In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories Page 14

  THE ROMANCE OF THE FIRST RADICAL.

  A PREHISTORIC APOLOGUE.

  "Titius. Le premier qui supprime un abus, comme on dit, est toujours victime du service qu'il rend.

  Un Homme du Peuple. C'est de sa faute! Pourquoi se mele t'il de ce qui ne le regarde pas."--Le Pretre de Nemi.

  The Devil, according to Dr. Johnson and other authorities, was the firstWhig. History tells us less about the first Radical--the first man whorebelled against the despotism of unintelligible customs, who assertedthe rights of the individual against the claims of the tribal conscience,and who was eager to see society organized, off-hand, on what he thoughta rational method. In the absence of history, we must fall back on thatbranch of hypothetics which is known as prehistoric science. We mustreconstruct the Romance of the First Radical from the hints supplied bygeology, and by the study of Radicals at large, and of contemporarysavages among whom no Radical reformer has yet appeared. In thefollowing little apologue no trait of manners is invented.

  The characters of our romance lived shortly after the close of the lastglacial epoch in Europe, when the ice had partly withdrawn from the faceof the world, and when land and sea had almost assumed their modernproportions. At this period Europe was inhabited by scattered bands ofhuman creatures, who roamed about its surface much as the black fellowsused to roam over the Australian continent. The various groups derivedtheir names from various animals and other natural objects, such as thesun, the cabbage, serpents, sardines, crabs, leopards, bears, and hyaenas.It is important for our purpose to remember that all the children tooktheir family name from the mother's side. If she were of the Hyaenaclan, the children were Hyaenas. If the mother were tattooed with thebadge of the Serpent, the children were Serpents, and so on. No twopersons of the same family name and crest might marry, on pain of death.The man of the Bear family who dwelt by the Mediterranean might not allyhimself with a woman of the Bear clan whose home was on the shores of theBaltic, and who was in no way related to him by consanguinity. Thesedetails are dry, but absolutely necessary to the comprehension of theFirst Radical's stormy and melancholy career. We must also rememberthat, among the tribes, there was no fixed or monarchical government. Thelittle democratic groups were much influenced by the medicine-men orwizards, who combined the functions of the modern clergy and of themedical profession. The old men, too, had some power; the braves, orwarriors, constituted a turbulent oligarchy; the noisy outcries of theold women corresponded to the utterances of an intelligent daily press.But the real ruler was a body of strange and despotic customs, the natureof which will become apparent as we follow the fortunes of the FirstRadical.