Hark! Actually a ring at the front-door bell. The dogs growled and sniffed, but there was no fierce barking. Confound these tramps! That trombone has gone back to the “Red Lion,” and the rogues are oozing out to practise upon our weakness. “That’s not a tramp,” said the Lady Shepherd. “Toby didn’t bark.” She was right, as she always is. For Toby has quite an unerring discernment of the proximity of a tramp. His gift in this line is inexplicable. How the great Darwin would have delighted to observe that dog! If it was not a tramp, who could it be? “I believe it’s Polus!” said the Lady Shepherd. “Only Polus could have the ferocity to come here in defiance of the snowdrifts.” Right again. It was Polus. She had given him the name because he was eager to get into the County Council.—Poor man! He only got three votes.—There was no reference to the young gentleman in the Gorgias who bore that name—only a desire to indicate that he was the man who went to the Poll.
It was hardly more than noon; we were snowed up, and yet already we had had music; poetry as represented by Tinker George; a flood of literature; and now there was discussion imminent on the profoundest questions of politics, philosophy, and law.
Enter Polus! What in the world had brought him hither this dreadful day? What had he been doing? whither was he going? Should we put him to bed? To send for a doctor was out of the question. But we could soon get him a mustard poultice and a hot bath. Polus laughed the hearty laugh of rude health and youth. “You, dear old people, you forget I’m only thirty-five. I’ve had a pleasant walk from Tegea—greased my boots well—only rolled over twice. I’ve come for a talk. Dear me! dear me! Didn’t I see a moth there on the curtains? Curious that they should come out in such numbers when you’re snowed up! May I help you to get rid of the pests?”
The man had come to show his defiance of the laws of nature and ordinary prudence. In fact, he had come for mere cussedness! Also he had come for a conference. What was the subject to be this time? “Anything but the education question,” said I; “we must draw the line somewhere. Woman’s rights, Man’s wrongs. Agricultural depression. The People’s Palace. The Feudal System. The Bacon-Shakespeare—anything you please in reason—but Education! No! Not for worlds.” It was not long before the cat jumped out of the bag. Polus was bent on floating a most magnificent new International League. His ideas were a trifle mixed, but so are those of many men in our times. Polus makes the mistake of bottling his grand schemes and laying them down, as it were, when they ought to be kept on draught. The result is that there’s always a superabundance of froth—or shall we call it foam?—that we have to plunge into before we can taste of that pleasant draught; and when you have drunk about half your fill, there’s a wholly unnecessary and somewhat disagreeable sediment at the bottom, which interferes with your enjoyment. Thus the new League was to be so comprehensive a League, for effecting so many desirable objects, that it was difficult to discover what the main object was—or, in fact, if the main object did not resolve itself into an assemblage of objects, each of which was struggling with the rest for prominence and supremacy.
On this occasion Polus had the effrontery to begin by assuring me that I was in honour and conscience bound to join the League, for the idea of it had been first suggested to him by a pregnant and suggestive saying of mine some months before. “What! when you were so hot for the abolition of the punishment by death?” Oh dear no. He’d changed his mind about that long ago. “Was it when you were advocating the desirability of the labourers having the cows and the landlords keeping the land?” “No, no! I’ve improved greatly upon that. Haven’t you heard? I’m for letting the landlord keep the cows, but giving the labourers the calves only; that appears to me the equitable adjustment of a complex question.” I thought a little, and Polus gave me time. What was it? What could it have been that we had been talking about? Enfantin’s hullucinations and the dual priesthood (couple-prêtre)? Fourrier’s Phalanstery? It must have been an obiter dictum which dropped from me as he laid down the law about Proudhon. I shook my head. “Don’t you remember? Entails!”
Then it appeared that the great League was to be started for the abolition of everything in the shape of entails. In our last conference I had let fall the remark that for every acre of land tied up in strict entail there was a thousand pounds sterling tied up in much stricter entail. If you are going to deal with the one, why not with the other? Polus was putting on his hat when I gave him that parting dig, and I thought I had silenced him for ever. So far from it, I had but sown a new seed in his soul, and now he came to show me the baby.
Polus meanwhile had plunged into the heaving billows of statistics. He had discovered, to his own satisfaction, that 500 millions of the National Debt was strictly entailed; that 217 millions belonged prospectively to babes unborn; that the British people were paying “enormous taxes, sir!” not only for the sins and extravagances of their forefathers, but for enriching of their hypothetical progeny. That it was a state of things altogether outrageous, irrational, monstrous, and a great many other epithets. Would I join the League? Of course I’d join a league for the extinction of nasal catarrh or the annihilation of stupidity—gladly, but upon conditions. I must first know how the thing is to be effected. Your object may be heroic, but the means for carrying out this glorious reform? the machinery, my dear Polus? Let me hear more about that. A new voyage en Icarie implies that you are going to embark upon some safe vessel. By the way, how did Cabet get to his enchanting island?
Hereupon ensued an elaborate monologue, admirably expressed, closely reasoned, carrying not so much conviction as demonstration along with it. Granting the premises, the conclusion was inevitable. It was as good as Bishop Blougram. The scheme was this: Property—even in the funds—is a fact. There is no denying that. Therefore face the facts first, and deal with them as such. Timid reformers go only halfway towards building up the ideal social fabric. They say meekly, nationalize the land. The true reformer says, abolish all permanent financial obligations. But hardships would ensue upon any sudden and violent extinction of private debts. Prudence suggests that you should begin by a gradual extinction of public debts—in other words, the National Debt. The living holders of stock shall be fairly dealt with, and during their lifetime they shall enjoy their abominable dividends wrenched from the pockets of the people. As they drop off—and the sooner they go the better—their several claims upon the tax-payer shall perish with them. None shall succeed to their privileges of robbing the teeming millions. All stock standing in the name of trustees shall be transferred to the names of the present beneficiaries, and shall be extinguished by the death of the several holders. All powers of bequest in regard of such stock shall be taken away. In the case of infants—and there are 147,623 of such cases—who are only prospective owners of stock—being only prospective owners, and therefore having never actually tasted the joys of unrighteous possession—they shall continue to be prospective owners, and never be allowed to become anything else. They will have nothing to complain of; you take from them nothing that they ever had. All that will happen to them will be that they will be saved from cherishing delusive hopes, such as should never have been aroused in them. The scales will drop from their eyes; they will no longer be the victims of treacherous phantasms. The sooner they learn their glorious lesson the better. They will speedily rise to a true conception of the dignity of citizenship, and grow to the stature of a loftier humanity, whose destiny who shall foreshadow? “Now, my dear Doctor,” said Polus, pausing for a moment in his harangue, “I ask you as a Christian and a philosopher, is not ours a magnificent League, and is not the vision that opens before us sublime?”
“Place aux dames! Place aux dames!” I answered. “Ask the Lady Shepherd. Let her speak.”
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