Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.Carlyle, Thomas
Philosophy
Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.
Carlyle, Thomas
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
What is Justice? that, on the whole, is the question of the Sphinx to
us. The law of Fact is, that Justice must and will be done. The sooner
the better; for the Time grows stringent, frightfully pressing! "What
is Justice?" ask many, to whom cruel Fact alone will be able to prove
responsive. It is like jesting Pilate asking, What is Truth? Jesting
Pilate had not the smallest chance to ascertain what was Truth. He
could not have known it, had a god shown it to him. Thick serene
opacity, thicker than amaurosis, veiled those smiling eyes of his to
Truth; the inner _retina_ of them was gone paralytic, dead. He looked
at Truth; and discerned her not, there where she stood. "What is
Justice?" The clothed embodied Justice that sits in Westminster Hall,
with penalties, parchments, tipstaves, is very visible. But the
_un_embodied Justice, whereof that other is either an emblem, or else
is a fearful indescribability, is not so visible! For the unembodied
Justice is of Heaven; a Spirit, and Divinity of Heaven,--_in_visible
to all but the noble and pure of soul. The impure ignoble gaze with
eyes, and she is not there. They will prove it to you by logic, by
endless Hansard Debatings, by bursts of Parliamentary eloquence. It is
not consolatory to behold! For properly, as many men as there are in a
Nation who _can_ withal see Heaven's invisible Justice, and know it to
be on Earth also omnipotent, so many men are there who stand between a
Nation and perdition. So many, and no more. Heavy-laden England, how
many hast thou in this hour? The Supreme Power sends new and ever new,
all _born_ at least with hearts of flesh and not of stone;--and heavy
Misery itself, once heavy enough, will prove didactic!--
CHAPTER III.
MANCHESTER INSURRECTION.
Blusterowski, Colacorde, and other Editorial prophets of the
Continental-Democratic Movement, have in their leading-articles shown
themselves disposed to vilipend the late Manchester Insurrection, as
evincing in the rioters an extreme backwardness to battle; nay as
betokening, in the English People itself, perhaps a want of the proper
animal courage indispensable in these ages. A million hungry operative
men started up, in utmost paroxysm of desperate protest against their
lot; and, ask Colacorde and company, How many shots were fired? Very
few in comparison! Certain hundreds of drilled soldiers sufficed to
suppress this million-headed hydra, and tread it down, without the
smallest appeasement or hope of such, into its subterranean
settlements again, there to reconsider itself. Compared with our
revolts in Lyons, in Warsaw and elsewhere, to say nothing of
incomparable Paris City past or present, what a lamblike
Insurrection!--
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