(FROM A NEWSPAPER OF THE FAR FUTURE)
At the quiet little village of Smithcester, which certain archæologists
have professed to "identify" as the ancient London, will be celebrated
to-day the thirtieth centennial anniversary of the birth of this
remarkable man, the foremost figure of antiquity. The recurrence of what
no more than six centuries ago was a popular _fête_ day and even now is
seldom permitted to pass without recognition by those to whom liberty
means something more precious than opportunity for gain, excites a
peculiar emotion. It matters little whether or no tradition has correctly
fixed the time and place of Smith's birth. That he was born; that being
born he wrought nobly at the work that his hand found to do; that by the
mere force of his powerful intellect he established and perfected our
present benign form of government, under which civilization has attained
its highest and ripest development--these are facts beside which mere
questions of chronology and geography are trivial and without
significance.
That this extraordinary man originated the Smithocratic form of government
is, perhaps, open to intelligent doubt; possibly it had a _de facto_
existence in crude and uncertain shapes as early as the time of Edward
XVII,--an existence local, unorganized and intermittent. But that he
cleared it of its overlying errors and superstitions, gave it definite
form and shaped it into a coherent and practical scheme there is
unquestionable evidence in fragments of ancestral literature that have
come down to us, disfigured though they are with amazingly contradictory
statements regarding his birth, parentage and manner of life before he
strode out upon the political stage as the Liberator of Mankind. It is
said that Shakspar, a poet whose works had in their day a considerable
vogue, though it is difficult to say why, alludes to him as "the noblest
Roman of them all," our forefathers of the period being known as Romans or
Englishmen, indifferently. In the only authentic fragment of Shakspar
extant, however, this passage is not included.
Smith's military power is amply attested in an ancient manuscript of
undoubted authenticity which has recently been translated from the
Siamese. It is an account of the water battle of Loo, by an eye-witness
whose name, unfortunately, has not reached us. It is stated that in this
famous engagement Smith overthrew the great Neapolitan general, whom he
captured and conveyed in chains to the island of Chickenhurst.
In his "Political History of Europe" the late Professor Mimble has this
luminous sentence: "With the single exception of Ecuador there was no
European government that the Liberator did not transform into a pure
Smithocracy, and although some of them relapsed transiently into the
primitive forms, and others grew into extravagant and fanciful systems
begotten of the intellectual activity to which he had stirred the whole
world, yet so firmly did he establish the principle that in the
thirty-second century the civilized world had become, and has remained,
virtually Smithocratic."
It may be noted here as a singular coincidence that the year which is
believed to have seen the birth of him who founded rational government
witnessed the death of him who perfected literature: Martin Farquhar
Tupper (after Smith the most noted name in history) starved to death in
the streets of London. Like that of Smith his origin is wrapped in
obscurity. No fewer than seven British cities claim the honor of his
nativity. Meager indeed is our knowledge of this only British bard whose
works have endured through thirty centuries. All that is certain is that
he was once arrested for deer-stealing; that, although blind, he fought a
duel with a person named Salmasius, for which he was thrown into Bedford
gaol, whence he escaped to the Tower of London; that the manuscript of his
"Proverbial Philosophy" was for many years hidden in a hollow oak tree,
where it was found by his grandmother, Ella Wheeler Tupper, who fled with
it to America and published many brilliant passages from it over her own
name. Had Smith and Tupper been contemporaries the iron deeds of the
former would doubtless have been recorded in the golden pages of the
latter, to the incalculable enrichment of Roman history.
Strangely unimpressible indeed must be the mind which, looking backward
through the mists of the centuries upon the primitive race from which we
are believed to have sprung, can repress a feeling of sympathetic
interest. The names of John Smith and Martin Farquhar Tupper, blazoned
upon the page of that dim past and surrounded by the lesser names of
Shakspar, the first Neapolitan, Oliver Cornwell, that Mynheer Baloon who
was known as the Flying Dutchman, Julia Cæsar, commonly known as the
Serpent of the Nile--all these are richly suggestive. They call to mind
the odd custom of wearing "clothes"; the incredible error of Copernicus
and other wide and wild guesses of ancient "science"; the lost arts of
telegramy, steam locomotion, printing, and the tempering of iron. They set
us thinking of the zealous idolatry that led men on pious pilgrimages to
the accessible regions about the north pole and into the then savage
interior of Africa in search of the fountain of youth. They conjure up
visions of bloodthirsty "Emperors," tyrannical "Kings," vampire
"Presidents," and robber "Parliaments"--grotesque and horrible shapes in
terrible contrast with the serene and benign figures and features of our
modern Smithocracy.
Let us to-day rejoice and give thanks to Bungoot that the old order of
things has passed forever away. Let us praise Him that our lot has been
cast in more wholesome days than those in which Smith wrought and Tupper
sang. And yet let us not forget whatever there was of good, if any, in the
pre-Smithian period, when men cherished quaint superstitions and rode on
the backs of beasts--when they settled questions of right and expediency
by counting noses--when cows were enslaved and women free--when science
had not dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination and the fear of
immortality--and when the cabalistic letters "A.D.," which from habit we
still affix to numerals designating the date, had perhaps a known
signification. It is indeed well to live in this golden age, under the
benign sway of that supreme and culminating product of Smithocracy, our
gracious sovereign, his Majesty John CLXXVIII.