THE TREACHERY OF THE PHELATAHS.

Realmah felt bitterly the cold reception he had met with from the council of the chiefs; and he had not the slightest idea that his proposition had received a favourable hearing.

On the ensuing day, after the council had been held, the ambassador from the Phelatahs was dismissed, with an assurance, however, that in two months’ time the forces of the Sheviri should join those of the Phelatahs, just where the river Coolahva falls into the great lake.

Notwithstanding this friendly assurance the council had resolved to adopt Realmah’s advice--at least, so far as to divide their forces into two bands: the one was to march along the margin of the lake, while the other, starting a day or two earlier, was to make its way through the woods--the two divisions having previously arranged a system of correspondence by means of signals.

Athlah was entrusted with the command of the main body, which moved along the margin of the lake, while Realmah had the guidance of the detachment that was to force its way through the woods. There was much murmuring at Realmah’s being entrusted with the command of these troops. The excuses given for his appointment were, that the idea of sending this second division was his; that the men of whom it consisted were not the flower of the army; that, in all probability, they would never be engaged, and that they were merely sent by way of precaution, and were to return, if possible, unperceived by their allies, should their countrymen not require their assistance.

Every arrangement having now been made, the expedition set out and joined the Phelatahs. Nothing occurred for some little time to justify any suspicion. At length, however, it was to be observed that the Phelatahs far outnumbered their allies; that, when the united forces halted during the march, it was the Phelatahs who occupied always the most commanding positions; and, moreover, there was an air of triumph about them that did not fail to rouse the attention even of the fearless and unsuspecting Athlah.

The united troops continued their march. Slight occasions of dispute arose which were made the most of by the chiefs of the Phelatahs. Finally, under pretence of there being insubordination (although there had been no question of allowing supremacy to the Phelatahs), the principal leaders of the Sheviri were seized and bound; gratuities were offered to the common soldiers; the mask was entirely thrown off: and the unfortunate Sheviri found themselves incorporated in a foreign army.

Gratuities, however, do not compensate for insults; and the common soldiers felt themselves as much aggrieved as their chiefs, who had been released from their bonds, but who were strictly guarded as they marched along, and were treated in all respects as hostages, if not as captives.

Tidings of this treachery on the part of the Phelatahs did not fail to reach Realmah. He skilfully prepared a night surprise, which was so far successful, that after a fearful and confused contest, he was able to liberate the chiefs of the Sheviri, and to cover the flight of the main body of men into the adjacent woods, from whence, burning with a sense of injury, they returned to their own town in a few weeks after they had left it.

The whole army felt that Realmah’s prudence had saved them; and he became, for the moment, the hero of the Sheviri.

His return to the city was welcomed in a triumphal manner, for, though the Sheviri had suffered much in the night attack and in the subsequent contest, to have escaped so great a disaster as the capture of their finest body of troops was held to be a signal cause of triumph.

Immediately a meeting of the great Council of the Four Hundred was held, and the whole of the transactions of the short campaign were explained to them by Athlah and Realmah.

Realmah’s speech was eminently judicious. He said not a word in self-glorification, nor did he in any way refer to his past warnings, but merely mentioned to the great council that he had laid some facts before the Council of the Three Fours, which facts had accidentally come to his notice, and which had led them, in their high wisdom, to make such arrangements of the forces as had insured a complete defeat of the wicked design of the Phelatahs. When he left the council he had not by self-praise exhausted any of the gratitude and respect which he now felt sure would be entertained for him by his nation.

That there is nothing new under the sun was the remark of wearied Solomon. Not wholly a true remark; for was not Christianity a new thing? But still the saying holds good for the most part in human affairs. The system of the Roman Empire of having a Cæsar as well as an Augustus had been adopted, or rather anticipated, long ago by the Sheviri, and had doubtless been borrowed by them from some more ancient nation. There was at this moment a vacancy in the office of Cæsar, _i. e._ of second in command to the chief of the East. The name of this office was Luathmor. By general acclamation this great office was conferred upon Realmah. The insignia consisted of a coronet rudely formed of dark polished stones and feathers, and of a blue scarf called the shemar. The shemar, however, did not strictly belong to the office of the Luathmor, but had almost always been granted at the same time to the person on whom that office had been conferred.

No one murmured when it was decreed unanimously by the Council of the Four Hundred and by the Council of the Three Fours that permission to wear the blue shemar should be conferred upon the young chief, Realmah, whose sagacity had gone far to save the republic; for men are always very grateful just at first, and when the remembrance of the service rendered is fresh and warm in their minds.

* * * * *

After the reading had finished, I am sorry to say that we had rather a painful scene. Sir John Ellesmere has great merits, as every one knows; and I am sure no one admires him more than I do; but he is one of those persons who indulge in intellectual antipathies. This Mr. Cranmer is just the man to keep Sir John in a perpetual state of irritation.

I cannot recollect exactly how the conversation began, but I think it was by either Mrs. Milverton or Lady Ellesmere saying, “Oh, how I wish our dear Mr. Dunsford were alive; how delighted he would be with the character of Realmah, and with all the proceedings that took place in the great Lake City.”

My readers may perhaps remember that the former conversations of the “Friends in Council” were collected by a good clergyman of the name of Dunsford, who had been tutor to Mr. Milverton and Sir John Ellesmere.

Mr. Cranmer then remarked, that Sir John must have been a great torment to Mr. Dunsford, and must have given him many an unhappy hour.

_Ellesmere._ Sir, I did nothing of the kind. Dunsford thoroughly understood me. I never gave him an unhappy hour, or an unhappy five minutes. It was impossible to admire a man more than I admired Dunsford; and of course he knew it. These simple, unselfish, transparently good people, like Dunsford, are the salt of the earth, and happily they are to be found everywhere. You cannot enter into any small portion of society, but you find them there, believing in the good of everybody, and bringing out the good points of every character. Sir, I am not such a fool as not to have known how far I could go with dear old Dunsford. I never provoked him more than such a man ought to be provoked, in order to show forth the full beauty of his character.

_Cranmer._ Crushed herbs are very sweet.

_Ellesmere._ Sir, he was never crushed by me. He was not one of those men who require to be trepanned in order that a joke, or a jesting objection, should be inserted into their dense brains. He was a good clergyman, and not an obtuse official man.

_Cranmer._ Oh, of course I am very obtuse, Sir John. I am sure I did not mean any offence.

[Ellesmere got up, and, in his pleasantest manner, offered his hand to Mr. Cranmer.]

_Ellesmere._ Now don’t be angry with me, there’s a good fellow: we shall be famous friends when we understand one another better; only it is rather hard upon one to be obliged to explain that one does not mean any harm by one’s foolish talk. Don’t imagine, Mr. Cranmer, that I don’t appreciate you. Didn’t I listen to you most patiently, and vote with you too in all emergencies, when you were fighting the estimates the last session when you and I were in office together? and I declare no man could have done it better than you did, and I sympathised with you thoroughly. [Turning to us, Ellesmere continued:] What a hand at explanation he was! Some foolish person wished to understand something about an estimate, and presumed to ask a question. Cranmer rose to explain; he was lucid, frank, candid, especially candid; and when he sat down, the House felt that something had been well explained, and yet one understood less about the subject generally than one did before. Now I take this to be a triumph of skill on the part of a great Government official.

Moreover, it is not a delusion impressed upon us by him, for really one does often find that when an explanation is given of any complicated matter, one understands less about it than one fancied one did before; and that the question one had asked was silly and irrelevant. I can assure you, grave official men on both sides of the House used to nod approval when Cranmer was giving any of his clear and candid explanations.

[Mr. Cranmer took Sir John Ellesmere’s hand, and gave it a most friendly grasp. The talk about the estimates had mollified him.]

_Cranmer._ It is impossible to be angry with you, Sir John; you make such pleasant fun of all of us.

_Ellesmere._ It does me good to hear you say so: we will never have a dispute again. Quarrels are such vulgar things; and you are the last man in the world I should like to quarrel with. You are made to be in office; and does not one always want some little job or other done, which the Secretary of the Treasury can further?

[We all made a point of laughing loudly at this last speech, and harmony was from that moment reestablished; Sir John Ellesmere resumed the conversation.]

_Ellesmere._ I must show Cranmer that I can be very serious, and I declare I am really much interested in this history of Realmah.

But is it not asking too much from us to believe that this semi-savage was such a great politician?

_Sir Arthur._ Mr. Milverton has been making me read that epic he talked to us about--namely, the “Araucana;” and I do assure you that there are speeches in that epic which show us that some of those savages--as you call them--possessed a high kind of political wisdom. “Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona;” and I do not see why there should not have lived considerable statesmen in the earliest times of the world’s history. You must remember, too, that their statesmanship was of a much easier character than ours: that they had not the complicated questions arising out of a state of high civilization to deal with.

_Ellesmere._ You have been in high office, Sir Arthur, and you might really tell us whether Milverton speaks truly and justly, when he asserts that there is so much to be done in the way of improving Government action, even amongst ourselves, who imagine that we are the best governed people upon the earth.

_Sir Arthur._ If I understand Mr. Milverton, I think he is quite right. I can see that he wants more intellectual power brought to the aid of Government. You and I were at college together, Ellesmere; though I am sorry to say we saw very little of one another.

_Ellesmere._ I was a poor man, a sizer, and had to make my way in the world; you were a rich one; and people do not often meet who live at different poles of the pecuniary world.

_Sir Arthur._ But I have no doubt you knew Alwin?

_Ellesmere._ Oh yes: the cleverest fellow I ever did know.

_Sir Arthur._ Well, when I came into office, one of my first thoughts was whether I could get Alwin into the service of the Government; but he is a married man, and has a large family, and is making a lot of money quietly as a consulting counsel. There was nothing I could offer him. What would the Treasury have said to me if I had asked them to give 3,000_l._ a year to what Milverton calls an “in-doors statesman?” It would have been no good pointing out to them that such a man might save us 30,000_l._ a year. Mr. Cranmer is not on my side of politics, but he knows very well what an enormous difficulty I should have had, to persuade any Secretary of the Treasury to give 3,000_l._ a year to such a man.

Well, there is nothing hardly that that man does not know, besides being a good lawyer. He is a man of the greatest general knowledge that I ever met with; and it happened that he was especially skilled in matters relating to my department. But I might as well have tried to have got the man in the moon to work with me as to have got Alwin.

_Ellesmere._ Milverton’s nymphs are very valuable personages; and they never charge any money for their advice.

_Milverton._ Do not sneer at my nymphs; they are as useful to me as Pope’s sylphs were to him in the “Rape of the Lock.”

But to talk seriously about Government. Do look at the difficulties; consider that at every step that a Government takes it is beset by importunate and powerful interests. Then look at the overwork of the principal men connected with the Government. Then see how the House of Commons is absorbed, not in its own proper work so much as in that which scarcely belongs to it, in executive as well as in legislative business. Giving Parliament credit for immense ability, we must admit that it is a body not fit for every kind of business.

_Ellesmere._ Bureaucracy! bureaucracy! Milverton always associates himself in imagination, and probably in reality, with whatever is bureaucratic.

_Milverton._ I do not admit that. But I want to bring before you another matter bearing closely upon this subject, and that is the unpleasantness of the capital as a place of residence. This will some day exercise a most malign influence over public affairs.

_Ellesmere._ This is a new idea: but I really do not see exactly what it means.

_Milverton._ I almost despair of making you see it; but I can tell you that the permanent officers of State--those men upon whom every Government must mainly rely--would well understand what I mean. No sooner does any opportunity arise for getting away from London, than all important people quit it.

But I return to Ellesmere’s attack upon me respecting my bureaucratic tendencies.

I maintain that there is not a person in England who has a greater horror of bureaucracy than I have. I only want to point out to you, that there are certain things which can only be done by bureaucracy. I have talked all this over before, and therefore I am aware that I am only repeating myself. Do you remember that passage in Aristophanes, where some good citizen resolves to make peace or war upon his own account simply, and to deal with the enemy himself?

_Ellesmere._ I never read that improper book Aristophanes, but I am willing to take for granted what you say.

_Milverton._ Well, you see how absurd it is for a private individual to talk of making peace or war by himself alone. But perhaps you do not see that there are many other matters in which also he cannot act alone. What I am driving at is, to establish a wide distinction between those things that can be done by a private individual, and in which he ought not to be interfered with, and those things in which the State must act for him.

Take sanitary matters--take education; these are things in which a private individual cannot act very forcibly. They must be transacted by Government.

_Ellesmere._ True: speaking as an individual, I decline to have anything to do with main drainage, or the Conscience Clause.

_Milverton._ Then you admit that there are some subjects in which the bureau must act for the general community; and I am quite willing that the bureau should be confined to this action.

_Ellesmere._ I was greatly struck, Milverton, by the remark you made a little time ago, that the aversion to London on the part of men of importance is a serious injury to public business. Do you hold to it, and is it really your own?

_Milverton._ I do hold to it, but it is not altogether my own. A late Under-Secretary of State used often to talk over the matter with me, and we thoroughly agreed upon it. I maintain that the celebrated Chancellor Oxenstiern’s maxim, “_Quantulâ sapientiâ regitur mundus_,” is only partially true, and that “_Quantulo tempore regitur mundus_” would be a much more valuable maxim. The truth is, most men of average ability are very capable of estimating good arguments, _pro_ or _con_, about any matter; and for my own part, I would rather have the attention of an average man for two hours, when the business really requires that time for discussion, than the attention of the cleverest man in England who will only give you one hour.

Ask any person who has really mastered the details of any great subject, and who has had to lay them before other people for decision. You will seldom find that he complains of any want of apprehension on their part, but that he will bitterly complain that he was not allowed time enough to lay before them the whole matter with all its bearings.

Now, the time to be given for considering a great subject is sure to be very much limited when people are very anxious to get away from the spot where the discussion takes place. And so it becomes a matter of great importance that the capital of every country should be a pleasant place for residence, as the main business of the country must be transacted there.

In all committees and councils, it is to be observed that the man of endurance and perseverance, who may, after all, be a very inferior man in point of thoughtfulness, will ultimately have too much power and influence. And it will be putting additional leverage into his hands, if he knows that the cleverest men amongst his opponents will be anxious to get away at a certain time, and that he can gain his point by outstaying them, whether he outreasons them or not.

_Sir Arthur._ I want to bring another branch of the subject before you. I think there might be a better division than there is of the functions of government. For instance, I would have a Minister of Justice, who should attend to matters of justice only. I would at the same time have a minister whose sole duty it should be to attend to the physical well-being of the community. I am not sure that I would not also throw upon him the business of education. And then, to make room for this important minister, I would cancel those offices which are becoming obsolete, I would, for instance, cancel the Privy Seal, in order to make room for a Minister of Health and Education.

_Milverton._ I entirely agree with you, Sir Arthur. Then there is another thing I would do. I would certainly make more use of the men who hold second-class places in Government. I think it is very hard upon them that, for the most part, they have their tongues tied, and that they are distanced in public estimation by those who are called independent members, who, being free from official trammels, have opportunities of distinguishing themselves which are denied to official personages of the second class.

_Sir Arthur._ This is very difficult, Milverton. You see, it would be a very serious thing for an Under-Secretary of State to be speaking in a contrary sense to his chief.

_Milverton._ I know all that, but I would occasionally give him an opportunity of distinguishing himself. I would entrust him, for instance, with the sole conduct of some great measure.

_Ellesmere._ How true men are to themselves and their old positions! Sir Arthur cannot forget that he has been a Secretary of State.

_Milverton._ But where the greatest opportunities for improvement in government lie, are in Colonial affairs. We really must come, before long, to some definite principles as to how we are to deal with our Colonies; and in any change of Government, the minister about whose appointment I feel the most anxiety is the Minister for our Colonial affairs. No father ever had a more difficult problem put before him, when he has growing-up boys to deal with, than we have in the management of our Colonies. It would be very hard upon England to be dragged into an expensive war for any of these Colonies.

_Sir Arthur._ And, on the other hand, it would be very hard to desert them in the time of need.

_Milverton._ How to reconcile, in a just manner, these two lines of policy is, you may depend upon it, the greatest question of the present day.

Nobody seemed inclined to combat this proposition. The ladies said it was getting late; and so we ordered the carriages and returned to Worth-Ashton, after a very pleasant day spent at the little inn near the harbour, which, as we left it, was overflowed by the full tide, and, with the setting sun upon it, looked most beautiful and attractive.

As we drove away, Ellesmere nudged Milverton, and said, “You see good temper has come over the landscape, and over us.” Then in a whisper, “I assure you I won’t break out again with Cranmer, whatever he may say to me. But then, you know how I loved Dunsford; and I believe he was nearly as fond of me as he was of you, though of course your views always suited him better than mine did. Poor dear man! What a large bit of life the loss of such a man takes out from us for ever! Yes, for ever!”