The sorts of statistics we hear of every day - rates of saving, unemployment, average wages - none of that was available to Carlyle or anyone else.
Parliament had never troubled itself to ask whether people were saving at all - C thought that a likely sign of the level of economic distress - , nor whether a "labouring man in this England of ours, who is willing to labour", can find work.
[Correction: information was available about savings accounts, but ordinary people were still in the habit of sticking cash under the bed or in the mattress, and nobody had any way of tracking money lent by individuals to other individuals at interest, says C.]
It had never occurred to Parliament that any of that was in the least their concern, evidently.
A committee of the bourgeoisie for managing their common affairs, Marx might say.
Best not to know or to ask how poor, miserable, or desperate the proletarian masses actually were, eh?
Let facts like that - good for business, handy for capitalists and their well-off dependents - remain quietly in the dark.
None of that is the proper concern of the state, anyway, is it?
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