"Titius. Le premier qui supprime un abus, comme on dit, est toujours
victime du service qu'il rend.
Un Homme du Peuple. C'est de sa faute! Pourquoi se mele t'il de ce
qui ne le regarde pas."--Le Pretre de Nemi.
The Devil, according to Dr. Johnson and other authorities, was the first
Whig. History tells us less about the first Radical--the first man who
rebelled against the despotism of unintelligible customs, who asserted
the rights of the individual against the claims of the tribal conscience,
and who was eager to see society organized, off-hand, on what he thought
a rational method. In the absence of history, we must fall back on that
branch of hypothetics which is known as prehistoric science. We must
reconstruct the Romance of the First Radical from the hints supplied by
geology, and by the study of Radicals at large, and of contemporary
savages among whom no Radical reformer has yet appeared. In the
following little apologue no trait of manners is invented.
The characters of our romance lived shortly after the close of the last
glacial epoch in Europe, when the ice had partly withdrawn from the face
of the world, and when land and sea had almost assumed their modern
proportions. At this period Europe was inhabited by scattered bands of
human creatures, who roamed about its surface much as the black fellows
used to roam over the Australian continent. The various groups derived
their names from various animals and other natural objects, such as the
sun, the cabbage, serpents, sardines, crabs, leopards, bears, and hyaenas.
It is important for our purpose to remember that all the children took
their family name from the mother's side. If she were of the Hyaena
clan, the children were Hyaenas. If the mother were tattooed with the
badge of the Serpent, the children were Serpents, and so on. No two
persons of the same family name and crest might marry, on pain of death.
The man of the Bear family who dwelt by the Mediterranean might not ally
himself with a woman of the Bear clan whose home was on the shores of the
Baltic, and who was in no way related to him by consanguinity. These
details are dry, but absolutely necessary to the comprehension of the
First Radical's stormy and melancholy career. We must also remember
that, among the tribes, there was no fixed or monarchical government. The
little democratic groups were much influenced by the medicine-men or
wizards, who combined the functions of the modern clergy and of the
medical profession. The old men, too, had some power; the braves, or
warriors, constituted a turbulent oligarchy; the noisy outcries of the
old women corresponded to the utterances of an intelligent daily press.
But the real ruler was a body of strange and despotic customs, the nature
of which will become apparent as we follow the fortunes of the First
Radical.