THOMAS CARLYLE'S IRISH WOMAN

"A poor Irish Widow, her husband having died in one of the Lanes of Edinburgh, went forth with her three children, bare of all resource, to solicit help from the Charitable Establishments of that City. At this Charitable Establishment and then at that she was refused; referred from one to the other, helped by none; -- till she had exhausted them all; till her strength and heart failed her; she sank down in typhus-fever; died, and infected her Lane with fever, so that 'seventeen other persons' died of fever there in consequence. The humane physician asked thereupon, as with a heart too full for speaking, Would it not have been economy to help this poor Widow? She took typhus fever and killed seventeen of you! -- Very curious. The forlorn Irish Widow applies to her fellow-creatures, as if saying, "Behold, I am sinking, bare of help: ye must help me!" They answer, "No, impossible; thou art no sister of ours." But she proves her sisterhood; her typhus-fever kills them: they actually were her brothers, though denying it! Had human creature ever to go lower for proof?"

This Irish woman is a refugee of the Potato Famine in Ireland. Let's see what we have to learn from Victorian literature about treatment (or mistreatment) of refugees, fellow human beings in need. How does Carlyle go on from here?




"For, as indeed was very natural in such case, all government of the Poor by the Rich has long ago been given over to Supply-and-Demand, Laissez-faire and such-like, and universally declared to be 'impossible.' "You are no sister of ours; what shadow of proof is there? Here are our parchments, our padlocks, providing indisputably our money-safes to be ours, and you to have no business with them. Depart! It is impossible!"  --Nay, what wouldst thou thyself have us do? cry indignant readers. Nothing, my friends, --till you have got a soul for yourselves again." (Carlyle Past & Present BII ChII.)

"The state of England" is relevant. There is cursed wealth and excess, huge divisions. Who are the haves and the have-nots? Is the division racial? Classist? Bipartisan? Which divisions matter, ought to be tended to? What ought to be avoided? Turn away from finished and falsified luxuriousness, excessively praised sophistries, and "serpent graciosities." Stop treating people like ladders; choose words carefully because language is powerful.

James Sire defines 'worldview' as "A set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic makeup of our world." Do not allow supply and demand be a worldview. Dignity is not a limited commodity.