“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 mass; 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 accumulation 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 institutions, 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 institutions of Leaplow are divided into two great moral categories, viz.: the LEGAL and the SUBSTITUTIVE. 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 constitution, 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 multitude 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 God; 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 nobility managed to get the better of the jus, when the divinum was left to shift for itself. It was at this epocha the present constitution 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 nobles; 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 nobility, who, for their own particular convenience, paid the principal 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 attitude. 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 constitutional 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 constitutionally 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 destitute, 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 substitute. 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 constitutional right to say who SHOULD BE his eldest first-cousin of the masculine gender, they had an undoubted constitutional 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, nobles 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.