way is to point out how a society faulty, troubled, but, it may be, not hopelessly corrupt, may be made in this point and in that a little less faulty, less troubled, less corrupt. There is no such contrast in Carlyle's other works to drive the sense of his error home; but the same error is present in them. It is far from being the case that their matter is essentially bad, or that Carlyle is essentially wrong. There is much that is wholly sound and good in _Chartism_; but it is unrelieved and unbalanced. The same is true of the _Latter-day Pamphlets_. Even the much-abused _Nigger Question_ is fundamentally right. What it means is that unless we organise free labour we had better give up boasting that we have set it free. The liberation of the West Indian slaves had brought to the verge of bankruptcy what had previously been the richest of British colonial possessions, robbed them of a prosperity which they have never fully recovered, ruined the whites, and deprived the blacks themselves of a government and discipline which Carlyle believed to be morally necessary to them, and therefore their right. There are several points of contact between this and the theory of Aristotle; there is also a general resemblance between it and the bold doctrine of Carlyle's countryman, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who, impressed by the evil of unorganised free labour degenerating into vagabondage, advocated the re-introduction of slavery. It does not follow from the evils pointed out by Carlyle that slavery ought to have been maintained; but it does seem a fair inference that the process of liberation actually adopted was ill considered, and was no subject for unqualified jubilation. If Carlyle had advanced such ideas in a moderate and conciliatory way he might have made converts. Instead of that, he was aggressive. He sowed the wind of provocation, and he reaped the whirlwind of opposition, rejection, sometimes of vituperation. It is vain to wish that he had done otherwise; he could only do as his character allowed him to do; but we shall do well to recognise that violence proved to be not strength but weakness, and that with more self-control he would probably have produced greater practical effect.