A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 257 



materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant 

 as the light of the sun." This may well offset his 

 more pessimistic statement, that " there are fools, 

 cowards, knaves, and gluttonous traitors, true only 

 to their own appetite, in immense majority in every 

 rank of life ; and there is nothing frightfuller than 

 to see these voting and deciding." If we " went 

 down to the roots of it," this statement is simply un- 

 true. " Democracy," he says, " is, by the nature of 

 it, a self-canceling business, and gives, in the long 

 run, a net result of zero." 



Because the law of gravitation is uncompromising, 

 things are not, therefore, crushed in a wild rush to 

 the centre of attraction. The very traits that make 

 Carlyle so entertaining and effective as a historian 

 and biographer, namely, his fierce, man - devouring 

 eyes, make him impracticable in the sphere of prac- 

 tical politics. 



Let me quote a long and characteristic passage 

 from Carlyle's Latter-Day pamphlets, one of dozens 

 of others, illustrating his misconception of universal 

 suffrage : 



"Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excel- 

 lent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and 

 that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious, 

 exquisitely constitutional manner ; the ship, to get 

 round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already 

 voted for and fixed with adamantine rigor by the an- 

 cient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless 

 how you voe. If you can, by voting or without vot- 

 17 



