In the instance of my own kingdom the many defunct and surviving systems of the nations of the Earth have all been studied and have doubtless been partially adapted here and there, so that in a sense the Meleagrian outlook on morals is extremely interesting, as affording the result of careful unprejudiced investigation over a wide space of time. But of course the outcome of these secret researches and deductions cannot possibly be agreeable or obvious to any one people or set of thinkers on Earth, for it will be remembered that whereas the Earth is a congeries of tribes and climates and faiths, so Meleager is homogeneous, unless one takes into account the colder and almost unexplored parts of Barbaria. And thus, as the consequence of careful study for many, many generations by acute well-trained intellects, a sort of eclecticism has been created here in the field of morals, as has already arisen in the case of religious tenets. Here there are no hard and fast rules on moral behaviour, but each individual is supposed to be guided by his or her instincts, which it is considered expedient to depress or encourage, according to the benefit or damage that may accrue thereby to society at large, or to the state, if you prefer to regard it as such. The open exhibition of harmful instincts then is looked on by the ruling caste of Meleager as an occasion not for punishment but for segregation; such tendencies in themselves being disregarded so long as they are practised in secret and kept, as it were, under personal control. And here I am speaking only of traits and tendencies, not of actual crimes, of fraud or violence, for the punishment of which there exists a severe code based apparently on the Mosaic laws. A cold-blooded murder is repaid by a death penalty, which is carried out privately in the case of a nobleman, by beheadal in prison of a merchant, and by public hanging in the case of a plebeian. Crimes of assault are met with strokes from the lash coupled with a fine; outrages on children are punished by death. But vile crimes and executions are very rare indeed, and this highly desirable state of things I attribute to the long period wherein the rulers of Meleager have been gradually eliminating the feeble-minded and evil-disposed members of the community by their careful and judicious system of segregation. Other cases of wrong-doing of a more venial type are usually met by a scale of fines, which are intended to compensate the injured party for any damage he may have incurred; whilst minor instances of violence or disturbance of the peace are frequently punished by an order to administer a certain number of lashes there and then in open court, this penalty being not uncommonly awarded to drunken or refractory persons belonging to the seafaring, peddling, long-shore and such humbler sections of the populace.