The Monikins

by James Fenimore Cooper

I stood aghast, even more amazed than the house itself had been only the instant before.

“Order—order—order—order—order!” continued to be yelled, as if a million of demons were screeching in the hall.

“The honorable member will please to recollect,” said the bland and ex-officio impartial speaker, who, by the way, was a Perpendicular, elected by fraud, “that it is out of order to use personalities.”

“Personalities! I do not understand, sir—”

“The instrument to which the honorable member has alluded, his own good sense will tell him, was never written by itself—so far from this, the very members of the convention by which it was drawn up, are at this instant members of this house, and most of them supporters of the resolution now before the house; and it will be deemed personal to throw into their faces former official acts, in this unheard-of manner. I am sorry it is my duty to say, that the honorable member is entirely out of order.”

“But, sir, the Sacred National—”

“Sacred, sir, beyond a doubt—but in a sense different from what you imagine—much too sacred, sir, ever to be alluded to here. There are the works of the commentators, the books of constructions, and specially the writings of various foreign and perfectly disinterested statesmen—need I name Ekrub in particular!—that are at the command of members; but so long as I am honored with a seat in this chair, I shall peremptorily decide against all personalities.”

I was dumfounded. The idea that the authority itself would be refused never crossed my mind, though I had anticipated a sharp struggle on its construction. The constitution only required that no law should be passed declaring black to be white, whereas the resolution merely ordered that henceforth white should be black. Here was matter for discussion, nor was I at all sanguine as to the result; but to be thus knocked on the head by a club, in the outset, was too much for the modesty of a maiden speech. I took my seat in confusion; and I plainly saw that the Perpendiculars, by their sneers, now expected to carry everything triumphantly their own way. This, most probably, would have been the case, had not one of the Tangents immediately got the floor, to move the amendment. To the vast indignation of Captain Poke, and, in some degree, to my own mortification, this duty was intrusted to the Hon. Robert Smut. Mr. Smut commenced with entreating members not to be led away by the sophistry of the first speaker. That honorable member, no doubt, felt himself called upon to defend the position taken by his friends; but those that knew him well, as it had been his fate to know him, must be persuaded that his sentiments had, at least, undergone a sudden and miraculous change. That honorable member denied the existence of color at all! He would ask that honorable member if he had never been instrumental himself in producing what is generally called “black and blue color”? He should like to know if that honorable member placed as little value, at present, on blows as he now seemed to set on words. He begged pardon of the house—but this was a matter of great interest to himself—he knew that there never had been a greater manufacturer of “black and blue color” than that honorable member, and he wondered at his now so pertinaciously denying the existence of colors, and at his wish to underrate their value. For his part, he trusted he understood the importance of words, and the value of hues; and while he did not exactly see the necessity of deeming black so inviolable as some gentlemen appeared to think it, he was not by any means prepared to go as far as those who had introduced this resolution. He did not believe that public opinion was satisfied with maintaining that black was black, but he thought it was not yet disposed to affirm that black was white. He did not say that such a day might not arrive; he only maintained that it had not yet arrived, and with a view to meet that which he believed was the public sentiment, he should move, by way of amendment, to strike out the whole of the resolution after the word “really,” and insert that which would cause the whole resolution to read as follows, viz.:

“Resolved, that the color which has hitherto been deemed to be black, is really lead-color.”

Hereupon, the Honorable Mr. Smut took his seat, leaving the house to its own ruminations. The leaders of the Perpendiculars, foreseeing that if they got half-way this session, they might effect the rest of their object the next, determined to accept the compromise; and the resolution, amended, passed by a handsome majority. So this important point was finally decided for the moment, leaving great hopes among the Perpendiculars of being able to lay the Horizontals even flatter on their backs than they were just then.