The Sun.
London, England, 1840-01-01 00:00:00

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LONDON :
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1840.

Mr. CARLYLE is known to most of our readers
as an historian of great power, though excessively
artificial. His succession of epics, called the
French Revolution, has made for him a name in
literature, while his miscellaneous works have ac-
quired for him no little reputation as a deep-
thinking, though mys'ical philosopher. Every
work which proceeds from such a man will com-
mand attention ; but when he undertakes to trace
the present evils of society to their source, and to
suggest a remedy for them—when he throws the
light of his large experience in books, and of his
midnight suggestions, over our every day affairs,
and writes a work on Chartism, it may be ex-
pected to excite almost intense interest.
Mr. CARLYLE is not one of us. He is a
meditative man, not a daily writer, forced to take
every topic as it comes, and frequently to fling well-
weighed reflection to the winds, in order to indite
some common-place trumpery about the In's and
Out's. He is neither a Whig nor a Radical. Nei-
ther is he a Tory, for he abhors persecution, and
reprobates, far more than he satirizes Reform, the
" heavier wrong" done to the nation by the Tories
in opposing, " after thirteen centuries," that the
" fraction of the revenue of one day," should
be laid out on education. He is not mixed
up with party contests, but, placed on the vantage
ground of an enlarged philosophy, he looks at
passing events, and writes on them to instruct, not
to defeat.
His pamphlet comes forth too at an appropriate
time. Just before the meeting of Farliament lie
summons public attention to the " Condition-
of England question." He ridicules the atten-
tion which is bestowed on the old grand question
whether A is to be in office or B, the Canada
question, the Irish Appropriation question, the
West India question, on Game Laws,
Usury Laws, Hill Coolies, Smithfield cattle,
and dog carts, and insists " that Honourable Mem-
bers, particularly Radical Members, ought to speak
of the Condition-of-England question." We agree
entirely with Mr. CARLYLE on this point, and
the very name be has given to the inquiry may
excite attention, which common language would
fail to command. The " Condition-of-England
question" ought to engage all our care.nd "
lowe per
er
struggle that divides the upper a
in society over Europe, and more pain-
fully and notably in England than elsewhere,
must end and adjust itself by making the right clear
and the might clear. And the right and might
ought now, therefore, to he a,certained. " Why
are the working classes discontented—what is their
condition. economical and moral, in their homes
and their hearts—what do they complain of—what
ought they and ought they not to complain of ?"
These are the searching questions to which
Mr. CARLYLE justly calls public attention,
and on which he throws no inconsiderable
light. We will add, too, that they are the
sort of questions the Legislature must take
up and sift, and must separate in them all that is
extrinsic and accidental from all that is essential
and permanent, before it can have the most remote
chance of framing useful laws, or of restoring that
contentment amongst the bulk of the people,
wanting which no amount of police and military
force will be zhie to secure the property or preserve
the peace of socie:;-.
Without at present foi:OwilMr• CARLYLE in
his investigations, we must s
seems an almost insurmountable tohhasttz:leusatthtelriee
very threshold. He assumes that the grey:
of wax
of the working classes is government. He con-
demns the laissez faire, and advocates the not
laissez faire principle. He describes the working
I all::
man as " crying, Guide me, govern me ;
and miserable, and cannot guide myself." "At
the bottom, is the wish and prayer of all human
hearts, and at all times, Give me a leader,
leader—not a false sham leader, a true leader—
that he may guide me on the true way, that I
may be loyal to him, and swear fealty to him."
Admitting that the fact is so, that the multitude
require to be led and governed, the other fact must
also be admitted that the present political heads pf
society, statesmen and priests of all parties, are
repudiated by the multitude as not true leaders, as
false sham leaders, and we require from Mr. CAR-
LYLE to tell us how the people are to find true
leaders, how they are to know them, or how their
confidence in their present leaders is to he rowed.
Of course he considers himself a true leader,
and he advocates education and emigration as the

remedies for the enormous evils of which the grown
and mature men and women, not the children, com-
_

plain ; at which the fierce Glasgow and Leeds ope-
ratives, already better instructed than those who
would teach them, will set up a horse laugh.
Other leaders, except those who conform to their

knowledge, will be received in the same way.
The Tories would lead them by the gibbet and the
bayonet, against which the bulk of society has al-
ready successfully rebelled. The obstacle, there-
fore, in our way, which must be removed before
the people can be led and guided, is their total
want of confidence—amply justified by their present
miserable condition, and some ages of unjust de-
gradation and suffering—in those who now
possess political power, and who, no doubt,
will struggle to preserve it. How is that confidence
to he restored, or this vast evil to be remedied ?
They have no share in the Parliament, which
they have come to despise too much to petition it,
They look on the idle classes, on the landowners,
and titheowners who constitute the aristocracy and
the priesthood, the governing and teaching
bodies, as their declared enemies, and as
long as the Corn-law is maintained they
have good reason so to regard them. Who
can teach them that they are wrong? Is that to be
the object of Mr. CARLYLE'S eduCatiOn,whiCh may
bear its fruits, perhaps, after a servile war of a quar-
ter of a century ? The lamentable division, widen-
ing every day, between masters and men, between
capitalists and labourers, deprives the multi-
tude of all • leaders, of all guides whom they
regard as true, and not false and sham-leaders !
Excluded as they are from all share of representa-
tion, we cannot expect that they should repose con-
fidence in the Legislature. That, they will say,
in the language of BURKE, " is appointing the old
offender to correct the old offences, is appointing the
wolf as guardian of the sheep ;" and " never can
any serious plan of amending old tyrannical esta-
blishments propose the authors and abettors of all
the abuses as the reformers of them."
To remove this obstacle there is but one possible
way. The rulers and the teachers must begin by
reforming themselves. They must prove by their
free, voluntary acts—and it will take time to make
the sincerity of their repentance be believed—that
they are worthy of the confidence of the people.
They must not preach one thing and do
another. They must not commit theft, and make
laws to punish it. They must prove that they are
faithful guides, true leaders, not sham and false,
not lying and deceiving leaders, and till they do
that the multitude, though " calling to be guided
and governed," will not submit to be guided and
governed by them.
We differ in many things from Mr, CARLYLE.
We think he has overlooked the great obstacle we
have dwelt on, and certainly he has not shown hog+.
it can be removed, Nevertheless, we are happy to
see an original thinker directing his energies to so
intelesting a subject, and happy to say that his
work can only produce good. We are especially
thankful to him, and the whole community ought to
be, for insisting, with much eloquence, on the neces-
sity now to cast aside all other matters, and consi-
der THE CONDITION-OF ENGLAND QUESTION.

The Tories are all adrift on the shoreless ocean
of politics without chart or compass. They know

not where they are, and are without star knowledge
to enable them lo shape a right course. They are

lying in the betwixts and the betweens, with now a

calm, now a baffling wind, and now a down-
pouring tornado, sometimes fair, and sometimes
foul. The pilot is bewildered, and the crew are
drunk. Sometimes they try to get towards the
rising, sometimes , towards the setting sun ; at one
' time courting King OASTLER anti the mob,
and at another holding up as idols to be wor-
shipped the decaying Church and the fading
Peerage. For some weeks and months they have
been abusing the Catholics, calling their priests
" surpliced ruffians," and the flocks a " beastly
rabble." They are now terrified at the con-
sequences of their • awn success, and with
equal meaness and cowardice, try to run away from
the storm they have raised. The Standard of
last night uses the following language, which 18
just as much worthy of belief as the generality of
the leaders in that truthless Journal :
We refer to the invaluable letter of 8., which we have
borrowed from this morning's Times, for the details of
proof as to the existence in Ireland of a very numerous
Roman Catholic party hostile to Mr. O'Connell, and,
of course, well-disposed to the cause of loyalty and
order. We have always affirmed the existence of such

•
a party. • • • •
From a Conservative Administration we shall ex•
pect a retracing of this insane and wicked course.
That Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington
who would be necessarily at the head of such a Go.
ernment must pay earnest attention to the Roman
Catholic body cannot be doubted. No two men living
are so deeply interested as these two great statesmen
in proving that Roman Catholics are capable of being
rendered loyal and peaceable subjects ; and that the
professions to which the Bill of 1829 was conceded
were not false as respects all Roman Catholics. We
may expect, therefore, that upon the accession of a
Conservative Government, whatever can be done will
be done to conciliate the Roman Catholic body.
The Tories would fain separate some of the
Catholics from Mr. O'CONNELL. After heaping
abuse on them indiscriminately for years, denouncing
them as necessarily bad subjects and bad men, be-
cause of their religion, the Tories wish to gain over
a part of them by flattery and a pretence of love.
Their hypocrisy is even more loathsome than
their avowed hatred and bigotry. A Conservative
administration, too, which is to be formed on the
principle of resuscitating the ascendancy of the
• Anglican Church, which is to come into power on
the principle of excluding Catholics from office, is
to co►►ciliate the Catholics. The humbug
comes too late. The Tories have again proved
that they are still the duck-legged drummer, al-
ways in the rear, of society. Four or five vcarr
ago great schisms were ci,mmencing amongst the
Catholics in Ireland. Had they not been perse-
cuted and oppressed, threatened and abused by the
villanous missionaries who went through the land
preaching strife in the name of a GOD of Love and
Peace, they would have broken into fragments.
Thousands would have followed Mr. CROLLY
and other dissidents, had they not been re-
pelled back into the bosom of the Pa-
pacy, and foreed under the banner of
Mr. O'CONNELL by the violence of the Ultra-
Protestants. The Protestants lost that golden op-
portunity, and by their severe and continued attacks
on the Catholics, again bound them into one united
homogeneous mass of fierce and on-pressing anta-
gonists. So bigotry has defeated itself, adding an-
other to the countless instances already on record,
that crime is its own punishment.
nt ; 4.

Following. the Treasury Minute, and the War-
"o published in the Gazette for the reduction of
Postaga, the Post-Office has issued an advertise-
ment, to bekund in another place, which explains
several matters viiiigh the other documents left in
darkness. We may ThigPtion the packet-rates on
foreign letters, stud the additicoal twopence to be
charged on foreign letters not posted Of delivered
at the port of departure or arrival.

The latest &emote from Madrid are of the 23d
ult. Letters had arrived (rwo SpARTERO, ad-
dressed severally to the QUEEN REGENT, tbg
Yre-
siuent of the Council, and his wife, but their eon
tents ilvtd Aot transpired. The French courier was
robbed, o .AQLI-1, within four leagues of Ma-
drid, of everything b,1,3

The French Journals of Monday talk of a uw(4i.

figtxtion of the Cabinet as likely to precede the
adoption a llie Address. We are of a contrary