It was intended that the government should consist of a Leader, two
Prime Advisers, twelve Privy Counsellors, and two hundred-and-fifty
Tribunes, all elected by the people. As a preliminary measure, however,
only fifty Inaugurators were chosen by the Teuto-Scottish Parliament,
and upon these devolves the selection of the swarms of women who
clamoured to become members of the new republic. The Inaugurators were
divided into five committees, consisting of ten members each. These were
named respectively the Financial, the Medical, the Social, the
Political, and the Religious.
The Financial Committee was the first which the candidate had to face.
No woman was accepted for membership who could not invest a certain sum
of money in New Amazonian consols. This rule served a twofold purpose.
It prevented the intrusion of women whose poverty would make them a
burden to the rest of the community, which above all things required a
fair start. And, by making every member a partner in the monetary
venture, it ensured the personal interest of every inhabitant of the
country in its permanent prosperity.
The Medical Committee was next entrusted with a careful examination of
all those who had been able to satisfy Committee number one. Every woman
who bore the slightest trace of disease or malformation about her was
rigorously rejected, and those who passed the second stage
satisfactorily were handed over to the tender mercies of the Social
Committee, whose mission it was to enquire into the antecedents of the
candidates, and weed out such as were likely to prove discreditable to
the rest.
Few of the women, having reached this stage of the examinations, found
any difficulty in agreeing to the conditions of committees four and
five. They were simply required to take an oath of allegiance to the new
government, and to swear to obey any laws or rules which might be made
by the Constitution. They also vowed to merge all religious differences,
and to conform to whatever religious doctrines might be ultimately
agreed upon as a safe basis for the establishment of a national church.
When all these preliminaries were duly gone through, the candidate paid
her money, received satisfactory security for it, signed certain
documents, and was henceforth a duly enrolled citizen of New Amazonia,
pledged to respect all its laws, and entitled to participate in all its
benefits.
When the inaugural committees, satisfied that the enterprise could now
be floated without further delay, decided to remove the scene of their
operations to Dublin, as the capital city of the new republic had
hitherto been called, there was great excitement in London.
A banquet was given in honour of the pioneers of the movement, and the
Teuto-Scottish Government entered so cordially into the spirit of the
great enterprise, as to ensure free travelling expenses to their future
home to all accepted New Amazonians who were willing to avail themselves
of the privilege.
In many cases this was a great boon, for although no men were accepted
as colonists, the future was provided for by the admission of all the
healthy children of enrolled citizens. As only a small proportion of the
adventurers were women who had been married, the number of children was
small enough to be comfortably provided for.
Proclamations had been issued announcing many benefits which were to
fall to the lot of the very small remnant of the Irish nation, and it
was anticipated that when they found themselves to be enjoying equal
privileges with the new comers they would lose the resentful demeanour
they had hitherto maintained, and be amenable to the dictates of
kindness and reason.
It was many years, however, before the last flickerings of their
discontent were extinguished, and before they could be induced to take
kindly to the mode of living universally enforced throughout the
country. This end being finally attained, the mingled races became
amalgamated, and were henceforth alike devoted to their country and its
constitutional laws.
It was well for New Amazonia in the end that a good many Irish women had
survived, for the arts of linen-making and lace-making, which they
perpetuated and improved, are among the most valuable sources of revenue
of the country.
Shortly after the Inaugurators were established in Dublin Castle a
general election was called, and all the members of the Constitution
were duly elected. These elections were to be triennial, none of the
officials to be eligible for two successive Parliaments. The country was
divided into two hundred and fifty districts, each of which elected its
own Tribune, and paid for the maintenance of that Tribune during her
term of office.
The salaries of the Leader, Prime Advisers, and Privy Councillors were
fixed upon a progressive basis, and were payable by the State. The
National Revenue was a question which required much anxious thought, but
a solution of the problem was eventually arrived at, which was in course
of time supplemented by the present existing arrangements.
The State was to be the only importer, no private competition being
permitted. Hence the question of excise became a thing of the past.
The appointment of a great many officials to regulate the export and
import trade was necessitated, and this at once gave employment to
hundreds of receiving and exporting agents, who in their turn required
the services of clerks.
All the goods which arrived in the country were paid for by the State,
and transferred at a percentage of profit to wholesale merchants with
capital enough to pay for large business transactions of this nature.
Careful tariffs were drawn up, and the maximum of profit chargeable by
the State upon all goods labeled as “Necessaries” was five per cent.
“Luxuries,” however, all yielded twenty per cent. profit to the State.
From the hands of the wholesale merchant all goods were transferred to
retail dealers, and by them placed within the reach of the people at
large. In order to prevent the largest capitalists from absorbing the
whole of the national trade, different branches were not permitted to be
adopted by one merchant or retail dealer.
Thus no draper was allowed to sell groceries, furniture, ironmongery,
stationery, or anything else which did not legitimately appertain to the
drapery business, and other traders were restricted by similar
regulations. By adopting this method the State prevented one or two
firms from making huge fortunes at the expense of fifty less opulent
traders, as was the case in Teuto-Scotland, where the system of compound
establishments, syndicates, and corners prevailed to a disastrous
extent.
At first the export traffic was not large, but was regulated in a
similar manner to the import trade. The State was the ultimate receiver,
and final vendor of all goods exported, a percentage of profit being
exacted on all goods sent away.
As the trade of the country, stimulated by the energy and determination
of its new inhabitants, steadily increased, the revenues derived by the
State were enormous, and no other method of taxation was deemed
necessary. We thus have, for the first time, the spectacle of a highly
civilised country in which the tax-collector is non-existent.
As every sort of employment which presented itself had to be done by
women, the question of a convenient working attire, which should at the
same time be suitable, healthy, warm, and becoming, was soon brought up
for discussion.
After much debate and strenuous opposition on the part of some advocates
of changeable fashions, it was decided to adopt a national distinctive
dress, the wearing of which should be compulsory. Latter day New
Amazonians find it difficult to believe that the barbarous mode of
dressing which had prevailed among the English, and later among the
Teuto-Scots, was reluctantly abandoned by thousands of women, and that
the New Amazonian National dress should have been strenuously objected
to at first.
There is in the museum, at Garrettville, an instrument of torture on
exhibition called a corset. Its extreme width is eighteen inches, and it
is an almost incredible fact that this instrument once spanned the waist
of a woman, who was only following one of the maddest and silliest
fashions ever instituted, when she deliberately forced her ribs out of
their proper places, and prepared an early grave for herself, in order
that she might meet with the favour of some idiot of the other sex, who
preferred fashion and doctor’s bills to health and happiness.
The children who came with their mothers to New Amazonia were housed in
existing large buildings, until suitable erections for their reception
could be designed and built. Their supervision and education was for a
time entrusted to the mothers, subject to the directions of a trained
staff of teachers.
Physical education was all that was aimed at until the child’s tenth
birthday had been passed. The most careful attention was paid to diet,
the necessary proportions of heat, flesh, and starch-formers being
supplied to them, all cooked in such palatably scientific methods as
conduced to build up a perfect system.
Swimming, running, dancing, drill, gymnastics, and every physical
health-giving game in vogue constituted the curriculum of youngsters
under ten. In the old country, thousands of little ones were pining from
bodily lassitude and decay engendered by the brain work necessitated by
a senseless system of cramming and examining. In New Amazonia the
children entering school at the age of ten were splendidly robust; had a
healthy, strong mind in a healthy, strong body, and were capable,
without fatigue, of learning more in two years than their Teuto-Scottish
contemporaries learned in all the seven years they had been compelled to
attend school.
For six years the school course had to be pursued, then a choice of
trade or profession adapted to the abilities of the student was made.
The next four years were devoted to the learning of this trade, and the
earnings of the next five years were appropriated by the State, which
thus remunerated itself for the heavy expense of maintaining and
educating each of its subjects under twenty years of age.
At the age of twenty-five each subject was at liberty to appropriate her
earnings as she liked, but was also expected to provide her own board
and residence henceforth.
As no men were admitted to any of the chief offices, some of them
emigrated, but others were glad to remain, and adopted various trades
which rendered them acceptable and useful members of the community. In
course of time, a desire was manifested on the part of several couples
to cast in their lot together, and it became necessary to pay some
attention to the marriage laws, which, as they had existed in
Teuto-Scotland, were totally rejected by New Amazonians as altogether
obsolete, and stupidly conducive to crime and immorality. The marriage
contract, under the new code of laws, became a purely civil one,
dissolvable almost without cost, upon one or other of the parties to it
proving incompatibility or unfaithfulness on the part of the other.
A document, received by each of the divorcees, legally entitled them to
marry again, provided they fulfilled every other necessary condition. A
medical certificate of soundness had to be procured before anyone was
allowed to marry, as, above all, the State was determined to secure none
but healthy subjects.
Sometimes very painful scenes were witnessed, for each new-born child
was subjected to examination, and no crippled or malformed infants were
permitted to live.
As all children were considered the property of the State, neither wife
nor husband was responsible for their maintenance and education, and
when a divorce was in prospect it was not necessary to take the
offspring of the temporary union into consideration at all, though no
divorces were permitted until after the birth of any expected result of
such union. Nursing mothers were always welcomed with their children,
and were maintained by the State, so long as the latter required their
attendance.
There was, however, a determination on the part of the Government to
guard against the evils of over-population in the future, and Malthusian
doctrines were stringently enforced. Any woman or man becoming the
parent of more than four children was punished for such recklessness by
being treated as a criminal, and deprived of many very valuable civil
rights.
It had often been the objection of legislators in the old country that
Woman’s Suffrage would, in some never satisfactorily explained manner,
cause an access of immorality in the land, seeing that immoral women
would have as much right to vote as their more virtuous sisters. The
stupidity and selfishness of such an argument is easily deducible from
the fact that a large number of the male members themselves were men who
led anything but moral lives.
Health of body, the highest technical and intellectual knowledge, and
purity of morals has ever been the goal aimed at in New Amazonia, and it
can to-day boast of being the most perfect, the most prosperous, and the
most moral community in existence.