CHAPTER XXVIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVES TO A LEGISLATOR—MORAL CONSECUTIVENESS, COMETS, KITES, AND A CONVOY; WITH SOME EVERY-DAY LEGISLATION; TOGETHER WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Legislation, during the occultation of the great moral postulate Principle by the passage of Pecuniary Interest, is, at the best, but a melancholy affair. It proved to be peculiarly so with us just at that moment, for the radiance of the divine property had been a good deal obscured in the houses, for a long time previously, by the interference of various minor satellites. In nothing, therefore, did the deplorable state of things which existed make itself more apparent, than in our proceedings.

As Captain Poke and myself, notwithstanding our having taken different stands in politics, still continued to live together, I had better opportunities to note the workings of the obscuration on the ingenuous mind of my colleague than on that of most other persons. He early began to keep a diary of his expenses, regularly deducting the amount at night from the sum of eight dollars, and regarding the balance as so much clear gain. His conversation, too, soon betrayed a leaning to his personal interests, instead of being of that pure and elevated cast which should characterize the language of a statesman. He laid down the position, pretty dogmatically, that legislation, after all, was work; that “the laborer was worthy of his hire”; and that, for his part, he felt no great disposition to go through the vexation and trouble of helping to make laws, unless he could see, with a reasonable certainty, that something was to be got by it. He thought Leaplow had quite laws enough as it was—more than she respected or enforced—and if she wanted any more, all she had to do was to pay for them. He should take an early occasion to propose that all our wages—or, at any rate, his own; others might do as they pleased—should be raised, at the very least, two dollars a day, and this while he merely sat in the house; for he wished to engage me to move, by way of amendment, that as much more should be given to the committees. He did not think it was fair to exact of a member to be a committee-man for nothin’, although most of them were committee-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 TWO PAYS. He said, considering it in the most favorable point of view, that there was great wear and tear of brain in legislation, and he should never be the man he was before he engaged in the trade; he assured me that his idees, sometimes, were so complicated that he did not know where to find the one he wanted, and that he had wished for a cauda, a thousand times, since he had been in the house, for, by keeping the end of it in his hand, like the bight of a rope, he might always have suthin’ tangible to cling to. He told me, as a great secret, that he was fairly tired of rummaging among his thoughts for the knowledge necessary to understand what was going on, and that he had finally concluded to put himself, for the rest of the session, under the convoy of a God-like. He had been looking out for a fit fugleman of this sort, and he had pretty much determined to follow the signal of the great God-like of the Parpendic’lars, like the rest of them, for it would occasion less confusion in the ranks, and enable him to save himself a vast deal of trouble in making up his mind. He didn’t know, on the whole, but eight dollars a day might give a living profit, provided he could throw all the 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 from foreign 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 that he thought of engaging a God-like. The reader has had some insight into the nature of one set of political leaders in Leaplow, who are known by the name of the Most Patriotic Patriots. These persons, it is scarcely necessary to say, are always with the majority, or in a situation to avail themselves of the evolutions of the little wheel. Their great rotatory principle keeps them pretty constantly in motion, it is true; but while there is a centrifugal force to maintain this action, great care has been had to provide a centripetal counterpoise, in order to prevent them from bolting out of the political orbit. It is supposed to be owing to this peculiarity in their party organizations, that your Leaplow patriot is so very remarkable for going round and round a subject, without ever touching it.

As an offset to this party arrangement, the Perpendiculars have taken refuge in the God-likes. A God-like, in Leaplow politics, in some respects resembles a saint in the Catholic calendar; that is to say, he is canonized, after passing through a certain amount of temptation and vice with a whole skin; after having his cause pleaded for a certain number of years before the high authorities of his party; and, usually, after having had a pretty good taste of purgatory. Canonization attained, 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 and tear” of brains, as Noah had termed it, for nothing puts one so much at liberty in this respect, as to have full powers to do all the thinking. Thinking in company, like travelling in company, requires that we should have some respect to the movements, wishes, and opinions of others; but he who gets a carte blanche for his sentiments, resembles the uncaged bird, and may fly in whatever direction most pleases himself, and feel confident, as he goes, that his ears will be saluted with the usual traveller’s signal of “all’s right.” I can best compare the operation of your God-like and his votaries, to the action of a locomotive with its railroad train. As that goes, this follows; faster or slower, the movement 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 sort of motion; and when a bolt is broken, they who have just been riding without the smallest trouble to themselves, are compelled to get out and push the load ahead as well as they can, frequently with very rueful faces, and in very dirty ways. The cars whisk about, precisely as the locomotive whisks about, all the turn-outs are necessarily imitated, and, in short, one goes after the other very much as it is reasonable to suppose will happen when two bodies are chained together, and the entire 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 on to one of these moral steam-tugs, in order that he too might be dragged through his duties without effort to himself; an expedient, as the old sealer expressed it, that would in some degree remedy his natural want of a cauda, by rendering him nothing but tail.

“I expect, Sir John,” he said, for he had a practice of expecting by way of conjecture, “I expect this is the reason why the Leaplowers dock themselves. They find it more convenient to give up the management of their affairs to some one of these God-likes, and fall into his wake like the tail of a comet, which makes it quite unnecessary to have any other cauda.”

“I understand you; they amputate to prevent tautology.”

Noah rarely spoke of any project until his mind was fairly made up; and the execution usually soon followed the proposition. The next thing I heard of him, therefore, he was fairly under the convoy, as he called it, of one of the most prominent of the Riddles. Curious to know how he liked the experiment, after a week’s practice, I called his attention to the subject, by a pretty direct inquiry.

He told me it was altogether the pleasantest mode of legislating that had ever been devised. He was now perfectly master of his own time, and in fact, he was making out a set of charts for the Leaplow marine, a task that was likely to bring him in a good round sum, as pumpkins were cheap, 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 Great Allegory, when he wanted a hint about it, or, indeed, about any other point at issue, all he had to do was to inquire what his God-like thought about it, and to vote accordingly. Then he saved himself a great deal of breath in the way of argument out of doors, for he and the rest of the clientele of this Riddle, having officially invested their patron with all their own parts, the result had been such an accumulation of knowledge in this one individual, as enabled them ordinarily to floor any antagonist by the simple quotation of his authority. Such or such is the opinion of God-like this or of God-like that, was commonly sufficient; and then there was no lack of material, for he had taken care to provide himself with a Riddle who, he really believed, had given an opinion, at some time or other, on every side of every subject that had ever been mooted in Leaplow. He could nullify, or mollify, or qualify, with the best of them; and these, which he termed the three fies, 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 monikin nature revolted at anything like total mental dependence; and that he had pretty much made up his mind to think for himself on a question that was to be decided that very day.

The case to which the captain alluded was this. The city of Bivouac was divided in three pretty nearly equal parts which were separated from each other by two branches of a marsh; one part of the town being on a sort of island, and the other two parts on the respective margins of the low land. It was very desirable to connect these different portions of the capital by causeways, and a law to that effect had been introduced in the house. Everybody, in or out of the house, was in favor of the project, for the causeways had become, in some measure, indispensable. The only disputed point was the length of the works in question. One who is but little acquainted with legislation, and who has never witnessed the effects of an occultation of the great moral postulate Principle, by the orb Pecuniary Interest, would very plausibly suppose that the whole affair lay in a nutshell, and that all we had to do was to pass a law ordering the causeways to extend just as far as the public convenience rendered it necessary. But these are mere tyros in the affairs of monikins. The fact was that there were just as many different opinions and interests at work to regulate the length of the causeways, as there were, owners of land along their line of route. The great object was to start in what was called the business quarter of the town, and then to proceed with the work as far as circumstances would allow. We had propositions before us in favor of from one hundred feet as far as up to ten thousand. Every inch was fought for with as much obstinacy as if it were an important breach that was defended; and combinations and conspiracies were as rife as if we were in the midst of a revolution. It was the general idea that by filling in with dirt, a new town might be built wherever the causeway terminated, and fortunes made by an act of parliament. The inhabitants of the island rallied en masse against the causeway leading one inch from their quarter, after it had fairly reached it; and, so throughout the entire line, monikins battled for what they called their interests, with an obstinacy worthy of heroes.

On this great question, for it had, in truth, become of the last importance by dragging into its consideration most of the leading measures of the day, as well as six or seven of the principal ordinances of the Great National Allegory, the respective partisans logically contending that, for the time being, nothing should advance a foot in Leaplow that did not travel along that causeway, Noah determined to take an independent stand. This resolution was not lightly formed, for he remained rather undecided, until, by waiting a sufficient time, he felt quite persuaded that nothing was to be got by following any other course. His God-like luckily was in the same predicament, and everything promised a speedy occasion to show the world what it was to act on principle; and this, too, in the middle of a moral eclipse.

When the question came to be discussed, the landholders along the first line of the causeway were soon reasoned down by the superior interests of those who lived on the island. The rub was, the point of permitting the work to go any further. The islanders manifested great liberality, according to their account of themselves; for they even consented that the causeway should be constructed on the other marsh to precisely such a distance as would enable any one to go as near as possible to the hostile quarter, without absolutely entering it. To admit the latter, they proved to demonstration, would be changing the character of their own island from that of an entrepot to that of a mere thoroughfare. No reasonable monikin could expect it of them.

As the Horizontals, by some calculation that I never understood, had satisfied themselves it might better answer their purposes to construct the entire work, than to stop anywhere between the two extremes, my duty was 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 I could approve. Noah, finding himself a free agent, now made his push for character, and took sides with us. Very fortunately we prevailed, all the beaten interests joining themselves, at the last moment, to the weakest side, or, in other words, to that which was right; and Leaplow presented the singular spectacle of having a just enactment passed during the occultation of the great moral postulate, so often named. I ought to mention that I have termed principle a postulate, throughout this narrative, simply because it is usually in the dilemma of a disputed proposition.

No sooner was the result known, than my worthy colleague came round to the Horizontal side of the house, to express his satisfaction with himself for the course he had just taken. He said it was certainly very convenient and very labor-saving to obey a God-like, and that he got on much better with his charts now he was at liberty to give his whole mind to the subject; but there was suthin’—he didn’t know what—but “a sort of Stunin’tun feeling” in doing what one thought right, after all, that caused him to be glad that he had voted for the whole causeway. He did not own any land in Leaplow, and therefore he concluded that what he had done, he had done for the best; at any rate, if he had got nothin’ by it, he had lost nothin’ by it, and he hoped all would come right in the end. The people of the island, it is true, had talked pretty fair about what they would do for those who should sustain their interests, but he had got sick of a currency in promises; and fair words, at his time of life, didn’t go for much; and so, on the whole, he had pretty much concluded to do as he had done. He thought no one could call in question his vote, for he was just as poor and as badly off now he had voted, as he was while he was making up his mind. For his part, he shouldn’t be ashamed, hereafter, to look both Deacon Snort and the Parson in the face, when he got home, or even Miss Poke. He knew what it was to have a clean conscience, as well as any man; for none so well knew what it was to be without anything, as they who had felt by experience its want. His God-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 a straw 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 anything his God-like might wish to have proclaimed. He concluded by stating that he 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 the human part of the house. The inhumans might live upon nuts still, if they liked them.

I remonstrated against the project of the rations, made a strong appeal to his pride, by demonstrating that we should be deemed little better than brutes if we were seen eating flesh, and advised him to cause some of his nuts to be roasted, by way of variety. After a good deal of persuasion, he promised further abstinence, although he went away with a singularly carnivorous look about the mouth, and an eye that spoke pork in every glance.

I was at home the next day, busy with my friend the brigadier, in looking over the Great National Allegory, with a view to prevent falling, unwittingly, into any more offences of quoting its opinions, when Noah burst into the room, as rabid as a wolf that had been bitten by a whole pack of hounds. Such, indeed, was, in some measure, his situation; for, according to his statement, he had been baited that morning, in the public streets even, by every monikin, monikina, monikino, brat, and beggar, that he had seen. Astonished to hear that my colleague had fallen into this disfavor with his constitutents, I was not slow in asking an explanation.

The captain affirmed that the matter was beyond the reach of any explanation it was in his power to give. He had voted in the affair of the 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 his barefaced and flagrant corruption. Here the captain laid before us six or seven of the leading journals of Bivouac, in all of which his late vote was treated with quite as little ceremony as if it had been an unequivocal act of sheep-stealing.

I looked at my friend the brigadier for an explanation. After running his eye over the articles in the journals, the latter smiled, and cast a look 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 be the case at present.”

“Tell me my sins at once, brigadier,” cried Noah, with the look of a martyr, “and put me out of pain.”

“You have forgotten to display a motive for your stand during the late hot discussion; and, as a matter of course, the community ascribes the worst that monikin ingenuity can devise. Such an oversight would ruin even a God-like!”

“But, my dear Mr. Downright,” I kindly interposed, “our colleague, in this instance, is supposed to have acted on principle.”

The brigadier looked up, turning his nose into the air, like a pup that has not yet opened its eyes, and then intimated that he could not see the quality I had named, it being obscured by the passage of the orb of Pecuniary Interest before its disc. I now began to comprehend the case, which really was much more grave than, at first, I could have believed possible. Noah himself seemed staggered; for, I believe, he had fallen on the simple and natural expedient of inquiring what he himself would have thought of the conduct of a colleague who had given a vote on a subject so weighty, without exposing a motive.

“Had the captain owned but a foot square of earth, at the end of the causeway,” observed the brigadier, mournfully, “the matter might be cleared up; but as things are, it is beyond dispute, a most unfortunate occurrence.”

“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 owned a lot by the wayside; that had houses on the island, and another was the heir of a great proprietor at the same point of the road. Each and all had their distinct and positive interests at stake, and not one of them was guilty of so great a weakness as to leave his cause to be defended by the extravagant pretension of mere principle!”

“My God-like, the greatest of all the Riddles, absented himself, and did not vote at all.”

“Simply because he had no good ground to justify any course he might take. No public monikin can expect to escape censure, if he fail to put his friends, in the way of citing some plausible and intelligible motive for his conduct.”

“How, sir! cannot a man, once in his life, do an act without being bought 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 the brigadier; “no doubt they manage this affair better than it is managed here; but, so far as monikins are concerned, there is no course more certain to involve a total loss of character—I may say so destructive to 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 very naturally have lost all confidence in you; for one who so very obviously neglects his own interests, it cannot be supposed will be very tenacious about protecting the interests of others. If you would escape with the little character that is left, you will forthwith resign. I do not perceive the smallest chance for you by going through gyration No. 4, both public opinions uniformly condemning the monikin who acts without a pretty obvious, as well as a pretty weighty motive.”

Noah made a merit of necessity; and, after some further deliberation between 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 high political trust which has been confided to me by the citizens of Bivouac, into the hands from which it was received. In tendering my resignation, I wish to express the great regret with which I part from colleagues so every way worthy of profound respect and esteem, and I beg you to assure them, that wherever fate may hereafter lead me, I shall ever retain the deepest regard for every honorable member with whom it has 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 heavy sighs, and divers throes of ambition; for even a mistaken politician yields to necessity with regret. Having changed the word emigrant to that of “immigrunt,” however, he put as good a face as possible on the matter, and wrote the fatal signature. He then left the house, declaring he didn’t so much begrudge his successor the pay, as nothing but nuts were to be had with the money; and that, as for himself, he felt as sneaking as he believed was the case with Nebuchadnezzar, when he was compelled to get down on all-fours, and eat grass.