Past and Present Chapter VIII - Unworking Aristocracy
by Thomas Carlyle
It is well said, 'Land is the right basis of an Aristocracy;'
whoever possesses the Land, he, more emphatically than any other,
is the Governor, Viceking of the people on the Land. It is in
these days as it was in those of Henry Plantagenet and Abbot
Samson; as it will in all days be. The Land is Mother of us
all; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all;
in how many ways, from our first wakening to our last sleep on
her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as with blessed mother-arms,
enfold us all!
The Hill I first saw the Sun rise over, when the Sun and I and
all things were yet in their auroral hour, who can divorce me
from it? Mystic, deep as the world's centre, are the roots I
have struck into my Native Soil; no tree that grows is rooted
so. From noblest Patriotism to humblest industrial Mechanism;
from highest dying for your country, to lowest quarrying and
coal-boring for it, a Nation's Life depends upon its Land. Again
and again we have to say, there can be no true Aristocracy but
must possess the Land.
Men talk of 'selling' Land. Land, it is true, like Epic Poems
and even higher things, in such a trading world, has to be
presented in the market for what it will bring, and as we say be
'sold:' but the notion of 'selling,' for certain bits of metal,
the Iliad of Homer, how much more the Land of the World-
Creator, is a ridiculous impossibility! We buy what is saleable
of it; nothing more was ever buyable. Who can, or could, sell
it to us? Properly speaking, the Land belongs to these two: To
the Almighty God; and to all His Children of Men that have ever
worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it. No
generation of men can or could, with never such solemnity and
effort, sell Land on any other principle: it is not the property
of any generation, we say, but that of all the past generations
that have worked on it, and of all the future ones that shall
work on it. Again, we hear it said, The soil of England, or of
any country, is properly worth nothing, except the labour
bestowed on it: This, speaking even in the language of
Eastcheap, is not correct. The rudest space of country equal in
extent to England, could a whole English Nation, with all their
habitudes, arrangements, skills, with whatsoever they do carry
within the skins of them, and cannot be stript of, suddenly take
wing, and alight on it,--would be worth a very considerable
thing! Swiftly, within year and day, this English Nation, with
its multiplex talents of ploughing, spinning, hammering, mining,
road-making and trafficking, would bring a handsome value out of
such a space of country. On the other hand, fancy what an
English Nation, once 'on the wing,' could have done with itself,
had there been simply no soil, not even an inarable one, to
alight on? Vain all its talents for ploughing, hammering, and
whatever else; there is no Earth-room for this Nation with its
talents: this Nation will have to keep hovering on the wing,
dolefully shrieking to and fro; and perish piecemeal; burying
itself, down to the last soul of it, in the waste unfirmamented
seas. Ah yes, soil, with or without ploughing, is the gift of
God. The soil of all countries belongs evermore, in a very
considerable degree, to the Almighty Maker! The last stroke of
labour bestowed on it is not the making of its value, but only
the increasing thereof.
It is very strange, the degree to which these truisms are
forgotten in our days; how, in the ever-whirling chaos of
Formulas, we have quietly lost sight of Fact,--which it is so
perilous not to keep forever in sight! Fact, if we do not see
it, will make us feel it by and by!--From much loud controversy
and Corn-Law debating there rises, loud though inarticulate, once
more in these years, this very question among others, Who made
the Land of England? Who made it, this respectable English Land,
wheat-growing, metalliferous, carboniferous, which will let
readily hand over head for seventy millions or upwards, as it
here lies: who did make it?--"We!" answer the much-consuming
Aristocracy; "We!" as they ride in, moist with the sweat of
Melton Mowbray: "It is we that made it; or are the heirs,
assigns and representatives of those who did!"--My brothers, You?
Everlasting honour to you, then; and Corn-Laws as many as you
will, till your own deep stomachs cry Enough, or some voice of
human pity for our famine bids you Hold! Ye are as gods, that
can create soil. Soil-creating gods there is no withstanding.
They have the might to sell wheat at what price they list; and
the right, to all lengths, and famine-lengths,--if they be
pitiless infernal gods! Celestial gods, I think, would stop
short of the famine-price; but no infernal nor any kind of god
can be bidden stop!--Infatuated mortals, into what questions are
you driving every thinking man in England?
I say, you did not make the Land of England; and, by the
possession of it, you are bound to furnish guidance and
governance to England! That is the law of your position on this
God's-Earth; an everlasting act of Heaven's Parliament, not
repealable in St. Stephen's or elsewhere! True government and
guidance; not no-government and Laissez-faire; how much less,
misgovernment and Corn-Law! There is not an imprisoned Worker
looking out from these Bastilles but appeals, very audibly in
Heaven's High Courts, against you, and me, and every one who is
not imprisoned, "Why am I here?" His appeal is audible in
Heaven; and will become audible enough on Earth too, if it
remain unheeded here. His appeal is against you, foremost of
all; you stand in the front-rank of the accused; you, by the
very place you hold, have first of all to answer him and Heaven!
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.
The Working Aristocracy--Yes, but on the threshold of all this,
it is again and again to be asked, What of the Idle Aristocracy?
Again and again, what shall we say of the Idle Aristocracy, the
Owners of the Soil of England; whose recognised function is that
of handsomely consuming the rents of England, shooting the
partridges of England, and as an agreeable amusement (if the
purchase-money and other conveniences serve), dilettante-ing in
Parliament and Quarter-Sessions for England? We will say
mournfully, in the presence of Heaven and Earth,--that we stand
speechless, stupent, and know not what to say! That a class of
men entitled to live sumptuously on the marrow of the earth;
permitted simply, nay entreated, and as yet entreated in vain, to
do nothing at all in return, was never heretofore seen on the
face of this Planet. That such a class is transitory,
exceptional, and, unless Nature's Laws fall dead, cannot
continue. That it has continued now a moderate while; has, for
the last fifty years, been rapidly attaining its state of
perfection. That it will have to find its duties and do them;
or else that it must and will cease to be seen on the face of
this Planet, which is a Working one, not an Idle one.
Alas, alas, the Working Aristocracy, admonished by Trades-unions,
Chartist conflagrations, above all by their own shrewd sense kept
in perpetual communion with the fact of things, will assuredly
reform themselves, and a working world will still be possible:--
but the fate of the Idle Aristocracy, as one reads its horoscope
hitherto in Corn-Laws and such like, is an abyss that fills one
with despair. Yes, my rosy fox-hunting brothers, a terrible
Hippocratic look reveals itself (God knows, not to my joy)
through those fresh buxom countenances of yours. Through your
Corn-Law Majorities, Sliding-Scales, Protecting-Duties, Bribery-
Elections and triumphant Kentish-fires a thinking eye discerns
ghastly images of ruin, too ghastly for words; a handwriting as
of MENE, MENE? Men and brothers, on your Sliding-scale you seem
sliding, and to have slid,--you little know whither! Good God!
did not a French Donothing Aristocracy, hardly above half a
century ago, declare in like manner, and in its featherhead
believe in like manner, "We cannot exist, and continue to dress
and parade ourselves, on the just rent of the soil of France;
but we must have farther payment than rent of the soil, we must
be exempted from taxes too,"--we must have a Corn-Law to extend
our rent? This was in 1789: in four years more--Did you look
into the Tanneries of Meudon, and the long-naked making for
themselves breeches of human skins! May the merciful Heavens
avert the omen; may we be wiser, that so we be less wretched.
A High Class without duties to do is like a tree planted on
precipices; from the roots of which all the earth has been
crumbling. Nature owns no man who is not a Martyr withal. Is
there a man who pretends to live luxuriously housed up; screened
from all work, from want, danger, hardship, the victory over
which is what we name work;--he himself to sit serene, amid down-
bolsters and appliances, and have all his work and battling done
by other men? And such man calls himself a noble-man? His
fathers worked for him, he says; or successfully gambled for
him: here he sits; professes, not in sorrow but in pride,
that he and his have done no work, time out of mind. It is the
law of the land, and is thought to be the law of the Universe,
that he, alone of recorded men, shall have no task laid on him,
except that of eating his cooked victuals, and not flinging
himself out of window. Once more I will say, there was no
stranger spectacle ever shewn under this Sun. A veritable fact
in our England of the Nineteenth Century. His victuals he does
eat: but as for keeping in the inside of the window,--have not
his friends, like me, enough to do? Truly, looking at his Corn-
Laws, Game-Laws, Chandos-Clauses, Bribery-Elections and much
else, you do shudder over the tumbling and plunging he makes,
held back by the lappelles and coatskirts; only a thin fence of
window-glass before him,--and in the street mere horrid iron
spikes! My sick brother, as in hospital-maladies men do, thou
dreamest of Paradises and Eldorados, which are far from thee.
'Cannot I do what I like with my own?' Gracious Heaven, my
brother, this that thou seest with those sick eyes is no firm
Eldorado, and Corn-Law Paradise of Donothings, but a dream of thy
own fevered brain. It is a glass-window, I tell thee, so many
stories from the street; where are iron spikes and the law
of gravitation!
What is the meaning of nobleness, if this be 'noble?' In a
valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others
suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. The chief of men is he
who stands in the van of men; fronting the peril which frightens
back all others; which, if it be not vanquished, will devour the
others. Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a
crown of thorns. The Pagan Hercules, why was he accounted a
hero? Because he had slain Nemean Lions, cleansed Augean
Stables, undergone Twelve Labours only not too heavy for a god.
In modern, as in ancient and all societies, the Aristocracy, they
that assume the functions of an Aristocracy, doing them or not,
have taken the post of honour; which is the post of difficulty,
the post of danger,--of death, if the difficulty be not overcome.
Il faut payer de sa vie. Why was our life given us, if not
that we should manfully give it? Descend, O Donothing Pomp;
quit thy down-cushions; expose thyself to learn what wretches
feel, and how to cure it! The Czar of Russia became a dusty
toiling shipwright; worked with his axe in the Docks of Saardam;
and his aim was small to thine. Descend thou: undertake this
horrid 'living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger' weltering round thy
feet; say, "I will heal it, or behold I will die foremost in
it." Such is verily the law. Everywhere and everywhen a man has
to 'pay with his life;' to do his work, as a soldier does, at
the expense of life. In no Piepowder earthly Court can you sue
an Aristocracy to do its work, at this moment: but in the Higher
Court, which even it calls 'Court of Honour,' and which is the
Court of Necessity withal, and the eternal Court of the Universe,
in which all Fact comes to plead, and every Human Soul is an
apparitor,--the Aristocracy is answerable, and even now
answering, there.
Parchments? Parchments are venerable: but they ought at all
times to represent, as near as they by possibility can, the
writing of the Adamant Tablets; otherwise they are not so
venerable! Benedict the Jew in vain pleaded parchments; his
usuries were too many. The King said, "Go to, for all thy
parchments, thou shalt pay just debt; down with thy dust, or
observe this tooth-forceps!" Nature, a far juster Sovereign, has
far terribler forceps. Aristocracies, actual and imaginary,
reach a time when parchment pleading does not avail them. "Go
to, for all thy parchments, thou shalt pay due debt!" shouts the
Universe to them, in an emphatic manner. They refuse to pay,
confidently pleading parchment: their best grinder-tooth, with
horrible agony, goes out of their jaw. Wilt thou pay now? A
second grinder, again in horrible agony, goes: a second, and a
third, and if need be, all the teeth and grinders, and the life
itself with them;--and then there is free payment, and an
anatomist-subject into the bargain!
Reform Bills, Corn-Law Abrogation Bills, and then Land-Tax Bill,
Property-Tax Bill, and still dimmer list of etceteras; grinder
after grinder:---my lords and gentlemen, it were better for
you to arise, and begin doing your work, than sit there and
plead parchments!
We write no Chapter on the Corn-Laws, in this place; the Corn-
Laws are too mad to have a Chapter. There is a certain
immorality, when there is not a necessity, in speaking about
things finished; in chopping into small pieces the already
slashed and slain. When the brains are out, why does not a
Solecism die! It is at its own peril if it refuse to die; it
ought to make all conceivable haste to die, and get itself
buried! The trade of Anti-Corn-Law Lecturer in these days, still
an indispensable, is a highly tragic one.
The Corn-Laws will go, and even soon go: would we were all as
sure of the Millennium as they are of going! They go swiftly in
these present months; with an increase of velocity, an ever-
deepening, ever-widening sweep of momentum, truly notable. It is
at the Aristocracy's own damage and peril, still more than at any
other's whatsoever, that the Aristocracy maintains them;--at a
damage, say only, as above computed, of a 'hundred thousand
pounds an hour!' The Corn-Laws keep all the air hot: fostered
by their fever-warmth, much that is evil, but much also, how
much that is good and indispensable, is rapidly coming to life
among us!
