A brother of his own was appointed the first king of it,—whose wife is said to have been a lady of beauty and accomplishments, though she had a slight mixture of aboriginal blood. Inducements were held out to several of the most respectable and intelligent persons in various states who were of mixed race, to come and settle in the new kingdom. Some of the ablest of these,—who, by the bye, are said to have had a considerable over-proportion of European blood in their veins,—together with others of purely white race, were nominated as the original senate (or upper house); and the lower house was, by a fundamental law, to consist exclusively, and for ever, of persons of mixed race, or who are married to such. And, to this day, no one is eligible who cannot prove his descent, or his wife’s, from blacks and whites.
This, however, is easily done at present; for the descent may be ever so remote, the mixture ever so unequal. Every one, therefore, is eligible, of whom any ancestor has been enrolled as such. There are, accordingly, many members of the house who, perhaps, have not above ¹⁄₁₆ or ¹⁄₃₂ of aboriginal blood; and, indeed, most of the population are at present not very dissimilar from Europeans in feature and complexion, and yet are qualified, as far as the above rule is concerned, for a seat in the house.
The plan was at first laughed at, as whimsical, by many of the Southlanders themselves; but the expediency of it in promoting mutual respect and speedy amalgamation between the two races, who were thus both alike excluded from an important branch of the legislature, was so apparent, and the joke was so good-humouredly joined in by those who were the objects of it, that the laughter was soon divested of all bitterness. The satirists had suggested, as a symbol for the new state, two swans,—an Australian black swan (Cygnus ater) and white European,—lovingly entwining their necks: on which the Upper-Londoners immediately adopted this as the arms of the kingdom; and so it remains to this day, with the motto of “Nimium ne crede colori.” The state, though one of the smaller ones, (its population about two hundred and fifty thousand,) is prosperous, and its citizens respectable, intelligent, and polite.
In most of the states, there are few or no considerable taxes, except a land tax; and in many of them even this is not heavy, from the government being in possession of considerable tracts of land, which in some instances have become very valuable from having been covered with buildings, wharfs, &c. [The word “tax” is used as best conveying to English ears the sense intended. They themselves call it “government-rent;” for they consider the state as alone holding what we call the fee-simple of all land, which it assigns to individuals, either for terms of years at a stipulated rent, or in perpetuity, subject to what we should call a land-tax.]
On the whole, Mr. Sibthorpe is of opinion, that, taking into consideration the very small military (and, of course, no naval) establishments, and also the comparative wealth of these and the European states, the government revenues are proportionably greater in the Southland states than in those of Europe,—the revenue that is actually expended in the public service each year; for he does not take into account, as a part of our revenue, the enormous sum annually paid as interest on the national debt. These states having happily been exempt from the prodigal expenditure of wars, have no national debt. Their public expenditure is, however, what we should be apt to call profuse in the payment of public functionaries. All are paid, even the representatives; and to most offices is attached, besides what may be considered an ample salary in reference to the prevailing style of living, a comfortable retiring pension: sinecures however, strictly so called,—i. e. payments for no services, either present or past,—are not known. When the more frugal system, in reference to this point, that prevails among us, was described to them, and also the prevailing clamour for still further reductions on that head, they gave it as their opinion that there could not be money worse saved, and that is must be a great wonder if we were well governed.
“The natural tendency,” they urged, “of a system of frugal government in this sense, is, to obtain a worse commodity. Try the experiment,” they said, “of being frugal to your physicians, and reduce their fees to half-crowns, and you will have a half-crown’s worth of skill instead of a guinea’s worth. You will still have plenty of physicians, but we should not like to be under their hands. While a man of talents and character, with a liberal education and industry, can realize a handsome and secure income in some of your learned professions, you cannot expect him, especially if he have a family to provide for, and but little private fortune, to give up a lucrative employment, and devote himself to the labours of political life, either gratuitously, or with an uncertain recompense in view. He will either keep aloof from public business, or will bestow on it a hurried, divided, and secondary attention. Thus, political business, and ultimately political power, is thrown into the hands of one or both of two classes of men:—those of large estates; and adventurers,—men, who, for want of character, or of steady application, are not succeeding in any reputable and lucrative profession, and therefore see nothing better to do than to take their chance in the profession—an ill-paid and precarious one, as it seems to be among you—of politics.
“Many persons of both these classes, among you, may, we doubt not, be possessed of high qualifications; but it seems evident that with so large a total number as you possess of educated and intelligent gentry, you practically limit your choice to a very small proportion of them for persons to conduct public affairs; and these affairs, therefore, we should expect to find conducted, if not ill, yet by no means so well as they might be. We should expect to find the department of government—one of such paramount importance—not so well filled as many subordinate departments; and that there would be among you a larger proportionate number of highly qualified legal, military, and naval men, for instance, of engineers, artisans, &c. than of statesmen.
“You are to observe,” they added, “that we are only throwing out our conjectures: we are ready and willing to stand corrected. You must know how the matter of fact stands; which may perhaps be at variance with our anticipations, through the operation of some causes we are not aware of. But we lay before you our notions and expectations, as the thought strikes ourselves.”
[There follows here, in the memoranda of the travellers, the explanations they gave, in answer to the foregoing remarks, of our institutions and usages,—the reasons by which they are vindicated,—and the practical working of them. But all this, though of course most interesting to the persons to whom it was addressed, would probably not be so to our readers, who must of course be familiar with discussions relative to our own institutions and customs, and curious rather to learn particulars concerning those of a strange nation, however unreasonable and whimsical their novelty may cause them to appear. For this reason, we have, in several other places as well as here, omitted much that we find recorded of the descriptions and discussions laid before the Southlanders by their guests; inserting only what was necessary to make their descriptions intelligible.]