You know (though I didn’t, till Aristides explained
to me) that in any European country the captain in
such a case would go to his consul, and the consul
would go to the police, and the police would run the
men down and send them back to the ship in irons as
deserters, or put them in jail till the captain was
ready to sail, and then deliver them up to him.
But it seems that there is no law in Altruria to do
anything of the kind; the only law here that would
touch the case is one which obliges any citizen to
appear and answer the complaint of any other citizen
before the Justiciary Assembly. A citizen cannot
be imprisoned for anything but the rarest offence,
like killing a person in a fit of passion; and as to
seizing upon men who are guilty of nothing worse than
wanting to be left to the pursuit of happiness, as
all the Altrurians are, there is no statute and no
usage for it. Aristides says that the only thing
which can be done is to ask the captain and the men
to come to the Assembly and each state his case.
The Altrurians are not anxious to have the men stay,
not merely because they are coarse, rude, or vicious,
but because they think they ought to go home and tell
the Americans what they have seen and heard here,
and try and get them to found an Altrurian Commonwealth
of their own. Still they will not compel them
to go, and the magistrates do not wish to rouse any
sort of sentiment against them. They feel that
the men are standing on their natural rights, which
they could not abdicate if they would. I know
this will appear perfectly ridiculous to Mr. Makely,
and I confess myself that there seems something binding
in a contract which ought to act on the men’s
consciences, at least.
III
Well, my dear Dorothea, the hearing before the Assembly
is over, and it has left us just where it found us,
as far as the departure of our trader is concerned.
How I wish you could have been there! The hearing
lasted three days, and I would not have missed a minute
of it. As it was, I did not miss a syllable,
and it was so deeply printed on my mind that I believe
I could repeat it word for word if I had to.
But, in the first place, I must try and realize the
scene to you. I was once summoned as a witness
in one of our courts, you remember, and I have never
forgotten the horror of it: the hot, dirty room,
with its foul air, the brutal spectators, the policemen
stationed among them to keep them in order, the lawyers
with the plaintiff and defendant seated all at one
table, the uncouth abruptness of the clerks and janitors,
or whatever, the undignified magistrate, who looked
as if his lunch had made him drowsy, and who seemed
half asleep, as he slouched in his arm-chair behind
his desk. Instead of such a setting as this,
you must imagine a vast marble amphitheatre, larger
than the Metropolitan Opera, by three or four times,
all the gradines overflowing (that is the word for
Copyrights
Through the Eye of the Needle from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
