Chapter 25 - Page 2

ought to have been, a fond, protecting, and
indulgent parent, was, in truth, no other than a rapacious,
vindictive and tyrannical step-mother. This was the opinion, it will
be remembered, when the two communities were legally united, had but
one head, wore clothes, and necessarily pursued a multitude of their
interests in common.

By the lucky termination of the war, all this was radically changed.
Leaplow pointed her thumb at Leaphigh, and declared her intention
henceforth to manage her own affairs in her own way. In order to do
this the more effectually, and, at the same time, to throw dirt into
the countenance of her late step-mother, she determined that her own
polity should run so near a parallel, and yet should be so obviously
an improvement on that of Leaphigh, as to demonstrate the
imperfections of the latter to the most superficial observer. That
this patriotic resolution was faithfully carried out in practice, I
am now about to demonstrate.

In Leaphigh, the old human principle had long prevailed, that
political authority came from God; though why such a theory should
ever have prevailed anywhere, as Mr. Downright once expressed it, I
cannot see, the devil very evidently having a greater agency in its
exercise than any other influence, or intelligence, whatever.
However, the jus divinum was the regulator of the Leaphigh social
compact, until the nobility managed to get the better of the jus,
when the divinum was left to shift for itself. It was at this epocha
the present constitution found its birth. Any one may have observed
that one stick placed on end will fall, as a matter of course,
unless rooted in the earth. Two sticks fare no better, even with
their tops united; but three sticks form a standard. This simple and
beautiful idea gave rise to the Leaphigh polity. Three moral props
were erected in the midst of the community, at the foot of one of
which was placed the king, to prevent it from slipping; for all the
danger, under such a system, came from that of the base slipping; at
the foot of the second, the nobles; and at the foot of the third,
the people. On the summit of this tripod was raised the machine of
state. This was found to be a capital invention in theory, though
practice, as practice is very apt to do, subjected it to some
essential modifications. The king, having his stick all his own way,
gave a great deal of trouble to the two other sets of stick-holders;
and, unwilling to disturb the theory, for that was deemed to be
irrevocably settled and sacred, the nobility, who, for their own
particular convenience, paid the principal workmen at the base of
the people's stick to stand steady, set about the means of keeping
the king's stick, also, in a more uniform and