Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

Though I have received many messages and injunctions from you, I have never before attempted an answer; and indeed the Present Age has hitherto always supposed itself secure from the reproaches of Posterity, and has been able to boast of its benefits to future times without fear of contradiction. You know that during your life I am confined to an island remote from your territories, and I have till now forborne from writing to you, because I have been told that no ship from this island could reach you. Having, however, found at last an expedient, by which, perhaps, a messenger may arrive at your court, I have resolved to send you a few observations, though without any absolute certainty that you will ever read them.

Although the seas between us are acknowledged impassable to a ship from my country, you have imagined them safe and easy to those which sail in the contrary direction, and leave your dominions for my island. But in this you are greatly mistaken; for of the innumerable ambassadors, whom you despatch to me, a few only arrive, and from them I receive a melancholy narrative of multitudes perishing by the rocks and other perils of the voyage. And besides the natural toil and danger of these seas, I learn that many of your messengers are lost by want of preparation and skill, by ignorance of the sea, and by faulty ships. It is said that some of your packets founder as soon as they have left the harbour, many in the middle of the voyage, and some within sight of my island. The ruins and fragments cast up on my shore from time to time inform me how many expeditions you fit out for destruction.

However, I have learned something of you from the few more skilful adventurers who have accomplished the voyage; and as from their information I find that you are imposing duties upon me, for which I am not likely to have either time or inclination, I shall make a few remarks upon these labours, which you think yourself entitled to leave for me.

In many particulars, I believe you only fall into that mistake, common to every age, of expecting too much observance from your successor; but in addition to that, you may perhaps have other errors of your own invention. I understand that upon the most trifling event you please yourself with considering what posterity will say about it. Now, while I gratefully acknowledge the care you take to supply me with conversation, I would represent to you that you can hardly expect me to decline all enterprises and employments for the sake of having full leisure to talk of what you have been doing. You seem to think it but reasonable, that when you are dead I shall be occupied incessantly with considering your exploits, and celebrating your praises; but you forget that I shall always have my own exploits to consider, and myself to praise. It is impossible that I should undertake in your behalf all the study and research which you impose upon me without neglecting altogether my own affairs, my hopes and dangers, and that only in order to make you famous. This, I think, cannot be expected; for although men will endure great labours for their own renown, no person has been known to forfeit his ease, pleasure, and reputation for the fame of another.

I am told that you expect me to understand the affairs of your reign much better than you do yourself. I am to discover infallibly the nature of every event, to expose the fraud of every intrigue, and to manifest the true origin of all that now passes before your eyes.

When there has been some mysterious transaction, in which there is guilt and blame without any certainty of the person upon whom it ought to fall, you desire your subjects to be under no concern, and not to perplex themselves with conjectures, for Posterity will inquire into the matter, and disgrace those who deserve it. Yet I should have thought you must have better opportunities of information about what is now passing than I am likely to command when all concerned in the event are dead. But I believe the advantage which makes Posterity infallible is, that none remain to contradict whatever he may choose to conclude. But before you can be sure I shall arrive at just decisions upon all events in your reign, you must know whether I shall be at the trouble of examining them at all; and I cannot help suspecting that I shall be more attentive to the most trivial occurrence which I see passing than to all the events which were seen by you.

I have learned, also, that you act with the most wanton caprice in distributing honours and rewards amongst your subjects. The clamorous become great; the good, the silent, and the useful remain obscure: and it is said that to excuse the little pains you take in discovering and advancing true merit, you often allege that Posterity will rectify all your mistakes concerning the characters of men. This seems to me a singular kind of justice; and I cannot think that a man of merit is adequately rewarded by the hope of its being acknowledged after his death that he ought to have been famous while he lived. But I warn you that I shall not think myself under any obligation to adjust the claims of your contemporaries. This is one of the most unreasonable tasks that you impose upon me; you find it difficult to distinguish the good and bad qualities in that multitude which is soliciting your notice, and therefore transfer the decision to me, as if the characters of men were most easily discerned when the means of information are lost. I am expected not only to furnish honour for all whom you have unjustly kept in obscurity, but also to degrade those whom you have exalted without reason, and you seem to think that you atone sufficiently for raising so many undeserving men when you charge Posterity to deprive them of their honours.

I am told that by this uncertainty in assigning honours, and this custom of referring all kinds of merit to my decision, you have taught great numbers of busy men, whose names can never reach my ear, to expect what they call justice from me. When there have been two competitors for a public honour, the unsuccessful one invokes my aid, and desires that I will not fail to expose the arts of his adversary and to manifest his own probity, when the truth is, that I am never to hear of the dispute, and therefore cannot reasonably be expected to settle it. I find that I am become the common refuge of all the unhappy men who are disappointed in their hopes of your favour. He who was to have been an orator and statesman, but instead of that dies unheard of in a wretched garret, entreats me with his last breath to make him as great a man as he ought to have been.

But I hear that of all those who expect my praise the most numerous and most confident are the authors. The scribbler, who has been guilty of a tiresome volume which you have refused to read, still writes with the same industry as at first, for he has patience, and can wait for the applause of Posterity. He who has had the good fortune to be read and commended by you has no reason to suppose that I shall be less pleased by his work; and he whom you have censured or refused to read is but the more confident of my applause from your known neglect of merit. Thus either to fail or to succeed assures an author of favour with Posterity, whence I must regard with despair the library that I am expected to peruse.

It is said that almost all your subjects are authors, so that he who has not written a book is accused of affecting singularity; and I hear you read the living writers with so much industry that very few complain of being overlooked. Now I am credibly informed that there is only one writer of your whole reign whom I am likely to study: I conceal his name, that each may believe it to be himself, and the vigour and hope of your authors may not be diminished.