28 DECEMBER 1839, Page 9

TILE ELEPHANT AND HIS KEEPERS.

TRUTHS are absolute or conditional. That "knowledge is power" Inv be called an absolute truth ; that " ignorance is bliss " is a conditional one. It may have been true that the people in this country were more happy at a time when they were more ignorant ; but it is conditional on this other fact, that they were better pro- vided and cared for. They arc now ill-housed, ill-fed, ill- taught, ill-every thing. To them Knowledge comes, th2refore, to whom no other deliverer would come : it is already found to be " power," and threatens to be sufficient, it' not to their own felicita- tion, certainly to the sore misfortune of the rest of the community. So vas it ever, in fact or fable. Did no one come to deliver the oppressed ?—there cause a god that did more, that brought plagues and deaths to the oppressor. Yet a more disastrous way of' deli- verance for the people is there not than this of their own, in which, " juvante dco," they learn to shake the land from North to South, and in the first experiment of their umvcighed powers, using dis- proportioned violence, blind and tit:calculating, throw down not alone the walls of their prison-house but the whole social fabric besides.

" Wenn aid' die Viilker selbst befrein,

Dn kann die. Wohlfahrt nicht gedeihn,"

(When nations rush self-freed to power,

Sad is their short-lived freedom's hour,)

says Scums& s rather too absolutely perhaps—for what will he .tmake of Atherica, amongst other instances ?—but still with " con- Alitional truth."

• But who shall prescribe certain lines and limits for the move- menneof a mad elephant? Behold, his strength is too great to .measure nicely what it destroys—his legs are unparticular in the amount of their down-tramplings. Wretched beefeaters, that keep the elephant ! he was not mad until you made him so ; lie was even troubling himself little with thoughts beyond his own cage, until you teased him into it with removing, first this bar, then that, twiddling the while with a third as though you would remove it also, and chalking others as for the same purpose. Then, indeed, his small sharp eyes began to glisten ; for lie thought you meant it in earnest, and that the time was really approaching when he was to be allowed to range the free plains again. And to that thought succeeded another, still in natural sequence ; for whether you meant it in earnest or not, he began to be better than over convinced, both that you ought and that he did. So thinking—what if he put his trunk out of the hole, and, as gently as so huge a brute could, began helping you with your other bar—improving, it may be a little roughly, your said official twiddle ? Oh, wretched twiddling beefeaters, did you not with your own fingers make that hole ? and in the name of conscience or common sense, what meant you by making that hole if you did not mean that your elephant was to come forth ? But again, pitiful, misguided beefeaters, what did you do when the elephant inserted his proboscis through the hole ? Having beaten him back within his bounds, you, in an undisguised agony of fear, began patching and soldering up the bars again, not without the addition of ill-treatment and menaces- ' anon exchanged (ye powers of patience ! ) for renewed blandish- ments and. more twiddling with the bars. And so on—now twiddling, now soldering,* now blandishing, now bullying—did vou work him into fury. But more—you starved your elephant. Was this, perhaps, with the hope that lie might prove boo weak fer self- deliverance when it came to the scratch ? You forgot despair, though-- at once the offspring of hunger and the parent of strength—one of those grim gods that generally come on the scene about this time, as has been said, minor auxiliaries failing, to work out a deliverance more dreadful than the evil. But still more— while you starved your elephant, you filed his tusks! Could idiotcy in elephant-keeping go further ?

Well, at last he breaks loose—mad, starving, filed as to his tusks, and rather inconsiderate—tramples some hundred innocent people to death—performs an incredible deal of field labour, say, calcu- lated to save trouble to the reapers ; &e. What then ? Whom have you to blame, but yourselves? Rascally beefeaters ! in the first place what business had you—what business had any of you— to keep the poor beast in so narrow and filthy a cage ? Look at it consider, if you please, whether it be liberally proportioned for so large an animal. Is it fair, that he should be confined fur ever to such a space—in which he has scarcely the power to turn round? Nay, consider further—is it a cage worthy of a creature so sagacious, good-tempered, and useful? But enough : you are known, and all your kind. Suffice to say—keeping or losing, barring or unbar- ring—you have behaved like the wretchedest, cowardliest, stupid- est beefeaters ; and if your elephant, when he comes out, does not make mashed potatoes of you all at the first rush—we will forswear parables from this time.

* Qu. Soldiering ?—P. D.