Illustrations of political economy, Volume 8 (of 9)Martineau, Harriet
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Illustrations of political economy, Volume 8 (of 9)
Martineau, Harriet
Didactic fiction, English; Political fiction, English; Social problems -- Fiction
This is the people’s own doing. No grown man can be supposed to care for
crowns and gold sticks, and robes and collars, in themselves. It is the
people who choose to preserve them as antiquarian curiosities. So be it,
as long as their taste for antiquities takes this turn, and they can
find grown men good-natured enough to dress up to make a show for their
gratification. But, in another reign or two, it will be necessary to
have dolls made to save busy and grave legislators the toil and
absurdity of figuring in such an exhibition; or perhaps cheap theatres
will by that time be allowed, where those who now act pantomimes, will
not be above exhibiting these other mummeries on Christmas nights.
Meantime, if the people choose to have their functionaries surrounded
with pomp and parade, they must pay the purchase money with thanks.
Whenever they shall become disposed to dispense with guards, trappings,
and pageantry, to respect simplicity, and obey the laws for the sake of
something more venerable than maces and wigs, they have only to say so,
and doubtless the King will feel much relieved, and his ministers very
thankful. The laws will work quite as well for the judges looking like
other people; in the same manner as it is found that physicians’
prescriptions are worth full as much as formerly, though the learned
gentlemen now wear their own hair. We tried this method of simplicity in
our own North American Colonies, less than a century ago. Their total
expenditure was under 65,000_l._ per annum. We shall not have held those
colonies for nothing if we learn from our own doings there how cheap a
thing government may be made, when removed from under the eyes and the
hands of a born aristocracy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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