CHAPTER XXVIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVES TO A LEGISLATOR--MORALCONSECUTIVENESS, COMETS, KITES, AND A CONVOY; WITH SOME EVERY-DAYLEGISLATION; TOGETHER WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT.
Legislation, during the occultation of the great moral postulatePrinciple by the passage of Pecuniary Interest, is, at the best, but amelancholy affair. It proved to be peculiarly so with us just at thatmoment, for the radiance of the divine property had been a good dealobscured in the houses, for a long time previously, by the interferenceof various minor satellites. In nothing, therefore, did the deplorablestate of things which existed make itself more apparent, than in ourproceedings.
As Captain Poke and myself, notwithstanding our having taken differentstands in politics, still continued to live together, I had betteropportunities to note the workings of the obscuration on the ingenuousmind of my colleague than on that of most other persons. He early beganto keep a diary of his expenses, regularly deducting the amount at nightfrom the sum of eight dollars, and regarding the balance as so muchclear gain. His conversation, too, soon betrayed a leaning to hispersonal interests, instead of being of that pure and elevated castwhich should characterize the language of a statesman. He laid down theposition, pretty dogmatically, that legislation, after all, was work;that "the laborer was worthy of his hire"; and that, for his part, hefelt no great disposition to go through the vexation and trouble ofhelping to make laws, unless he could see, with a reasonable certainty,that something was to be got by it. He thought Leaplow had quite lawsenough as it was--more than she respected or enforced--and if she wantedany more, all she had to do was to pay for them. He should take an earlyoccasion to propose that all our wages--or, at any rate, his own; othersmight do as they pleased--should be raised, at the very least, twodollars a day, and this while he merely sat in the house; for he wishedto engage me to move, by way of amendment, that as much more shouldbe given to the committees. He did not think it was fair to exact ofa member to be a committee-man for nothin', although most of them werecommittee-men for nothin'; and if we were called on to keep two watches,in this manner, the least that could be done would be to give us TWOPAYS. He said, considering it in the most favorable point of view, thatthere was great wear and tear of brain in legislation, and he shouldnever be the man he was before he engaged in the trade; he assured methat his idees, sometimes, were so complicated that he did not knowwhere to find the one he wanted, and that he had wished for a cauda, athousand times, since he had been in the house, for, by keeping theend of it in his hand, like the bight of a rope, he might always havesuthin' tangible to cling to. He told me, as a great secret, that he wasfairly tired of rummaging among his thoughts for the knowledge necessaryto understand what was going on, and that he had finally concludedto put himself, for the rest of the session, under the convoy of aGod-like. He had been looking out for a fit fugleman of this sort, andhe had pretty much determined to follow the signal of the great God-likeof the Parpendic'lars, like the rest of them, for it would occasion lessconfusion in the ranks, and enable him to save himself a vast deal oftrouble in making up his mind. He didn't know, on the whole, but eightdollars a day might give a living profit, provided he could throw allthe thinking on his God-like, and turn his attention to suthin' else;he thought of writing his v'y'ges, for he understood that anything fromforeign parts took like wild-fire in Leaplow; and if they didn't take,he could always project charts for a living.
Perhaps it will be necessary to explain what Noah meant by saying thathe thought of engaging a God-like. The reader has had some insight intothe nature of one set of political leaders in Leaplow, who are known bythe name of the Most Patriotic Patriots. These persons, it is scarcelynecessary to say, are always with the majority, or in a situation toavail themselves of the evolutions of the little wheel. Their greatrotatory principle keeps them pretty constantly in motion, it is true;but while there is a centrifugal force to maintain this action, greatcare has been had to provide a centripetal counterpoise, in order toprevent them from bolting out of the political orbit. It is supposedto be owing to this peculiarity in their party organizations, thatyour Leaplow patriot is so very remarkable for going round and round asubject, without ever touching it.
As an offset to this party arrangement, the Perpendiculars have takenrefuge in the God-likes. A God-like, in Leaplow politics, in somerespects resembles a saint in the Catholic calendar; that is to say, heis canonized, after passing through a certain amount of temptation andvice with a whole skin; after having his cause pleaded for a certainnumber of years before the high authorities of his party; and, usually,after having had a pretty good taste of purgatory. Canonizationattained, however, all gets to be plain sailing with him. He is spared,singular as it may appear, even a large portion of his former "wear andtear" of brains, as Noah had termed it, for nothing puts one so much atliberty in this respect, as to have full powers to do all the thinking.Thinking in company, like travelling in company, requires that we shouldhave some respect to the movements, wishes, and opinions of others; buthe who gets a carte blanche for his sentiments, resembles the uncagedbird, and may fly in whatever direction most pleases himself, and feelconfident, as he goes, that his ears will be saluted with the usualtraveller's signal of "all's right." I can best compare the operation ofyour God-like and his votaries, to the action of a locomotive withits railroad train. As that goes, this follows; faster or slower, themovement is certain to be accompanied; when the steam is up they fly,when the fire is out they crawl, and that, too, with a very uneasy sortof motion; and when a bolt is broken, they who have just been ridingwithout the smallest trouble to themselves, are compelled to get outand push the load ahead as well as they can, frequently with very ruefulfaces, and in very dirty ways. The cars whisk about, precisely as thelocomotive whisks about, all the turn-outs are necessarily imitated,and, in short, one goes after the other very much as it is reasonable tosuppose will happen when two bodies are chained together, and theentire moving power is given to only one of them. A God-like in Leaplow,moreover, is usually a Riddle. It was the object of Noah to hitch onto one of these moral steam-tugs, in order that he too might be draggedthrough his duties without effort to himself; an expedient, as the oldsealer expressed it, that would in some degree remedy his natural wantof a cauda, by rendering him nothing but tail.
"I expect, Sir John," he said, for he had a practice of expecting byway of conjecture, "I expect this is the reason why the Leaplowers dockthemselves. They find it more convenient to give up the management oftheir affairs to some one of these God-likes, and fall into his wakelike the tail of a comet, which makes it quite unnecessary to have anyother cauda."
"I understand you; they amputate to prevent tautology."
Noah rarely spoke of any project until his mind was fairly made up; andthe execution usually soon followed the proposition. The next thing Iheard of him, therefore, he was fairly under the convoy, as he calledit, of one of the most prominent of the Riddles. Curious to know how heliked the experiment, after a week's practice, I called his attention tothe subject, by a pretty direct inquiry.
He told me it was altogether the pleasantest mode of legislating thathad ever been devised. He was now perfectly master of his own time, andin fact, he was making out a set of charts for the Leaplow marine, atask that was likely to bring him in a good round sum, as pumpkins werecheap, and in the polar seas he merely copied the monikin authorities,and out of it he had things pretty much his own way. As for the GreatAllegory, when he wanted a hint about it, or, indeed, about any otherpoint at issue, all he had to do was to inquire what his God-likethought about it, and to vote accordingly. Then he saved himself a greatdeal of breath in the way of argument out of doors, for he and the restof the clientele of this Riddle, having officially invested their patronwith all their own parts, the result had been such an accumulation ofknowledge in this one individual, as enabled them ordinarily to floorany antagonist by the simple quotation of his authority. Such or suchis the opinion of God-like this or of God-like that, was commonlysufficient; and t
hen there was no lack of material, for he had takencare to provide himself with a Riddle who, he really believed, had givenan opinion, at some time or other, on every side of every subjectthat had ever been mooted in Leaplow. He could nullify, or mollify, orqualify, with the best of them; and these, which he termed the threefies, he believed were the great requisites of a Leaplow legislator.He admitted, however, that some show of independence was necessary,in order to give value to the opinion of even a God-like, for monikinnature revolted at anything like total mental dependence; and that hehad pretty much made up his mind to think for himself on a question thatwas to be decided that very day.
The case to which the captain alluded was this. The city of Bivouac wasdivided in three pretty nearly equal parts which were separated fromeach other by two branches of a marsh; one part of the town being on asort of island, and the other two parts on the respective margins of thelow land. It was very desirable to connect these different portions ofthe capital by causeways, and a law to that effect had been introducedin the house. Everybody, in or out of the house, was in favor of theproject, for the causeways had become, in some measure, indispensable.The only disputed point was the length of the works in question. One whois but little acquainted with legislation, and who has never witnessedthe effects of an occultation of the great moral postulate Principle, bythe orb Pecuniary Interest, would very plausibly suppose that the wholeaffair lay in a nutshell, and that all we had to do was to pass a lawordering the causeways to extend just as far as the public conveniencerendered it necessary. But these are mere tyros in the affairs ofmonikins. The fact was that there were just as many different opinionsand interests at work to regulate the length of the causeways, as therewere, owners of land along their line of route. The great object was tostart in what was called the business quarter of the town, and thento proceed with the work as far as circumstances would allow. We hadpropositions before us in favor of from one hundred feet as far as up toten thousand. Every inch was fought for with as much obstinacy as ifit were an important breach that was defended; and combinations andconspiracies were as rife as if we were in the midst of a revolution. Itwas the general idea that by filling in with dirt, a new town might bebuilt wherever the causeway terminated, and fortunes made by an act ofparliament. The inhabitants of the island rallied en masse againstthe causeway leading one inch from their quarter, after it had fairlyreached it; and, so throughout the entire line, monikins battled forwhat they called their interests, with an obstinacy worthy of heroes.
On this great question, for it had, in truth, become of the lastimportance by dragging into its consideration most of the leadingmeasures of the day, as well as six or seven of the principal ordinancesof the Great National Allegory, the respective partisans logicallycontending that, for the time being, nothing should advance a foot inLeaplow that did not travel along that causeway, Noah determined to takean independent stand. This resolution was not lightly formed, for heremained rather undecided, until, by waiting a sufficient time, hefelt quite persuaded that nothing was to be got by following any othercourse. His God-like luckily was in the same predicament, and everythingpromised a speedy occasion to show the world what it was to act onprinciple; and this, too, in the middle of a moral eclipse.
When the question came to be discussed, the landholders along the firstline of the causeway were soon reasoned down by the superior interestsof those who lived on the island. The rub was, the point of permittingthe work to go any further. The islanders manifested great liberality,according to their account of themselves; for they even consented thatthe causeway should be constructed on the other marsh to precisely sucha distance as would enable any one to go as near as possible to thehostile quarter, without absolutely entering it. To admit the latter,they proved to demonstration, would be changing the character of theirown island from that of an entrepot to that of a mere thoroughfare. Noreasonable monikin could expect it of them.
As the Horizontals, by some calculation that I never understood, hadsatisfied themselves it might better answer their purposes to constructthe entire work, than to stop anywhere between the two extremes, my dutywas luckily, on this occasion, in exact accordance with my opinions;and, as a matter of course, I voted, this time, in a way of which Icould approve. Noah, finding himself a free agent, now made his push forcharacter, and took sides with us. Very fortunately we prevailed, allthe beaten interests joining themselves, at the last moment, to theweakest side, or, in other words, to that which was right; and Leaplowpresented the singular spectacle of having a just enactment passedduring the occultation of the great moral postulate, so often named. Iought to mention that I have termed principle a postulate, throughoutthis narrative, simply because it is usually in the dilemma of adisputed proposition.
No sooner was the result known, than my worthy colleague came roundto the Horizontal side of the house, to express his satisfaction withhimself for the course he had just taken. He said it was certainly veryconvenient and very labor-saving to obey a God-like, and that he got onmuch better with his charts now he was at liberty to give his whole mindto the subject; but there was suthin'--he didn't know what--but "a sortof Stunin'tun feeling" in doing what one thought right, after all, thatcaused him to be glad that he had voted for the whole causeway. He didnot own any land in Leaplow, and therefore he concluded that what he haddone, he had done for the best; at any rate, if he had got nothin' byit, he had lost nothin' by it, and he hoped all would come right in theend. The people of the island, it is true, had talked pretty fair aboutwhat they would do for those who should sustain their interests, but hehad got sick of a currency in promises; and fair words, at his timeof life, didn't go for much; and so, on the whole, he had pretty muchconcluded to do as he had done. He thought no one could call in questionhis vote, for he was just as poor and as badly off now he had voted, ashe was while he was making up his mind. For his part, he shouldn't beashamed, hereafter, to look both Deacon Snort and the Parson in theface, when he got home, or even Miss Poke. He knew what it was to have aclean conscience, as well as any man; for none so well knew what it wasto be without anything, as they who had felt by experience its want. HisGod-like was a very labor-saving God-like, but he had found, on inquiry,that he came from another part of the island, and that he didn't care astraw which way his kite-tail (Noah's manner of pronouncing clientele)voted. In short, he defied any one to say ought ag'in' him this time,and he was not sorry the occasion had offered to show his independence,for his enemies had not been backward in remarking that, for some days,he had been little better than a speaking-trumpet to roar out anythinghis God-like might wish to have proclaimed. He concluded by stating thathe could not hold out much longer without meat of some sort or other,and by begging that I would second a resolution he thought of offering,by which regular substantial rations were to be dealt out to all thehuman part of the house. The inhumans might live upon nuts still, ifthey liked them.
I remonstrated against the project of the rations, made a strong appealto his pride, by demonstrating that we should be deemed little betterthan brutes if we were seen eating flesh, and advised him to causesome of his nuts to be roasted, by way of variety. After a good deal ofpersuasion, he promised further abstinence, although he went away with asingularly carnivorous look about the mouth, and an eye that spoke porkin every glance.
I was at home the next day, busy with my friend the brigadier, inlooking over the Great National Allegory, with a view to preventfalling, unwittingly, into any more offences of quoting its opinions,when Noah burst into the room, as rabid as a wolf that had been bittenby a whole pack of hounds. Such, indeed, was, in some measure, hissituation; for, according to his statement, he had been baited thatmorning, in the public streets even, by every monikin, monikina,monikino, brat, and beggar, that he had seen. Astonished to hear thatmy colleague had fallen into this disfavor with his constitutents, I wasnot slow in asking an explanation.
The captain affirmed that the matter was beyond the reach of anyexplanation it was in his power to give. He
had voted in the affair ofthe causeway, in strict conformity with the dictates of his conscience,and yet here was the whole population accusing him of bribery--nay,even the journals had openly flouted at him for what they called hisbarefaced and flagrant corruption. Here the captain laid before us sixor seven of the leading journals of Bivouac, in all of which his latevote was treated with quite as little ceremony as if it had been anunequivocal act of sheep-stealing.
I looked at my friend the brigadier for an explanation. After runninghis eye over the articles in the journals, the latter smiled, and cast alook of commiseration at our colleague.
"You have certainly committed a grave fault here, my friend," he said,"and one that is seldom forgiven in Leaplow--perhaps I might say never,during the occultation of the great moral postulate, as happens to bethe case at present."
"Tell me my sins at once, brigadier," cried Noah, with the look of amartyr, "and put me out of pain."
"You have forgotten to display a motive for your stand during the latehot discussion; and, as a matter of course, the community ascribes theworst that monikin ingenuity can devise. Such an oversight would ruineven a God-like!"
"But, my dear Mr. Downright," I kindly interposed, "our colleague, inthis instance, is supposed to have acted on principle."
The brigadier looked up, turning his nose into the air, like a pup thathas not yet opened its eyes, and then intimated that he could not seethe quality I had named, it being obscured by the passage of the orb ofPecuniary Interest before its disc. I now began to comprehend the case,which really was much more grave than, at first, I could have believedpossible. Noah himself seemed staggered; for, I believe, he had fallenon the simple and natural expedient of inquiring what he himself wouldhave thought of the conduct of a colleague who had given a vote on asubject so weighty, without exposing a motive.
"Had the captain owned but a foot square of earth, at the end of thecauseway," observed the brigadier, mournfully, "the matter might becleared up; but as things are, it is beyond dispute, a most unfortunateoccurrence."
"But Sir John voted with me, and he is no more a free-holder in Leaplow,than I am myself."
"True; but Sir John voted with the bulk of his political friends."
"All the Horizontals were not in the majority; for at least twenty went,on this occasion, with the minority."
"Undeniable--yet every monikin of them had a visible motive. This owneda lot by the wayside; that had houses on the island, and another was theheir of a great proprietor at the same point of the road. Each and allhad their distinct and positive interests at stake, and not one of themwas guilty of so great a weakness as to leave his cause to be defendedby the extravagant pretension of mere principle!"
"My God-like, the greatest of all the Riddles, absented himself, and didnot vote at all."
"Simply because he had no good ground to justify any course he mighttake. No public monikin can expect to escape censure, if he fail to puthis friends, in the way of citing some plausible and intelligible motivefor his conduct."
"How, sir! cannot a man, once in his life, do an act without beingbought like a horse or a dog, and escape with an inch of character?"
"I shall not take upon myself to say what MEN can do," returned thebrigadier; "no doubt they manage this affair better than it is managedhere; but, so far as monikins are concerned, there is no course morecertain to involve a total loss of character--I may say so destructiveto reputation even for intellect--as to act without a good, apparent,and substantial MOTIVE."
"In the name of God, what is to be done, brigadier?"
"I see no other course than to resign. Your constituents must verynaturally have lost all confidence in you; for one who so very obviouslyneglects his own interests, it cannot be supposed will be very tenaciousabout protecting the interests of others. If you would escape withthe little character that is left, you will forthwith resign. I do notperceive the smallest chance for you by going through gyration No. 4,both public opinions uniformly condemning the monikin who acts without apretty obvious, as well as a pretty weighty motive."
Noah made a merit of necessity; and, after some further deliberationbetween us, he signed his name to the following letter to the speaker,which was drawn up on the spot, by the brigadier.
"Mr. Speaker:--The state of my health obliges me to return the highpolitical trust which has been confided to me by the citizens ofBivouac, into the hands from which it was received. In tendering myresignation, I wish to express the great regret with which I part fromcolleagues so every way worthy of profound respect and esteem, and I begyou to assure them, that wherever fate may hereafter lead me, I shallever retain the deepest regard for every honorable member with whom ithas been my good fortune to serve. The emigrant interest, in particular,will ever be the nearest and dearest to my heart." Signed,
"NOAH POKE."
The captain did not affix his name to this letter without many heavysighs, and divers throes of ambition; for even a mistaken politicianyields to necessity with regret. Having changed the word emigrant tothat of "immigrunt," however, he put as good a face as possible on thematter, and wrote the fatal signature. He then left the house, declaringhe didn't so much begrudge his successor the pay, as nothing but nutswere to be had with the money; and that, as for himself, he felt assneaking as he believed was the case with Nebuchadnezzar, when he wascompelled to get down on all-fours, and eat grass.
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