The Portland daily press., 1867-08-23
Leviatham Unclaimed.

1t is fortunate thing when good cause
has reckless and brutal antagonist 1t is
fortunate when reaction from right is vio-
lent and thorough, for then the counter re-
action comes more speedily and carries the
world further toward its goal-the millenni-
um The last half decade has been peculiar
ly an era of progress and reform, and provi-
dence or fate has raised up to mark and de-
clare the inevitable rebound-Carlyle! The
allocution which that sage has pronounced
from the den to which he has retired for his
greater convenience in celebrating the oracu-
lar gro Tls with which he from time to time
favors the world, is sufficiently thorough and
earnest to answer all the requirements of
moral reaction, and coming from the authori-
tative source it does, the world may logically
pass onward at once from the point where the
Reform Bill in England and Emancipation in
America have left it. shooting Niagara
and After" is, in its philosophy, an adaptation
of Hobbes's Leviathan; in its politics, an echo
to Napoleon's Caesar; in its theology, hero
worship-devil-worship. 1t is as foreign to
any healthy and natural thought of this age
as the obscenities of Doccaccio or the political
and social canons Of Machiavel and Chester
field. All this is fortunate. 1t marks the
consummation Of what is at the same time
disagreeable and unavoidable. Who listened
or cared when only SALISBURY uttered his
feeble protest in the House of Lords ? ?The is
only nobeman by virtue of having the repu-
tation OF being his fathers son. What mat
tered it while only Rouher replied to Jules
Favre and Thiers ?-he iscnly the paid mouth
piece of an imperial robber and assassin, who
covers blood stains under the insignia of roy
atty. The Day Book and Helper, disciples in
the same antique school, have clamored like
obsure birds even on this side of the water,
but no one marked them more than Hotspur
marked Glendower, when he entertained him
by enumerating the several names of the dew
ills with whom he maintained social relations,
But with Carlyle n is different He has read
vast deal Of out of the way German, has
written Sartor Resartus, and had the courage
to attempt to crowd the American Til ad into
nutshell.
An English translation Of the great hero
worshipper's manifesto would make good
Democratic campaign document Its con-
servatism, advocacy of class distinctions and
barbaric scorn OF. lower, laboring classes are
altogether in harmony with the leading ideas
of our own reactionists. An English version
we insist upon; Tor unless there is transla-
tion into the Manhattanese dialect known to
the brethren of Mozart and Tammany, it
would be as unintellisible to them as an old
law book, written in Norman French.
The great Democratic proposition for 1857
is, "Blast a nigger;" Carlyle's is triae broad
er, but more logical and scientifically accu-
rate. Stripped OF all the word wonders that
partially conceal it is simply "Down with the
labOring classes" rsl-,.rEt..a
The Democratic leaders mean the same
thing but have not the boldness to avow it,
They disguise their purposes by taking the
specific term "nigger" instead Of the generic
"Iaboring man." Herein may be observed the
shrewdness OF party leaders. Undiluted Car
iylism would leave them with less than ten
thousand followers in the whole country. So
they make profession of infinite tenderness
for the laboring man and thus lead a consid-
cradle number of them in a ruthless crusade
against class whose interests are identical
with their own. Thousands OF Irishmel go
TO the polls every year and deposit ballots
which they mean for an assertion that they
are better than any possible African, not con-
sidering that if they succeed in establishing
the existence of caste in that particular in
stance, they also recognize, by that very act, a
class better than themselves. a ztDsH
History will have no stranger paradox than
this: that the aristocratic element ofthe AM
erican people, which had for its allies and
friends Carlyle and the English aristocracy,
the Pope and all the Emperors and Kings, as
sumed the name of Democracy" for q party
designation, and then gathered to its ranks
thousands of laborihg men. .,G.et h