Carlyle was full of wrath at what he considered the cant about the condition of the wage-earners in Manchester and elsewhere, and his indignation found vent in the _Latter-day Pamphlets_. Froude once asked him if he had ever thought of going into Parliament, for the former knew that the opportunity must have been offered him. 'Well,' he said, 'I did think of it at the time of the "Latter-day Pamphlets." I felt that nothing could prevent me from getting up in the House and saying all that.' 'He was powerful,' adds Froude, 'but he was not powerful _enough_ to have discharged with his single voice the vast volume of conventional electricity with which the collective wisdom of the nation was, and remains charged. It is better that his thoughts should have been committed to enduring print, where they remain to be reviewed hereafter by the light of fact.'[25] The printing of the _Pamphlets_ commenced at the beginning of 1850, and went on month after month, each separately published, no magazine daring to become responsible for them. When the _Pamphlets_ appeared, they were received with 'astonished indignation.' 'Carlyle taken to whisky,' was the popular impression--or perhaps he had gone mad. '_Punch_,' says Froude, 'the most friendly to him of all the London periodicals, protested affectionately. The delinquent was brought up for trial before him, I think for injuring his reputation. He was admonished, but stood impenitent, and even "called the worthy magistrate a windbag and a sham." I suppose it was Thackeray who wrote this; or some other kind friend, who feared, like Emerson, "that the world would turn its back on him." He was under no illusion himself as to the effect which he was producing.'[26]