Carlyle's Portrayal of "Modern" England's "Enchanted" Condition

In “Past and Present,” Thomas Carlyle highlights the need for “modern” England’s realization of the illusory nature of materialistic gains.  He states “England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition” (477).  Although England flourished with wealth, there was something that starved the country of its richness.  Throughout this piece, Carlyle gave many examples to show the unrealistic happiness of England’s so called “Enchanted wealth.” 

The first of his examples was the illustration of Workhouse worker’s appearance to a picturesque artist.  At the time, the Workhouse was the result of the “Poor Act” which was induced by the state as a way to calm down and mitigate the revolting nature of the majority, the poverty class.  However, England’s greed to keep this charitable service from being a luxury for the “deters,” it was mandated that the Workhouses be regulated to be as “unpleasant as possible” (744 caption 3).  As a result, even this heaven for the poor turned into a “Poor-law Prison.”  And this is evident from the nature of its inhabitants as Carlyle portrays an analogy of the scene to Dante’s Hell behind the eyes of the Tourist:

“An Earth all lying round, crying, Come and till me, come and reap me;--yet we here sit enchanted!  In the eyes and brows of these men hung the gloomiest expression, not of anger, but of grief and shame and manifold inarticulate distress and weariness” (478).

The crisis state of the nation is further amplified as Carlyle addresses the sin that erupts from a poverty and hungry society in his example of the Father and Mother’s inevitable scandal to relieve their selves of starvation and release their children’s misery of hunger (479).  It’s not that they are evil, but rather their unlivable conditions “hints” and teases them daily until they submit to their inevitable animalistic instincts, and that is to do what it takes to survive.

Like the poor, the rich is no richer in the sense of transcendental values.  Contrastingly, Carlyle depicts the corruption and ill nature of the aristocrats and their sinful behaviors.  Even though they enjoy their wealth and satisfy their human desires, their physical appearance does not show this.  They “eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors,” and yet, their stomach proved to be no more “blessed” than the common man.  With rhetorical questions of their happiness, Carlyle directs the reader to believe that they are no “better, beautifuler, stronger, braver … [and] what they call ‘happier’” than the poor (479).  They look “disloyally to one another” while “coercing, bribing, [and] cajoling; ‘doing what [they] like with [their] own’” even though they have more than they can spend or enjoy (479).  Even though they are so close to what they may believe to be happiness, they still cannot grasp the “enchantments” of England.  And they never will.  I think Carlyle used “enchanted” for a reason and that is to show it’s magical or illusive and that it cannot be obtained.  Thus, these materialistic gains will never bring them true happiness.

Climatically, Carlyle concludes that neither the rich nor the poor are in a benevolent state, and that both are suffering from a “Fatal paralysis” of the human soul “towards the heart itself” as if “accursed by some god.”  I believe this whole piece was to warn the people, both rich and poor, that what they believed to be “enchanted” wealth, whether it be the state’s poor laws, nor the rich man’s riches, is only illusive in nature, and that their continual track and greed for materialistic gains will lead to their downfall as did King Midas and his wish for the touch of gold (Carlyle’s final analogy of man’s greed to show the consequence of materialistic gains and their fatal byproduct). “We have more riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of them than any Nation ever had before.”  (480)