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conclude that the other is essentially, and as tried by a spiritual standard, the better, sounder, and more gifted nature. Goldsmith, we should think, would rank higher, with all his moral defects, than a Benjamin Franklin. Not that there was virtue in the defects of the one, for prudence added to intellect and heart, make the noblest triad; but that there was greater want of virtue in the defects of the other. Now, although Mr. Carlyle is very far from lending his sanction to so coarse a mode of regarding men as that which makes the prudential all in all, and although no man has startled the world more by the audacity with which he has found merit where mankind in general found none, or worse than none; yet we think we perceive in him, and especially of late, a tendency to accept as absolute, on the whole, that classification of men which is determined, as we have seen, chiefly by their practical or success-compelling qualities. To say this in the face of his onslaught on Mr. Hudson is somewhat bold; but we think we could prove it. It is the Roman type of mind that Mr. Carlyle prefers, and not the Hellenic. For what is called mere sensibility, the influence of which is invisibly and electrically dif fusive, he has but little respect; what he admires is direct energy of character. Hence, as we imagine, somewhat of that tone of severity and reproach with which he thinks it necessary to address his imaginary audience of paupers in the first of these pamphlets. That they are paupers, that they have failed to maintain themselves above the level of want, is to him, as indeed it ought legitimately to be to all, a primâ facie evidence that in some point or other they are weaker than their fellows; but, in attending to this, he seems to forget that, to some extent at least, the worldly struggle in which these men have fared so badly, may not have yet been so organized as to be a fair comparative trial of the whole merits of the competitors. And so, in a certain, though perhaps smaller degree, in the case even of criminals. Can it be said, with any degree of confidence, that the criminals of the world are the worst men in it? May no good qualities of humanity seek a specific refuge even among them? Ah! does not Christianity here also help us to a higher speculation? Does it not seem as if its great Founder had intended, by his assiduous presence in the society of sinners, and by his frequent assertions of the superiority of mercy to sacrifice, to indicate a preference for keenness of sensibility over energy of character, and to read the world the permanent lesson that, on this very account, some of the more hopeful elements of our social regeneration are to be found among the outcasts?

To turn to another topic: Not the least interesting of the

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contents of these Pamphlets are the author's expositions of his views regarding the nature, objects, and methods of government. The great end of all government Mr. Carlyle defines, in general terms, to be the conduct of the whole social procedure of a nation in accordance with the permanent laws of the universe. "To prosper in this world," he says, "to gain felicity, victory, and improvement, either for a man or a nation, there is but one thing requisite 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." Whatsoever administration, "were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, or M'Crowdy, the seraphic doctor, with his last evangel of Political Economy," can set a nation most surely in the way of these laws, is, by that fact, the best form of government. Something more precise, however, he thinks, it may be possible to determine respecting the mode most likely to attain the great end. If, for example, any means could be devised whereby, absolutely, or even approximately, the ablest man in a nation should be raised to the highest official place in it, and surrounded by the men nearest in ability to himself, so as to govern by their aid-this, he thinks, would be as nearly a perfect scheme of national polity as we can hope to live under. For, according to his theory, the ablest man is also necessarily the best man, the most valiant and worthy in all respects, and the truest in his insight into the ways of the universe. Place him, therefore, at the top of a nation, and give him able men as his instruments and subordinates; and, so far as human means can, you guarantee that nation a career of prosperity and rectitude.

Now, though all this is very general, yet, like other generalities, it is a splendid thing to remember, and a thing, nevertheless, very apt to be forgotten. By keeping this ideal scheme of government in mind, one may not indeed be able, thinks Mr. Carlyle, to frame off-hand a set of institutions for its accomplishment, but one will at least have a useful notion of the kind of institutions that will tend that way; and, above all, one will be expert at knowing the kind of institutions that have no such promise in them. For himself, making this critical use of his ideal, he is disposed to protest, it appears, chiefly against one abstraction relative to the art of governing, now widely spread throughout the mind of Western Europe-the abstraction, namely, that is couched in the phrase "Representative System.

Fairly to get out the collective wishes of a nation with respect to every step of its procedure; fairly to collect the votes of all

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its component individuals, and accurately to base every act of legislation or administration on the pronounced opinion of the majority, (if indeed some method might not be devised for giving expression in act to the desire of the minority too,) this, for the last century or more, has been the ideal scheme of government painted forth to the eager eyes of nations by our metaphysical politicians. Vox Populi, vor, as nearly as possible, Dei; perfect, therefore, your system of representation, so as not to leave out of account any particle of opinion lodged anywhere throughout the community, whether in the highest or in the lowest stratum; and by this means alone you will catch the clue of the future. Such is the abstract theory in practice, of course, there are difficulties in the way. To meet these, it is customary to take up the question in two parts; discussing, first, the Suffrage, or that portion of the representative system in which, by the delegation of the right of legislation by the community at large to a limited number of individuals, the first stage in the formularization of its wishes is effected; and, secondly, the Constitution of Parliaments, or that other portion of the system, in which, by the adoption of certain modes of procedure among the delegated individuals, the work of formularization is completed. In both these stages of the process, the theory demands the most absolute respect for the representative principle. In the first place, the suffrage should, according to the pure theory, be universal, no man, woman, or child, being excluded; and, in the second place, the constitution of parliaments should be such as, while subjecting them as completely as possible to the flux of opinion out of doors, to secure them perfect independence in deliberation, and the entire control of the executive. This, of course, is only as the matter is represented in theory; for neither in the nature of things is such a thorough scheme of representation possible, nor even in those countries where it has been carried farthest has it attained all the finish that might be practicable. On the whole, the part of the scheme that has been most elaborated in Europe is that referring to the constitution of parliaments. In England and in France, parliaments have now for some time been approximating to the form accounted perfect by the representativists. Hence, in the less advanced countries of Europe, the possession of a parliamentary constitution like that of England was, till lately, regarded as a realization in full of the system of representation. Only in England and France themselves was the other part of the problem, that of the organization of the suffrage, very assiduously worked at. Completing the long effort to bring up the practice to the theory, there arose in each of these countries a Universal Suffrage movement.

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Recent events have given this movement an éclat that a little while ago could hardly have been anticipated; and now it may be said that over all Europe the aspiration of the popular politicians is for a free and exclusively representative parliament, based on universal suffrage. That, and that alone, it is believed, will be the salvation of the nations.

Right into the heart of all this Mr. Carlyle hurls his contradiction. Keeping in view his conclusion as to the end and purpose of government, namely, that nations should be led conformably to the laws of right and justice, he denies, in toto, the competence, as regards this end, of the theory of representation. His illustration on this point is very happy.

"Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this way and that, above decks and below, in the most 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 half-frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all.

* 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."-The Present Time, pp. 18, 19.

This quarrel with the representative theory of government he carries out in detail. For the suffrage movement, for example, he has no regard whatever, pronouncing it one of the least hopeful speculations in which, at the present day, a man could engage. By no conceivable mode or amount, he thinks, of "ballot-boxing," could the only end be served that would entitle that process to any estimation as one of the chief formalities in the business of government, the discrimination, namely, of the ablest and fittest men from the rest of the community, in order that they might be invested with official rank. To perfect the organization of the suffrage would, therefore, he thinks, be a waste of labour. Again, as regards parliaments, his judgment is to the same purpose. A parliament is but a talking-apparatus, and, even were it composed of efficient men, would necessarily, VOL. XIV. NO. XXVII.

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by the very nature of its constitution as a representative body, be less adapted for the true work of government than some other institution easily conceivable. The day of parliaments, he asserts, is all but gone by in England; and already, he thinks, men ought to be beginning to confess as much to themselves, and to be looking forward to the new sort of device, upon which, as he anticipates, the country, if it is to exist in prosperity any longer, must soon come to depend. That device, he believes, will be a reformed Downing-street. Somehow or other, (he is unable to say how; except that he believes the proclamation of the necessity will help to bring about the result, by rousing and setting in motion towards Whitehall the very individuals that are wanted,) the country will have to get together its best intellects; and these, forming themselves into an executive committee, will have to assume the direction of affairs, using such of the old forms of parliamentary procedure as they find convenient, and dispensing with the others. Meanwhile, as a step to this large result, and as a means of bringing it about as gradually, and with as little derangement as possible, he proposes that the present constitution of our parliaments should be at once so far modified as to permit the return to them of a few members who should not be representatives of any constituencies, but direct nominees of the prime minister.

Now, in all this there is much that is deep, and full of wholesome instruction, especially needed at the present hour. To disenchant the popular mind of its illusion as to the absolute sufficiency of a full representative system for the remedy of all social wrongs, and the satisfaction of all social wants, would be a service of the highest importance. Two thousand years ago Socrates made it one of his aims to perform very much the same service for the men of Athens, teaching them, almost in the very words that Mr. Carlyle uses, that right and justice were the ends of all government, and that these ends could no more be accomplished by the hap-hazard association of the citizens, than the business of steering a ship safely could be accomplished by the empiric agreement of the passengers. It is a curious corroboration, also, of the validity of these views of Mr. Carlyle at this particular crisis of the affairs of Europe, that the profoundest speculative politicians of France have of late been pursuing very nearly the same track of thought. Among the best passages in that part of the Cours de Philosophie Positive of M. Comte, in which the author contributes his efforts towards the formation of a science of Sociology, are those wherein he criticises the existing maxims of our ordinary liberal politicians, such as that embodied in the phrase "sovereignty of the people," and points out