page_title: Thomas Carlyle
section_title: Later work
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Carlyle / Writing career / Later work
context_page_description: Thomas Carlyle was a British historian, satirical writer, essayist, translator, philosopher, mathematician, and teacher. In his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History, he argued that the actions of the "Great Man" play a key role in history, claiming that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men". Other major works include The French Revolution: A History, 3 vols and The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, 6 vols.
  His 1837 history of The French Revolution was the inspiration for Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, and remains popular today. Carlyle's 1836 Sartor Resartus is a notable philosophical novel.
  A noted polemicist, Carlyle coined the term "the dismal science" for economics, in his essay "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question", which advocated for the reintroduction of slavery to the West Indies. He also wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.
  Once a Christian, Carlyle lost his faith while attending the University of Edinburgh, later adopting a form of deism.
context_section_description: All these books were influential in their day, especially on writers such as Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. However, after the Revolutions of 1848 and political agitations in the United Kingdom, Carlyle published a collection of essays entitled Latter-Day Pamphlets, in 1850, in which he attacked democracy as an absurd social ideal, mocking the idea that objective truth could be discovered by weighing up the votes for it, while equally condemning hereditary aristocratic leadership as a "deadening." The government should come from those ablest to lead, Carlyle asserted. Two of these essays, No. I: "The Present Times" and No. II: "Model Prisons" was reviewed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in April 1850.   Marx and Engels state their approval of Carlyle's criticisms against hereditary aristocracy; however, they harshly criticize Carlyle's views as "a thinly disguised acceptance of existing class rule" and an unjust exoneration of statism. Anthony Trollope for his part considered that in the Pamphlets "the grain of sense is so smothered in a sack of the sheerest trash.... He has one idea – a hatred of spoken and acted falsehood; and on this, he harps through the whole eight pamphlets". A century later, Northrop Frye would similarly speak of the work as "tantrum prose" and "rhetorical ectoplasm."
  In later writings, Carlyle sought to examine instances of heroic leadership in history. The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845) presented a positive image of Cromwell: someone who attempted to weld order from the conflicting forces of reform in his own day. Carlyle sought to make Cromwell's words live in their own terms by quoting him directly and then commenting on the significance of these words in the troubled context of the time. Again this was intended to make the past "present" to his readers: "he is epic, still living".
  His essay "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question" (1849) suggested that slavery should never have been abolished, or else replaced with serfdom. It had kept order, he argued, and forced work from people who would otherwise have been lazy and feckless: "West Indian blacks are emancipated and, it appears, refuse to work". This, and Carlyle's support for the repressive measures of Governor Edward Eyre in Jamaica during the Morant Bay rebellion, further alienated him from his old liberal allies. As Governor of the Colony, Eyre, fearful of an island-wide uprising, forcibly suppressed the rebellion and had many black peasants killed. Hundreds were flogged. He also authorized the execution of George William Gordon, a mixed-race colonial assemblyman who was suspected of involvement in the rebellion.  These events created great controversy in Britain, resulting in demands for Eyre to be arrested and tried for murdering Gordon. John Stuart Mill organised the Jamaica Committee, which demanded his prosecution and included some well-known British liberal intellectuals (such as John Bright, Charles Darwin, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Hughes, Thomas Henry Huxley, and Herbert Spencer).
  Carlyle set up rival Governor Eyre Defence and Aid Committee for the defence, arguing that Eyre had acted decisively to restore order. His supporters included John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens,  Alfred Tennyson and John Tyndall. Eyre was twice charged with murder, but the cases never proceeded.
  Similar hard-line views were expressed in Shooting Niagara, and After?, written after the passing of the Electoral Reform Act of 1867 in which he "reaffirmed his belief in wise leadership (and wise followership), his disbelief in democracy and his hatred of all workmanship – from brickmaking to diplomacy – that was not genuine."
caption: Helen Allingham's 1879 painting of Carlyle
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