SOURCE: "Carlyle's 'Chartism,' the Rhetoric of Revolution, and the Dream of Empire," in Victorians Institute Journal, Vol. 23, 1995, pp. 129-50.

In the following essay, Lamb contends that Carlyle, in his essay "Chartism, " exploited what had become the "myth of the French revolution, " in order to paint the Chartism movement in revolutionary terms and to thereby highlight its significance. Carlyle sought, Lamb argues, to advocate British imperialism as a cure for the country's social and economic distress, of which Chartism was a manifestation.

Thomas Carlyle's "Chartism" first appeared in December 1839, a crucial moment in the debate over Parliamentary reform and the "Condition-of-England Question." The year 1839 was an extremely important period in the development and shaping of the Chartist movement and in the evolving strategies aimed at pressuring the government into again extending the franchise. Throughout that year, Victorians were either excited or alarmed by numerous and occasionally hysterical accounts...