Style of the Pamphlets.

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hardened into sceptical egoism, knows no monition but that of his own frigid cautions, avarices, mean timidities." That Carlyle is here in the right as to the general rule and law that the elders of the people are their natural leaders whether in court, camp, or congregation, I have no doubt. There may be more question as to the alleged apathy and prudential cowardice of mature or aged men in this, as distinguished from other times.

In literary form, the Latter-Day Pamphlets are inferior to Carlyle's earlier writings. His mannerism is now too obvious, too strongly obtruded. His humour becomes harsher, and sometimes borders upon coarseness. Heavyside, Flimnap, MacCrowdy, Crabbe with his Radiator, Smelfungus, Sauerteig, Peter, Bobus of Houndsditch, Phantasm Captains and the rest of the dramatis persona, cease to be amusing from the frequency of their appearance on the boards. The vehemence has now become almost spasmodic, and the "green oases by the palm-tree wells," the spaces of repose and chastened and genial beauty, have become far less frequent than formerly.

THE

HE good and the bad in the Latter-Day Pamphlets are almost inextricably coiled and twisted together. Having read each Pamphlet when it came out, being then a lad of nineteen, and having had the volume often in my hand, and always, more or less, in my head since then, I ought to have some skill in separating its good from its evil; and it is upon the strength of my performance of this problem, and the inferences drawn therefrom, that, Liberal as I am, I pretend to be a more legitimate pupil and disciple of Carlyle in the political department than those Conservative persons for whom the Latter-Day Pamphlets are a fountain of speculative and practical Toryism. I find certain of those fundamental facts recognised in them, certain of those fundamental principles laid down in them, on which rational and constructive Liberalism rests.

The first fact recognised by Carlyle is that sovereignty has in these times passed into the hands of the whole people. "Universal democracy," he says, "whatever we may think of it, has declared itself as an inevitable fact of the days in which we live; and he who has any chance to instruct, or lead, in his days must begin by admitting that: new street barricades, and new anarchies, still more scandalous if less sanguinary, must return and again return, till governing persons everywhere know and admit that." Even in Russia democracy is working underground, and

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may soon come above ground; "and here in England, though we object to it resolutely in the form of streetbarricades and insurrectionary pikes, and decidedly will not open doors to it on those terms, the tramp of its million feet is on all streets and thoroughfares, the sound of its bewildered thousand-fold voice is in all writings and speakings, in all thinkings, and modes, and activities, of men the soul that does not now, with hope or terror, discern it, is not the one we address on this occasion." No acceptance of democracy as an inexorable fact could be more explicit than this; and I am unable to attach any coherent sense to the words, "acceptance of democracy," unless they imply that government is to take place, not in opposition to the national will, not in scornful indifference to the national will, but with the assent and by the authority of the national will.

Mr. Carlyle next lays down the principle that what is essential to prosperous governing is that "the man or nation can discern what the true regulations of the universe are in regard to him and his pursuit, and can faithfully and steadfastly follow these." The form of expression may here be vague, but the meaning is incontrovertible. You want good government. Will democracy ensure that? Self-government by fools is ruin. So much importance does Carlyle attach to the fact that government by the people's will is not necessarily right government, that we shall not do him justice unless we quote at least one of those passages in which he impales the idiotic notion, possibly entertained by a brainless mobocrat here and there, that, if you only perfect your voting apparatus, you are absolutely certain of good government.

ROUNDING THE POLITICAL CAPE HORN.

Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most

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ice

harmonious, exquisitely constitutional manner; the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour, by the ancient elemental powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape; if you cannot,—the ruffian winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic admonition"; you will be flung, halffrozen, on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your berg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship; yes, indeed, the ship's crew may be very unanimous, which doubtless, for the time being, will be very comfortable to the ship's crew, and to their Phantasm Captain if they have one; but if the tack they unanimously steer upon is guiding them into the belly of the abyss, it will not profit them much! Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box at all; and they reject the Phantasm species of captains; one wishes much some other entities-since all entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws,-could be brought to show as much wisdom and sense at least of self-preservation, the first command of nature. Phantasm captains with unanimous votings: this is considered to be all the law and all the prophets, at present.

Into the vagaries of political lunacy it were bootless to inquire, but I am not aware that I ever met with any one foolish enough to dispute in terms the principle thus picturesquely stated. Dazzling imagery, however, may interfere with, rather than promote, the investigation of manysided truth, and we must look into this case of the Cape Horn voyagers somewhat closely.

The safety of the ship, in doubling Cape Horn, depends primarily upon whether the captain understands his business, or does not, and secondarily, though in an important degree, upon the loyalty and promptitude of the crew in rendering him obedience. This loyalty and promptitude may depend considerably upon the way in which the captain has been appointed; and, if any gross jobbery or flagrant injustice has been perpetrated in his appointment, the circumstance may materially affect that energetic obedience to his commands, on the part of the crew, which he will want in the Straits of Magellan.

One thing also is pretty sure, though it may look sur

Rounding the Political Cape Horn.

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prising, that, if the captain were appointed by vote of the crew, he would be a good seaman. Nothing seems much more absurd on paper than almost all kinds of popular election, and yet it has been proved in countless instances to be practically superior to any other that has been devised. The Professors whose genius spread the fame of Edinburgh University throughout the world, were elected by a parcel of shopkeepers, who could give no other guarantee of choosing rightly, except that they sincerely wished to get the best man. David Hume makes a note in his Memorandum-book, referring to Livy as his authority, that many of the chief officers of the army were named by the people in old Rome. Lord Advocate Young told the Social Science Congress at Aberdeen, in 1877, that he would back the verdict of a jury taken from all grades of society," and most of them uneducated men," against the verdict of fifteen of the best trained lawyers in Scotland. Who has not heard "fellows in buckram descanting on the absurdity of election of pastors by their congregations? But the Duke of Argyll, having some twenty-five livings in his gift, made a rule of appointing men who were chosen by the people; and he publicly stated that, in many years' experience, he had never found the people err in their choice. On the other hand, the Bishop of Peterborough, appointing pastors, with all the formalities and precautions that the buckram fellows could desire, declared, in 1875, that since entering on the duties of his diocese he had been called upon to institute one clergyman who was paralytic, one who was hopelessly aged and infirm, one reclaimed drunkard, who had been intemperate in a parish adjoining that in which he was to minister, and one who had resigned a public office rather than face a charge of "the most horrible immorality." The facts were notorious, but the Bishop was advised that he had no legal power to refuse institution. Whether St.