CHAPTER CCXLI.
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.
[Footnote 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]
[Footnote 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.”