1 CHURCHILL.
There was an order of hereditary nobles in the Doctor's Columbia; men were raised to that rank as a just reward for any signal service which they had rendered to the state; but on the other hand an individual might be degraded for any such course of conduct as evinced depravity in himself, or was considered as bringing disgrace upon his order. The chiefs of the Hierarchy, the Iatrarchy, the Nomarchy and the Hoplarchy (under which title both sciences, naval and military, were comprised) were like our Bishops, Peers of the realm by virtue of their station, and for life only.
I do not remember what was the scheme of representation upon which his House of Commons was elected, farther than it commenced with universal suffrage and ascended through several stages, the lowest assembly chusing electors for the next above it, so that the choice ultimately rested with those who from their education and station of life might be presumed to exercise it with due discretion. Such schemes are easily drawn up; making and mending constitutions, to the entire satisfaction of the person so employed, being in truth among the easiest things in the world. But like most Utopianizers the legislator of this Columbia had placed his Absolute King and his free People under such strict laws, and given such functions to the local authorities, and established such complete and precise order in every tything, that the duties of the legislative body were easy indeed; this its very name imported; for he called it the Conservative Assembly.
Nor is Crown-wisdom any quintessence
Of abstract truth, or art of Government,
More than sweet sympathy, or counterpease
Of humours, temper'd happily to please.2
2 LORD BROOKE.
The legislator of Columbia considered good policy as a very simple thing. He said to his King, his Three Estates and his collective nation, with the inspired lawgiver “and now Israel what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul: to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command thee, this day, for thy good?” And he added with St. Paul, “now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”
Take care of the pennies, says the frugal old Proverb, and the pounds will take care of themselves. “Les petites choses,” says M. de Custine, sont tout ce qu'on sent de l'existence; les grandes se savent, ce qui est très-différent. Take care of little things, was the Doctor's maxim as a legislator, and great ones will then proceed regularly and well. He was not ignorant that legislators as well as individuals might be penny-wise and pound foolish; proofs enough he had seen in the conduct of the English Government, and many more and more glaring ones he would have seen if he had lived to behold the progress of œconomical reform and liberal legislation. He also knew that an over-attention to trifles was one sure indication of a little mind; but in legislation as in experimental philosophy, he argued, that circumstances which appeared trifling to the ignorant, were sometimes in reality of essential importance, that those things are not trifles upon which the comfort of domestic life, the peace of a neighbourhood, and the stability of a state depend, and yet all these depend mainly upon things apparently so trifling as common schools and parochial government.
“I have ever observed it,” says Ben Jonson, “to have been the office of a wise patriot, among the greatest affairs of the state, to take care of the commonwealth of learning. For schools they are the seminaries of state; and nothing is worthier the study of a statesman, than that part of the republic which we call the advancement of letters.”