A prison conveyed the most lugubrious ideas to the mind of the unhappy
Plenipotentiary; and shut up in a hackney-coach, with a man on each side
of him with a most gloomy conceptions of overwhelming fetters, black
bread, and green water. He arrived at the principal gaol in Hubbabub.
He was ushered into an elegantly furnished apartment, with French sash
windows and a piano. Its lofty walls were entirely hung with a fanciful
paper, which represented a Tuscan vineyard; the ceiling was covered with
sky and clouds; roses were in abundance; and the windows, though well
secured, excited no jarring associations in the mind of the individual
they illumined, protected, as they were, by polished bars of cut steel.
This retreat had been fitted up by a poetical politician, who had
recently been confined for declaring that the Statue was an old idol
originally imported from the Sandwich Isles. Taking up a brilliantly
bound volume which reposed upon a rosewood table, Popanilla recited
aloud a sonnet to Liberty; but the account given of the goddess by
the bard was so confused, and he seemed so little acquainted with his
subject, that the reader began to suspect it was an effusion of the
gaoler.
Next to being a Plenipotentiary, Popanilla preferred being a prisoner.
His daily meals consisted of every delicacy in season: a marble bath was
ever at his service; a billiard-room and dumb-bells always ready; and
his old friends, the most eminent physician and the most celebrated
practitioner in Hubbabub, called upon him daily to feel his pulse and
look at his tongue. These attentions authorised a hope that he might yet
again be an Ambassador, that his native land might still be discovered,
and its resources still be developed: but when his gaoler told him that
the rest of the prisoners were treated in a manner equally indulgent,
because the Vraibleusians are the most humane people in the world,
Popanilla’s spirits became somewhat depressed.
He was greatly consoled, however, by a daily visit from a body of the
most beautiful, the most accomplished, and the most virtuous females
in Hubbabub, who tasted his food to see that his cook did his duty,
recommended him a plentiful use of pine-apple well peppered, and made
him a present of a very handsome shirt, with worked frills and ruffles,
to be hanged in. This enchanting committee generally confined their
attentions to murderers and other victims of the passions, who were
deserted in their hour of need by the rest of the society they
had outraged; but Popanilla, being a foreigner, a Prince, and a
Plenipotentiary, and not ill-looking, naturally attracted a great deal
of notice from those who desire the amelioration of their species.
Popanilla was so pleased with his mode of life, and had acquired such
a taste for poetry, pin-apples, and pepper since he had ceased to be an
active member of society, that he applied to have his trial postponed,
on the ground of the prejudice which had been excited against him by
the public press. As his trial was at present inconvenient to the
Government, the postponement was allowed on these grounds.
In the meantime, the public agitation was subsiding. The nation
reconciled itself to the revolution in its fortunes. The ci-devant
millionaires were busied with retrenchment; the Government engaged in
sweeping in as many pink shells as were lying about the country;
the mechanics contrived to live upon chalk and sea-weed; and as the
Aboriginal would not give his corn away gratis, the Vraibleusians
determined to give up bread. The intellectual part of the nation were
intently interested in discovering the cause of the National Distress.
One of the philosophers said that it might all be traced to the effects
of a war in which the Vraibleusians had engaged about a century
before. Another showed that it was altogether clearly ascribable to the
pernicious custom of issuing pink shells; but if, instead of this mode
of representing wealth, they had had recourse to blue shells, the nation
would now have advanced to a state of prosperity which it had never yet
reached. A third demonstrated to the satisfaction of himself and his
immediate circle that it was all owing to the Statue having recently
been repaired with silver instead of iron. The public were unable to
decide between these conflicting opinions; but they were still more
desirous of finding out a remedy for the evil than the cause of it.
An eloquent and philosophical writer, who entertains consolatory
opinions of human nature, has recently told us that ‘it is in the nature
of things that the intellectual wants of society should be supplied.
Whenever the man is required invariably the man will appear.’ So it
happened in the present instance. A public instructor jumped up in
the person of Mr. Flummery Flam, the least insinuating and the least
plausible personage that ever performed the easy task of gulling a
nation. His manners were vulgar, his voice was sharp, and his language
almost unintelligible. Flummery Flam was a provisional optimist. He
maintained that everything would be for the best, if the nation would
only follow his advice. He told the Vraibleusians that the present
universal and overwhelming distress was all and entirely and merely to
be ascribed to ‘a slight over-trading,’ and that all that was required
to set everything right again was ‘a little time.’ He showed that
this over-trading and every other injudicious act that had ever been
committed were entirely to be ascribed to the nation being imbued with
erroneous and imperfect ideas of the nature of Demand and Supply. He
proved to them that if a tradesman cannot find customers his goods will
generally stay upon his own hands. He explained to the Aboriginal
the meaning of rent; to the mechanics the nature of wages; to the
manufacturers the signification of profits. He recommended that a large
edition of his own work should be printed at the public expense and
sold for his private profit. Finally, he explained how immediate, though
temporary, relief would be afforded to the State by the encouragement of
EMIGRATION.
The Vraibleusians began to recover their spirits. The Government had
the highest confidence in Flummery Flam, because Flummery Flam served to
divert the public thoughts. By his direction lectures were instituted at
the corner of every street, to instil the right principles of politics
into the mind of the great body of the people. Every person, from the
Managers of the Statue down to the chalk-chewing mechanics, attended
lectures on Flummery-Flammism. The Vraibleusians suddenly discovered
that it was the great object of a nation not to be the most powerful,
or the richest, or the best, or the wisest, but to be the most
Flummery-Flammistical.