THE TAMTONIANS

In all my intercourse with the Tamtonians I was treated with the most

distinguished consideration and no obstacles to a perfect understanding of

their social and political life were thrown in my way. My enforced

residence on the island was, however, too brief to enable me to master the

whole subject as I should have liked to do.

The government of Tamtonia is what is known in the language of the island

as a _gilbuper_. It differs radically from any form known in other parts

of the world and is supposed to have been invented by an ancient chief of

the race, named Natas, who was for many centuries after his death

worshiped as a god, and whose memory is still held in veneration. The

government is of infinite complexity, its various functions distributed

among as many officers as possible, multiplication of places being

regarded as of the greatest importance, and not so much a means as an end.

The Tamtonians seem to think that the highest good to which a human being

can attain is the possession of an office; and in order that as many as

possible may enjoy that advantage they have as many offices as the country

will support, and make the tenure brief and in no way dependent on good

conduct and intelligent administration of official duty. In truth, it

occurs usually that a man is turned out of his office (in favor of an

incompetent successor) before he has acquired sufficient experience to

perform his duties with credit to himself or profit to the country. Owing

to this incredible folly, the affairs of the island are badly mismanaged.

Complaints are the rule, even from those who have had their way in the

choice of officers. Of course there can be no such thing as a knowledge of

the science of government among such a people, for it is to nobody's

interest to acquire it by study of political history. There is, indeed, a

prevalent belief that nothing worth knowing is to be learned from the

history of other nations--not even from the history of their errors--such

is this extraordinary people's national vanity! One of the most notable

consequences of this universal and voluntary ignorance is that Tamtonia is

the home of all the discreditable political and fiscal heresies from which

many other nations, and especially our own, emancipated themselves

centuries ago. They are there in vigorous growth and full flower, and

believed to be of purely Tamtonian origin.

It needs hardly to be stated that in their personal affairs these people

pursue an entirely different course, for if they did not there could be no

profitable industries and professions among them, and no property to tax

for the support of their government. In his private business a Tamtonian

has as high appreciation of fitness and experience as anybody, and having

secured a good man keeps him in service as long as possible.

The ruler of the nation, whom they call a _Tnediserp_, is chosen every

five years but may be rechosen for five more. He is supposed to be

selected by the people themselves, but in reality they have nothing to do

with his selection. The method of choosing a man for _Tnediserp_ is so

strange that I doubt my ability to make it clear.

The adult male population of the island divides itself into two or more

_seitrap_[1] Commonly there are three or four, but only two ever have any

considerable numerical strength, and none is ever strong morally or

intellectually. All the members of each _ytrap_ profess the same political

opinions, which are provided for them by their leaders every five years

and written down on pieces of paper so that they will not be forgotten.

The moment that any Tamtonian has read his piece of paper, or _mroftalp_,

he unhesitatingly adopts all the opinions that he finds written on it,

sometimes as many as forty or fifty, although these may be altogether

different from, or even antagonistic to, those with which he was supplied

five years before and has been advocating ever since. It will be seen from

this that the Tamtonian mind is a thing whose processes no American can

hope to respect, or even understand. It is instantaneously convinced

without either fact or argument, and when these are afterward presented

they only confirm it in its miraculous conviction; those which make

against that conviction having an even stronger confirmatory power than

the others. I have said any Tamtonian, but that is an overstatement. A few

usually persist in thinking as they did before; or in altering their

convictions in obedience to reason instead of authority, as our own people

do; but they are at once assailed with the most opprobrious names, accused

of treason and all manner of crimes, pelted with mud and stones and in

some instances deprived of their noses and ears by the public executioner.

Yet in no country is independence of thought so vaunted as a virtue, and

in none is freedom of speech considered so obvious a natural right or so

necessary to good government.

[1] The Tamtonian language forms its plurals most irregularly, but

usually by an initial inflection. It has a certain crude and

primitive grammar, but in point of orthoepy is extremely

difficult. With our letters I can hardly hope to give an

accurate conception of its pronunciation. As nearly as possible

I write its words as they sounded to my ear when carefully

spoken for my instruction by intelligent natives. It is a harsh

tongue.

At the same time that each _ytrap_ is supplied with its political opinions

for the next five years, its leaders--who, I am told, all pursue the

vocation of sharpening axes--name a man whom they wish chosen for the

office of _Tnediserp_. He is usually an idiot from birth, the Tamtonians

having a great veneration for such, believing them to be divinely

inspired. Although few members of the _ytrap_ have ever heard of him

before, they at once believe him to have been long the very greatest idiot

in the country; and for the next few months they do little else than quote

his words and point to his actions to prove that his idiocy is of entirely

superior quality to that of his opponent--a view that he himself,

instructed by his discoverers, does and says all that he can to confirm.

His inarticulate mumblings are everywhere repeated as utterances of

profound wisdom, and the slaver that drools from his chin is carefully

collected and shown to the people, evoking the wildest enthusiasm of his

supporters. His opponents all this time are trying to blacken his

character by the foulest conceivable falsehoods, some even going so far as

to assert that he is not an idiot at all! It is generally agreed among

them that if he were chosen to office the most dreadful disasters would

ensue, and that, _therefore_, he will not be chosen.

To this last mentioned conviction, namely that the opposing candidate

(_rehtot lacsar_) cannot possibly be chosen, I wish to devote a few words

here, for it seems to me one of the most extraordinary phenomena of the

human mind. It implies, of course, a profound belief in the wisdom of

majorities and the error of minorities. This belief can and does in some

mysterious way co-exist, in the Tamtonian understanding, with the deepest

disgust and most earnest disapproval of a decision which a majority has

made. It is of record, indeed, that one political _ytrap_ sustained no

fewer than six successive defeats without at all impairing its conviction

that the right side must win. In each recurring contest this ytrap was as

sure that it would succeed as it had been in all the preceding ones--and

sure _because_ it believed itself in the right! It has been held by some

native observers that this conviction is not actually entertained, but

only professed for the purpose of influencing the action of others; but

this is disproved by the fact that even after the contest is decided,

though the result is unknown--when nobody's action can have effect--the

leaders (ax-sharpeners) continue earnestly to "claim" this province and

that, up to the very last moment of uncertainty, and the common people

murder one another in the streets for the crime of doubting that the man

is chosen whom the assassin was pleased to prefer. When the majority of a

province has chosen one candidate and a majority of the nation another,

the mental situation of the worthy Tamtonian is not over-easy of

conception, but there can be no doubt that his faith in the wisdom of

majorities remains unshaken.

One of the two antagonistic idiots having been chosen as ruler, it is

customary to speak of him as "the choice of the people," whereas it is

obvious that he is one of the few men, seldom exceeding two or three, whom

it is certainly known that nearly one-half the people regard as unfit for

the position. He is less certainly "the people's choice" than any other

man in the country excepting his unsuccessful opponents; for while it is

known that a large body of his countrymen did not want him, it cannot be

known how many of his supporters really preferred some other person, but

had no opportunity to make their preference effective.

The Tamtonians are very proud of their form of government, which gives

them so much power in selecting their rulers. This power consists in the

privilege of choosing between two men whom but a few had a voice in

selecting from among many millions, any one of whom the rest might have

preferred to either. Yet every Tamtonian is as vain of possessing this

incalculably small influence as if he were a Warwick in making kings and a

Bismarck in using them. He gives himself as many airs and graces as would

be appropriate to the display of an honest pin-feather upon the

pope's-nose of a mooley peacock.

Each congenital idiot whom the ax-grinders name for the office of

_Tnediserp_ has upon the "ticket" with him a dead man, who stands or falls

with his leader. There is no way of voting for the idiot without voting

for the corpse also, and _vice versa_. When one of these precious couples

has been chosen the idiot in due time enters upon the duties of his office

and the corpse is put into an ice-chest and carefully preserved from

decay. If the idiot should himself become a corpse he is buried at once

and the other body is then haled out of its ice to take his place. It is

propped up in the seat of authority and duly instated in power. This is

the signal for a general attack upon it. It is subjected to every kind of

sacrilegious indignity, vituperated as a usurper and an "accident," struck

with rotten eggs and dead cats, and undergoes the meanest

misrepresentation. Its attitude in the chair, its fallen jaw, glazed eyes

and degree of decomposition are caricatured and exaggerated out of all

reason. Yet such as it is it must be endured for the unexpired term for

which its predecessor was chosen. To guard against a possible interregnum,

however, a law has recently been passed providing that if it should tumble

out of the chair and be too rotten to set up again its clerks

(_seiraterces_) are eligible to its place in a stated order of succession.

Here we have the amazing anomaly of the rulers of a "free" people actually

appointing their potential successors!--a thing inexpressibly repugnant to

all our ideas of popular government, but apparently regarded in Tamtonia

as a matter of course.

During the few months intervening between the ax-men's selection of

candidates and the people's choice between those selected (a period known

as the _laitnediserp ngiapmac_) the Tamtonian character is seen at its

worst. There is no infamy too great or too little for the partisans of the

various candidates to commit and accuse their opponents of committing.

While every one of them declares, and in his heart believes, that honest

arguments have greater weight than dishonest; that falsehood reacts on the

falsifier's cause; that appeals to passion and prejudice are as

ineffectual as dishonorable, few have the strength and sense to deny

themselves the luxury of all these methods and worse ones. The laws

against bribery, made by themselves, are set at naught and those of

civility and good breeding are forgotten. The best of friends quarrel and

openly insult one another. The women, who know almost as little of the

matters at issue as the men, take part in the abominable discussions; some

even encouraging the general demoralization by showing themselves at the

public meetings, sometimes actually putting themselves into uniform and

marching in procession with banners, music and torchlights.

I feel that this last statement will be hardly understood without

explanation. Among the agencies employed by the Tamtonians to prove that

one set of candidates is better than another, or to show that one

political policy is more likely than another to promote the general

prosperity, a high place is accorded to colored rags, flames of fire,

noises made upon brass instruments, inarticulate shouts, explosions of

gunpowder and lines of men walking and riding through the streets in cheap

and tawdry costumes more or less alike. Vast sums of money are expended to

procure these strange evidences of the personal worth of candidates and

the political sanity of ideas. It is very much as if a man should paint

his nose pea-green and stand on his head to convince his neighbors that

his pigs are fed on acorns. Of course the money subscribed for these

various controversial devices is not all wasted; the greater part of it is

pocketed by the ax-grinders by whom it is solicited, and who have invented

the system. That they have invented it for their own benefit seems not to

have occurred to the dupes who pay for it. In the universal madness

everybody believes whatever monstrous and obvious falsehood is told by the

leaders of his own _ytrap_, and nobody listens for a moment to the

exposures of their rascality. Reason has flown shrieking from the scene;

Caution slumbers by the wayside with unbuttoned pocket. It is the

opportunity of thieves!

With a view to abating somewhat the horrors of this recurring season of

depravity, it has been proposed by several wise and decent Tamtonians to

extend the term of office of the _Tnediserp_ to six years instead of five,

but the sharpeners of axes are too powerful to be overthrown. They have

made the people believe that if the man whom the country chooses to rule

it because it thinks him wise and good were permitted to rule it too long

it would be impossible to displace him in punishment for his folly and

wickedness. It is, indeed, far more likely that the term of office will be

reduced to four years than extended to six. The effect can be no less than

hideous!

In Tamtonia there is a current popular saying dating from many centuries

back and running this way: "_Eht eciffo dluohs kees eht nam, ton eht nam

eht eciffo_"--which may be translated thus: "No citizen ought to try to

secure power for himself, but should be selected by others for his fitness

to exercise it." The sentiment which this wise and decent phrase expresses

has long ceased to have a place in the hearts of those who are

everlastingly repeating it, but with regard to the office of _Tnediserp_

it has still a remnant of the vitality of habit. This, however, is fast

dying out, and a few years ago one of the congenital idiots who was a

candidate for the highest dignity boldly broke the inhibition and made

speeches to the people in advocacy of himself, all over the country. Even

more recently another has uttered his preferences in much the same way,

but with this difference: he did his speechmaking at his own home, the

ax-grinders in his interest rounding up audiences for him and herding them

before his door. One of the two corpses, too, was galvanized into a kind

of ghastly activity and became a talking automaton; but the other had been

too long dead. In a few years more the decent tradition that a man should

not blow his own horn will be obsolete in its application to the high

office, as it is to all the others, but the popular saying will lose none

of its currency for that.

To the American mind nothing can be more shocking than the Tamtonian

practice of openly soliciting political preferment and even paying money

to assist in securing it. With us such immodesty would be taken as proof

of the offender's unfitness to exercise the power which he asks for, or

bear the dignity which, in soliciting it, he belittles. Yet no Tamtonian

ever refused to take the hand of a man guilty of such conduct, and there

have been instances of fathers giving these greedy vulgarians the hands of

their daughters in marriage and thereby assisting to perpetuate the

species. The kind of government given by men who go about begging for the

right to govern can be more easily imagined than endured. In short, I

cannot help thinking that when, unable longer to bear with patience the

evils entailed by the vices and follies of its inhabitants, I sailed away

from the accursed island of Tamtonia, I left behind me the most pestilent

race of rascals and ignoramuses to be found anywhere in the universe; and

I never can sufficiently thank the divine Power who spared me the

disadvantage and shame of being one of them, and cast my lot in this

favored land of goodness and right reason, the blessed abode of public

morality and private worth--of liberty, conscience and common sense.

I was not, however, to reach it without further detention in barbarous

countries. After being at sea four days I was seized by my mutinous crew,

set ashore upon an island, and having been made insensible by a blow upon

the head was basely abandoned.