So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery, would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is, with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation, and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend. It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening. Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and were able to put his threats into execution.
"Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line,--know that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that _will_ hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him? Better he reach _his_ goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this.--And you Quashee, my pumpkin,--(not a bad fellow either, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!)--idle Quashee, I say you must get the Devil _sent away_ from your elbow, my poor dark friend! In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that you and I can live together. And if you had respectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyond the Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of the world,--behold I, for one individual, do not believe said respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins, except as things which you, till you grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late."