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  ...of our existence, I should reckon it idle to solicit remedial measures from any Government, the disease being insusceptible of remedy. Government can do much, but it can in no wise do all. Government, as the most conspicuous object in Society, is called upon to give signal of what shall be done; and, in many ways, to preside over, further, and command the doing of it. But the Government cannot do, by all its signalling and commanding, what the Society is radically indisposed to do.- In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.   --The main substance of this immense Problem of Organising Labour, and first of all of Managing the Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it; by those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie potentially extant in those two Classes, who are to obey such enactment. A Human Chaos in which there is no light, you vainly attempt to...   Carlyle, Thomas

Source: THOMAS CARLYLE, Past and Present, ed. Richard D. Altick, book 4, chapter 4, p. 267 . First published in 1843. · Excerpt from Past and Present · This quote is about government · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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