all Christendom. None save Jews were
outside it or could get outside it, except by excommunication; which was
the most terrible of penalties, because it cut a man off from all
spiritual human fellowship. The same principle of co-operation prevailed
in mediaeval industry and commerce, organised into guilds of craftsmen
and trading corporations, which fixed the prices and quality of goods,
the number of apprentices allowed, etc. The manufacturer was not a
capitalist, but simply a master workman. Government was paternal and
interfered continually with the freedom of contract and the rights of the
individual. Here was where Carlyle took issue with modern Liberalism,
which proclaims that the best government is that which governs least.
According to the _laissez-faire_ doctrine, he said, the work of a
government is not that of a father, but of an active parish constable.
The duty of a government is to govern, but this theory makes it its duty
to refrain from governing. Not liberty is good for men, but obedience
and stern discipline under wise rulers, heroes, and heaven-sent kings.
Carlyle took no romantic view of the Middle Ages. He is rather
contemptuous of Scott's mediaeval-picturesque,[35] and his Scotch
Calvinism burns fiercely against the would-be restorers of mediaeval
religious formularies and the mummeries of "the old Pope of Rome"--a
ghastly survival of a dead creed.[36] He said that Newman had the brain
of a good-sized rabbit. But in this matter of collectivism versus
individualism, Carlyle was with the Middle Ages. "For those were rugged,
stalwart ages. . . . Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, it is like, got cuffs
as often as pork-parings; but Gurth did belong to Cedric; no human
creature then went about connected with nobody; left to go his way into
Bastilles or worse, under _Laissez-faire_. . . . That Feudal
Aristocracy, I say, was no imaginary one. . . . It was a Land
Aristocracy; it managed the Governing of this English People, and had the
reaping of the Soil of England in return. . . . Soldiering, Police and
Judging, Church-Extension, nay, real Government and Guidance, all this
was actually _done_ by the Holders of Land in return for their Land. How
much of it is now done by them; done by anybody? Good Heavens!
'_Laissez faire_, Do ye nothing, eat your wages and sleep,' is everywhere
the passionate half-wise cry of this time." [37]

From 1850 onwards, in which year Ruskin made Carlyle's acquaintanc