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Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke) - "Little Folks Astray"

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Various - "Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860"

Random House Walks from BEC 2009
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The Crater by James Fenimore Cooper

J >> James Fenimore Cooper >> The Crater




This was a perilous condition for the healthful humility of human
beings. Two dangers beset them; both coloured and magnified by a common
tendency. One was that of dropping into luxurious idleness--the certain
precursor, in such a climate, of sensual indulgences; and the other was
that of "waxing fat, and kicking." The tendency common to both, was to
place self before God, and not only to believe that they merited all
they received, but that they actually created a good share of it.

Of luxurious idleness, it was perhaps too soon to dread its worst
fruits. The men and women retained too many of their early habits and
impressions to drop easily into such a chasm; on the contrary, they
rather looked forward to producing results greater than any which had
yet attended their exertions. An exaggerated view of self, however, and
an almost total forgetfulness of God, took the place of the colonial
humility with which they had commenced their career in this new region.
These feelings were greatly heightened by three agents, that men
ordinarily suppose might have a very different effect--religion, law,
and the press.

When the Rancocus returned, a few months after the repulse of the
pirates, she had on board of her some fifty emigrants; the council still
finding itself obliged to admit the friends of families already settled
in the colony, on due application. Unhappily, among these emigrants were
a printer, a lawyer, and no less than four persons who might be named
divines. Of the last, one was a presbyterian, one a methodist,--the
third was a baptist, and the fourth a quaker. Not long after the arrival
of this importation, its consequences became visible. The sectaries
commenced with a thousand professions of brotherly love, and a great
parade of Christian charity; indeed they pretended that they had
emigrated in order to enjoy a higher degree of religious liberty than
was now to be found in America, where men were divided into sects,
thinking more of their distinguishing tenets than of the Being whom they
professed to serve. Forgetting the reasons which brought them from home,
or quite possibly carrying out the impulses which led them to resist
their former neighbours, these men set to work, immediately, to collect
followers, and believers after their own peculiar notions. Parson
Hornblower, who had hitherto occupied the ground by himself, but who was
always a good deal inclined to what are termed "distinctive opinions,"
buckled on his armour, and took the field in earnest. In order that the
sheep of one flock should not be mistaken for the sheep of another,
great care was taken to mark each and all with the brand of sect. One
clipped an ear, another smeared the wool (or drew it over the eyes) and
a third, as was the case with Friend Stephen Dighton, the quaker, put on
an entire covering, so that his sheep might be known by their outward
symbols, far as they could be seen. In a word, on those remote and sweet
islands, which, basking in the sun and cooled by the trades, seemed
designed by providence to sing hymns daily and hourly to their maker's
praise, the subtleties of sectarian faith smothered that humble
submission to the divine law by trusting solely to the mediation,
substituting in its place immaterial observances and theories which were
much more strenuously urged than clearly understood. The devil, in the
form of a "professor," once again entered Eden; and the Peak, with so
much to raise the soul above the grosser strife of men, was soon ringing
with discussions on "free grace," "immersion," "spiritual baptism," and
the "apostolical succession." The birds sang as sweetly as ever, and
their morning and evening songs hymned the praises of their creator as
of old; but, not so was it with the morning and evening devotions of
men. These last began to pray _at_ each other, and if Mr. Hornblower was
an exception, it was because his admirable liturgy did not furnish him
with the means of making these forays into the enemy's camp.

Nor did the accession of law and intelligence help the matter much.
Shortly after the lawyer made his appearance, men began to discover that
they were wronged by their neighbours, in a hundred ways which they had
never before discovered. Law, which had hitherto been used for the
purpose of justice, and of justice only, now began to be used for those
of speculation and revenge. A virtue was found in it that had never
before been suspected of existing in the colony; it being discovered
that men could make not only very comfortable livings, but, in some
cases, get rich, by the law; not by its practice, but by its practices.
Now came into existence an entire new class of philanthropists; men who
were ever ready to lend their money to such of the needy as possessed
property, taking judgment bonds, mortgages, and other innocent
securities, which were received because the lender always _acted on a
principle_ of not lending without them, or had taken a vow, or made
their wives promises; the end of all being a transfer of title, by which
the friendly assistant commonly relieved his dupe of the future care of
all his property. The governor soon observed that one of these
philanthropists rarely extended his saving hand, that the borrower did
not come out as naked as the ear of the corn that has been through the
sheller, or nothing but cob; and that, too, in a sort of patent-right
time. Then there were the labourers of the press to add to the influence
of those of religion and the law. The press took up the cause of human
rights, endeavouring, to transfer the power of the state from the public
departments to its own printing-office; and aiming at establishing all
the equality that can flourish when one man has a monopoly of the means
of making his facts to suit himself, leaving his neighbours to get along
under such circumstances as they can. But the private advantage secured
to himself by this advocate of the rights of all, was the smallest part
of the injury he did, though his own interests were never lost sight of,
and coloured all he did; the people were soon convinced that they had
hitherto been living under an unheard-of tyranny, and were invoked
weekly to arouse in their might, and be true to themselves and their
posterity. In the first place, not a tenth of them had ever been
consulted on the subject of the institutions at all, but had been
compelled to take them as they found them. Nor had the present
incumbents of office been placed in power by a vote of a majority, the
original colonists having saved those who came later to the island all
trouble in the premises. In these facts was an unceasing theme of
declamation and complaint to be found. It was surprising how little the
people really knew of the oppression under which they laboured, until
this stranger came amongst them to enlighten their understandings. Nor
was it less wonderful how many sources of wrong he exposed, that no one
had ever dreamed of having an existence. Although there was not a tax of
any sort laid in the colony, not a shilling ever collected in the way of
import duties, he boldly pronounced the citizens of the islands to be
the most overburthened people in Christendom! The taxation of England
was nothing to it, and he did not hesitate to proclaim a general
bankruptcy as the consequence, unless some of his own expedients were
resorted to, in order to arrest the evil. Our limits will not admit of a
description of the process by which this person demonstrated that a
people who literally contributed nothing at all, were overtaxed; but any
one who has paid attention to the opposing sides of a discussion on such
a subject, can readily imagine how easily such an apparent contradiction
can be reconciled, and the proposition demonstrated.

In the age of which we are writing, a majority of man kind fancied that
a statement made in print was far more likely to be true than one made
orally. Then he who stood up in his proper person and uttered his facts
on the responsibility of his personal character, was far less likely to
gain credit than the anonymous scribbler, who recorded his lie on paper,
though he made his record behind a screen, and half the time as much
without personal identity as he would be found to be without personal
character, were he actually seen and recognised. In our time, the press
has pretty effectually cured all observant persons at least of giving
faith to a statement merely because it is in print, and has become so
far alive to its own great inferiority as publicly to talk of
conventions to purify itself, and otherwise to do something to regain
its credit; but such was not the fact, even in America, forty years
since. The theory of an unrestrained press has fully developed itself
within the last quarter of a century, so that even the elderly ladies,
who once said with marvellous unction, "It must be true, for it's in
print," are now very apt to say, "Oh! it's only a newspaper _account_!"
The foulest pool has been furnished by a beneficent Providence with the
means of cleansing its own waters.

But the "Crater Truth-Teller" could utter its lies, as a privileged
publication, at the period of this narrative. Types still had a
sanctity; and it is surprising how much they deceived, and how many were
their dupes. The journal did not even take the ordinary pains to mystify
its readers, and to conceal its own cupidity, as are practised in
communities more advanced in civilization. We dare say that journals
_are_ to be found in London and Paris, that take just as great liberties
with the fact as the Crater Truth-Teller; but they treat their readers
with a little more outward respect, however much they may mislead them
with falsehoods. Your London and Paris publics are not to be dealt with
as if composed of credulous old women, but require something like a
plausible mystification to throw dust in their eyes. They have a
remarkable proneness to believe that which they wish, it is true; but,
beyond that weakness, some limits are placed to their faith and
appearances must be a good deal consulted.

But at the crater no such precaution seemed to be necessary. It is true
that the editor did use the pronoun "we," in speaking of himself; but he
took all other occasions to assert his individuality, and to use his
journal diligently in its behalf. Thus, whenever he got into the law,
his columns were devoted to publicly maintaining his own side of the
question, although such a course was not only opposed to every man's
sense of propriety, but was directly flying into the teeth of the laws
of the land; but little did he care for that. He was a public servant,
and of course all he did was right. To be sure, other public servants
were in the same category, all they did being wrong; but he had the
means of telling his own story, and a large number of gaping dunces were
ever ready to believe him. His manner of filling his larder is
particularly worthy of being mentioned. Quite as often as once a week,
his journal had some such elegant article as this, viz:--"Our esteemed
friend, Peter Snooks"--perhaps it was Peter Snooks, _Esquire_--"has just
brought us a fair specimen of his cocoa-nuts, which we do not hesitate
in recommending to the housekeepers of the crater, as among the choicest
of the group." Of course, Squire Snooks was grateful for this puff, and
often brought _more_ cocoa-nuts. The same great supervision was extended
to the bananas, the bread-fruit, the cucumbers, the melons, and even the
squashes, and always with the same results to the editorial larder.
Once, however, this worthy did get himself in a quandary with his use of
the imperial pronoun. A mate of one of the vessels inflicted personal
chastisement on him, for some impertinent comments he saw fit to make on
the honest tar's vessel; and, this being matter of intense interest to
the public mind, he went into a detail of all the evolutions of the
combat. Other men may pull each other's noses, and inflict kicks and
blows, without the world's caring a straw about it; but the editorial
interest is too intense to be overlooked in this manner. A bulletin of
the battle was published; the editor speaking of himself always in the
plural, out of excess of modesty, and to avoid egotism(!) in three
columns which were all about himself, using such expressions as
these:--"_We_ now struck _our_ antagonist a blow with _our_ fist, and
followed this up with a kick of _our_ foot, and otherwise _we_ made an
assault on him that he will have reason to remember to his dying day."
Now, these expressions, for a time, set all the old women in the colony
against the editor, until he went into an elaborate explanation, showing
that his modesty was so painfully sensitive that he could not say _I_ on
any account, though he occupied three more columns of his paper in
explaining the state of _our_ feelings. But, at first, the cry went
forth that the battle had been of _two_ against _one_; and _that_ even
the simple-minded colonists set down as somewhat cowardly. So much for
talking about _we_ in the bulletin of a single combat!

The political, effects produced by this paper, however, were much the
most material part of its results. Whenever it offended and disgusted
its readers by its dishonesty, selfishness, vulgarity, and lies--and it
did this every week, being a hebdomadal--it recovered the ground it had
lost by beginning to talk of 'the people' and their rights. This the
colonists could not withstand. All their sympathies were enlisted in
behalf of him who thought so much of their rights; and, at the very
moment he was trampling on these rights, to advance his own personal
views, and even treating them with contempt by uttering the trash he
did, they imagined that he and his paper in particular, and its
doctrines in general, were a sort of gift from Heaven to form the
palladium of their precious liberties!

The great theory advanced by this editorial tyro, was, that a majority
of any community had a right to do as it pleased. The governor early
saw, not only the fallacies, but the danger of this doctrine; and he
wrote several communications himself, in order to prove that it was
false. If true, he contended it was true altogether; and that it must be
taken, if taken as an axiom at all, with its largest consequences. Now,
if a majority has a right to rule, in this arbitrary manner, it has a
right to set its dogmas above the commandments, and to legalize theft,
murder, adultery, and all the other sins denounced in the twentieth
chapter of Exodus. This was a poser to the demagogue, but he made an
effort to get rid of it, by excepting the laws of God, which he allowed
that even majorities were bound to respect. Thereupon, the governor
replied that the laws of God were nothing but the great principles which
ought to govern human conduct, and that his concession was an avowal
that there was a power to which majorities should defer. Now, this was
just as true of minorities as it was of majorities, and the amount of it
all was that men, in establishing governments, merely set up a standard
of principles which they pledged themselves to respect; and that, even
in the most democratical communities, all that majorities could legally
effect was to decide certain minor questions which, being necessarily
referred to some tribunal for decision, was of preference referred to
them. If there was a power superior to the will of the majority, in the
management of human affairs, then majorities were not supreme; and it
behooved the citizen to regard the last as only what they really are,
and what they were probably designed to be--tribunals subject to the
control of certain just principles.

Constitutions, or the fundamental law, the governor went on to say, were
meant to be the expression of those just and general principles which
should control human society, and as such should prevail over
majorities. Constitutions were expressly intended to defend the rights
of minorities; since without them, each question, or interest, might be
settled by the majority, as it arose. It was but a truism to say that
the oppression of the majority was the worst sort of oppression; since
the parties injured not only endured the burthen imposed by many, but
were cut off from the sympathy of their kind, which can alleviate much
suffering, by the inherent character of the tyranny.

There was a great deal of good sense, and much truth in what the
governor wrote, on this occasion; but of what avail could it prove with
the ignorant and short-sighted, who put more trust in one honeyed phrase
of the journal, that flourished about the 'people' and their 'rights,'
than in all the arguments that reason, sustained even by revelation,
could offer to show the fallacies and dangers of this new doctrine, As a
matter of course, the wiles of the demagogue were not without fruits.
Although every man in the colony, either in his own person, or in that
of his parent or guardian, had directly entered into the covenants of
the fundamental law, as that law then existed, they now began to quarrel
with its provisions, and to advance doctrines that would subvert
everything as established, in order to put something new and untried in
its place. _Progress_ was the great desideratum; and _change_ was the
hand-maiden of progress. A sort of 'puss in the corner' game was
started, which was to enable those who had no places to run into the
seats of those who had. This is a favourite pursuit of man, all over the
world, in monarchies as well as in democracies; for, after all that
institutions can effect, there is little change in men by putting on, or
in taking off ermine and robes, or in wearing 'republican simplicity,'
in office or out of office; but the demagogue is nothing but the
courtier, pouring out his homage in the gutters, instead of in an
ante-chamber.

Nor did the governor run into extremes in his attempts to restrain the
false reasoning and exaggerations of the demagogue and his deluded, or
selfish followers. Nothing would be easier than to demonstrate that
their notions of the rights of numbers was wrong, to demonstrate that
were their theories carried out in practice, there could be, and would
be nothing permanent or settled in human affairs; yet not only did each
lustrum, but each year, each month, each week, each hour, each minute
demand its reform. Society must be periodically reduced to its elements,
in order to redress grievances. The governor did not deny that men had
their natural rights, at the very moment he insisted that these rights
were just as much a portion of the minority as of the majority. He was
perfectly willing that equal laws should prevail, as equal laws did
prevail in the colony, though he was not disposed to throw everything
into confusion merely to satisfy a theory. For a long time, therefore,
he opposed the designs of the new-school, and insisted on his vested
rights, as established in the fundamental law, which had made him ruler
for life. But "it is hard to kick against the pricks." Although the
claim of the governor was in every sense connected with justice,
perfectly sacred, it could not resist the throes of cupidity,
selfishness, and envy. By this time, the newspaper, that palladium of
liberty, had worked the minds of the masses to a state in which the
naked pretension of possessing rights that were not common to everybody
else was, to the last degree, "tolerable and not to be endured." To such
a height did the fever of liberty rise, that men assumed a right to
quarrel with the private habits of the governor and his family, some
pronouncing him proud because he did not neglect his teeth, as the
majority did, eat when they ate, and otherwise presumed to be of
different habits from those around him. Some even objected to him
because he spat in his pocket-handkerchief, and did not blow his nose
with his fingers.

All this time, religion was running riot, as well as politics. The
next-door neighbours hated each other most sincerely, because they took
different views of regeneration, justification, predestination and all
the other subtleties of doctrine. What was remarkable, they who had the
most clouded notions of such subjects were the loudest in their
denunciations. Unhappily, the Rev. Mr. Hornblower, who had possession of
the ground, took a course which had a tendency to aggravate instead of
lessening this strife among the sects. Had he been prudent, he would
have proclaimed louder than ever "Christ, and him crucified;" but, he
made the capital mistake of going up and down, crying with the mob, "the
church, the church!" This kept constantly before the eyes and ears of
the dissenting part of the population--dissenting from his opinions if
not from an establishment--the very features that were the most
offensive to them. By "the church" they did not understand the same
divine institution as that recognised by Mr. Hornblower himself, but
surplices, and standing up and sitting down, and gowns, and reading
prayers out of a book, and a great many other similar observances, which
were deemed by most of the people relics of the "scarlet woman." It is
wonderful, about what insignificant matters men can quarrel, when they
wish to fall out. Perhaps religion, under these influences, had quite as
much to do with the downfall of the governor, which shortly after
occurred, as politics, and the newspaper, and the new lawyer, all of
which and whom did everything that was in their power to destroy him.

At length, the demagogues thought they had made sufficient progress to
spring their mine. The journal came out with a proposal to call a
convention, to alter and improve the fundamental law. That law contained
a clause already pointing out the mode by which amendments were to be
made in the constitution; but this mode required the consent of the
governor, of the council, and finally, of the people. It was a slow,
deliberative process, too, one by which men had time to reflect on what
they were doing, and so far protected vested rights as to render it
certain that no very great revolution could be effected under its
shadow. Now, the disaffected aimed at revolution--at carrying out,
completely the game of "puss in the corner," and it became necessary to
set up some new principle by which they could circumvent the old
fundamental law.

This was very easily accomplished in the actual state of the public
mind; it was only to carry out the doctrine of the sway of the majority
to a practical result; and this was so cleverly done as actually to put
the balance of power in the hands of the minority. There is nothing new
in this, however, as any cool-headed man may see in this enlightened
republic of our own, daily examples in which the majority-principle
works purely for the aggrandizement of a minority clique. It makes very
little difference how men are ruled; they will be cheated; for, failing
of rogues at head-quarters to perform that office for them, they are
quite certain to set to work to devise some means of cheating
themselves. At the crater this last trouble was spared them, the
opposition performing that office in the following ingenious manner.

The whole colony was divided into parishes, which exercised in
themselves a few of the minor functions of government. They had a
limited legislative power, like the American town meetings. In these
parishes, laws were passed, to require the people to vote 'yes' or 'no,'
in order to ascertain whether there should, or should not be, a
convention to amend the constitution. About one-fourth of the electors
attended these primary meetings, and of the ten meetings which were
held, in six "yes" prevailed by average majorities of about two votes in
each parish. This was held to be demonstration of the wishes of the
majority of the people to have a convention, though most of those who
staid away did so because they believed the whole procedure not only
illegal, but dangerous. Your hungry demagogue, however, is not to be
defeated by any scruples so delicate. To work these _elites_ of the
colony went, to organise an election for members of the convention. At
this election about a third of the electors appeared, the candidates
succeeding by handsome majorities, the rest staying away because they
believed the whole proceedings illegal. Thus fortified by the sacred
principle of the sway of majorities, these representatives of a
minority, met in convention, and formed an entirely new fundamental law;
one, indeed, that completely subverted the old one, not only in fact,
but in theory. In order to get rid of the governor to a perfect
certainty, for it was known that he could still command more votes for
the office than any other man in the colony, one article provided that
no person should hold the office of governor, either prospectively, or
perspectively, more than five years, consecutively. This placed Mr. Mark
Woolston on the shelf at the next election. Two legislative bodies were
formed, the old council was annihilated, and everything was done that
cunning could devise, to cause power and influence to pass into new
hands. This was the one great object of the whole procedure, and, of
course, it was not neglected.