A VISIT TO THE MINISTER OF STATE.
Before returning to the United States of America I called on the
Minister of State, who is also the presiding officer of the Parliament,
and told him that I would regard it as a great favor if he would tell
me how such changes had taken place in the Government of his country,
"for," said I, "from what I read about your Government when I was a boy
it was an absolute monarchy, and one man's will was the law of the
land."
"You have the key to the problem in that statement," he replied, "for I
am free to confess that it would have taken centuries to have brought
about our present system of government under so-called democracy. Near
the middle of the last century an absolute ruler in our country by a
stroke of his pen freed twenty-three millions of slaves, while in your
country it required four years of bloody war at a cost of ten thousand
millions of dollars and the lives of one million of brave men, and
through the widespread demoralization that ensued through your bravest
and best being killed or giving to the corrupt element in your country
(for a dishonest man is always a coward) the opportunity to inaugurate
a reign of monopoly where graft and bribery flourishes and the slave
element that you freed are a menace (and will be as long as they remain
in the country) to society.
"The last absolute ruler we had was one of those great men that God in
His infinite wisdom brings into the world at stated intervals to
exercise a dominating influence in human affairs and to give a fresh
impetus to human progress. Of the great men that we class with him are
the following: Confucius, Buddha, Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell,
Abraham Lincoln. The first thing he did when he became Emperor was to
summon sixty of the most liberal minded men and women in the empire to
the palace to draw up under his supervision a political, civil and
penal code, which with slight modification is in force at the present
time, and he called all the newspaper editors into conference and asked
them to assist him in promoting the welfare of the people and then he
issued a decree granting liberty of speech and of the press throughout
Eurasia, which he announced as the name of the Empire in future, and
the reason that he gave for it was that his people were composed of a
great many nationalities and by dividing the empire into districts and
numbering them in arithmetical order he abolished the old political
divisions and he also decreed that the present language we speak should
be the official language of the empire for the ancient language of the
ruling class had created a bitter feeling amongst great numbers of the
people and besides the present had become the commercial language of
the world.
"He reorganized the Cabinet into fourteen departments and held the
Minister at the head of each department responsible. He converted the
Army and Navy (who were eating up the hard-earned wages of the working
men and women of our land in idleness and dissipation), into a great
industrial army and assigned them to work under the different
departments as they were required, weeding out the worthless and
reducing to the ranks all officers that conducted themselves in a
manner unbecoming a gentleman and by election of officers giving every
soldier equal opportunity to rise to the highest rank. This great
measure eliminated the aristocracy in the Army and made the Emperor the
idol of the soldiers, so that from that time forward every effort of
the aristocracy to oppose the Emperor in giving to the country a
Government by the people was futile for the Army supported him with a
force that was irresistible. He ordered the districts laid out
according to latitude and longitude, making due allowance for
population, the smallest district being one degree of latitude in
breadth and two degrees of longitude in length, and the largest (which
were situated in the frozen regions of the Arctic or in the great
desert) five degrees of latitude in breadth and ten degrees of
longitude in length, and when they were surveyed he ordered that the
land should be assessed without improvements at its full value, and the
owner had to swear that he would sell to the Government the land at its
assessed valuation.
"The aristocracy almost to a man swore to a low valuation, so when five
years had passed the Emperor issued a decree appropriating to
Government use all land over and above six hundred and forty acres held
by private owners and paying for it one-fifth of the total assessment
for the previous five years with twenty per cent. added for
improvements, the aristocracy had to accept it and their power was
broken forever, for the Emperor leased the land to the cultivators of
the soil at the rate of four per cent. per annum of the price that the
Government paid for the land, dividing the land into small farms and
giving the renter the right of purchase at any time.
"The aristocracy and the Church have been in every country the enemies
of liberty and human progress. The Emperor saw the evil effects of the
liquor traffic and to abate the evil he abolished the manufacture and
sale of liquors by individuals and placed their manufacture and sale in
the care of the Department of Manufactures and year by year he added
tobacco, drugs and chemicals, sugar, salt, tea, coffee, coal oil, stone
coal, charcoal and all the metals, and placed the coinage and currency
of the Empire under the control of the Department of Finance known
throughout the world as the Bank of Eurasia. He established our present
system of education and forbade the teaching of religious dogmas in the
public schools, and when every district in the Empire was surveyed and
the people thereof enjoyed a District Government by electing their
Governors, Judges and other public officials and the Government owned
and operated all public utilities, he decided that the time had arrived
for a Government of the people, for the people and by the people and
called a general election to elect members of Parliament and to submit
to the people the political, civil and penal code of the Empire. The
people by an overwhelming vote ratified the code and endorsed the
Government. Four years afterward the Emperor called a general election
to choose his successor and retired to private life, beloved by his
people.
"Your people had a President who gained worldwide fame not only by the
vigorous way that he wielded the Big Stick, but also through his
undaunted courage and inflexible honesty. Place him again in the
Presidential chair and he will open the way for a government of the
people, for the people and by the people."