The Crater, James Fenimore Cooper [good book club books TXT] 📗

and highways in a republic; for truth it is, and truth, those who press the foremost on another path will the soonest discover it to be. The mass may select their representatives, may know them, and may in a good measure so far sway them, as to keep them to their duties; but when a constituency assumes to enact the part of executive and judiciary, they not only get beyond their depth, but into the mire. What can , what does the best-informed layman, for instance, know of the qualifications of this or that candidate to fill a seat on the bench! He has to take another's judgment for his guide; and a popular appointment of this nature, is merely transferring the nomination from an enlightened, and, what is everything, a RESPONSIBLE authority, to one that is unavoidably at the mercy of second persons for its means of judging, and is as IRRESPONSIBLE AS AIR.

At one time, Mark Woolston regretted that he had not established an opposition paper, in order to supply an antidote for the bane; but reflection satisfied him it would have been useless. Everything human follows its law, until checked by abuses that create resistance. This is true of the monarch, who misuses power until it becomes tyranny; of the nobles, who combine to restrain the monarch, until the throes of an aristocracy-ridden country proclaim that it has merely changed places with the prince; of the people, who wax fat and kick! Everything human is abused; and it would seem that the only period of tolerable condition is the transition state, when the new force is gathering to a head, and before the storm has time to break. In the mean time, the earth revolves, men are born, live their time, and die; communities are formed and are dissolved; dynasties appear and disappear; good contends with evil, and evil still has its day; the whole, however, advancing slowly but unerringly towards that great consummation, which was designed from the beginning, and which is as certain to arrive in the end, as that the sun sets at night and rises in the morning. The supreme folly of the hour is to imagine that perfection will come before its stated time.


Chapter XXX.


"This is thy lesson, mighty sea!
Man calls the dimpled earth his own,
The flowery vale, the golden lea;
And on the wild gray mountain-stone
Claims nature's temple for his throne!
But where thy many voices sing
Their endless song, the deep, deep tone
Calls back his spirit's airy wing,
He shrinks into himself, when God is king!"

Lunt.


For some months after the change of government, Mark Woolston was occupied in attending to the arrangement of his affairs, preparatory to an absence of some length. Bridget had expressed a strong wish to visit America once more, and her two eldest children were now of an age when their education had got to be a matter of some solicitude. It was the intention of their father to send them to Pennsylvania for that purpose, when the proper time arrived, and to place them under the care of his friends there, who would gladly take the charge. Recent events probably quickened this intention, both as to feeling and time, for Mark was naturally much mortified at the turn things had taken.

There was an obvious falling-off in the affairs of the colony from the time it became transcendantly free. In religion, the sects ever had fair-play, or ever since the arrival of the parsons, and that had been running down, from the moment it began to run into excesses and exaggerations. As soon as a man begins to shout in religion, he may be pretty sure that he is "hallooing before he is out of the woods." It is true that all our feelings exhibit themselves, more or less, in conformity to habits and manners, but there is something profane in the idea that the spirit of God manifests it presence in yells and clamour, even when in possession of those who have not been trained to the more subdued deportment of reason and propriety. The shouting and declamatory parts of religion may be the evil spirits growling and yelling before they are expelled, but these must not be mistaken for the voice of the Ancient of Days.

The morals decayed as religion obtained its false directions. Self-righteousness, the inseparable companion of the quarrels of sects, took the place of humility, and thus became prevalent that most dangerous condition of the soul of man, when he imagines that he sanctifies what he does; a frame of mind, by the way, that is by no means strange to very many who ought to be conscious of their unworthiness. With the morals of the colony, its prosperity, even in worldly interests, began to lose ground. The merchants, as usual, had behaved badly in the political struggle. The intense selfishness of the caste kept them occupied with the pursuit of gain, at the most critical moments of the struggle, or when their influence might have been of use; and when the mischief was done, and they began to feel its consequences, or, what to them was the same thing, to fancy that the low price of oil in Europe was owing to the change of constitution at the Crater, they started up in convulsed and mercenary efforts to counteract the evil, referring all to money, and not manifesting any particular notions of principles concerning the manner in which it was used. As the cooler heads of the minority--perhaps we ought to say of the majority, for, oddly enough, the minority now actually ruled in Craterdom, by carrying out fully the principle of the sway of the majority--but, as the cooler heads of the colony well understood that nothing material was to follow from such spasmodic and ill-directed efforts, the merchants were not backed in their rising, and, as commonly happens with the slave, the shaking of their chains only bound them so much the tighter.

At length the Rancocus returned from the voyage on which she had sailed just previously to the change in the constitution, and her owner announced his intention to go in her to America, the next trip, himself. His brothers, Heaton, Anne, their children, and, finally, Captain Betts, Friend Martha, and their issue, all, sooner or later, joined the party; a desire to visit the low shores of the Delaware once more, uniting with the mortification of the recent changes, to induce them all to wish to see the land of their fathers before they died. All the oil in the colony was purchased by Woolston, at rather favourable prices, the last quotations from abroad being low: the ex-governor disposed of most of his movables, in order to effect so large an operation. He also procured a glorious collection of shells, and some other light articles of the sort, filling the ship as full as she could be stowed. It was then that the necessity of having a second vessel became apparent, and Betts determined to withdraw his brig from the fishery, and to go to America in her. The whales had been driven off the original fishing-ground, and the pursuit was no longer as profitable as it had been, three fish having been taken formerly to one now; a circumstance the hierarchy of the Crater did not fail to ascribe to the changes in the constitution, while the journal attributed it to certain aristocratical tendencies which, as that paper averred, had crept into the management of the business.

The vessels were loaded, the passengers disposing of as many of their movables as they could, and to good advantage, intending to lay in fresh supplies in Philadelphia, and using the funds thus obtained to procure a freight for the brig. At the end of a month, both vessels were ready; the different dwellings were transferred to new occupants, some by lease and others by sales, and all those who contemplated a voyage to America were assembled at the crater. Previously to taking leave of a place that had become endeared to him by so many associations and interests, Mr. Woolston determined to take the Anne, hiring her of the government for that purpose--Governor Pennock condescendingly deciding that the public interests would not suffer by the arrangement--and going in her once more through the colony, on a tour of private, if not of official inspection. Bridget, Heaton, Anne, and Captain Betts, were of the party; the children being left at the crater, in proper custody.

The first visit was paid to Rancocus Island. Here the damage done by the pirates had long been repaired; and the mills, kilns and other works, were in a state of prosperous industry. The wild hogs and goats were now so numerous as to be a little troublesome, particularly the former; but, a good many being shot, the inhabitants did not despair of successfully contending with them for the possession of the place. There were cattle, also, on this island; but they were still tame, the cows giving milk, and the oxen being used in the yoke. These were the descendants of the single pair Woolston had sent across, less than twelve years before, which had increased in an arithmetical proportion, care having been taken not to destroy any. They now exceeded a hundred, of whom quite half were cows; and the islanders occasionally treated themselves to fresh beef. As cows had been brought into the colony in every vessel that arrived, they were now in tolerably good numbers, Mark Woolston himself disposing of no less than six when he broke up his farming establishment for a visit to America. There were horses, too, though not in as great numbers as there were cows and oxen. Boats were so much used, that roadsters were very little needed; and this so much the less, on account of the great steadiness of the trades. By this time, everybody understood the last; and the different channels of the group were worked through with almost the same facility as would have been the case with so many highways. Nevertheless, horses were to be found in the colony, and some of the husbandmen preferred them to the horned cattle in working their lands.

A week was passed in visiting the group. Something like a consciousness of having ill-treated Mark was to be traced among the people; and this feeling was manifested under a well-known law of our nature, which rendered those the most vindictive and morose, who had acted the worst. Those who had little more to accuse themselves of than a compliant submission to the wrong-doing of others, in political matters everywhere the most numerous class of all, received their visiters well enough, and in many instances they treated their guests with delicacy and distinction. On the whole, however, the late governor derived but little pleasure from the intercourse, so much mouthing imbecility being blended with the expressions of regret and sympathy, as to cause him to mourn over the compliance of his fellow-creatures, more than to rejoice at their testimony in his own favour.

But, notwithstanding all these errors of man, nature and time had done their work magnificently since the last "progress" of Woolston among the islands. The channels were in nearly every instance lined with trees, and the husbandry had assumed the aspect of an advanced civilization. Hedges, beautiful in their luxuriance and flowers, divided the fields; and the buildings which contribute to the comforts of