It has often been remarked that while all countries in the world
possess some sort of literature, as Iceland her Sagas, England her
daily papers, France her prose writers and dramatists, and even Prussia
her railway guides, one nation and one alone, the Empire of Monomotopa,
is utterly innocent of this embellishment or frill.
No traveller records the existence of any Monomotopan quill-driver; no
modern visitor to that delightful island has come across a
_littérateur_ whether in the worse or in the best hotels; and such
reading as the inhabitants enjoy is entirely confined to works imported
by large steamers from the neighbouring Antarctic Continent.
The causes of this singular and happy state of affairs were unknown
(since the common histories did not mention them) until the recent
discovery by Mr. Paley, the chief authority upon Monomotopan hieratic
script, of a very ancient inscription which clearly sets forth the
whole business.
It seems that an Emperor of Monomotopa, whose date can be accurately
fixed by internal evidence to lie after the universal deluge and before
the building of the Pyramid of Cheops, was, upon his accession to the
throne, particularly concerned with the just repartition of taxes among
his beloved subjects.
It would seem (if we are to trust the inscription) that in a past still
more remote the taxes were so light that even the richest men would
meet them promptly and without complaining, but this was at a period
when the enemies of Monomotopa were at once distant and actively
engaged in quarrelling among themselves. With sickening treachery these
distant rival nations had determined to produce wealth and to live in
amity, so that it was incumbent upon the Monomotopans not only to build
ships, but actually to provide an army, and at last (what broke the
camel’s back) to establish fortifications of a very useless but
expensive sort upon a dozen points of their Imperial coast.
Under the increasing strain the old fiscal system broke down. The poor
were clearly embarrassed, as might be seen in their emaciated visages
and from the terrible condition of their boots. The rich had reached
the point after which it was inconvenient to them to pay any more. The
middle classes were spending the greater part of their time in devising
methods by which the exorbitant and intempestive demands of the
collectors could be either evaded or, more rarely, complied with. In a
word, a new and juster system of taxation was an imperative need, and
the Emperor, who had just ascended the throne at the age of eighteen,
and whom a sort of greenness had preserved from the iniquities of this
world, was determined to effect the great reform.
With the advice of his Ministers (all of whom had had considerable
experience in the handling of money), the Emperor at last determined
that each man and woman should pay to the State one-tenth and no more
of the wealth which he or she produced; those who produced nothing it
was but common justice and reason to exempt, and the effect of this
tardy act of justice upon the very rich was observed in the sudden
increase of the death-rate from all those diseases that are the
peculiar product of luxury and evil living. Paupers also, the
unemployed, cripples, imbeciles, deaf mutes, and the clergy escaped
under this beneficent and equable statute, and we may sum up the whole
policy by saying that never was a law acclaimed with so much happy
bewilderment nor subject to less expressed criticism than this.
It was, moreover, easy to estimate in this new fashion the total
revenue of the State, since its produce had been accurately set down by
statisticians of the utmost eminence, and one of these diverse
documents had been taken for the basis of the new fiscal regime.
In practice also the collection was easy. Overseers would attend the
harvest with large carts, prong the tenth turnip, hoick up the tenth
sheaf of wheat, bucket out the tenth gallon of ale, and so forth. In
the markets every tenth animal was removed by Imperial officers, every
tenth newspaper was impounded as it left the press, and every tenth
drink about to be consumed in the hostelries of the Empire was, after a
simulacrum of proffering it, suddenly removed by the waiter and poured
into a receptacle, the keys of which were very jealously guarded.
It was the same with the liberal professions: of the fee received by a
barrister in the Criminal Courts a tenth was regularly demanded at the
door when the verdict had been given and the prisoner whom he had
defended passed out to execution. The tenth knock-out in the prize ring
received by the professional pugilist was followed by the immediate
sequestration of his fee for that particular encounter, and the tenth
aria vibrating from the lips of a prima donna was either compounded for
at a certain rate or taken in kind by the official who attended at
every performance of grand opera.
One form of wealth alone puzzled the beneficent monarch and his
Napoleonic advisers, and this was the production (for it then existed)
of literary matter.
At first this seemed as simple to tax as any one of the other numerous
activities upon which the Emperor’s loyal and loving subjects were
engaged. A brief examination of the customs of the trade, conducted by
an army of officials who penetrated into the very dens and attics in
which Letters are evolved, reported that the method of payment was by
the measurement of a number of words.
“It is, your Majesty,” wrote the permanent official of the department
in his minute, “the practice of those who charitably employ this sort
of person to pay them in classes by the thousand words; thus one man
gets one sequin a thousand, another two byzants, a third as much as a
ducat, while some who have singularly attracted the notice of the
public can command ten, twenty, nay forty scutcheons, and in some very
exceptional cases a thousand words command one of those beautiful
pieces of stiff paper which your Majesty in his bountiful provision
tenders to his dutiful subjects for acceptance as metal under diverse
penalties. The just taxation of these fellows can therefore be easily
achieved if your Majesty, in the exercise of his almost superhuman
wisdom, will but add a schedule to the Finance Act in which there shall
be set down fifteen or twenty classes of writers, with their price per
thousand words, and a compulsory registration of each class, enforced
by the rude hand of the police.”
The Emperor of Monomotopa immediately nominated a Royal Commission
(unpaid), among whose sons, nephews, and private friends the salaried
posts connected with the work were distributed. This Commission
reported by a majority of one ere two years had elapsed. The schedule
was designed, and such _littérateurs_ as had not in the interval fled
the country were registered, while a further enactment strictly
forbidding their employers to make payment upon any other system
completed the scheme.
But, alas! so full of low cunning and dirty dodges is this kind of man
(I mean what we call authors) that very soon after the promulgation of
the new law a marked deterioration in the quality of Monomotopan
letters was apparent upon every side!
The citizen opening his morning paper would be astonished to find the
leading article consist of nothing more original than a portion of the
sacred Scriptures. A novel bought to ease the tedium of a journey would
consist of long catalogues for the most part, and when it came to
descriptions of scenery would fall into the most minute and detailed
category of every conceivable feature of the landscape. Some even took
advantage of the new regulation so far as to repeat one single word an
interminable number of times, while it was remarked with shame by the
Ministers of Religion that the morals of their literary friends
permitted them only to use words of one syllable, and those of the
shortest kind. And this they said was the only true and original
Monomotopan dialect.
Such was the public inconvenience that next year a sharper and much
more drastic law was passed, by which it was laid down that every
literary composition should make sense within the meaning of the Act,
and should be original so far as the reading of the judge appointed for
the trial of the case extended. But though after the first few
executions this law was generally observed, the nasty fellows affected
by it managed to evade it in spirit, for by the use of obscure terms,
of words drawn from dead languages, and of bold metaphor transferred
from one art to another, they would deliberately invite prosecution,
and then in the witness-box make fools of those plain men, the judge
and jury, by showing that this apparently meaningless claptrap could,
with sufficient ingenuity, be made to yield some sort of sense, and
during this period no art critic was put to death.
Driven to desperation, the Emperor changed the whole basis of the
Remuneration of Literary Labour, and ordered that it should be by the
length of the prose or poetry measured in inches.
This reform, however, did but add to the confusion, for while the men
of the pen wrote their works entirely in short dialogue, asterisks, and
blanks, the publishers, who were now thoroughly organized, printed the
same in smaller and smaller type, in order to avoid the consequences of
the law.
At this last piece of insolence the Emperor’s mind was quickly decided.
Arresting one night not only all those who had ever written, but all
those who had even boasted of letters, or who were so much as suspected
by their relatives of secretly indulging in them, he turned the whole
two million into a large but enclosed area, and (desiring to kill two
birds with one stone) offered the ensuing spectacle as an amusement to
the more sober and respectable sections of the community.
It is well known that the profession of letters breeds in its followers
an undying hatred of each against his fellows. The public were
therefore entertained for a whole day with the pleasing sight of a
violent but quite disordered battle, in which each of the wretched
prisoners seemed animated by no desire but the destruction of as many
as possible of his hated rivals, until at last every soul of these
detestable creatures had left its puny body and the State was rid of
all.
A law which carried to the universities the rule of the primary
schools—to wit, that men should be taught to read but not to
write—completed the good work. And there was peace.