----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
[Posted on behalf of David Levy -- RBE] 
 
This is from 1849, "Occasional discourse on the negro question"  
(ODNQ), p. 675 from Fraser's:  
 
"If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars,  
cinnamons, and nobler products of the West Indian Island, for the  
benefit of all mankind, then I say neither will the Powers permit  
Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit;  
but will sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich  
ground; him and all that partake with him,--perhaps in a very terrible  
manner. For, under favour of Exeter Hall, the 'terrible manner' is not yet  
quite extinct with the Destines in this Universe; for will it quite cease ...   
the gods wish besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products to  
grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making  
the West Indies: infinitely more they wish, that manful industrious men  
occupy their West Indies, not indolent two-legged cattle, however  
'happy' over their abundant pumpkins! ... Quashee, if he will not help in  
bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state  
will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip  
....   
 
I do not report the really awful racial stuff. It is easy enough to get a  
reprint of "ODNQ" by going to the Making of America web site at  
Michigan (http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/), doing a search on Carlyle AND  
Emancipation. Carlyle's article from Dec 1849 is reprinted in New  
Orleans I think July 1850. It was also reprinted in an unpleasant  
collection *Negro-Mania* which you will find reviewed on the M of A  
data set. 
 
I wouldn't wish to say that Carlyle is a simple minded anything. After all  
he described the concept of consumer sovereignty in 1833. The feudal  
idea in *Past and Present* is an ideal ... like the competitive equilibrium  
idea. The question is whether racial slavery as actually practiced in the  
West Indies and in the U.S. until the 1860s is close enough to the idea  
to count. J S Mill responded so quickly in 1850 because he believed  
that Carlyle might reverse the progress of American emancipation.    
 
Carlyle was not politically active? He was the head of the Eyre defense  
committee, at least nominally.  He wrote on political topics ... Marx has  
useful things to say on this in *Capital*.   
 
Actually the racial material in Carlyle is fairly well known. The really  
undiscussed question is the fate of the Jews under Carlyle's ideal  
feudalism and how the Carlylean industrial novelists dealt with the  
Jewish problem of capitalism. The problem is that Jews don't really  
have a place in the ideal feudalism. Guess what? What a surprise ... I've  
got a paper on this too. The Jewish material is discussed in the paper  
coming on in the Peart-Forget *Reflections on the Canon* essay for  
Sam Hollander. Needless to say I can e-mail a copy in lots of different  
formats.   
 
David M. Levy 
George Mason University   
 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]