, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would
prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.

THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE-QUESTION. (1846.)

A LATE number of Fraser's Magazine contains an article bearing the
unmistakable impress of the Anglo-German peculiarities of Thomas Carlyle,
entitled, 'An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be
interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so
unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of
amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous
irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of
Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of
Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices
from the West Indies have diminished since emancipation,--and that the
negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without
wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the
latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to
them, can afford to give,--the author considers himself justified in
denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was
specially sent into this world to belabor. Had he confned himself to
simple abuse and caricature of the self-denying and Christian
abolitionists of England--"the broad-brimmed philanthropists of Exeter
Hall"--there would have been small occasion for noticing his splenetic
and discreditable production. Doubtless there is a cant of philanthropy
--the alloy of human frailty and folly--in the most righteous reforms,
which is a fair subject for the indignant sarcasm of a professed hater of
shows and falsities. Whatever is hollow and hypocritical in politics,
morals, or religion, comes very properly within the scope of his mockery,
and we bid him Godspeed in plying his satirical lash upon it. Impostures
and frauds of all kinds deserve nothing better than detection and
exposure. Let him blow them up to his heart's content, as Daniel did the
image of Bell and the Dragon.

But our author, in this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply
his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to
humanity itself. He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the
amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred
rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire cla