Polynesian. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu], Hawaii) 1844-1864, 1859-02-12
From the Philadelphia Evening Post.
Tendency of the age.

Tendency of the age.
In an elaborate review of Carlyle's Frederick
the Great, the London ImleS has the subioined re-
MARKS
{" Mr.. Carlyle has no faith in his age or his CO.
tempO$aries he is blind to the modern conditions
OF progress, and he turns lrom its complicated
agencies in despair. His creed is the old super
seded faith in individual efforts and the superiori-
ty of units; he is insensible to the grandeur of
social forces, and the increasing ease with which
they work; he questions their results because
they wrought by machinery which he has
never studied and is unable to appreciate. As the
true poet sings. the individual withers and the
world is more and mOre;' but Mr. CARLYLE, instead
of accepting this tendency as the inevitable law
or condition of progress, is irritated and queru-
lOus, or confused and alarmed, and rushes out in
his shirt sleeves to call for u hero. For present
occasions and Latterday wants he sees with dis
gust there is none on the beat. At the same time
he is looking for fatal catastrophe which
ought to beiall US, but which never happens-and
for some coming man to avert it, but who never
arrives, and for whom he remains sulkily waiting in
the cold. In history only he find consolation
There he meets with or fances heroes ad H5itu7a."
But we would suggest to the Times that the end
for the present. Of the grandeur of social forces"
in France, for instance, Is the - one man power"
as embodied in Louis Napoleon.
we WOulu also Suggest LnlJ tne course OF events
on this earth is apt to be from one extreme to
its opposite; SO that it is by no means improbable
that the poet Of fifty years to come. may have to
chronicle that " the individual is more and more"
Therefore Mr.. Carlyle may be allowed to doubt
that what may be Justly called at present the
prevailing tendency" is, as the Times says.
% the enevtabe law or condition of progress"
For our part, we are no believer in - ''inevitabe
laws of progress" Progress, as used in its gen.
8 -orrl-y q
able T" in the case of nation than Of an indigid-
ual-as the whole history of the world proves
because it is simply history, far, of the rise
and fall of nations - If thou dOest well, shalt
thou not be acccepted-if thou doest evil sin (and
death as the resultJ leth at the door this is
the only inevitable law of progress, upward
downward, and applies the same to men collect
lively and Individually.
Even as to our own highly favored country
in which Democracy and the &" social forces are
supposed to be the most firmly and widely rooted
he would be bold man, with the lights of his
torv around him, who should say that the growth
of the one man power" into a one man despot-
ism, was an absolute impossibility. Even Presi-
dent Buchanan, in letter regretting his inability
to be present at the recent Fort Duquesne celebra
tion in Pittsburg, feels respondent enough to
such ominous language the following -
% From the stand point at which we have arriv-
ed the anxious patriot cannot fail. whilst review
inc the past to cast glance into the future, and
to speculate upon what may be the condition OF
our beloved country when your pOsterity shall as
sembe to celebrate the second centennial ami
yersary of the capture of Fort Duquesne. Shall
our whole country then compose one united nation,
more populous, powerful and free than any other
which has ever existed Or will the Confederacy
have been rent assunder and divided into groups
of hostile and Jealous States Or may it ncs be
possible that, ere the next celebration, all the
fragments exhausted by intermediate conflicts
with each other, may have finally reunited and
sought refuge under the shelter Of one great and
overshadOwing despotlsm
| shall assume the privilege of advancing years
in referring to another growing and dangerous
evil. In the last age, although our fathers, like
ourselves were divided into political parties which
often had severe conflicts with each other, yet
never heard, until within a recent period, of the
employment of money to carry elections. Should
this practice increase until the voters and their
Representatives in the State and National Legis-
lature shall become infected, the fountain Of free
government will then be poisoned at its source, and
we must end as history proves, in a military des-
potism. A Democratic Republic, all agree, can
not long survive, unless sustained by public vir-
tue. When this is csrrupted and the people be-
come venal there is a canker at the root of the
tree of liberty which must cause it to wither and
to de-
We instance this to show that others than
scholar and author like Mr.. Carlyle-men whose
whole lives have been passed in the practical du-
ties of statesmanship-by no means regard it
an impossibility that - units may again become
superior, and override the socil forces" In
fact. talk about :" inevitable progress much as
YOU choose, every sensible and we-informed man
knows that, in the language of Mr.. Buchanan,
Democratic Republic, unless sustained by public
virtue. must end in a Despotism. And what an
incentive this knowledge should be, in the minds
of our public men, to Il faithful and lncorruPtibe
discharge of all their duties, Legislative, Judicial,
or Executive.
[From the Philadelphia Evening POsi.l
ITse of Pork as Food.