The Monikins Part 33

"Very true, brigadier, very true--the marvel of our times! But, gentlemen, what do you indeed think of us? I shall not let you off with generalities. You have now been long enough on sh.o.r.e to have formed some pretty distinct notions about us, and I confess I should be glad to hear them. Speak the truth with candor--are we not most miserable, forlorn, disreputable devils, after all?"

I disclaimed the ability to judge of the social condition of a people on so short an acquaintance; but to this Mr. Wriggle would not listen.

He insisted that I must have been particularly disgusted with the coa.r.s.eness and want of refinement in the rabble, as he called the ma.s.s, who, by the way, had already struck me as being relatively much the better part of the population, so far as I had seen things--more than commonly decent, quiet, and civil. Mr. Wriggle, also, very earnestly and piteously begged I would not judge of the whole country by such samples as I might happen to fall in with in the highways.

"I trust, Mogul, you will have charity to believe we are not all of us quite so bad as appearances, no doubt, make us in your polished eyes.

These rude beings are spoiled by our jacobinical laws; but we have a cla.s.s, sir, that IS different. But, if you will not touch on the people, how do you like the town, sir? A poor place, no doubt, after your own ancient capitals?"

"Time will remedy all that, Mr. Wriggle."

"Do you then think we really want time? Now, that house at the corner, there, to my taste is fit for a gentleman in any country--eh?"

"No doubt, sir, fit for one."

"This is but a poor street in the eyes of you travellers, I know, this Wide-path of ours; though we think it rather sublime?"

"You do yourself injustice, Mr. Wriggle; though not equal to many of the---"

"How, sir, the Wide-path not equal to anything on earth! I know several people who have been in the old world [so the Leaplowers call the regions of Leaphigh, Leapup, Leapdown, etc.] and they swear there is not as fine a street in any part of it. I have not had the good fortune to travel, sir; but, sir, permit me, sir, to say, sir, that some of them, sir, that HAVE travelled, sir, think, sir, the Wide-path, the most magnificent public avenue, sir, that their experienced eyes ever beheld, sir--yes, sir, that their very experienced eyes ever beheld, sir."

"I have seen so little of it, as yet, Mr. Wriggle, that you will pardon me if I have spoken hastily."

"Oh! no offence--I despise the monikin who is not above local vanities and provincial admiration! You ought to have seen that, sir, for I frankly admit, sir, that no rabble can be worse than ours, and that we are all going to the devil, as fast as ever we can. No, sir, a most miserable rabble, sir.--But as for this street, and our houses, and our cats, and our dogs, and certain exceptions--you understand me, sir--it is quite a different thing. Pray, Mogul, who is the greatest personage, now, in your nation?"

"Perhaps I ought to say the Duke of Wellington, sir."

"Well, sir, allow me to ask if he lives in a better house than that before us?--I see you are delighted, eh? We are a poor, new nation of pitiful traders, sir, half savage, as everybody knows; but we DO flatter ourselves that we know how to build a house! Will you just step in and see a new sofa that its owner bought only yesterday--I know him intimately, and nothing gives me so much pleasure as to show his new sofa."

I declined the invitation on the plea of fatigue, and by this means got rid of so troublesome an acquaintance. On leaving me, however, he begged that I would not fail to make his house my home, swore terribly at the rabble, and invited me to admire a very ordinary view that was to be obtained by looking up the Wide-path in a particular direction, but which embraced his own abode. When Mr. Wriggle was fairly out of earshot, I demanded of the brigadier if Bivouac, or Leaplow, contained many such prodigies.

"Enough to make themselves very troublesome, and us ridiculous,"

returned Mr. Downright. "We are a young nation, Sir John, covering a great surface, with a comparatively small population, and, as you are aware, separated from the other parts of the monikin region by a belt of ocean. In some respects we are like people in the country, and we possess the merits and failings of those who are so situated. Perhaps no nation has a larger share of reflecting and essentially respectable inhabitants than Leaplow; but, not satisfied with being what circ.u.mstances so admirably fit them to be, there is a clique among us, who, influenced by the greater authority of older nations, pine to be that which neither nature, education, manners, nor facilities will just yet allow them to become. In short, sir, we have the besetting sin of a young community--imitation. In our case the imitation is not always happy, either; it being necessarily an imitation that is founded on descriptions. If the evil were limited to mere social absurdities, it might be laughed at--but that inherent desire of distinction, which is the most morbid and irritable, unhappily, in the minds of those who are the least able to attain anything more than a very vulgar notoriety, is just as active here, as it is elsewhere; and some who have got wealth, and who can never get more than what is purely dependent on wealth, affect to despise those who are not as fortunate as themselves in this particular. In their longings for pre-eminence, they turn to other states (Leaphigh, more especially, which is the beau ideal of all nations and people who wish to set up a caste in opposition to despotism) for rules of thought, and declaim against that very ma.s.s which is at the bottom of all their prosperity, by obstinately refusing to allow of any essential innovation on the common rights. In addition to these social pretenders, we have our political Indoctrinated."

"Indoctrinated! Will you explain the meaning of the term?"

"Sir, an Indoctrinated is one of a political school who holds to the validity of certain theories which have been made to justify a set of advent.i.tious facts, as is eminently the case in our own great model, Leaphigh. We are peculiarly placed in this country. Here, as a rule, facts--meaning political and social facts--are greatly in advance of opinion, simply because the former are left chiefly to their own free action, and the latter is necessarily trammelled by habit and prejudice; while in the 'old region' opinion, as a rule--and meaning the leading or better opinion--is greatly in advance of facts, because facts are restrained by usage and personal interests, and opinion is incited by study, and the necessity of change."

"Permit me to say, brigadier, that I find your present inst.i.tutions a remarkable result to follow such a state of things."

"They are a cause, rather than a consequence. Opinion, as a whole, is everywhere on the advance; and it is further advanced even here, as a whole, than anywhere else. Accident has favored the foundation of the social compact; and once founded, the facts have been hastening to their consummation faster than the monikin mind has been able to keep company with them. This is a remarkable but true state of the whole region. In other monikin countries, you see opinion tugging at rooted practices, and making desperate efforts to eradicate them from their bed of vested interests, while here you see facts dragging opinion after them like a tail wriggling behind a kite. [Footnote: One would think that Brigadier Downright had lately paid a visit to our own happy and much enlightened land. Fifty years since, the negro was a slave in New York, and incapable of contracting marriage with a white. Facts have, however, been progressive; and, from one privilege to another, he has at length obtained that of consulting his own tastes in this matter, and, so far as he himself is concerned, of doing as he pleases. This is the fact, but he who presumes to speak of it has his windows broken by opinion, for his pains! NOTE BY THE EDITOR] As to our purely social imitation and social follies, absurd as they are, they are necessarily confined to a small and an immaterial cla.s.s; but the Indoctrinated spirit is a much more serious affair. That unsettles confidence, innovates on the right, often innocently and ignorantly, and causes the vessel of state to sail like a ship with a drag towing in her wake."

"This is truly a novel condition for an enlightened monikin nation."

"No doubt, men manage better; but of all this you will learn more in the great council. You may, perhaps, think it strange that our facts should preserve their ascendency in opposition to so powerful a foe as opinion; but you will remember that a great majority of our people, if not absolutely on a level with circ.u.mstances, being purely practical, are much nearer to this level, than the cla.s.s termed the endoctrinated. The last are troublesome and delusive, rather than overwhelming."

"To return to Mr. Wriggle--is his sect numerous?"

"His cla.s.s flourishes most in the towns. In Leaplow we are greatly in want of a capital, where the cultivated, educated, and well-mannered can a.s.semble, and, placed by their habits and tastes above the ordinary motives and feelings of the less instructed, they might form a more healthful, independent, appropriate, and manly public sentiment than that which now pervades the country. As things are, the real elite of this community are so scattered, as rather to receive an impression FROM, than to impart one TO society, The Leaplow Wriggles, as you have just witnessed, are selfish and exacting as to their personal pretensions, irritably confident as to the merit of any particular excellence which limits their own experience, and furiously proscribing to those whom they fancy less fortunate than themselves."

"Good heavens!--brigadier--all this is excessively human!"

"Ah! it is--is it? Well, this is certainly the way with us monikins. Our Wriggles are ashamed of exactly that portion of our population of which they have most reason to be proud, viz., the ma.s.s; and they are proud of precisely that portion of which they have most reason to be ashamed, viz., themselves. But plenty of opportunities will offer to look further into this; and we will now hasten to the inn."

As the brigadier appeared to chafe under the subject, I remained silent, following him as fast as I could, but keeping my eyes open, the reader may be very sure, as we went along. There was one peculiarity I could not but remark in this singular town. It was this:--all the houses were smeared over with some colored earth, and then, after all this pains had been taken to cover the material, an artist was employed to make white marks around every separate particle of the fabric (and they were in millions), which ingenious particularity gives the dwellings a most agreeable air of detail, imparting to the architecture, in general, a sublimity that is based on the multiplication table. If to this be added the black of the chevaux-de-frise, the white of the entrance-ladders, and a sort of standing-collar to the whole, immediately under the eves, of some very dazzling hue, the effect is not unlike that of a platoon of drummers, in scarlet coats, cotton lace, and cuffs and capes of white.

What renders the similitude more striking, is the fact that no two of the same plantoon appear to be exactly of a size, as is very apt to be the case with your votaries in military music.

CHAPTER XXV. A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE, A FUNDAMENTAL LAW, AND A FUNDAMENTAL ERROR.

The people of Leaplow are remarkable for the deliberation of their acts, the moderation of their views, and the acc.u.mulation of their wisdom. As a matter of course such a people is never in an indecent haste. Although I have now been legally naturalized, and regularly elected to the great council fully twenty-four hours, three entire days were allowed for the study of the inst.i.tutions, and to become acquainted with the genius of a nation, who, according to their own account of the matter, have no parallel in heaven or earth, or in the waters under the earth, before I was called upon to exercise my novel and important functions. I profited by the delay and shall seize a favorable moment to make the reader acquainted with some of my acquisitions on this interesting topic.

The inst.i.tutions of Leaplow are divided into two great moral categories, viz.: the LEGAL and the SUBSt.i.tUTIVE. The former embraces the provisions of the great ELEMENTARY, and the latter all the provisions of the great ALIMENTARY principle. The first, accordingly, is limited by the const.i.tution, or the Great National Allegory, while the last is limited by nothing but practice; one contains the proposition, and the other its deductions; this is all hypothesis, that, all corollary. The two great political landmarks, the two public opinions, the bob-upon-bobs, the rotatory action, and the great and little wheels, are merely inferential, and I shall, therefore, say nothing about them in my present treatise, which has a strict relation only to the fundamental law of the land, or to the Great and Sacred National Allegory.

It has been already stated that Leaplow was originally a scion of Leaphigh. The political separation took place in the last generation, when the Leaplowers publicly renounced Leaphigh and all it contained, just as your catechumen is made to renounce the devil and all his works.

This renunciation, which is also sometimes called the DENUNCIATION, was much more to the liking of Leaplow than to that of Leaphigh; and a long and sanguinary war was the consequence. The Leaplowers, after a smart struggle, however, prevailed in their firm determination to have no more to do with Leaphigh. The sequel will show how far they were right.

Even preceding the struggle, so active was the sentiment of patriotism and independence, that the citizens of Leaplow, though ill-provided with the productions of their own industry, proudly resorted to the self-denial of refusing to import even a pin from the mother country, actually preferring nakedness to submission. They even solemnly voted that their venerable progenitor, instead of being, as she clearly ought to have been, a fond, protecting, and indulgent parent, was, in truth, no other than a rapacious, vindictive and tyrannical step-mother. This was the opinion, it will be remembered, when the two communities were legally united, had but one head, wore clothes, and necessarily pursued a mult.i.tude of their interests in common.

By the lucky termination of the war, all this was radically changed.

Leaplow pointed her thumb at Leaphigh, and declared her intention henceforth to manage her own affairs in her own way. In order to do this the more effectually, and, at the same time, to throw dirt into the countenance of her late step-mother, she determined that her own polity should run so near a parallel, and yet should be so obviously an improvement on that of Leaphigh, as to demonstrate the imperfections of the latter to the most superficial observer. That this patriotic resolution was faithfully carried out in practice, I am now about to demonstrate.

In Leaphigh, the old human principle had long prevailed, that political authority came from G.o.d; though why such a theory should ever have prevailed anywhere, as Mr. Downright once expressed it, I cannot see, the devil very evidently having a greater agency in its exercise than any other influence, or intelligence, whatever. However, the jus divinum was the regulator of the Leaphigh social compact, until the n.o.bility managed to get the better of the jus, when the divinum was left to shift for itself. It was at this epocha the present const.i.tution found its birth. Any one may have observed that one stick placed on end will fall, as a matter of course, unless rooted in the earth. Two sticks fare no better, even with their tops united; but three sticks form a standard.

This simple and beautiful idea gave rise to the Leaphigh polity. Three moral props were erected in the midst of the community, at the foot of one of which was placed the king, to prevent it from slipping; for all the danger, under such a system, came from that of the base slipping; at the foot of the second, the n.o.bles; and at the foot of the third, the people. On the summit of this tripod was raised the machine of state.

This was found to be a capital invention in theory, though practice, as practice is very apt to do, subjected it to some essential modifications. The king, having his stick all his own way, gave a great deal of trouble to the two other sets of stick-holders; and, unwilling to disturb the theory, for that was deemed to be irrevocably settled and sacred, the n.o.bility, who, for their own particular convenience, paid the princ.i.p.al workmen at the base of the people's stick to stand steady, set about the means of keeping the king's stick, also, in a more uniform and serviceable att.i.tude. It was on this occasion that, discovering the king never could keep his end of the great social stick in the place where he had sworn to keep it, they solemnly declared that he must have forgotten where the const.i.tutional foot-hole was, and that he had irretrievably lost his memory--a decision that was the remote cause of the recent calamity of Captain Poke. The king was no sooner const.i.tutionally deprived of his memory, than it was an easy matter to strip him of all his other faculties; after which it was humanely decreed, as indeed it ought to be in the case of a being so dest.i.tute, that he could do no wrong. By way of following out the idea on a humane and Christian-like principle, and in order to make one part of the practice conform to the other, it was shortly after determined that he should do nothing; his eldest first-cousin of the masculine gender being legally proclaimed his subst.i.tute. In the end, the crimson curtain was drawn before the throne. As, however, this cousin might begin to wriggle the stick in his turn, and derange the balance of the tripod, the other two sets of stick-holders next decided that, though his majesty had an undeniable const.i.tutional right to say who SHOULD BE his eldest first-cousin of the masculine gender, they had an undoubted const.i.tutional right to say who he SHOULD NOT BE. The result of all this was a compromise; his majesty, who, like other people, found the sweets of authority more palatable than the bitter, agreeing to get up on top of the tripod, where he might appear seated on the machine of state, to receive salutations, and eat and drink in peace, leaving the others to settle among themselves who should do the work at the bottom, as well as they could. In brief, such is the history, and such was the polity of Leaphigh, when I had the honor of visiting that country.

The Leaplowers were resolute to prove that all this was radically wrong.

They determined, in the first place, that there should be but one great social beam; and, in order that it should stand perfectly steady, they made it the duty of every citizen to prop its base. They liked the idea of a tripod well enough, but, instead of setting one up in the Leaphigh fashion, they just reversed its form, and stuck it on top of their beam, legs uppermost, placing a separate agent on each leg, to work their machine of state; taking care, also, to send a new one aloft periodically. They reasoned thus: If one of the Leaphigh beams slip (and they will be very apt to slip in wet weather, with the king, n.o.bles and people wriggling and shoving against each other), down will come the whole machine of state, or, to say the least, it will get so much awry as never to work as well as at first; and therefore we will have none of it. If, on the other hand, one of our agents makes a blunder and falls, why, he will only break his own neck. He will, moreover, fall in the midst of us, and, should he escape with life, we can either catch him and throw him back again, or we can send a better hand up in his place, to serve out the rest of his time. They also maintain that one beam, supported by all the citizens, is much less likely to slip than three beams, supported by three powers of very uncertain, not to say unequal, forces.

Such, in effect, is the substance of the respective national allegories of Leaphigh and of Leaplow; I say allegories, for both governments seem to rely on this ingenious form of exhibiting their great distinctive national sentiments. It would, in fact, be an improvement, were all const.i.tutions henceforth to be written in this manner, since they would necessarily be more explicit, intelligible, and sacred than they are by the present attempt at literality.

Having explained the governing principles of these two important states, I now crave the reader's attention, for a moment, while I go a little into the details of the MODUS OPERANDI, in both cases.

Leaphigh acknowledged a principle, in the outset, that Leaplow totally disclaimed, viz., that of primogeniture. Being an only child myself, and having no occasion for research on this interesting subject, I never knew the basis of this peculiar right, until I came to read the great Leaphigh commentator, Whiterock, on the governing rules of the social compact. I there found that the first-born, MORALLY considered, is thought to have better claims to the honors of the genealogical tree, on the father's side, than those offspring whose origin is to be referred to a later period in connubial life. On this obvious and highly discriminating principle, the crown, the rights of the n.o.bles, and indeed all other rights, are transferred from father to son, in the direct male line, according to primogeniture.

Nothing of this is practised in Leaplow. There, the supposition of legitimacy is as much in favor of the youngest as of the oldest born, and the practice is in conformity. As there is no hereditary chief to poise on one of the legs of the great tripod, the people at the foot of the beam choose one from among themselves, periodically, who is called the Great Sachem. The same people choose another set, few in number, who occupy a common seat, on another leg. These they term the Riddles.

Another set, still more numerous and popular in aspect, if not in fact, fills a large seat on the third leg. These last, from their being supposed to be supereminently popular and disinterested, are familiarly known as the Legion. They are also pleasantly nicknamed the Bobees, an appellation that took its rise in the circ.u.mstance that most of the members of their body have submitted to the second dock, and, indeed, have nearly obliterated every sign of a CAUDA. I had, most luckily, been chosen to sit in the House of Bobees, a station for which I felt myself well qualified, in this great essential at least; for all the anointing and forcing resorted to by Noah and myself, during our voyage out, and our residence in Leaphigh, had not produced so much as a visible sprout in either.

The Great Sachem, the Riddles, and the Legion, had conjoint duties to perform, in certain respects, and separate duties in others. All three, as they owed their allegorical elevation to, so were they dependent on, the people at the foot of the great social stick, for approbation and reward--that is to say for all rewards other than those which they have it in their power to bestow on themselves. There was another authority, or agent of the public, that is equally perched on the social beam, though not quite so dependent as the three just named, upon the main prop of the people--being also propped by a mechanical disposition of the tripod itself. These are termed the Supreme Arbitrators, and their duties are to revise the acts of the other three agents of the people, and to decide whether they are or are not in conformity with the recognized principles of the Sacred Allegory.

I was greatly delighted with my own progress in the study of the Leaplow inst.i.tutions. In the first place, I soon discovered that the princ.i.p.al thing was to reverse the political knowledge I had acquired in Leaphigh, as one would turn a tub upside-down, when he wished to draw from its stores at a fresh end, and then I was pretty sure of being within at least the spirit of the Leaplow law. Everything seemed simple, for all was dependent on the common prop, at the base of the great social beam.

Having got a thorough insight myself into the governing principles of the system under which I had been chosen to serve, I went to look up my colleague, Captain Poke, in order to ascertain how he understood the great Leaplow Allegory.

I found the mind of the sealer, according to a beautiful form of speech already introduced in this narrative, "considerably exercised," on the several subjects that so naturally presented themselves to a man in his situation. In the first place, he was in a towering pa.s.sion at the impudence of Bob in presuming to offer himself as a candidate for the great council; and having offered himself, the rage of the Captain was in no degree abated by the circ.u.mstance of the young rascal's being at the head of the poll. He most unreservedly swore "that no subordinate of his should ever sit in the same legislative body with himself; that he was a republican by birth, and knew the usages of republican governments quite as well as the best patriot among them; and although he admitted that all sorts of critters were sent to Congress in his country, no man ever knew an instance of a cabin-boy's being sent there. They might elect just as much as they pleased; but coming ash.o.r.e, and playing politician were very different things from cleaning his boots, and making his coffee, and mixing his grog." The captain had just been waited on by a committee of the Perpendiculars (half the Leaplow community is on some committee or other), by whom he had been elected, and they had given notice, that instructions would be sent in, forthwith, to all their representatives, to perform gyration No. 3, as soon after the meeting of the council as possible. He was no tumbler, and he had sent for a master of political saltation, who had just been with him practising. According to Noah's own statement, his success was anything but flattering. "If they would give a body room, Sir John," he said, in a complaining accent, "I should think nothing of it--but you are expected to stand shoulder to shoulder--yard-arm and yard-arm--and throw a flap-jack as handy as an old woman would toss a johnny-cake!

It's unreasonable to think of wearing ship without room; but give me room, and I'll engage to get round on the other tack, and to luff into the line again, as safely as the oldest cruiser among 'em, though not quite so quick. They do go about spitefully, that's sartain."