After a long fight with poverty, when he frequently went
without a meal in order to save the money necessary for his education,
he rose to a position of some influence. He was one of the first to
propose that museums and public galleries should be opened on Sundays,
for he declared that most of the intemperance and vice was owing to
the want of wholesome and rational recreation. He insisted that it
was necessary to create a moral, sober, and thinking working-class
in order to enable them to carry through the reforms for which they
were struggling. Disgust with the violent methods of many of his
associates caused him at last to withdraw from their ranks.
Kingsley looked up to Carlyle as his master, to whom he owed more
than to any other man. "Of the general effect," he said, "which his
works had upon me, I shall say nothing: it was the same as they have
had, thank God, on thousands of my class and every other."
When, finally, violent methods proved of no avail and the Chartist
party dissolved, the democratic movement took a fresh lease of life.
As Carlyle had already pointed out, the question of the people was
a 'knife and fork' question--that is to say, so long as taxes were
levied upon the necessities of life, the poorer classes, who could
least of all afford to pay, would become poorer.
Sir Robert Peel was the first to remove this injustice, by
substituting a tax upon income for the hundred and one taxes which
had pressed so heavily upon the poor.
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