"Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret."
"For nature driven out, with proud disdain,
All powerful goddess, will return again."
The election of a town constable, exhibits the violence of Lunar Politics to be much the same as the terrestrial, and seems to have some allusion to an existing and important controversy amongst ourselves. The prostitution of the press is satirized by the story of a number of boys dressed in black and white—wearing the badges of the party to which they respectively belong, and each provided with a syringe and two canteens, the one filled with rose water, and the other with a black, offensive, fluid: the rose water being squirted at the favourite candidates and voters—the other fluid on the opposite party. All these were under regular discipline, and at the word of command discharged their syringes on friend or foe, as the case might be.
The "glorious uncertainty of the law" (proverbial with us,) falls also under notice. In Morosofia, it seems, a favourite mode of settling private disputes, whether concerning person, character, or property, is by the employment of prize fighters who hire themselves to the litigants:—
"And out of foreign controversies
By aiding both sides, fill their purses:
But have no int'rest in the cause
For which th' engage and wage the laws
Nor farther prospect than their pay
Whether they lose or win the day."
The chapter concludes with a discussion between an old man and his wife, in which the policy of encouraging manufactures, is argued.
In an account of Okalbia—a happy valley—similar only in name to that in Rasselas, the author seems to sketch his views of a perfect commonwealth, and glances at some important questions of politics and political economy. Prudential restraints are considered sufficient to obviate a redundancy of population—and on Ricardo's theory of rent, the author holds the same opinions as those already expressed in this Journal.
Some useful hints are also afforded on the subject of legislation and jurisprudence.
After having passed a week amongst the singular and happy Okalbians, whom our travellers found equally amiable, intelligent, and hospitable, they returned to Alamatua.
Jeffery's theory of beauty, as developed in the article beauty, of the supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which he denies the existence of original beauty and refers it to association, is ridiculed by an extension of a similar kind of reasoning to the smell.