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The Crater by James Fenimore Cooper

J >> James Fenimore Cooper >> The Crater




When the new constitution was completed, it was referred back to the
people for approval. At this third appeal to the popular voice, rather
less than half of all the electors voted, the constitution being adopted
by a majority of one-third of those who did. By this simple, and
exquisite republican process, was the principle of the sway of
majorities vindicated, a new fundamental law for the colony provided,
and all the old incumbents turned out of office. 'Silence gives
consent,' cried the demagogues, who forgot they had no right to put
their questions!

Religion had a word to say in these changes. The circumstance that the
governor was an Episcopalian reconciled many devout Christians to the
palpable wrong that was done him; and it was loudly argued that a church
government of bishops, was opposed to republicanism, and consequently
ought not to be entertained by republicans. This charming argument,
which renders religious faith secondary to human institutions, instead
of human institutions secondary to religious faith, thus completely
putting the cart before the horse, has survived that distant revolution,
and is already flourishing in more eastern climes. It is as near an
approach to an idolatrous worship of self, as human conceit has recently
tolerated.

As a matter of course, elections followed the adoption of the new
constitution. Pennock was chosen governor for two years; the new lawyer
was made judge, the editor, secretary of state and treasurer; and other
similar changes were effected. All the Woolston connection were
completely laid on the shelf. This was not done so much by the electors,
with whom they were still popular, as by means of the nominating
committees. These nominating committees were expedients devised to place
the power in the hands of a few, in a government of the many. The rule
of the majority is so very sacred a thing that it is found necessary to
regulate it by legerdemain. No good republican ever disputes the
principle, while no sagacious one ever submits to it. There are various
modes, however, of defeating all 'sacred principles,' and this
particular 'sacred principle' among the rest. The simplest is that of
caucus nominations. The process is a singular illustration of the theory
of a majority-government. Primary meetings are called, at which no one
is ever present, but the wire-pullers and their puppets. Here very
fierce conflicts occur between the wire-pullers themselves, and these
are frequently decided by votes as close as majorities of one, or two.
Making the whole calculation, it follows that nominations are usually
made by about a tenth, or even a twentieth of the body of the electors;
and this, too, on the supposition that they who vote actually have
opinions of their own, as usually they have not, merely wagging their
tongues as the wires are pulled. Now, these nominations are conclusive,
when made by the ruling party, since there are no concerted means of
opposing them. A man must have a flagrantly bad character not to succeed
under a regular nomination, or he must be too honest for the body of the
electors; one fault being quite as likely to defeat him as the other.

In this way was a great revolution effected in the colony of the crater.
At one time, the governor thought of knocking the whole thing in the
head, by the strong arm; as he might have done, and would have been
perfectly justified in doing. The Kannakas were now at his command, and,
in truth, a majority of the electors were with him; but political
jugglery held them in duress. A majority of the electors of the state of
New York are, at this moment, opposed to universal suffrage, especially
as it is exercised in the town and village governments, but moral
cowardice holds them in subjection. Afraid of their own shadows, each
politician hesitates to 'bell the cat.' What is more, the select
aristocrats and monarchists are the least bold in acting frankly, and in
saying openly what they think; leaving that office to be discharged, as
it ever will be, by the men who--_true_ democrats, and not canting
democrats--willing to give the people just as much control as they know
how to use, or which circumstances will allow them to use beneficially
to themselves, do not hesitate to speak with the candour and manliness
of their principles. These men call things by their right names, equally
eschewing the absurdity of believing that nature intended rulers to
descend from male to male, according to the order of primogeniture, or
the still greater nonsense of supposing it necessary to obtain the most
thrifty plants from the hotbeds of the people, that they may be
transplanted into the beds of state, reeking with the manure of the
gutters.

The governor submitted to the changes, through a love of peace, and
ceased to be anything more than a private citizen, when he had so many
claims to be first, and when, in fact, he had so long been first. No
sovereign on his throne, could write _Gratia Dei_ before his titles with
stricter conformity to truth, than Mark Woolston; but his right did not
preserve him from the ruthless plunder of the demagogue. To his
surprise, as well as to his grief, Pennock was seduced by ambition, and
he assumed the functions of the executive with quite as little visible
hesitation, as the heir apparent succeeds to his father's crown.

It would be untrue to say that Mark did not feel the change; but it is
just to add that he felt more concern for the future fate of the colony,
than he did for himself or his children. Nor, when he came to reflect on
the matter, was he so much surprised that he could be supplanted in this
way, under a system in which the sway of the majority was so much
lauded, when he did not entertain a doubt that considerably more than
half of the colony preferred the old system to the new, and that the
same proportion of the people would rather see him in the Colony House,
than to see John Pennock in his stead. But Mark--we must call him the
governor no longer--had watched the progress of events closely, and
began to comprehend them. He had learned the great and all-important
political truth, THAT THE MORE A PEOPLE ATTEMPT TO EXTEND THEIR POWER
DIRECTLY OVER STATE AFFAIRS, THE LESS THEY, IN FACT, CONTROL THEM, AFTER
HAVING ONCE PASSED THE POINT OF NAMING LAWGIVERS AS THEIR
REPRESENTATIVES; MERELY BESTOWING ON A FEW ARTFUL MANAGERS THE INFLUENCE
THEY VAINLY IMAGINE TO HAVE SECURED TO THEMSELVES. This truth should be
written in letters of gold, at every corner of the streets and highways
in a republic; for truth it is, and truth, those who press the foremost
on another path will the soonest discover it to be. The mass _may_
select their representatives, _may_ know them, and _may_ in a good
measure so far sway them, as to keep them to their duties; but when a
constituency assumes to enact the part of executive and judiciary, they
not only get beyond their depth, but into the mire. What _can_, what
_does_ the best-informed layman, for instance, know of the
qualifications of this or that candidate to fill a seat on the bench! He
has to take another's judgment for his guide; and a popular appointment
of this nature, is merely transferring the nomination from an
enlightened, and, what is everything, a RESPONSIBLE authority, to one
that is unavoidably at the mercy of second persons for its means of
judging, and is as IRRESPONSIBLE AS AIR.

At one time, Mark Woolston regretted that he had not established an
opposition paper, in order to supply an antidote for the bane; but
reflection satisfied him it would have been useless. Everything human
follows its law, until checked by abuses that create resistance. This is
true of the monarch, who misuses power until it becomes tyranny; of the
nobles, who combine to restrain the monarch, until the throes of an
aristocracy-ridden country proclaim that it has merely changed places
with the prince; of the people, who wax fat and kick! Everything human
is abused; and it would seem that the only period of tolerable condition
is the transition state, when the new force is gathering to a head, and
before the storm has time to break. In the mean time, the earth
revolves, men are born, live their time, and die; communities are formed
and are dissolved; dynasties appear and disappear; good contends with
evil, and evil still has its day; the whole, however, advancing slowly
but unerringly towards that great consummation, which was designed from
the beginning, and which is as certain to arrive in the end, as that the
sun sets at night and rises in the morning. The supreme folly of the
hour is to imagine that perfection will come before its stated time.




Chapter XXX.



"This is thy lesson, mighty sea!
Man calls the dimpled earth his own,
The flowery vale, the golden lea;
And on the wild gray mountain-stone
Claims nature's temple for his throne!
But where thy many voices sing
Their endless song, the deep, deep tone
Calls back his spirit's airy wing,
He shrinks into himself, when God is king!"

Lunt.


For some months after the change of government, Mark Woolston was
occupied in attending to the arrangement of his affairs, preparatory to
an absence of some length. Bridget had expressed a strong wish to visit
America once more, and her two eldest children were now of an age when
their education had got to be a matter of some solicitude. It was the
intention of their father to send them to Pennsylvania for that purpose,
when the proper time arrived, and to place them under the care of his
friends there, who would gladly take the charge. Recent events probably
quickened this intention, both as to feeling and time, for Mark was
naturally much mortified at the turn things had taken.

There was an obvious falling-off in the affairs of the colony from the
time it became transcendantly free. In religion, the sects ever had
fair-play, or ever since the arrival of the parsons, and that had been
running down, from the moment it began to run into excesses and
exaggerations. As soon as a man begins to _shout_ in religion, he may be
pretty sure that he is "hallooing before he is out of the woods." It is
true that all our feelings exhibit themselves, more or less, in
conformity to habits and manners, but there is something profane in the
idea that the spirit of God manifests it presence in yells and clamour,
even when in possession of those who have not been trained to the more
subdued deportment of reason and propriety. The shouting and declamatory
parts of religion may be the evil spirits growling and yelling before
they are expelled, but these must not be mistaken for the voice of the
Ancient of Days.

The morals decayed as religion obtained its false directions.
Self-righteousness, the inseparable companion of the quarrels of sects,
took the place of humility, and thus became prevalent that most
dangerous condition of the soul of man, when he imagines that _he_
sanctifies what he does; a frame of mind, by the way, that is by no
means strange to very many who ought to be conscious of their
unworthiness. With the morals of the colony, its prosperity, even in
worldly interests, began to lose ground. The merchants, as usual, had
behaved badly in the political struggle. The intense selfishness of the
caste kept them occupied with the pursuit of gain, at the most critical
moments of the struggle, or when their influence might have been of use;
and when the mischief was done, and they began to feel its consequences,
or, what to them was the same thing, to fancy that the low price of oil
in Europe was owing to the change of constitution at the Crater, they
started up in convulsed and mercenary efforts to counteract the evil,
referring all to money, and not manifesting any particular notions of
principles concerning the manner in which it was used. As the cooler
heads of the minority--perhaps we ought to say of the majority, for,
oddly enough, the minority now actually ruled in Craterdom, by carrying
out fully the principle of the sway of the majority--but, as the cooler
heads of the colony well understood that nothing material was to follow
from such spasmodic and ill-directed efforts, the merchants were not
backed in their rising, and, as commonly happens with the slave, the
shaking of their chains only bound them so much the tighter.

At length the Rancocus returned from the voyage on which she had sailed
just previously to the change in the constitution, and her owner
announced his intention to go in her to America, the next trip, himself.
His brothers, Heaton, Anne, their children, and, finally, Captain Betts,
Friend Martha, and their issue, all, sooner or later, joined the party;
a desire to visit the low shores of the Delaware once more, uniting with
the mortification of the recent changes, to induce them all to wish to
see the land of their fathers before they died. All the oil in the
colony was purchased by Woolston, at rather favourable prices, the last
quotations from abroad being low: the ex-governor disposed of most of
his movables, in order to effect so large an operation. He also procured
a glorious collection of shells, and some other light articles of the
sort, filling the ship as full as she could be stowed. It was then that
the necessity of having a second vessel became apparent, and Betts
determined to withdraw his brig from the fishery, and to go to America
in her. The whales had been driven off the original fishing-ground, and
the pursuit was no longer as profitable as it had been, three fish
having been taken formerly to one now; a circumstance the hierarchy of
the Crater did not fail to ascribe to the changes in the constitution,
while the journal attributed it to certain aristocratical tendencies
which, as that paper averred, had crept into the management of the
business.

The vessels were loaded, the passengers disposing of as many of their
movables as they could, and to good advantage, intending to lay in fresh
supplies in Philadelphia, and using the funds thus obtained to procure a
freight for the brig. At the end of a month, both vessels were ready;
the different dwellings were transferred to new occupants, some by lease
and others by sales, and all those who contemplated a voyage to America
were assembled at the crater. Previously to taking leave of a place that
had become endeared to him by so many associations and interests, Mr.
Woolston determined to take the Anne, hiring her of the government for
that purpose--Governor Pennock condescendingly deciding that the public
interests would not suffer by the arrangement--and going in her once
more through the colony, on a tour of private, if not of official
inspection. Bridget, Heaton, Anne, and Captain Betts, were of the party;
the children being left at the crater, in proper custody.

The first visit was paid to Rancocus Island. Here the damage done by the
pirates had long been repaired; and the mills, kilns and other works,
were in a state of prosperous industry. The wild hogs and goats were
now so numerous as to be a little troublesome, particularly the former;
but, a good many being shot, the inhabitants did not despair of
successfully contending with them for the possession of the place. There
were cattle, also, on this island; but they were still tame, the cows
giving milk, and the oxen being used in the yoke. These were the
descendants of the single pair Woolston had sent across, less than
twelve years before, which had increased in an arithmetical proportion,
care having been taken not to destroy any. They now exceeded a hundred,
of whom quite half were cows; and the islanders occasionally treated
themselves to fresh beef. As cows had been brought into the colony in
every vessel that arrived, they were now in tolerably good numbers, Mark
Woolston himself disposing of no less than six when he broke up his
farming establishment for a visit to America. There were horses, too,
though not in as great numbers as there were cows and oxen. Boats were
so much used, that roadsters were very little needed; and this so much
the less, on account of the great steadiness of the trades. By this
time, everybody understood the last; and the different channels of the
group were worked through with almost the same facility as would have
been the case with so many highways. Nevertheless, horses were to be
found in the colony, and some of the husbandmen preferred them to the
horned cattle in working their lands.

A week was passed in visiting the group. Something like a consciousness
of having ill-treated Mark was to be traced among the people; and this
feeling was manifested under a well-known law of our nature, which
rendered those the most vindictive and morose, who had acted the worst.
Those who had little more to accuse themselves of than a compliant
submission to the wrong-doing of others, in political matters everywhere
the most numerous class of all, received their visiters well enough, and
in many instances they treated their guests with delicacy and
distinction. On the whole, however, the late governor derived but little
pleasure from the intercourse, so much mouthing imbecility being blended
with the expressions of regret and sympathy, as to cause him to mourn
over the compliance of his fellow-creatures, more than to rejoice at
their testimony in his own favour.

But, notwithstanding all these errors of man, nature and time had done
their work magnificently since the last "progress" of Woolston among the
islands. The channels were in nearly every instance lined with trees,
and the husbandry had assumed the aspect of an advanced civilization.
Hedges, beautiful in their luxuriance and flowers, divided the fields;
and the buildings which contribute to the comforts of a population were
to be found on every side. The broad plains of soft mud, by the aid of
the sun, the rains, the guano, and the plough, had now been some years
converted into meadows and arable lands; and those which still lay
remote from the peopled parts of the group, still nine-tenths of its
surface, were fast getting the character of rich pastures, where cattle,
and horses, and hogs were allowed to roam at pleasure. As the cock
crowed from the midst of his attendant party of hens and chickens, the
ex-governor in passing would smile sadly, his thoughts reverting to the
time when its predecessor raised its shrill notes on the naked rocks of
the Reef!

That Reef itself had undergone more changes than any other spot in the
colony, as the Peak had undergone fewer. The town by this time contained
more than two hundred buildings, of one sort and another, and the
population exceeded five hundred souls. This was a small population for
so many tenements; but the children, as yet, did not bear a just
proportion to the adults. The crater was the subject of what to Mark
Woolston was a most painful law-suit. From the first, he had claimed
that spot as his private property; though he had conceded its use to the
public, under a lease, since it was so well adapted, by natural
formation, to be a place of refuge when invasions were apprehended. But
the crater he had found barren, and had rendered fertile; the crater had
even seemed to him to be an especial gift of Providence bestowed on him
in his misery; and the crater was his by possession, as well as by other
rights, when he received strangers into his association. None of the
older inhabitants denied this claim. It is the last comers who are ever
the most anxious to dispute ancient rights. As they can possess none of
these established privileges themselves, they dislike that others
should enjoy them; and association places no restraints on their
cupidity. Pennock, once in the hands of "the people," was obliged to
maintain their rights, or what some among them chose to call their
rights; and he authorized the attorney-general to bring an action of
ejectment against the party in possession. Some pretty hard-faced
trickery was attempted in the way of legislation, in order to help along
the claim of the public; for, if the truth must be said, the public is
just as wont to resort to such unworthy means to effect its purposes as
private individuals, when it is deemed necessary. But there was little
fear of the "people's" failing; they made the law, and they administered
it, through their agents; the power being now so completely in their
hands that it required twice the usual stock of human virtue to be able
to say them nay, as had formerly been the case. God help the man whose
rights are to be maintained against the masses, when the immediate and
dependent nominees of those masses are to sit in judgment! If the
public, by any inadvertency, have had the weakness to select servants
that are superior to human infirmities, and who prefer to do right
rather than to do as their masters would have them, it is a weakness
that experience will be sure to correct, and which will not be often
repeated.

The trial of this cause kept the Woolstons at the crater a week longer
than they would have remained. When the cause was submitted to the jury,
Mr. Attorney-General had a great deal to say about aristocracy and
privileged orders, as well as about the sacred rights of the people. To
hear him, one might have imagined that the Woolstons were princes in the
full possession of their hereditary states, and who were dangerous to
the liberties or the mass, instead of being what they really were,
citizens without one right more than the meanest man in the colony, and
with even fewer chances of maintaining their share of these common
rights, in consequence of the prejudice, and jealousy, and most of all,
the _envy_, of the majority. Woolston argued his own cause, making a
clear, forcible and manly appeal to the justice and good sense of the
jury, in vindication of his claims; which, on every legal as well as
equitable principle, was out of all question such as every civilized
community should have maintained. But the great and most powerful foe of
justice, in cases of this sort, is SLANG; and SLANG in this instance
came very near being too much for law. The jury were divided, ten going
for the 'people,' and two for the right; one of the last being Bigelow,
who was a fearless, independent fellow, and cared no more for the
bug-bear called the 'people,' by the slang-whangers of politics, than he
did for the Emperor of Japan.

The day after this fruitless trial, which left Mark's claim in abeyance
until the next court, a period of six months, the intended travellers
repaired on board ship, and the brig, with her party, went to sea, under
her owner, captain Betts, who had provided himself with a good navigator
in the person of his mate. The Rancocus, however, crossed over to the
Peak, and the passengers all ascended to the plain, to take leave of
that earthly paradise. Nature had done so much for this place, that it
had been the settled policy of Mark Woolston to suffer its native charms
to be marred as little as possible. But the Peak had ever been deemed a
sort of West-End of the Colony; and, though the distribution of it had
been made very fairly, those who parted with their shares receiving very
ample compensations for them, a certain distinction became attached to
the residence on the Peak. Some fancied it was on account of its
climate; some, because it was a mountain, and was more raised up in the
world than the low islands near it; some, because it had most edible
birds, and the best figs; but none of those who now coveted residences
there for their families, or the name of residences there, would allow
even to themselves, what was the simple fact, that the place received it
highest distinction on account of the more distinguished individuals who
dwelt on it. At first, the _name_ was given to several settlements in
the group, just as the Manhattanese have their East and West Broadway;
and, just for the very same reasons that have made them so rich in
Broadways, they will have ere long, first-fifth, second-fifth, and
third-fifth avenue, unless common sense begins to resume its almost
forgotten sway among the aldermen. But this demonstration in the way of
names, did not satisfy the minor-majority, after they got into the
ascendant; and a law was passed authorizing a new survey, and a new
subdivision of the public lands on the Peak, among the citizens of the
colony. On some pretence of justice, that is not very easily to be
understood, those who had property there already were not to have shares
in the new lottery; a lottery, by the way, in which the prizes were
about twice as large as those which had originally been distributed
among the colonists.

But, Mark and Bridget endeavoured to forget everything unpleasant in
this visit to their much-loved home. They regarded the place as a boon
from Providence, that demanded all their gratitude, in spite of the
abuses of which it was the subject; and never did it seem to them more
exquisitely beautiful, perhaps it never had been more perfectly lovely,
than it appeared the hour they left it. Mark remembered it as he found
it, a paradise in the midst of the waters, wanting only in man to erect
the last great altar in his heart, in honour of its divine creator. As
yet, its beauties had not been much marred; though the new irruption
menaced them, with serious injuries.