Chapter 25

A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE, A FUNDAMENTAL LAW, AND A FUNDAMENTAL ERROR.

The people of Leaplow are remarkable for the deliberation of their
acts, the moderation of their views, and the accumulation of their
wisdom. As a matter of course such a people is never in an indecent
haste. Although I have now been legally naturalized, and regularly
elected to the great council fully twenty-four hours, three entire
days were allowed for the study of the institutions, and to become
acquainted with the genius of a nation, who, according to their own
account of the matter, have no parallel in heaven or earth, or in
the waters under the earth, before I was called upon to exercise my
novel and important functions. I profited by the delay and shall
seize a favorable moment to make the reader acquainted with some of
my acquisitions on this interesting topic.

The institutions of Leaplow are divided into two great moral
categories, viz.: the LEGAL and the SUBSTITUTIVE. The former
embraces the provisions of the great ELEMENTARY, and the latter all
the provisions of the great ALIMENTARY principle. The first,
accordingly, is limited by the constitution, or the Great National
Allegory, while the last is limited by nothing but practice; one
contains the proposition, and the other its deductions; this is all
hypothesis, that, all corollary. The two great political landmarks,
the two public opinions, the bob-upon-bobs, the rotatory action, and
the great and little wheels, are merely inferential, and I shall,
therefore, say nothing about them in my present treatise, which has
a strict relation only to the fundamental law of the land, or to the
Great and Sacred National Allegory.

It has been already stated that Leaplow was originally a scion of
Leaphigh. The political separation took place in the last
generation, when the Leaplowers publicly renounced Leaphigh and all
it contained, just as your catechumen is made to renounce the devil
and all his works. This renunciation, which is also sometimes called
the DENUNCIATION, was much more to the liking of Leaplow than to
that of Leaphigh; and a long and sanguinary war was the consequence.
The Leaplowers, after a smart struggle, however, prevailed in their
firm determination to have no more to do with Leaphigh. The sequel
will show how far they were right.

Even preceding the struggle, so active was the sentiment of
patriotism and independence, that the citizens of Leaplow, though
ill-provided with the productions of their own industry, proudly
resorted to the self-denial of refusing to import even a pin from
the mother country, actually preferring nakedness to submission.
They even solemnly voted that their venerable progenitor, instead of
being, as she clearly