Chapter 28

THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVES TO A LEGISLATOR--MORAL CONSECUTIVENESS,
COMETS, KITES, AND A CONVOY; WITH SOME EVERY-DAY LEGISLATION;
TOGETHER WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Legislation, during the occultation of the great moral postulate
Principle by the passage of Pecuniary Interest, is, at the best, but
a melancholy affair. It proved to be peculiarly so with us just at
that moment, for the radiance of the divine property had been a good
deal obscured in the houses, for a long time previously, by the
interference of various minor satellites. In nothing, therefore, did
the deplorable state of things which existed make itself more
apparent, than in our proceedings.

As Captain Poke and myself, notwithstanding our having taken
different stands in politics, still continued to live together, I
had better opportunities to note the workings of the obscuration on
the ingenuous mind of my colleague than on that of most other
persons. He early began to keep a diary of his expenses, regularly
deducting the amount at night from the sum of eight dollars, and
regarding the balance as so much clear gain. His conversation, too,
soon betrayed a leaning to his personal interests, instead of being
of that pure and elevated cast which should characterize the
language of a statesman. He laid down the position, pretty
dogmatically, that legislation, after all, was work; that "the
laborer was worthy of his hire"; and that, for his part, he felt no
great disposition to go through the vexation and trouble of helping
to make laws, unless he could see, with a reasonable certainty, that
something was to be got by it. He thought Leaplow had quite laws
enough as it was--more than she respected or enforced--and if she
wanted any more, all she had to do was to pay for them. He should
take an early occasion to propose that all our wages--or, at any
rate, his own; others might do as they pleased--should be raised, at
the very least, two dollars a day, and this while he merely sat in
the house; for he wished to engage me to move, by way of amendment,
that as much more should be given to the committees. He did not
think it was fair to exact of a member to be a committee-man for
nothin', although most of them were committee-men for nothin'; and
if we were called on to keep two watches, in this manner, the least
that could be done would be to give us TWO PAYS. He said,
considering it in the most favorable point of view, that there was
great wear and tear of brain in legislation, and he should never be
the man he was before he engaged in the trade; he assured me that
his idees, sometimes, were so complicated that he did not know where
to find the one he wanted, and that he had wished for a cauda, a
thousand times, since he had