THE DOCTOR'S UTOPIA DENOMINATED COLUMBIA.—HIS SCHEME ENTERED UPON—BUT ‘LEFT HALF TOLD’ LIKE ‘THE STORY OF CAMBUSCAN BOLD.’
I will to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine own, a new Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself. And why may I not?
BURTON.
The Doctor's plan would have provided materials for a moral and physiological Cadastre, or Domesday Book. This indeed is the place for stating what the reader, knowing as much as he knows of our Philosopher, will not be surprised to hear, that Dr. Dove had conceived an Utopia of his own. He fixed it an island, thinking the sea to be the best of all neighbours, and he called it Columbia, not as pretending that it had been discovered by his “famous namesake,” but for a reason which the sagacious may divine.
The scheme of his government had undergone many changes, although from the beginning it was established upon the eternal and immutable principles of truth and justice. Every alteration was intended to be final; yet it so happened that, notwithstanding the proposed perpetuity of the structure, and the immutability of the materials, he frequently found cause to exercise the imperscriptible and inalienable right of altering and improving his own work. He justified this, as being himself sole legislator, and moreover the only person in existence whose acceptance of the new constitution was necessary for its full establishment; and no just objection, he said, could be advanced against any of these changes, if they were demonstrably for the better, not merely innovations, but improvements also; for no possible revolution however great, or however suddenly effected, could occasion the slightest evil to his Commonwealth. Governments in nubibus being mended as easily as they are made, for which, as for many other reasons, they are so much better than any that are now actually existing, have existed, or ever will exist.
At first he denominated his Commonwealth an Iatrarchy, and made the Archiatros, or Chief Physician, head of the state. But upon after consideration he became convinced that the cares of general government, after all the divisions and subdivisions which could be made, were quite enough for any one head, however capacious and however strong, and however ably assisted. Columbia therefore was made an absolute monarchy, hereditary in the male line, according to the Salic law.
How did he hold sweet dalliance with his crown,
And wanton with dominion, how lay down,
Without the sanction of a precedent,
Rules of most large and absolute extent,
Rules which from sense of public virtue spring,
And all at once commence a Patriot King!1
O Simon Bolivar, once called the Liberator, if thou couldst have followed the example of this less practical but more philosophical statesman, and made and maintained thyself as absolute monarch of thy Columbia, well had it been for thy Columbians and for thee! better still for thyself, it may be feared, if thou hadst never been born.