20 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



III 



It is Carlyle's polemic against democracy, and his alleged justifica- 

 tion of Might, which have united forces of such varying origin in the 

 present crusade against him. Did he then really pin his faith for the 

 future to a revival of the political reactionaries ? Did he defend those 

 tyrannies of the strong man armed by which the world has been so 

 nearly undone ? Let us grant at once that his accounts of both Crom- 

 well and Frederick are open to reproach. Let us grant that his 

 attacks upon democracy were often unfair. Let us grant that he 

 magnified enormously the advantages and turned a blind eye to the 

 risks of trusting an autocratic expert. Does this mean that he was 

 "Prussianised" ? I contend that to say this does grave injustice to 

 Carlyle, and pays an utterly undeserved compliment to Prussianism. 



We need in this debate to keep our heads. The prevailing resent- 

 ment arises in a great degree from the ambiguities of a word. If by 

 "democracy" we mean just a plan of government, it is a matter of 

 opinion how far the plan is good or bad, and not a few of those against 

 whom no charge of inhumanity would be entertained have judged 

 democratic government exceedingly evil. What rouses temper is 

 quite another sense of the word, and here at least Carlyle is open to 

 no reproach, but must rather be counted among our foremost demo- 

 crats. Few have denied with equal vigour all sacrosanctity in caste, 

 or have insisted with equal force upon every man's worth as determined 

 by personal ability or personal character, and as determined not at all 

 by birth, by descent, by tradition, by the prestige of a name or the 

 homage paid to unearned wealth. No writer has crystallised into more 

 telling phrase our human protest against the usurpations of mere rank. 



Carlyle did not believe that by universal suffrage, or even by 

 popular institutions the ideal of justice was to be reached. No doubt 

 we now think this judgment largely mistaken, but it was at least 

 arguable, it had a profound vein of truth, and the error — such as it 

 was — was an error about means, not about the end. Herein it differs 

 toto coelo from the creed we call Prussianism. As Carlyle himself put 

 it in defending his attitude against the strictures of Lecky, he did not 

 hold that Might is Right, but rather that Right is Might. In his best 

 moments of insight he even contradicted his own errors. Recall, for 

 instance, the passage about the deathbed of Louis XV as that not so 

 much of a French king as of the decaying French kingship. Recall 

 the paragraph about the birth of democracy in America, "announcing 

 under her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-do, that she is 

 born, and whirlwind-like will envelope the whole world," about the 

 new constitution standing there "inexpugnable, immeasureable," 



