"A messenger, a messenger, no doubt," cried Dogvane, "from his august and most sable Majesty King Hokee with dispatches from the most noble Bandit of the East."
With much pomp and ceremony the herald advanced, carrying over his left shoulder a spear, and in his right hand what looked like a battered beaver hat, with the crown knocked out. Halting in front of the Buccaneer, he exclaimed, after having made the usual obeisance, "Most noble and illustrious Sea King, ruler of the universe, the holder of the only key to Heaven, the redresser of wrongs, the chastiser of the evil doer, and the terror of the oppressor, know that a little while since, while yet the day was but a few hours old, two friendly factions of the Ojabberaways met, and entered upon an argument apparently from opposite premises, and this is the conclusion that they arrived at." With this he stuck his spear into the battered beaver, for such it was, and raised it up on high, for an admiring crowd to gaze upon. When curiosity was satisfied a very high state official took charge of the interesting relic, and it was conveyed with much ceremony to one of the Buccaneer's principal museums.
It must be owned that to sit and listen to the complaints of so many people was trying to the patience of all; but the Buccaneer and his family were well trained to this sort of thing, and even liked it. Sunday after Sunday the uncrowned queen, Respectability, sent them all to church, sometimes even twice. There they sat quietly under their favourite pulpit, and listened without a murmur to their pastor, who frequently either chided them as children, treated them as fools, or eternally damned them all as incorrigible sinners.
The upper ranks of the Buccaneer's people now came on and complained that their heels were being kicked by those who came after them, and that the respect that once was given to rank and social position was now grudgingly bestowed, if indeed it was bestowed at all. The deputation was presented with the proverb which the Buccaneer and his cox'sn had picked up in their roving days on the Spanish Main, and they were recommended to have it framed and hung up in some convenient place, where their children might be able to look upon it.
The Squire followed, and he again laid bare his numerous complaints; said he could never remember the time when he was in such low water, for he could get little or nothing out of his tenants, whilst his burdens were more than he could bear. Scarcely had he finished speaking, when his tenants appeared in a body, and declared, that owing to the foreign cheap-Jacks underselling them, they could not get enough out of the land to keep body and soul together, let alone money enough to pay their landlord rents. Some of these tenants complained too, that the clergy were too exacting, and made no abatement in their tithe charge; but demanded the pound of flesh that was in their bond.
This brought the clergy forward, and they declared that their claim was the first charge upon the land, which was taken subject to the burden. The pulpit produces the speaker, if it does nothing else. "Is it not in our bond," they said, "that we shall have the tenth part of the yearly increase arising from the profits of the land, the stock upon the land, and the personal industry of those living upon the land, or a just equivalent for these?"
There was now a most learned discussion upon the origin and nature of the tithe charge, all of which did little less than breed confusion. The argument was taken up amongst the company. Some said that it began first as a purely voluntary offering, but that long since a crafty priesthood had fossilized it into a hard and fast legal right, which weighed heavily upon the land in such hard times. The clergy said that it was on account of the hardness of men's hearts that the offering had to be legalized into a right. "If," they said, "the charge were left to the free will of man, we should soon starve, for man would give nothing in so selfish, degenerate, and worldly an age. The custom is sanctioned by age and by Divine authority, for did not Abraham, when he spoiled the five kings, give a tenth part of the spoils to Melchisedek?" No one seemed bold enough to deny this, and the clergy finished up by saying that as they were called upon to fulfil their obligations, so they must call upon other people to fulfil theirs.
This seemed but reasonable; but just as the Buccaneer was going to deliver judgment, the poor clergy took the opportunity to come forward and present their grievance, which was to the effect that they, and their families, were in many cases in want. Upon being appealed to, the High Priest and Lords Spiritual declared that it was so, and that it reflected the greatest discredit upon the Buccaneer and all his people, for it betokened a selfish hardness of heart that was most unchristian-like.
The poorer clergy were treated to a most excellent discourse upon the beauties of poverty, which beauties, it would appear, that even the clergy love best to contemplate at a distance, which in this, as in most things else, lends enchantment to the view. It was pointed out to this section of the disaffected, by those in spiritual authority, that Christ Himself was a great advocate for poverty and condemned in no measured terms the greed after riches; that all His early disciples were poor and lowly, and that His religion was propagated by a band of holy, but shoeless beggars. The poor clergy were bid to find comfort in this, and walk in the path to which they had been called with a sanctified humility.
The old cox'sn now got himself into disgrace, for he turned round and asked the preacher how he could reconcile the precept with the general practice. How, if poverty was such a fine thing, the clergy did not practise it themselves. The high ecclesiastics to whom Jack addressed himself did not condescend to answer so impertinent a remark, but all chance of Church preferment was for ever gone from the old cox'sn, and it is even possible that if he then had died he would not have been allowed Christian burial.