E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D., and Delphine Lettau
THE FIXED PERIOD
by
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
First published anonymously in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1882.
CONTENTS
VOLUME I.
I. INTRODUCTION.
II. GABRIEL CRASWELLER.
III. THE FIRST BREAK-DOWN.
IV. JACK NEVERBEND.
V. THE CRICKET-MATCH.
VI. THE COLLEGE.
VOLUME II.
VII. COLUMBUS AND GALILEO.
VIII. THE "JOHN BRIGHT."
IX. THE NEW GOVERNOR.
X. THE TOWN-HALL.
XI. FAREWELL!
XII. OUR VOYAGE TO ENGLAND.
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
It may be doubted whether a brighter, more prosperous, and specially
a more orderly colony than Britannula was ever settled by British
colonists. But it had its period of separation from the mother
country, though never of rebellion,--like its elder sister New
Zealand. Indeed, in that respect it simply followed the lead given
her by the Australias, which, when they set up for themselves, did so
with the full co-operation of England. There was, no doubt, a special
cause with us which did not exist in Australia, and which was only,
in part, understood by the British Government when we Britannulists
were allowed to stand by ourselves. The great doctrine of a "Fixed
Period" was received by them at first with ridicule, and then
with dismay; but it was undoubtedly the strong faith which we of
Britannula had in that doctrine which induced our separation. Nothing
could have been more successful than our efforts to live alone during
the thirty years that we remained our own masters. We repudiated no
debt,--as have done some of our neighbours; and no attempts have
been made towards communism,--as has been the case with others.
We have been laborious, contented, and prosperous; and if we have
been reabsorbed by the mother country, in accordance with what I
cannot but call the pusillanimous conduct of certain of our elder
Britannulists, it has not been from any failure on the part of the
island, but from the opposition with which the Fixed Period has been
regarded.
I think I must begin my story by explaining in moderate language a
few of the manifest advantages which would attend the adoption of the
Fixed Period in all countries. As far as the law went it was adopted
in Britannula. Its adoption was the first thing discussed by our
young Assembly, when we found ourselves alone; and though there were
disputes on the subject, in none of them was opposition made to the
system. I myself, at the age of thirty, had been elected Speaker of
that Parliament. But I was, nevertheless, able to discuss the merits
of the bills in committee, and I did so with some enthusiasm. Thirty
years have passed since, and my "period" is drawing nigh. But I am
still as energetic as ever, and as assured that the doctrine will
ultimately prevail over the face of the civilised world, though I
will acknowledge that men are not as yet ripe for it.
The Fixed Period has been so far discussed as to make it almost
unnecessary for me to explain its tenets, though its advantages may
require a few words of argument in a world that is at present dead to
its charms. It consists altogether of the abolition of the miseries,
weakness, and _fainéant_ imbecility of old age, by the prearranged
ceasing to live of those who would otherwise become old. Need I
explain to the inhabitants of England, for whom I chiefly write, how
extreme are those sufferings, and how great the costliness of that
old age which is unable in any degree to supply its own wants? Such
old age should not, we Britannulists maintain, be allowed to be. This
should be prevented, in the interests both of the young and of those
who do become old when obliged to linger on after their "period" of
work is over. Two mistakes have been made by mankind in reference to
their own race,--first, in allowing the world to be burdened with the
continued maintenance of those whose cares should have been made to
cease, and whose troubles should be at an end. Does not the Psalmist
say the same?--"If by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet
is their strength labour and sorrow." And the second, in requiring
those who remain to live a useless and painful life. Both these
errors have come from an ill-judged and a thoughtless tenderness,--a
tenderness to the young in not calling upon them to provide for
the decent and comfortable departure of their progenitors; and a
tenderness to the old lest the man, when uninstructed and unconscious
of good and evil, should be unwilling to leave the world for which
he is not fitted. But such tenderness is no better than unpardonable
weakness. Statistics have told us that the sufficient sustenance of
an old man is more costly than the feeding of a young one,--as is
also the care, nourishment, and education of the as yet unprofitable
child. Statistics also have told us that the unprofitable young and
the no less unprofitable old form a third of the population. Let the
reader think of the burden with which the labour of the world is thus
saddled. To these are to be added all who, because of illness cannot
work, and because of idleness will not. How are a people to thrive
when so weighted? And for what good? As for the children, they are
clearly necessary. They have to be nourished in order that they may
do good work as their time shall come. But for whose good are the old
and effete to be maintained amid all these troubles and miseries? Had
there been any one in our Parliament capable of showing that they
could reasonably desire it, the bill would not have been passed.
Though to me the politico-economical view of the subject was always
very strong, the relief to be brought to the aged was the one
argument to which no reply could be given.
It was put forward by some who opposed the movement, that the old
themselves would not like it. I never felt sure of that, nor do I
now. When the colony had become used to the Fixed Period system,
the old would become accustomed as well as the young. It is to be
understood that a euthanasia was to be prepared for them;--and how
many, as men now are, does a euthanasia await? And they would depart
with the full respect of all their fellow-citizens. To how many does
that lot now fall? During the last years of their lives they were to
be saved from any of the horrors of poverty. How many now lack the
comforts they cannot earn for themselves? And to them there would be
no degraded feeling that they were the recipients of charity. They
would be prepared for their departure, for the benefit of their
country, surrounded by all the comforts to which, at their time of
life, they would be susceptible, in a college maintained at the
public expense; and each, as he drew nearer to the happy day, would
be treated with still increasing honour. I myself had gone most
closely into the question of expense, and had found that by the use
of machinery the college could almost be made self-supporting. But
we should save on an average £50 for each man and woman who had
departed. When our population should have become a million, presuming
that one only in fifty would have reached the desired age, the sum
actually saved to the colony would amount to £1,000,000 a-year. It
would keep us out of debt, make for us our railways, render all our
rivers navigable, construct our bridges, and leave us shortly the
richest people on God's earth! And this would be effected by a
measure doing more good to the aged than to any other class of the
community!
Many arguments were used against us, but were vain and futile in
their conception. In it religion was brought to bear; and in talking
of this the terrible word "murder" was brought into common use. I
remember startling the House by forbidding any member to use a phrase
so revolting to the majesty of the people. Murder! Did any one who
attempted to deter us by the use of foul language, bethink himself
that murder, to be murder, must be opposed to the law? This thing was
to be done by the law. There can be no other murder. If a murderer
be hanged,--in England, I mean, for in Britannula we have no capital
punishment,--is that murder? It is not so, only because the law
enacts it. I and a few others did succeed at last in stopping the use
of that word. Then they talked to us of Methuselah, and endeavoured
to draw an argument from the age of the patriarchs. I asked them in
committee whether they were prepared to prove that the 969 years, as
spoken of in Genesis, were the same measure of time as 969 years now,
and told them that if the sanitary arrangements of the world would
again permit men to live as long as the patriarchs, we would gladly
change the Fixed Period.
In fact, there was not a word to be said against us except that
which referred to the feelings of the young and old. Feelings are
changeable, I told them at that great and glorious meeting which
we had at Gladstonopolis, and though naturally governed only by
instinct, would be taught at last to comply with reason. I had lately
read how feelings had been allowed in England to stand in the way of
the great work of cremation. A son will not like, you say, to lead
his father into the college. But ought he not to like to do so? and
if so, will not reason teach him to like to do what he ought? I can
conceive with rapture the pride, the honour, the affection with
which, when the Fixed Period had come, I could have led my father
into the college, there to enjoy for twelve months that preparation
for euthanasia which no cares for this world would be allowed to
disturb. All the existing ideas of the grave would be absent. There
would be no further struggles to prolong the time of misery which
nature had herself produced. That temptation to the young to begrudge
to the old the costly comforts which they could not earn would be no
longer fostered. It would be a pride for the young man to feel that
his parent's name had been enrolled to all coming time in the bright
books of the college which was to be established for the Fixed
Period. I have a son of my own, and I have carefully educated him to
look forward to the day in which he shall deposit me there as the
proudest of his life. Circumstances, as I shall relate in this story,
have somewhat interfered with him; but he will, I trust, yet come
back to the right way of thinking. That I shall never spend that last
happy year within the walls of the college, is to me, from a selfish
point of view, the saddest part of England's reassuming our island as
a colony.
My readers will perceive that I am an enthusiast. But there are
reforms so great that a man cannot but be enthusiastic when he has
received into his very soul the truth of any human improvement. Alas
me! I shall never live to see carried out the glory of this measure
to which I have devoted the best years of my existence. The college,
which has been built under my auspices as a preparation for the happy
departure, is to be made a Chamber of Commerce. Those aged men who
were awaiting, as I verily believe, in impatience the coming day of
their perfected dignity, have been turned loose in the world, and
allowed to grovel again with mundane thoughts amidst the idleness of
years that are useless. Our bridges, our railways, our Government are
not provided for. Our young men are again becoming torpid beneath
the weight imposed upon them. I was, in truth, wrong to think that
so great a reform could be brought to perfection within the days of
the first reformers. A divine idea has to be made common to men's
minds by frequent ventilation before it will be seen to be fit
for humanity. Did not the first Christians all suffer affliction,
poverty, and martyrdom? How many centuries has it taken in the
history of the world to induce it to denounce the not yet abolished
theory of slavery? A throne, a lord, and a bishop still remain to
encumber the earth! What right had I, then, as the first of the
Fixed-Periodists, to hope that I might live to see my scheme carried
out, or that I might be allowed to depart as among the first glorious
recipients of its advantages?
It would appear absurd to say that had there been such a law in
force in England, England would not have prevented its adoption in
Britannula. That is a matter of course. But it has been because the
old men are still alive in England that the young in Britannula are
to be afflicted,--the young and the old as well. The Prime Minister
in Downing Street was seventy-two when we were debarred from carrying
out our project, and the Secretary for the Colonies was sixty-nine.
Had they been among us, and had we been allowed to use our wisdom
without interference from effete old age, where would they have been?
I wish to speak with all respect of Sir William Gladstone. When we
named our metropolis after him, we were aware of his good qualities.
He has not the eloquence of his great-grandfather, but he is, they
tell us, a safe man. As to the Minister for the Crown Colonies,--of
which, alas! Britannula has again become one,--I do not, I own, look
upon him as a great statesman. The present Duke of Hatfield has none
of the dash, if he has more than the prudence, of his grandfather.
He was elected to the present Upper Chamber as a strong anti-Church
Liberal, but he never has had the spirit to be a true reformer. It is
now due to the "feelings" which fill no doubt the bosoms of these two
anti-Fixed-Period seniors, that the doctrine of the Fixed Period has
for a time been quenched in Britannula. It is sad to think that the
strength and intellect and spirit of manhood should thus be conquered
by that very imbecility which it is their desire to banish from the
world.
Two years since I had become the President of that which we gloried
to call the rising Empire of the South Pacific. And in spite of all
internal opposition, the college of the Fixed Period was already
completed. I then received violent notice from the British Government
that Britannula had ceased to be independent, and had again been
absorbed by the mother country among the Crown Colonies. How that
information was received, and with what weakness on the part of the
Britannulists, I now proceed to tell.
I confess that I for one was not at first prepared to obey. We were
small, but we were independent, and owed no more of submission to
Great Britain than we do to the Salomon Islands or to Otaheite.
It was for us to make our own laws, and we had hitherto made them
in conformity with the institutions, and, I must say, with the
prejudices of so-called civilisation. We had now made a first attempt
at progress beyond these limits, and we were immediately stopped by
the fatuous darkness of the old men whom, had Great Britain known
her own interest, she would already have silenced by a Fixed Period
law on her own account. No greater instance of uncalled-for tyranny
is told of in the history of the world as already written. But my
brother Britannulists did not agree with me that, in the interest of
the coming races, it was our duty rather to die at our posts than
yield to the menaces of the Duke of Hatfield. One British gunboat,
they declared, in the harbour of Gladstonopolis, would reduce us--to
order. What order? A 250-ton steam-swiveller could no doubt crush
us, and bring our Fixed Period college in premature ruin about our
ears. But, as was said, the captain of the gunboat would never dare
to touch the wire that should commit so wide a destruction. An
Englishman would hesitate to fire a shot that would send perhaps five
thousand of his fellow-creatures to destruction before their Fixed
Period. But even in Britannula fear still remains. It was decided, I
will confess by the common voice of the island, that we should admit
this Governor, and swear fealty again to the British Crown. Sir
Ferdinando Brown was allowed to land, and by the rejoicing made at
the first Government House ball, as I have already learned since I
left the island, it appeared that the Britannulists rejoiced rather
than otherwise at their thraldom.
Two months have passed since that time, and I, being a worn-out old
man, and fitted only for the glory of the college, have nothing left
me but to write this story, so that coming ages may see how noble
were our efforts. But in truth, the difficulties which lay in our
way were very stern. The philosophical truth on which the system is
founded was too strong, too mighty, too divine, to be adopted by man
in the immediate age of its first appearance. But it has appeared;
and I perhaps should be contented and gratified, during the years
which I am doomed to linger through impotent imbecility, to think
that I have been the first reformer of my time, though I shall be
doomed to perish without having enjoyed its fruits.
I must now explain before I begin my story certain details of our
plan, which created much schism among ourselves. In the first place,
what should be the Fixed Period? When a party of us, three or four
hundred in number, first emigrated from New Zealand to Britannula,
we were, almost all of us, young people. We would not consent to
measures in regard to their public debt which the Houses in New
Zealand threatened to take; and as this island had been discovered,
and a part of it cultivated, thither we determined to go. Our
resolution was very popular, not only with certain parties in New
Zealand, but also in the mother country. Others followed us, and we
settled ourselves with great prosperity. But we were essentially
a young community. There were not above ten among us who had then
reached any Fixed Period; and not above twenty others who could be
said to be approaching it. There never could arrive a time or a
people when, or among whom, the system could be tried with so good a
hope of success. It was so long before we had been allowed to stand
on our bottom, that the Fixed Period became a matter of common
conversation in Britannula. There were many who looked forward to
it as the creator of a new idea of wealth and comfort; and it was
in those days that the calculation was made as to the rivers and
railways. I think that in England they thought that a few, and but
a few, among us were dreamers of a dream. Had they believed that
the Fixed Period would ever have become law, they would not have
permitted us to be law-makers. I acknowledge that. But when we were
once independent, then again to reduce us to submission by a 250-ton
steam-swiveller was an act of gross tyranny.
What should be the Fixed Period? That was the first question which
demanded an immediate answer. Years were named absurd in their
intended leniency;--eighty and even eighty-five! Let us say a
hundred, said I, aloud, turning upon them all the battery of my
ridicule. I suggested sixty; but the term was received with silence.
I pointed out that the few old men now on the island might be
exempted, and that even those above fifty-five might be allowed to
drag out their existences if they were weak enough to select for
themselves so degrading a position. This latter proposition was
accepted at once, and the exempt showed no repugnance even when it
was proved to them that they would be left alone in the community and
entitled to no honour, and never allowed even to enter the pleasant
gardens of the college. I think now that sixty was too early an age,
and that sixty-five, to which I gracefully yielded, is the proper
Fixed Period for the human race. Let any man look among his friends
and see whether men of sixty-five are not in the way of those who are
still aspiring to rise in the world. A judge shall be deaf on the
bench when younger men below him can hear with accuracy. His voice
shall have descended to a poor treble, or his eyesight shall be dim
and failing. At any rate, his limbs will have lost all that robust
agility which is needed for the adequate performance of the work of
the world. It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all
that he is fit to do. He should be troubled no longer with labour,
and therefore should be troubled no longer with life. "It is all
vanity and vexation of spirit," such a one would say, if still brave,
and still desirous of honour. "Lead me into the college, and there
let me prepare myself for that brighter life which will require
no mortal strength." My words did avail with many, and then they
demanded that seventy should be the Fixed Period.
How long we fought over this point need not now be told. But we
decided at last to divide the interval. Sixty-seven and a half was
named by a majority of the Assembly as the Fixed Period. Surely the
colony was determined to grow in truth old before it could go into
the college. But then there came a further dispute. On which side
of the Fixed Period should the year of grace be taken? Our debates
even on this subject were long and animated. It was said that the
seclusion within the college would be tantamount to penal departure,
and that the old men should thus have the last lingering drops of
breath allowed them, without, in the world at large. It was at last
decided that men and women should be brought into the college at
sixty-seven, and that before their sixty-eighth birthday they should
have departed. Then the bells were rung, and the whole community
rejoiced, and banquets were eaten, and the young men and women called
each other brother and sister, and it was felt that a great reform
had been inaugurated among us for the benefit of mankind at large.
Little was thought about it at home in England when the bill was
passed. There was, I suppose, in the estimation of Englishmen, time
enough to think about it. The idea was so strange to them that it
was considered impossible that we should carry it out. They heard of
the bill, no doubt; but I maintain that, as we had been allowed to
separate ourselves and stand alone, it was no more their concern than
if it had been done in Arizona or Idaho, or any of those Western
States of America which have lately formed themselves into a new
union. It was from them, no doubt, that we chiefly expected that
sympathy which, however, we did not receive. The world was clearly
not yet alive to the grand things in store for it. We received,
indeed, a violent remonstrance from the old-fashioned Government at
Washington; but in answer to that we stated that we were prepared
to stand and fall by the new system--that we expected glory rather
than ignominy, and to be followed by mankind rather than repudiated.
We had a lengthened correspondence also with New Zealand and with
Australia; but England at first did not believe us; and when she was
given to understand that we were in earnest, she brought to bear upon
us the one argument that could have force, and sent to our harbour
her 250-ton steam-swiveller. The 250-ton swiveller, no doubt, was
unanswerable--unless we were prepared to die for our system. I was
prepared, but I could not carry the people of my country with me.
I have now given the necessary prelude to the story which I have to
tell. I cannot but think that, in spite of the isolated manners of
Great Britain, readers in that country generally must have become
acquainted with the views of the Fixed-Periodists. It cannot but
be that a scheme with such power to change,--and, I may say, to
improve,--the manners and habits of mankind, should be known in a
country in which a portion of the inhabitants do, at any rate, read
and write. They boast, indeed, that not a man or a woman in the
British Islands is now ignorant of his letters; but I am informed
that the knowledge seldom approaches to any literary taste. It may be
that a portion of the masses should have been ignorant of what was
being done within the empire of the South Pacific. I have therefore
written this preliminary chapter to explain to them what was the
condition of Britannula in regard to the Fixed Period just twelve
months before England had taken possession of us, and once more
made us her own. Sir Ferdinando Brown now rules us, I must say, not
with a rod of iron, but very much after his own good will. He makes
us flowery speeches, and thinks that they will stand in lieu of
independence. He collects his revenue, and informs us that to be
taxed is the highest privilege of an ornate civilisation. He pointed
to the gunboat in the bay when it came, and called it the divine
depository of beneficent power. For a time, no doubt, British
"tenderness" will prevail. But I shall have wasted my thoughts, and
in vain poured out my eloquence as to the Fixed Period, if, in the
course of years, it does not again spring to the front, and prove
itself to be necessary before man can accomplish all that he is
destined to achieve.