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 looks maddest, miserablest in these mad and miserable Corn-Laws
is independent altogether of their 'effect on wages,' their effect on
'increase of trade,' or any other such effect: it is the continual
maddening proof they protrude into the faces of all men, that our
Governing Class, called by God and Nature and the inflexible law of
Fact, either to do something towards governing, or to die and be
abolished,--have not yet learned even to sit still and do no mischief!
For no Anti-Corn-Law League yet asks more of them than this;--Nature
and Fact, very imperatively, asking so much more of them.
Anti-Corn-Law League asks not, Do something; but, Cease your
destructive misdoing, Do ye nothing!
Nature's message will have itself obeyed: messages of mere Free-Trade,
Anti-Corn-Law League and Laissez-faire, will then need small
obeying!--Ye fools, in name of Heaven, work, work, at the Ark of
Deliverance for yourselves and us, while hours are still granted you!
No: instead of working at the Ark, they say, "We cannot get our hands
kept rightly warm;" and _sit obstinately burning the planks_. No
madder spectacle at present exhibits itself under this Sun.
The Working Aristocracy; Mill-owners, Manufacturers, Commanders of
Working Men: alas, against them also much shall be brought in
accusation; much,--and the freest Trade in Corn, total abolition of
Tariffs, and uttermost 'Increase of Manufactures' and 'Prosperity of
Commerce,' will permanently mend no jot of it. The Working Aristocracy
must strike into a new path; must understand that money alone is _not_
the representative either of man's success in the world, or of man's
duties to man; and reform their own selves from top to bottom, if they
wish England reformed. England will not be habitable long, unreformed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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