It was an impulse similar to that which inspired _Oliver
Twist_, but Carlyle's remedies were widely different from those of
Dickens. Not merely more kindness and sympathy, but paternal government,
supplying work to the idle inmates of the workhouse, and insisting, by
force if need be, on it being done, was his panacea. It had been Abbot
Samson's way in his strong government of the Monastery of St. Edmunds,
and he resolved, half in parable, half in plain sermon, to recommend it
to the Ministers Peel and Russell.
In this mood, the book was written off in the first seven weeks of
1843, a _tour de force_ comparable to Johnson's writing of _Rasselas_.
Published in April, it at once made a mark by the opposition as well as
by the approval it excited. Criticism of the work--of its excellences,
which are acknowledged, and its defects as manifold--belongs to a review
of the author's political philosophy: it is enough here to note that it
was remarkable in three ways. _First_, the object of its main attack,
_laissez faire_, being a definite one, it was capable of having and had
some practical effect. Mr. Froude exaggerates when he says that Carlyle
killed the pseudo-science of orthodox political economy; for the
fundamental truths in the works of Turgot, Smith, Ricardo, and Mill
cannot be killed: but he pointed out that, like Aristotle's leaden rule,
the laws of supply and demand must be made to bend; as Mathematics made
mechanical must allow for friction, so must Economics leave us a little
room for charity.
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