for this world as a King! No: though immense acclamation attend him at the first outset in that course, every volition and opinion finding itself admitted into the poor King's procedure, yet unless the volitions and opinions are wise and not foolish, not the smallest ultimate prosperity can attend him ; and all the acclamations of the world will not save him from the ignominious lot which Nature herself has appointed for all creatures that do not follow the Law which Nature has laid down.
You ask this and the other man what is his opinion, his notion, about
varieties of things : and having ascertained what his notion is, and
carried it off as a piece of information, surely you are bound, many
times, most times if you are a wise man, to go directly in the teeth of
it, and for his sake and for yours to do directly the contrary of it.
Any man's opinion one would accept; all men's opinion, could it be had
absolutely without trouble, might be worth accepting. Nay on certain
points I even ask my horse's opinion: as to whether beans will suit
him at this juncture, or a truss of tares; on this and the like [p.208]
points I carefully consult my horse; gather, by such language as he has,
what my horse's candid opinion as to beans or the truss of tares is, and
unhesitatingly follow the same. As what prudent rider would not? There
is no foolishest man but knows one and the other thing more clearly than
any the wisest man does; no glimmer of human or equine intelligence but
can disclose something which even the intelligence of a Newton, not
present in that exact juncture of circumstances, would not otherwise
have ascertained. To such length you would gladly consult all equine,
and much more all human intelligences: to such length ; and, strictly
speaking, not any farther.
Of what use towards the general result of finding out what it is wise to
do, which is the one thing needful to all men and nations, can the
fool's vote be? It is either coincident with the wise man's vote,
throwing no new light on the matter, and therefore superfluous; or else
it is contradictory, and therefore still more superfluous, throwing mere
darkness on the matter, and imperatively demanding to be annihilated,
and returned to the giver with protest. Woe to you if you leave that
valid! There are expressions of volition too, as well as of opinion,
which you collect from foolish men, and even from inferior creatures :
these can do you no harm, these it may be very beneficial for you to
have and know; but these also, surely it is often imperative on you to
contradict, and would be ruinous and baleful for you to follow.
You have to apprise the unwise man, even as you do the unwiser horse :
"On the truss of tares I took your vote, and have cheerfully fulfilled
it; but in regard to choice of roads and the like, I regret to say you
have no competency whatever. No, my unwise friend, we are for
Hammersmith and the West, not for Highgate and the Northern parts, on
this occasion : not by that left turn, by this turn to the right runs
our road; thither, for reasons too intricate to explain at this moment,
it will behove thee and me to go : Along, therefore!"
But how?" your Lordship asks, and all the world with you: "Are not two men stronger than one; must not two votes carry it over one?" I answer : No, nor two thousand nor two million. Many men vote; but in the end, you will infallibly find, none counts except the few who were in the right. Unit of that class, against as many zeros as you like! If the King's thought is according to the will of God, or to the law [p.209] appointed for this Universe, I can assure your Lordship the King will ultimately carry that, were he but one in it against the whole world.
It is not by rude force, either of muscle or of will, that one man can govern twenty men, much more twenty millions of men. For the moment, if all the twenty are stark against his resolution never so wise, the twenty for the moment must have their foolish way; the wise resolution, for the moment, cannot be carried. Let their votes be taken, or known (as is often possible) without taking ; and once well taken, let them be weighed, which latter operation, also an essential one for the King or Governor, is very difficult. If the weight be in favour of the Governor, let him in general proceed; cheerfully accepting adverse account of heads, and dealing wisely with that according to his means; often enough, in pressing cases, flatly disregarding that, and walking through the heart of it; for in general it is but frothy folly and loud-blustering rant and wind.
I have known minorities, and even small ones by the account of heads, do grand national feats long memorable to all the world, in these circumstances. Witness Cromwell and his Puritans; a minority at all times, by account of heads; yet the authors or saviours, as it ultimately proved, of whatsoever is divinest in the things we can still reckon ours in England. Minority by tale of heads; but weighed in Heaven's balances, a most clear majority : this 'company of poor men that will spend their blood rather,' on occasion shown, it has now become a noble army of heroes, whose conquests were appointed to endure forever. Indeed it is on such terms that grand national and other feats, by the sons of Adam, are generally done. Not without risk and labour to the doers of them ; no surely, for it never was an easy matter to do the real will of a Nation, much more the real will of this Universe in respect to a Nation. No, that is difficult and heroic ; easy as it is to count the voting heads of a Nation at any time, and do the behests of their beer and balderdash ; empty behests, very different from even their ' will,' poor blockheads, to say nothing of the Nation's will and the Universe's will ! Which two, especially which latter, are alone worth doing.
But if not only the number but the weight of votes preponderate
against your Governor, he, never so much in the right, will find it wise
to hold his hand ; to delay, for a time, this his [p.210]
beneficent execution, which is ultimately inevitable and
indispensable, of Heaven's Decrees ; the Nation being still unprepared.
He will leave the bedarkened Nation yet a while alone. What can he do
for it, if not even a small minority will stand by him ? Let him strive
to enlighten the Nation ; let him pray, and in all ways endeavour, that
the Nation be enlightened, that a small minority may open their eyes
and hearts to the message of Heaven, which he, heavy-laden man and
governor, has been commissioned to see done in this transitory earth, at
his peril ! Heaven's message, sure enough, if it be true ; and Hell's if
it be not, though voted for by innumerable two-legged animals without
feathers or with !
On the whole, honour to small minorities, when they are genuine ones.
Severe is their battle sometimes, but it is victorious always like that
of gods. Tancred of Hauteville's sons, some eight centuries ago,
conquered all Italy ; bound it up into organic masses, of vital order
after a sort; founded thrones and principalities upon the same, which
have not yet entirely vanished, which, the last dying wrecks of which,
still wait for some worthier successor, it would appear. The Tancred
Normans were some Four Thousand strong; the Italy they conquered in open
fight, and bound up into masses at their ordering will, might count
Eight Millions, all as large of bone, as eupeptic and black-whiskered as
they. How came the small minority of Normans to prevail in this so
hopeless-looking debate? Intrinsically, doubt it not, because they were
in the right; because, in a dim, instinctive, but most genuine manner,
they were doing the commandment of Heaven, and so Heaven had decided
that they were to prevail. But extrinsically also, I can see, it was
because the Normans were not afraid to have their skin scratched;
and were prepared to die in their quarrel where needful. One man of that
humour among a thousand of the other, consider it! Let the small
minority, backed by the whole Universe, and looked on by such a cloud of
invisible witnesses, fall into no despair.
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What is to become of Parliament in the New Era, is less a question with me than what is to become of Downing Street. With a reformed Downing Street strenuously bent on real and not imaginary management of our affairs, I could foresee all manner of reform to England and its Parliament; and at length [p.211] in the gradual course of years, that highest acme of reform to Parliament and to England, a New Governing Authority, a real and not imaginary King set to preside there. With that, to my view, comes all blessedness whatsoever; without that comes, and can come, nothing but, with ever-accelerated pace. Anarchy; or the declaration of the fact that we have no Governor, and have long had none.
For the rest, Anarchy advances as with seven-league boots, in these
years. Either some New Downing Street and Incipiency of a real
Hero-Kingship again, or else Chartist Parliament, with Apotheosis of
Attorneyism, and Anarchy very undeniable to all the world : one or else
the other, it seems to me, we shall soon have. Under a real Kingship the
Parliament, we may rest satisfied, would gradually, with whatever
difficulty, get itself inducted to its real function, and restricted to
that, and moulded to the form fittest for that. If there can be no
reform of Downing Street, I care not much for the reform of Parliament.
Our doom, I perceive, is the Apotheosis of Attorneyism ; into that
blackest of terrestrial curses we must plunge, and take our fate there
like the others.
For the sake both of the New Downing Street and of whatever its New
Parliament may be, let us add here, what will vitally concern both these
Institutions, a few facts, much forgotten at present, on the general
question of Enfranchisement; and therewith end. Who is slave, and
eternally appointed to be governed ; who free, and eternally appointed
to govern? It would much avail us all to settle this question.
Slave or free is settled in Heaven for a man; acts of parliament
attempting to settle it on earth for him, sometimes make sad work of it.
Now and then they correctly copy Heaven's settlement in regard to it ;
proclaim audibly what is the silent fact, "Here is a free man, let him
be honoured!" and so are of the nature of a God's Gospel to other men
concerned. Far oftenest they quite miscopy Heaven's settlement, and copy
merely the account of the Ledger, or some quite other settlement in
regard to it; proclaiming with an air of discovery, "Here is "a Ten-pounder
; here is a Thousand-pounder ; Heavens, here is a Three-millon pounder,
is not he free?" Nay they are wont, here in England for some time
back, to proclaim in the gross, as if it had become credible lately, all
two-legged animals [p.212] without feathers to
be 'free.' "Here is a distressed Nigger," they proclaim, "who much
prefers idleness to work, should not he be free to choose which? Is
not he a man and brother? Clearly here are two legs and no feathers: let
us vote him Twenty millions for enfranchisement, and so secure the
blessing of the gods!"
My friends, I grieve to remind you, but it is eternally the fact : Whom Heaven has made a slave, no parliament of men nor power that exists on Earth can render free. No; he is chained by fetters which parliaments with their millions cannot reach. You can label him free; yes, and it is but labelling him a solecism, bidding him be the parent of solecisms wheresoever he goes. You can give him pumpkins, houses of tenpound rent, houses of ten-thousand pound : the bigger candle you light within the slave-image of him, it will but show his slave-features on the larger and more hideous scale. Heroism, manful wisdom is not his : many things you can give him, but that thing never. Him the Supreme Powers marked in the making of him, slave; appointed him, at his and our peril, not to command but to obey, in this world. Him you cannot enfranchise, not him; to proclaim this man free is not a God's Gospel to other men; it is an alarming Devil's Gospel to himself and to us all. Devil's Gospel little feared in these days ; but brewing for the whole of us its big oceans of destruction all the same. States are to be called happy and noble in so far as they settle rightly who is slave and who free; unhappy, ignoble, and doomed to destruction, as they settle it wrong.
We may depend on it. Heaven in the most constitutional countries knows well who is slave, who is not. And with regard to voting, I lay it down as a rule. No real slave's vote is other than a nuisance, whensoever or wheresoever or in what manner soever it be given. That is a truth. No slave's vote; and, alas, here is another not quite so plain, though equally certain. That as Nature and severe Destiny, not mere act of Parliament and possession of money-capital, determine a man's slavehood, so, by these latter, it has been, in innumerable instances, determined wrong just at present! Instances evident to everybody, and instances suspected by nobody but the more discerning : the fact is, slaves are in a tremendous majority everywhere; and the voting of them (not to be got rid of just yet) is a nuisance in proportion. Nuisance of proportionally tremendous [p.213] magnitude, properly indeed the grand fountain of all other nuisances whatsoever.
For it is evident, could you entirely exclude the slave's vote, and admit only the heroic free man's vote, folly, knavery, falsity, gluttonous imbecility, lowmindedness and cowardice had, if not disappeared from the earth, reduced themselves to a rigorous minimum in human affairs; the ultimate New Era, and best possible condition of human affairs, had actually come. This is what I always pray for; rejoicing in everything that furthers it, sorrowing for everything that furthers the reverse of it. And though I know it is yet a great way off, I know also either that it is inevitably coming, or that human society, and the possibility of man's living on this earth, has ended. And so for England too, nay I think for England most and soonest of all, it will be behooveful that we attain some rectification, innumerable rectifications, in regard to this essential matter; and contrive to bid our Heaven's free men vote, and our Heaven's slaves be silent, with infinitely more correctness than at present. Either on the hither brink of that black sea of Anarchy, wherein other Nations at present lie drowning and plunging, or after weltering through the same, if we can welter, it will have to be attained. In some measure, in some manner, attained : life depends on that, death on the missing of that.
New definitions of slavery are pressingly wanted just now. The definition of a free man is difficult to find, so that all men could distinguish slave from free; found, it would be invaluable! The free man once universally recognised, we should know him who had the privilege to vote and assist in commanding, at least to go himself uncommanded. Men do not know his definition well at present; never knew it worse ; hence these innumerable sorrows.
The free man is he who is loyal to the Laws of this Universe; who in his heart sees and knows, across all contradictions, that injustice cannot befall him here; that except by sloth and cowardly falsity evil is not possible here. The first symptom of such a man is not that he resists and rebels, but that he obeys. As poor Henry Marten wrote in Chepstow Castle long ago,
"Reader, if thou an oft-told tale wilt trust,
Thou'lt gladly do and suffer what thou must."
[p.214]
Gladly; he that will go gladly to his labour and his suffering, it is to him alone that the Upper Powers are favourable and the Field of Time will yield fruit. 'An oft-told tale,' friend Harry ; all the noble of this world have known it, and in various dialects have striven to let us know it! The essence of all 'religion' that was and that will be, is to make men free. Who is he that, in this Life-pilgrimage, will consecrate himself at all hazards to obey God and God's servants, and to disobey the Devil and his? With pious valour this free man walks through the roaring tumults, invincibly the way whither he is bound. To him in the waste Saharas, through the grim solitudes peopled by galvanised corpses and doleful creatures, there is a loadstar; and his path, whatever those of others be, is towards the Eternal. A man well worth consulting, and taking the vote of, about matters temporal ; and properly the only kind of man. Though always an exceptional, this was once a well-known man. He has become one of the rarest now; but is not yet entirely extinct ; and will become more plentiful, if the Gods intend to keep this Planet habitable long.
Him it were vain to try to find always without mistake ; alas, if he were in the majority, this world would be all 'a school of virtue,' which it is far from being. Nevertheless to him, and in all times to him alone, belongs the rule of this world : that he be got to rule, that he be forbidden to rule and not got, means salvation or destruction to the world. Friend Peter, I am perfectly deliberate in calling this the truest doctrine of the constitution you have ever heard. And I recommend you to learn it gradually, and to lay it well to heart ; for without it there is no salvation, and all other doctrines of the constitution are leather and prunella. Will any mass of Chancery parchments, think you, of respectablest traditions and Delolme philosophies, save a man or People that forgets this, from the eternal fire? There does burn such a fire everywhere under this green earth-rind of ours, and London pavements themselves (as Paris pavements have done) can start up into sea-ridges, with a horrible 'trough of the sea,' if the fire-flood urge!
To this man, I say, belongs eternally the government of the world. Where he
reigns, all is blessed ; and the gods rejoice, and only the wicked make wail.
Where the contrary of [p.215] him reigns, all is
accursed ; and the gods lament, and will, by terrible methods, rectify the
matter by and by! Have you forbidden this man to rule ? Obey he cannot where the
Devil and his servants rule; how can he ? He must die thrice ruined, damned by
the gods, if he do. He will retire rather, into deserts and rocky
inaccessibilities, companion to wild-beasts, to the dumb granites and the
eternal stars, far from you and your affairs. You and your affairs, once well
quit of him, go by a swift and ever swifter road!
I would recommend your Lordship to attack straightway, by the Industrial
Regiments or better otherwise, that huge Irish and British Pauper Question,
which is evidently the father of questions for us, the lowest level in
our 'universal Stygian quagmire;' and to try whether (without ballot-box) there
are no 'kings' discoverable in England who would rally round you, in practical
attempt towards draining said quagmire from that point. And to be swift about
it; for the time presses, and if your Lordship is not ready, I think the
ballot-boxes and the six points are fast getting ready!
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