" "In defect of
Raphaels and Angelos and Mozarts, we have royal academies of painting,
sculpture, music." In like manner, he complains, government is a
machine. "Its duties and faults are not those of a father, but of an
active parish-constable." Against the "police theory," as distinguished
from the "paternal" theory, of government, Carlyle protested with ever
shriller iteration. In _Chartism_, 1839, _Past and Present_, 1843, and
_Latter-day Pamphlets,_ 1850, he denounced this _laissez faire_ idea.
The business of government, he repeated, is to govern; but this view
makes it its business to refrain from governing. He fought most fiercely
against the conclusions of political economy, "the dismal science"
which, he said, affirmed that men were guided exclusively by their
stomachs. He protested, too, against the Utilitarians, followers of
Bentham and Mill, with their "greatest happiness principle," which
reduced virtue to a profit-and-loss account. Carlyle took issue with
modern liberalism; he ridiculed the self-gratulation of the time, all
the talk about progress of the species, unexampled prosperity, etc. But
he was reactionary without being conservative. He had studied the French
Revolution, and he saw the fateful, irresistible approach of democracy.
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