Latter-Day Pamphlets | Page 3

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LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. by Thomas Carlyle

But as yet struggles the twelfth hour of the Night. Birds of darkness are
on the wing; spectres uproar; the dead walk; the living dream. Thou,
Eternal Providence, wilt make the Day dawn!--JEAN PAUL.
Then said his Lordship, "Well. God mend all!"--"Nay, by God, Donald,
we must help him to mend it!" said the other.--RUSHWORTH (_Sir
David Ramsay and Lord Rea, in 1630_).
CONTENTS.
I. THE PRESENT TIME II. MODEL PRISONS III. DOWNING
STREET IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET V. STUMP-ORATOR
[February 1, 1850.] NO. I. THE PRESENT TIME.
The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and heir of all the
Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of all the Future, is ever

a "New Era" to the thinking man; and comes with new questions and
significance, however commonplace it look: to know it, and what it
bids us do, is ever the sum of knowledge for all of us. This new Day,
sent us out of Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens;--amid the
bustling trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions, which if
we cannot read and obey, it will not be well with us! No;--nor is there
any sin more fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same,
which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: the sin
which our old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"--which we, with
our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is;
disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these,
stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current
semblances of these. This is true of all times and days.
But in the days that are now passing over us, even fools are arrested to
ask the meaning of them; few of the generations of men have seen more
impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation,
confusion worse confounded: if they are not days of endless hope too,
then they are days of utter despair. For it is not a small hope that will
suffice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal.
There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all! That
human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and
proceed with any steadiness or continuance there; this small hope is not
now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of
universal new-birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is a Time
to make the dullest man consider; and ask himself, Whence he came?
Whither he is bound?--A veritable "New Era," to the foolish as well as
to the wise.
Not long ago, the world saw, with thoughtless joy which might have
been very thoughtful joy, a real miracle not heretofore considered
possible or conceivable in the world,--a Reforming Pope. A simple
pious creature, a good country-priest, invested unexpectedly with the
tiara, takes up the New Testament, declares that this henceforth shall be
his rule of governing. No more finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or
foul dealing of any kind: God's truth shall be spoken, God's justice shall
be done, on the throne called of St. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, or
Father of Christendom, shall preside there. And such a throne of St.
Peter; and such a Christendom, for an honest Papa to preside in! The

European populations everywhere hailed the omen; with shouting and
rejoicing leading articles and tar-barrels; thinking people listened with
astonishment,--not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise; with awe
rather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as of victory beyond
death! Something pious, grand and as if awful in that joy, revealing
once more the Presence of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to such