“Liberty! the true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out, the right path, and to walk thereon—­to learn or to be taught what work he actually was able for, and then, by permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing the same!  That is his true blessedness, honour, ‘liberty,’ and maximum of well-being,—­if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty.  You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait waist-coat, away from the precipices!  Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman; his true liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold of him when he is going wrong, and order and compel him to go a little righter.  O! if thou really art my senior—­seigneur, my elder—­Presbyter or priest,—­if thou art in very deed my wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to ‘conquer’ me, to command me!  If thou do know better than I what is good and right, I conjure thee, in the name of God, force me to do it; were it by never such brass collars, whips, and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices!  That I have been called by all the newspapers a ‘free man,’ will avail me little, if my pilgrimage have ended in death and wreck.  O that the newspapers had called me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased their sweet voices to name me, and I had attained not death but life!  Liberty requires new definitions.”—­P. 285.

“But truly, as I had to remark in the meanwhile, the ’liberty of not being oppressed by your fellow-man,’ is an indispensable, yet one of the most insignificant fractional parts of human liberty.  No man oppresses thee—­can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shown.  True; from all men thou art emancipated, but from thyself and from the devil!  No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go; but thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy false appetites for money—­Windsor Georges and such like!  No man oppresses thee, O free and independent Franchiser! but does not this stupid porter-pot oppress thee? no son of Adam can bid thee come and go; but this absurd pot of heavy-wet, this can and does!  Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this scoured dish of liquor; and thou protest of thy ‘liberty,’ thou entire blockhead!”—­P. 292.

We should hardly think of entering with Mr Carlyle into a controversy upon the corn-laws, or on schemes of emigration, or any disputed point of political economy.  He brings to bear upon these certain primitive moral views and feelings which are but very remotely applicable in the resolution of these knotty problems.  We should almost as soon think of inviting the veritable Diogenes himself, should he roll up in his tub to our door, to a discussion upon our commercial system.  Our Diogenes Teufelsdrockh looks upon these matters in a quite peculiar manner; observe, for example, the glance he takes at our present mercantile difficulties, which, doubtless, is not without its own value, nor undeserving of all consideration.