It was in the state of Atroloria,—so called from the lake of the same name[[1]] within its territory,—which the travellers first reached, that they had the earliest opportunity of witnessing debates in their senate. They afterwards, on several occasions, attended the legislative assemblies in other places. The circumstance which in the first instance most attracted, by its novelty to them, the attention of the visitors, was one which they found on inquiry was common to all the states in their deliberative assemblies; being a regulation originally established by Müller, and afterwards, from its tried advantage and convenience, continued universally and uninterruptedly. It was this, that no member was allowed to speak and to vote on the same question, but each had his choice between the two. The proceedings, accordingly, bore some resemblance to those of a court of justice in civil causes; the speakers corresponding to the pleaders who address the court,—the voters, to the jury, who give the verdict. The difference is, that each member has it left to his choice which character he will take. Any member wishing to address the house, quits his seat and places himself in front of the chair of the moderator,—answering to the speaker or chairman; and when he has spoken, seats himself, not in his former place, but, with a view to prevent mistake or confusion, on a bench appropriated to the purpose, and thence called the speakers’ bench; or he is at liberty to leave the assembly if he thinks fit. When the question has been put to the vote and decided, and a fresh question is coming on, he resumes his original seat. Certain public functionaries, who are not members, have a seat by right on the speakers’ bench, and are at liberty to address the house (though they have no vote) when there is any reference to the business of their own peculiar departments.
[1]. The lake was so called by the early settlers; doubtless from the same cause which led to the name of our own colony in Western Australia.
Whether owing to this circumstance, or to any other, the debates were observed to be shorter, and the speakers much fewer, than is usual in European assemblies. They seldom exceeded two or three on each side.
The travellers observed that the speakers rarely used even the smallest degree of action, but usually kept themselves remarkably still while speaking. This, it appears, was one of the results of that general and deep-rooted association already alluded to. In the course of conversation on this subject, the Southlanders, it appeared, considered it as something uncivilized to use either vociferation or gesticulation in speaking, “as the savages do.” They even accounted the refined Athenians and Romans of old as little better than half-reclaimed barbarians in this respect, because they would not attend to an orator unless he stamped and shouted, and brandished his arms about, as if he were speaking to a pack of hounds, instead of to an assembly of rational beings.
The travellers were so fortunate as to witness on one occasion a debate of a peculiar kind, which is of rare occurrence, and which served to throw light on the whole system of legislature of this singular people. It occurred in the kingdom of Nether-London, one of the most ancient and populous of all the states. They found a considerable excitement and bustle prevailing, though all was orderly and decorous, on account of a summons issued (in our phraseology, “a call of the house”) to the members of their assembly, called in that state the parliament, to deliberate on the question of removing a fundamental law. The particular law then in question was, they found, like the Salic law of the French, one which confined the succession to the throne to males. But a further inquiry let them into the knowledge of matter far more curious and interesting,—the general principle of “fundamental laws,” which materially affects the whole of the system of legislature in the country; being, with slight differences of detail, common to all the states, regal and republican, and extending also to the several ecclesiastical communities.
“The system I am about to describe to you,” said Mr. Adamson, who was one of their principal informants on this occasion, “was established by the Müllers; the younger of whom, during the whole of his long reign, as it may be called, laboured earnestly and successfully to explain its advantages, and to perpetuate its adoption. I will put into your hands presently a little popular tract on the subject written by him, which, like the many others he wrote, is in every one’s hands at this day. He sets forth in that the evils resulting, on the one hand, from retaining, or, oftener, vainly striving to retain, all laws, usages, and institutions unaltered, some of which, even though the result originally of consummate wisdom, may become utterly unsuitable to other times and altered circumstances; and, on the other hand, from frequent, sudden, and violent changes, which are apt to agitate and unsettle men’s minds, and to lead to consequences not designed or foreseen,—like the pulling out of one stone from a wall, which is apt to loosen some of the others. His discussion of this subject bears much resemblance to those I lately saw in the little book you lent me the other day, by Lord Bacon,[[2]] who strikes me as a very able writer, and likely to be well worthy of the reputation you tell me he enjoys.
[2]. A little pocket edition of Bacon’s Essays, one of four or five small volumes which the travellers had brought with them to beguile any occasional tedious half-hour at their halting-places, or in their boat.
“Müller goes on to say that unwise legislators have been in all ages apt to bring on themselves, not one only, but both of these classes of evils. Unmindful of the proverb, that “a stitch in time saves nine,” they often, through dread of change, maintain unaltered things which manifestly want altering, at the expense of much loss and inconvenience; and when the change does come, from the inconvenience having grown to an intolerable height, it is apt to be, in consequence, a violent, hasty, and sometimes ruinous change. ‘That dirt made this dust,’ is a homely old saying, which he used frequently to apply in speaking of such instances, in allusion to those who in wet weather neglect to scrape off the mud from the roads; and consequently, besides being for a long time continually splashed and bemired, at length, when the mud is all dried up by the sun, they are half smothered by the dust it produces. He would always, therefore, he said, be, by choice, an improver, rather than a reformer; introducing corrections and additions, from time to time, as occasion offered, rather than letting a building become so inconvenient or ruinous as to require being pulled down and rebuilt.
“A great reformation he considered as, in all cases, a great evil; though frequently by far the least evil that circumstances admit of, and though he had himself, accordingly, been always a strenuous supporter of the great reformation of religion, notwithstanding the many evils resulting, according to him, from its having been so long delayed and so obstinately resisted. To avoid both of the opposite evils,—the liability to sudden and violent changes, and the adherence to established usage when inconvenient or mischievous,—to give the requisite stability to governments and other institutions without shutting the door against improvement,—this is a problem which both ancient and modern legislators, he thought, had not well succeeded in solving. And the same, it appears, may be said of those who have appeared in Europe since his time. Some, like the ancient Medes and Persians, and like Lycurgus, have attempted to prohibit all change; but those who constantly appeal to the wisdom of their ancestors, as a sufficient reason for perpetuating everything these have established, forget two things; first, that they cannot hope for ever to persuade all successive generations of men that there was once one generation of such infallible wisdom as to be entitled to dictate to all their descendants for ever,—so as to make the earth, in fact, the possession, not of the living, but of the dead; and, secondly, that, even supposing our ancestors gifted with such infallibility, many cases must arise in which it may be reasonably doubted whether they themselves would not have advocated, if living, changes called for by altered circumstances; even as our own forefathers, who denoted the southern quarter from meridies (noon), would not have been so foolish as to retain that language had they come to live in this hemisphere, where the sun at noon is in the north.