The Monikins

by James Fenimore Cooper

I ought to have said before, that both Brigadier Downright and myself had applied to be admitted of counsel for the accused, under an ancient law of Leaphigh, as next of kin; I as a fellow human being, and the brigadier by adoption.

The preliminary forms observed, the attorney-general was about to go into proof, in behalf of the crown, when my brother Downright arose and said that he intended to save the precious time of the court, by admitting the facts; and that it was intended to rest the defence altogether on the law of the case. He presumed the jury were the judges of the law as well as of the facts, according to the rule of Leaplow, and that “he and his brother Goldencalf were quite prepared to show that the law was altogether with us, in this affair.” The court received the admission, and the facts were submitted to the jury, by consent, as proven; although the chief-justice took occasion to remark, Longbeard dissenting, that, while the jury were certainly judges of the law, in one sense, yet there was another sense in which they were not judges of the law. The dissent of Baron Longbeard went to maintain that while the jury were the judges of the law in the “another sense” mentioned, they were not judges of the law in the “one sense” named. This difficulty disposed of, Mr. Attorney-General arose and opened for the crown.

I soon found that we had one of a very comprehensive and philosophical turn of mind against us, in the advocate of the other side. He commenced his argument by a vigorous and lucid sketch of the condition of the world previously to the subdivisions of its different inhabitants into nations, and tribes, and clans, while in the human or chrysalis condition. From this statement, he deduced the regular gradations by which men become separated into communities, and subjected to the laws of civilization, or what is called society. Having proceeded thus far, he touched lightly on the different phases that the institutions of men had presented, and descended gradually and consecutively to the fundamental principles of the social compact, as they were known to exist among monikins. After a few general observations that properly belonged to the subject, he came to speak of those portions of the elementary principles of society that are connected with the rights of the sovereign. These he divided into the rights of the king’s prerogative, the rights of the king’s person, and the rights of the king’s conscience. Here he again generalized a little, and in a very happy manner; so well, indeed, as to leave all his hearers in doubt as to what he would next be at; when, by a fierce logical swoop, he descended suddenly on the last of the king’s rights, as the one that was most connected with the subject.

He triumphantly showed that the branch of the royal immunities that was chiefly affected by the offence of the prisoner at the bar, was very clearly connected with the rights of the king’s conscience. “The attributes of royalty,” observed the sagacious advocate, “are not to be estimated in the same manner as the attributes of the subject. In the sacred person of the king are centred many, if not most, of the interesting privileges of monikinism. That royal personage, in apolitical sense, can do no wrong: official infallibility is the consequence. Such a being has no occasion for the ordinary faculties of the monikin condition. Of what use, for instance, is a judgment, or a conscience, to a functionary who can do no wrong? The law, in order to relieve one on whose shoulders was imposed the burden of the state, had consequently placed the latter especially in the keeping of another. His majesty’s first-cousin is the keeper of his conscience, as is known throughout the realm of Leaphigh. A memory is the faculty of the least account to a personage who has no conscience; and, while it is not contended that the sovereign is relieved from the possession of his memory by any positive statute law, or direct constitutional provision, it follows, by unavoidable implication, and by all legitimate construction, that, having no occasion to possess such a faculty, it is the legal presumption he is altogether without it.

“That simplicity, lucidity and distinctness, my lords,” continued Mr. Attorney-General, “which are necessary to every well-ordered mind, would be impaired, in the case of his majesty, were his intellectual faculties unnecessarily crowded in this useless manner, and the state would be the sufferer. My lords, the king reigns, but he does not govern. This is a fundamental principle of the constitution; nay, it is more—it is the palladium of our liberties! My lords, it is an easy matter to reign in Leaphigh. It requires no more than the rights of primogeniture, sufficient discretion to understand the distinction between reigning and governing, and a political moderation that is unlikely to derange the balance of the state. But it is quite a different thing to govern. His majesty is required to govern nothing, the slight interests just mentioned excepted; no, not even himself. The case is far otherwise with his first-cousin. This high functionary is charged with the important trust of governing. It had been found, in the early ages of the monarchy, that one conscience, or indeed one set of faculties generally, scarcely sufficed for him whose duty it was both to reign and to govern. We all know, my lords, how insufficient for our personal objects are our own private faculties; how difficult we find it to restrain even ourselves, assisted merely by our own judgments, consciences, and memories; and in this fact do we perceive the great importance of investing him who governs others, with an additional set of these grave faculties. Under a due impression of the exigency of such a state of things, the common law—not statute law, my lords, which is apt to be tainted with the imperfections of monikin reason in its isolated or individual state, usually bearing the impress of the single cauda from which it emanated—but the common law, the known receptacle of all the common sense of the nation—in such a state of things, then, has the common law long since decreed that his majesty’s first-cousin should be the keeper of his majesty’s conscience; and, by necessary legal implication, endowed with his majesty’s judgment, his majesty’s reason, and finally, his majesty’s memory.

“My lords, this is the legal presumption. It would, in addition, be easy for me to show, in a thousand facts, that not only the sovereign of Leaphigh, but most other sovereigns, are and ever have been, destitute of the faculty of a memory. It might be said to be incompatible with the royal condition to be possessed of this obtrusive faculty. Were a prince endowed with a memory, he might lose sight of his high estate, in the recollection that he was born, and that he is destined, like another, to die; he might be troubled with visions of the past; nay, the consciousness of his very dignity might be unsettled and weakened by a vivid view of the origin of his royal race. Promises, obligations, attachments, duties, principles, and even debts, might interfere with the due discharge of his sacred trusts, were the sovereign invested with a memory; and it has, therefore, been decided, from time immemorial, that his majesty is utterly without the properties of reason, judgment, and memory, as a legitimate inference from his being destitute of a conscience.”

Mr. Attorney-General now directed the attention of the court and jury to a statute of the 3d of Firstborn 6th, by which it was enacted that any person attributing to his majesty the possession of any faculty, with felonious intent, that might endanger the tranquillity of the state, should suffer decaudization, without benefit of clergy. Here he rested the case on behalf of the crown.

There was a solemn pause, after the speaker had resumed his seat. His argument, logic, and above all, his good sense and undeniable law, made a very sensible impression; and I had occasion to observe that Noah began to chew tobacco ravenously. After a decent interval, however, Brigadier Downright—who, it would seem, in spite of his military appellation, was neither more nor less than a practising attorney and counsellor in the city of Bivouac, the commercial capital of the Republic of Leaplow—arose, and claimed a right to be heard in reply. The court now took it into its head to start the objection, for the first time, that the advocate had not been duly qualified to plead, or to argue, at their bar. My brother Downright instantly referred their lordships to the law of adoption, and to that provision of the criminal code which permitted the accused to be heard by his next of kin.

“Prisoner at the bar,” said the chief-justice, “you hear the statement of counsel. Is it your desire to commit the management of your defence to your next of kin?”

“To anybody, your honors, if the court please,” returned Noah, furiously masticating his beloved weed; “to anybody who will do it well, my honorables, and do it cheap.”