The Condition of

England: Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), who studied

extensively the cause of the French Revolution, was
apprehensive of about England's future. He believed
that England was infected by a disease called the
‘Industrial Revolution' or ‘Mechanization' and he
presented Chartism as a symptom of this disease. He
was certain that the effect of this could be a
revolution if the government did nothing to improve
the living conditions of the laboring-class, take for
example Carlyle’s warning in his long essay on Chartism
(1839) in which he stated that “if something be not
done, something will do itself one day, and in a fashion
that will please nobody.”
According to Carlyle the cure for this disease was
‘real aristocracy’. He had faith that this ‘unclassed’
aristocrats could lead the laboring-class through
vicissitudes (change of circumstance or fortune) of
modern history. He hardly had confidence and was
critical about the casual landowners and aristocrats
who were Mammon worshipers, that instead of being
the “captain of the industry” they were “a gang of
industrial robbers and pirates”.
Carlyle solution to the problem of “mechanization
of the laboring-class and mammonization of the
aristocrats” was the same as mentioned in Sartor
Resartus (1832)- a spiritual rebirth of both the
individual and the society. He romanticized the vision
of the past based on the chronical of the English
Monk. Jocelyn of Brakelond (died-1211) describes the
life of the abbot Samson and his monks at St Edmund’s
monastery. It shows the simplification of the nature
of monk’s lifestyle as an authentic idyll (a short poem
describing a peaceful country scene), whereas he finds
contemporary lifestyle increasingly unbearable due to
lack of true leadership.
Thomas Carlyle was born in a protestant family
who followed the teachings of John Calvin. Carlyle’s
Calvinistic upbringing may have exerted influence on
his pessimistic assessment (judgment) on
contemporary society. He was widely respected as a
social critic and a Victorian sage. Wrote political
essays, philosophical satire, and fictions in which he
blurred the lines between the literary genre. Some of
his famous works are Signs of the Times (1829),
Sartor Resartus (1832), Chartism (1839), Past and
Present (1843), etc.
Past and Present which begins with a visit to a
workhouse was a response to the economic crisis that
began in the early 1840s. Carlyle shows a depressing
picture of the daily life of the workers, many of whom
were unable to find a meaningful job. All those
successful and skillful workers (around 2 million,
counted later) were sitting idle in workhouses and
Poor-Law prisons. In the third chapter of the fourth
book of Past and Present, Carlyle gives three practical
suggestions for the improvement of social Conditions
in England. First the introduction of legal hygienic
measures, second the importance of education and last
but not the least the promotion of emigration. The
first two proposals were instantly adopted, the third
proposal affected mainly the Irish and Scottish
people and, in a smaller degree the English population.
On 17th October 1826 Carlyle married Jane
Welsh, and settle first in Edinburgh and consequently
at Craigenputtock, in an isolated farmhouse belonging
to his wife's family. It was during this period that he
wrote a series of essays for the Edinburgh Review and
the Foreign Review which were later grouped as
Miscellaneous and Critical Essays. His essays were on
Goethe, Burns, Richter and the most important Signs
of the Times, his first essay on contemporary social
problems.
In June 1829 the Edinburgh Review published
Carlyle's "Signs of the Times", in which he envisions
(anticipates) the Condition of England Question he
raised a decade later in Chartism (1839) and Past and
Present (1843).
He criticized vehemently (showing strong
feelings) the ethos of the industrial revolution, which
he believed was dismantling the human individuality. In
his sermon-like essays, Carlyle led a crusade against
the scientific materialism, utilitarianism and the
laissez-faire system. He believed that men grew
mechanical in the head, in heart and as well as in hand.
Men have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in
natural force of any kind. For Carlyle, machine and
mechanization had double meaning first they meant
literally new technical devices, and the other meant
metaphorical mechanization of the human thoughts
and behaviour and suppression of human desires and
freedom. Carlyle strongly criticized the mechanization
of the human spirit and indicated (showed) the high
moral costs of industrial change.
 The “Signs of the Times” therefore tried to
reshape the public opinion about the present Condition
of England, which Carlyle found unbearable. His
criticism of the “mechanical society” produced a
memorable narrative in Charles Dicken’s novel Hard
Times (1854), whose subtitle “For These Times” is
indebted to Carlyle’s essay.