Midas
The condition of England, on which many pamphlets are now in the
course of publication, and many thoughts unpublished are going on
in every reflective head, is justly regarded as one of the most
ominous, and withal one of the strangest, ever seen in this
world. England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce,
supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of
inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and
grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with
workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of
workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest and the
willingest our Earth ever had; these men are here; the work
they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant,
exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as
of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers,
ye master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it,
no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted
fruit!" On the poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest
shape; but on the rich masterworkers too it falls; neither can
the rich master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape,
but all are like to be brought low with it, and made 'poor'
enough, in the money-sense or a far fataller one.
Of these successful skillful workers some two millions, it is now
counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door
relief' flung over the wall to them,--the workhouse Bastille
being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder
by a stronger.* They sit there, these many months now; their
hope of deliverance as yet small. In workhouses, pleasantly so
named, because work cannot be done in them. Twelve hundred
thousand workers in England alone; their cunning right-hand
lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful bosom; their hopes,
outlooks, share of this fair world, shut in by narrow walls.
They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of horrid enchantment;
glad to be imprisoned and enchanted, that they may not perish
starved. The picturesque Tourist, in a sunny autumn day,
through this bounteous realm of England, describes the Union
Workhouse on his path. 'Passing by the Workhouse of St. Ives
in Huntingdonshire, on a bright day last autumn,' says the
picturesque Tourist, 'I saw sitting on wooden benches, in front
of their Bastille and within their ringwall and its railings,
some half-hundred or more of these men. Tall robust figures,
young mostly or of middle age; of honest countenance, many of
them thoughtful and even intelligent-looking men. They sat
there, near by one another; but in a kind of torpor, especially
in a silence, which was very striking. In silence: for, alas,
what word was to be said? An Earth all lying round, crying, Come
and till me, come and reap me;--yet we here sit enchanted! In
the eyes and brows of these men hung the gloomiest expression,
not of anger, but of grief and shame and manifold inarticulate
distress and weariness; they returned my glance with a glance
that seemed to say, "Do not look at us. We sit enchanted here,
we know not why. The Sun shines and the Earth calls; and, by
the governing Powers and Impotences of this England, we are
forbidden to obey. It is impossible, they tell us!" There was
something that reminded me of Dante's Hell in the look of all
this; and I rode swiftly away.
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* The Return of Paupers for England and Wales, at Ladyday, 1842,
is, "In-door 221,687, Out-door 1,207,402, Total 1,429,089."--
(_Official Report_)
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So many hundred thousands sit in workhouses: and other hundred
thousands have not yet got even workhouses; and in thrifty
Scotland itself, in Glasgow or Edinburgh City, in their
dark lanes, hidden from all but the eye of God, and of rare
Benevolence the minister of God, there are scenes of woe and
destitution and desolation, such as, one may hope, the Sun never
saw before in the most barbarous regions where men dwelt.
Competent witnesses, the brave and humane Dr. Alison, who speaks
what he knows, whose noble Healing Art in his charitable hands
becomes once more a truly sacred one, report these things for us:
these things are not of this year, or of last year, have no
reference to our present state of commercial stagnation, but only
to the common state. Not in sharp fever-fits, but in chronic
gangrene of this kind is Scotland suffering. A Poor-law, any and
every Poor-law, it may be observed, is but a temporary measure;
an anodyne, not a remedy: Rich and Poor, when once the naked
facts of their condition have come into collision, cannot long
subsist together on a mere Poor-law. True enough:--and yet,
human beings cannot be left to die! Scotland too, till something
better come, must have a Poor-law, if Scotland is not to be a
byword among the nations. O, what a waste is there; of noble
and thrice-noble national virtues; peasant Stoicisms, Heroisms;
valiant manful habits, soul of a Nation's worth,--which all the
metal of Potosi cannot purchase back; to which the metal of
Potosi, and all you can buy with _it,_ is dross and dust!
Why dwell on this aspect of the matter? It is too indisputable,
not doubtful now to any one. Descend where you will into the
lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by
Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by
Mining-Labourer Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking,
the same sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit
that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is
fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered,
there was literally never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes,--
and this too has no reference to the present state of trade,
being of date prior to that,--a Mother and a Father are arraigned
and found guilty of poisoning three of their children, to defraud
a 'burial-society' of some _31.8s._ due on the death of each
child: they are arraigned, found guilty; and the official
authorities, it is whispered, hint that perhaps the case is not
solitary, that perhaps you had better not probe farther into that
department of things. This is in the autumn of 1841; the crime
itself is of the previous year or season. "Brutal savages,
degraded Irish," mutters the idle reader of Newspapers; hardly
lingering on this incident. Yet it is an incident worth
lingering on; the depravity, savagery and degraded Irishism
being never so well admitted. In the British land, a human
Mother and Father, of white skin and professing the Christian
religion, had done this thing; they, with their Irishism and
necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such instances
are like the highest mountain apex emerged into view; under
which lies a whole mountain region and land, not yet emerged. A
human Mother and Father had said to themselves, What shall we do
to escape starvation? We are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar;
and help is far.--Yes, in the Ugolino Hungertower stern things
happen; best-loved little Gaddo fallen dead on his Father's
knees!--The Stockport Mother and Father think and hint: Our poor
little starveling Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will
see only evil and not good in this world: if he were out of
misery at once; he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept
alive? It is thought, and hinted; at last it is done. And now
Tom being killed, and all spent and eaten, Is it poor little
starveling Jack that must go, or poor little starveling Will?--
What an inquiry of ways and means!
In starved sieged cities, in the uttermost doomed ruin of old
Jerusalem fallen under the wrath of God, it was prophesied and
said, 'The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own
children.' The stern Hebrew imagination could conceive no
blacker gulf of wretchedness; that was the ultimatum of degraded
god-punished man. And we here, in modern England, exuberant with
supply of all kinds, besieged by nothing if it be not by
invisible Enchantments, are we reaching that?--How come these
things? Wherefore are they, wherefore should they be?
Nor are they of the St. Ives workhouses, of the Glasgow lanes,
and Stockport cellars, the only unblessed among us. This
successful industry of England, with its plethoric wealth, has as
yet made nobody rich; it is an enchanted wealth, and belongs yet
to nobody. We might ask, Which of us has it enriched? We can
spend thousands where we once spent hundreds; but can purchase
nothing good with them. In Poor and Rich, instead of noble
thrift and plenty, there is idle luxury alternating with mean
scarcity and inability. We have sumptuous garnitures for our
Life, but have forgotten to _live_ in the middle of them. It is
an enchanted wealth; no man of us can yet touch it. The class
of men who feel that they are truly better off by means of it,
let them give us their name!
Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors,--with what
advantage they can report, and their Doctors can: but in the
heart of them, if we go out of the dyspeptic stomach, what
increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, beautifuller,
stronger, braver? Are they even what they call 'happier? Do
they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in
this God's Earth; do more things and human faces look with
satisfaction on them? Not so. Human faces gloom discordantly,
disloyally on one another. Things, if it be not mere cotton and
iron things, are growing disobedient to man. The Master Worker
is enchanted, for the present, like his Workhouse Workman;
clamours, in vain hitherto, for a very simple sort of 'Liberty:'
the liberty 'to buy where he finds it cheapest, to sell where he
finds it dearest.' With guineas jingling in every pocket, he was
no whit richer; but now, the very guineas threatening to vanish,
he feels that he is poor indeed. Poor Master Worker! And the
Master Unworker, is not he in a still fataller situation?
Pausing amid his game-preserves, with awful eye,--as he well may!
Coercing fifty-pound tenants; coercing, bribing, cajoling;
doing what he likes with his own. His mouth full of loud
futilities, and arguments to prove the excellence of his
Corn-law;* and in his heart the blackest misgiving, a desperate
half-consciousness that his excellent Corn-law is indefensible,
that his loud arguments for it are of a kind to strike men too
literally _dumb._
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[* Digital transcriber note: The "corn-law" that Carlyle
repeatedly refers to was an English sliding-scale tariff on
grain, which kept the price of bread artificially inflated.]
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To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth? Who is it that
it blesses; makes happier, wiser, beautifuller, in any way
better? Who has got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for
him, like a true servant, not like a false mock-servant; to do
him any real service whatsoever? As yet no one. We have more
riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of
them than any Nation ever had before. Our successful industry is
hitherto unsuccessful; a strange success, if we stop here! In
the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish; with gold
walls, and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied.
Workers, Master Workers, Unworkers, all men, come to a pause;
stand fixed, and cannot farther. Fatal paralysis spreading
inwards, from the extremities, in St. Ives workhouses, in
Stockport cellars, through all limbs, as if towards the heart
itself. Have we actually got enchanted, then; accursed by
some god?--
Midas longed for gold, and insulted the Olympians. He got gold,
so that whatsoever he touched became gold,--and he, with his long
ears, was little the better for it. Midas had misjudged the
celestial music-tones; Midas had insulted Apollo and the gods:
the gods gave him his wish, and a pair of long ears, which also
were a good appendage to it. What a truth in these old Fables!