CHAPTER XTHE CHURCH AND JOURNALISM
THE Bureau of Fame had come to be the real shrine of religion. For it had the power of heaven and hell beyond as well as on this side of the grave. And one of the most significant changes in the government of Aleofane in recent times had been the amalgamation of the ministry of public worship with the department of fame. The church had of course from the earliest times been a state institution; and in spite of new-fangled philosophers was likely to continue so. For how could so subtle a force in human nature as religion be allowed to straggle lawlessly throughout a nation? Above all things it needed the most skilful piloting. A church apart from the state, an independent power, meant the spirit against the body, a divorce unnatural, if not monstrous. This was the philosophy of the position. And so convinced of it were the rulers that they allowed less independence of action in the ecclesiastical than in any other department. The head of the church was a minister responsible to the government, and they thought it illogical and feeble to let such an organisation legislate for itself. It was according to nature, it was the true primitive law, that the state and the church should be completely one. The idea of their separation was the result of degeneracy from the golden age. And what anarchy would ensue from an attempt to realise such a scheme or rather no scheme!
To speak of the separation of church and state in Aleofane was to speak of human life without breath, of the noon sky without the sun. The religion had grown to be the inner spirit of government. Never had there existed so religious a state. It could accomplish nothing except through its ecclesiastical organisation. It could affect the spirits of all the nation in any direction it pleased. It is true the people jealously guarded the traditional creed. But by gradual and impalpable change in the teachings of the priests or in the ceremonies the national mind could be bent in any way to suit the governors.
One of the first and most effective changes in the spiritual scheme of the state had been the gradual degradation of all the great posts in the church. The princely salaries attached to them were from tenure to tenure reduced till at last the chief ecclesiastical officers had to rely on charity for subsistence. The great spiritual influence that obstinately clung to them drew occasionally men of rank and ability. But all the common priesthoods fell so low in estimation that at last the state had to fill them with the milder type of higher-class criminals. No one would enter voluntarily into what was practically mental slavery to the government of the time. So, if any marble citizen fell into habitual and transparent falsehood, or failed before the eyes of all in some dishonest scheme, or let his fortune imperceptibly leak away and ceased to conceal the financial minus on which he luxuriously lived, he was promptly given the choice of the church or journalism; though for that matter the two had been for centuries amalgamated; they were but two branches of ecclesiastical business.
For it would have been foolish on the part of so successful a government to stop one intellectual leak in the nation and leave a wider one unguarded. It had been always a matter of course that those who could teach or influence the people with any talent should be the servants of the state. It came about, therefore, that, as a literature developed, the church was but journalism through speech and ceremony, journalism was but the church in writing. They were but two phases of the same function of the state. And the governors laughed as I told them of the position of affairs in Europe, where the state was supposed to rule the church, but had allowed the press complete independence. And they told me as a close analogy the story of one of their citizens who had soon drifted into idiocy; a bird of great beauty had flown into his house, and he resolved to catch it; and to make sure of it he planted a ring of servants all round the house and shut his doors and locked them, and opened his windows wide. For some time afterwards, if any one of them met me, he would with a twinkle of the eye ask me whether the governments of “Yullup†had ever caught their bird.
There was, I inwardly confessed, a logical thoroughness about leashing in the service of the state the twin spiritual powers of the church and the press. But I was pained in my European vanity to find the most cherished features of our modern civilisation so productive of mirth. They showed me that the only two logical positions were complete independence of both the great spiritual powers or complete control of both; nothing could justify the release of one and the bondage of the other.
As retaliation for their laughter at our civilisation and its hard-won fruits I smiled at their employment of criminals as priests and journalists, and asked them how they could expect to have religion well taught or truth well disseminated by such characters. They were not to be beaten—those subtle reasoners; I felt this in the smile of superiority with which they met mine. They asked me how I could expect priests who were by their positions and incomes independent of the state, and bound only by their own caprices or by those of the locality or circle to which they ministered, to teach the creed of the nation aright? To secure their salaries or to win reputation, they would launch into originalities, nay, into absurdities: they would pander to the predominant passions of their flocks, whilst keeping up the appearance of teaching the creed. The very contradictoriness of human nature would drive them in different directions from one another. With the journalists this would be still more the case, bound as they would be by no definite creed or set of rules or kind of emotions. How could they be expected to spread truth when there was no guide or master for them, no book of truth to appeal to? Nothing could be so productive of mental chaos as a class of men who without training or guidance or common consent or a common set of beliefs or principles should be allowed to pour their vagaries into the minds of the people. Would the nation ever advance, or keep from degeneracy, if these were to be its daily teachers, men who would pander to the commonest of popular passions and tastes, heedless of right or truth or even policy?
And when the state had both religion and journalism in its hands, how was it to secure the dissemination of what it considered absolute truth except by complete abeyance of the wills and characters of the disseminators? Centuries ago they had had a church whose priesthood was filled by men of the purest life and highest principle and then no one knew what the creed was; it was torn into shreds; and over its remains the preachers and theologians trampled like wild colts; there were a hundred schools and sects within the church, and each claimed for itself divine authority and divine truth; the people could find no guidance in faith or in morality; nor dare the state interfere with the extreme preachings or practices of any division, or even of any individual priest, for his followers, seeing the nobleness of his life and believing therefore that he had reached ultimate truth, would gladly die at the stake for him; and the high-salaried ecclesiastics having once got into their posts lived a free life without regard for God or man or government; they became fountains of immorality and discontent; by their example on the one hand and their luxury on the other, the spiritual head of the church was powerless; he dared not interfere with the privileges of his subordinates or even their beliefs; everything was indeed chaos, and that a chaos of religious enthusiasm.
It was the birth and growth of journalism that taught the state the true cure for such a diseased condition. Some of the most abandoned but able men in the nation had sunk so low that no one would trust them; in order to get something to live on they were driven to take advantage of an invention that had been recently made; the use of free types had cheapened printing, and with this and some other means of cheaply multiplying written productions, they determined to sell at a price sheets that would amuse the people. They were successful; and the more they invented lies and filled their sheets with fiction, the more lucrative it became. All the most accomplished liars of the nation crowded into it, and it was generally spoken of as the new profession of lying for the amusement of the people. The fortunes that had begun to be gained in it and the various attacks made upon men in authority called the attention of the ministry to the nascent power. And they were only just in time; a few more years and it would have been too strong for any state to cope with. They manipulated it with caution; they bought up the poorest and most unscrupulous of the journalists into what was practically lifelong servitude to the state, and turned the whole force of their talents in fabricating untruth against the few that had made fortunes in the trade; it was not long before these latter were ruined and had to sell their services to the government. But after a time it was found that the ablest of the state journalists grew vain of their powers and showed signs of striking out for themselves. Wages was not a strong enough lien over the talents of men who had grown conscious of their hold on the people. The trade was therefore proclaimed a state monopoly, and all the conceited journalists were weeded out; and into their places were put the most capable of the marble criminals who had been condemned to state servitude for life. It was made one of the rewards of good behaviour amongst convicts; for as journalists they were allowed to live in some degree of luxury; they had full scope for their craving for falsehood and dishonesty, and made of these a fine art. The only condition they had to fulfil was obedience to orders; all their productions were based on ideas supplied to them by the department and had to undergo criticism or revision by its officers. The state had them absolutely in its power; and yet the average of literary talent amongst them was far higher than when journalism had been free and independent; in fact a literature of some power, a pure state literature, had resulted. It was universally acknowledged that genius is essentially immoral on one or more rules of the moral code and sometimes on all; it has ever a vein of eccentricity or even madness in it that makes it leap over the pales of convention or principle or law; and hence in previous ages it had always been a pariah. At its first escapade it was now hurried into the fetters of the state, and was soon glad to accept the comparative freedom of state journalism. Thus the government had gathered into its service the greatest imaginations of the people, and through them could mould the nation to what purpose it would.
The success of this conquest of a new-born power and domestication of the wild spirits of the race pointed out the true secret for remedying the evils of religion and the church. Eccentricity was rampant in them; they were ever producing discontent and riot and rebellion; they were the homes of all that threatened the existence of the state. And yet the state dared not remove the offending priests, lest it should inflame the disloyalty of the people who followed them. The most astute of their statesmen saw the lesson of the conquest of journalism and applied it. He gradually reduced the salaries of the clergy, basing the policy chiefly on the ground that those who served God should be humble and free from the temptations of luxury; another and minor reason was that during a time of scarcity and depression economy was needed in the departments of the state. His successors carried out his craft with as much system and success, and, when the lower clergy had been reduced to a pittance, crusaded through the journals against the princes of the church and their luxury. By this time the marble citizens had ceased to send their children into the ordinary priesthoods, which gave no more the chance of a career, and all the clergy now belonged to the poorer classes. The higher posts were in the gift of the government; and it stripped them one by one of their great revenues and bestowed them thus lowered upon the common priests who showed themselves obsequious and obedient. And at last the very headship of the church was surrendered by the aristocracy, when it had lost its enormous salary and influence. The state at once created a department of public worship to absorb its functions. But, without journalism in its hands, it would never have been able to accomplish so complete a revolution; against it and its power over the people the church dignitaries were pithless; whilst the common clergy were too much torn by sectarian opinions to offer a united front. The later steps of this clever statecraft were easy and rapid.
But religion was not yet turned to its final purpose. Even the poor priests had their eccentricities, and broke away from state leading-strings. The unity of church and government was merely nominal, if this could occur. To make any function of the state real, perfect discipline is needed. A national army would succumb to the first foe, if regiments of it, or individual generals, were to follow their own caprice. And a national church, if it is to be a true engine of the state, has still more need of exceptionless discipline, inasmuch as it has to master the spirits of men.
Generation after generation of Aleofanian statesmen turned their best energies to this problem. Experiment after experiment was tried, but none succeeded till the policy of government journalism was adopted. Criminals with a turn for piety—and very few were without it—were offered the choice of incarceration for life or careers as priests. Already the people had been inoculated by the journals with the belief that the stream of divine unction had poured down through the ages quite irrespective of the channels along which it flowed; it would have been a hard thing indeed if the evil characters and lives of so many priests in the past had stopped their transmission of the favour of heaven to their flocks; long ago would true religion have failed them had it depended on the officiating ministers of the deity; it would have shown limitation of God’s omnipotence if He had been supposed unable to send His inspiration through any person or character. The journalists had indeed found it easy to press home this doctrine, for the great church dignitaries, being often men of evil life, had been forced to inculcate it for many ages, and, being not seldom feeble in intellect, had reduced their duties down to the mere performance of ceremonies and the reading of prayers and portions of the sacred books. It was only amongst the poorest sectaries that the clergy had to use their brains in the way of reasoning out abstract doctrine into practical precept, or in rousing their flocks to religious fervour. Their light it was easy to extinguish or ignore. And all the marble city and its society readily accepted the change from the dull, uninterested performances of the old dignitaries to the smart elocution and brilliant histrionic attainments of the criminals. The state chose these not only for their piety, a common and superabundant commodity amongst them, but for their grace of speech and action, and sent them for several years to a great dramatic college, where every one of the arts of the stage was taught to perfection.
The long-talked-of reamalgamation of the theatre and the church was at last silently accomplished. What was the use of paying to see a poor performance in the theatre or concert-room, when they could enter any church for nothing and see a far more brilliant ceremonial enacted, and hear far more talented elocution? The minister of public worship encouraged by rewards the clever rogues, whom he had selected for the church, to invent new and more interesting modes of conducting the services, and new and more fascinating ways of chaining the attention of a crowd. The dramatic companies and public entertainers had to close their doors and seek employment under the state, and especially in the Bureau of Fame. The old revenues of the church were spent on magnificent choirs and instrumental bands, on the training of the musical talent of the nation for its services, as well as on the training of the criminals for its priesthood. As a rule the best histrionic ability straggled off into prison, for it delighted in outraging first convention and then law; it had a great taste, so my guide informed me, for extravagance and show, and soon developed a tendency to lying and hypocrisy. And such a truthful and sincere people had elaborate laws, of course, for the punishment and constraint of such vices. Thus the state got all the actor-talent of the marble city into its power. But it had to hire the musical talents, for they were too vain to have any vice but quarrelling; they had to be caught by other nets, the nets of gain; it secured from childhood all who had fine voices or great and original talent for melodious composition, or the management of musical instruments, and it trained them elaborately for the service of the church; the only certain employer was the state, and thus it had a monopoly of everything musical in the nation.
Elaborate and attractive though the church services in the hands of the state had grown, they still repelled or sent to sleep a considerable proportion of the worshippers; for the prelections and sermons had been left unreformed; they were as old and tedious and uninteresting as they had been centuries before in the hands of the incapable scions of the marble citizens. A reforming statesman had recently turned his attention to this defect; he had founded a great college of oratory, and selected the best of the cultivated and able criminals to be trained there. It was found an easier task than had been anticipated. For great gifts of speech and great powers of moralising were found to run frequently with immoral and criminal tendencies. And now it was remembered that, under the freerrégimeof an olden time, it had been men of the loosest life who had gained greatest influence over the people and the popular assemblies; popular orator and scoundrel had in the older language been synonymous terms; whilst even orator had had a flavour of dishonesty and untruthfulness, if not libertinism, about it. So the prison officials saw that it was generally the most untrustworthy of their wards who were most persuasive in speech, and had to be isolated lest they should incite to riots and rebellions.
Thus it was found necessary to choose all the future preachers of the church from the criminals classified as dangerous. But once their passion for oratory was allowed a safety-valve, once they began their training in the college, they became comparatively harmless; provided nothing was left in their way to steal, and no one sufficiently off his guard for them to deceive or corrupt. When I arrived in Aleofane, the first batch of oratorical criminals was being draughted into the service of the church. And I found great commotion amongst the older worshippers against the innovation; they complained that they and their ancestors had furnished their sections in the churches as dormitories; and now they claimed damages from the state as this expenditure had been rendered useless; just as the music had induced somnolence, they were roused by the bellowing appeals of these loud-lunged miscreants to conscience and the loftiest principles of morality; their ancestors had not thus been disturbed, nor were they going to be; they removed to the older-fashioned churches where the droning old sermonisers still buzzed; there they would have peace on holy days to rest; they would be gone to the final sleep before the ranting crowd had followed them. The younger set of worshippers were delighted at the change; for they listened now to lively declamation and vivid and picturesque oratory. Nothing could surpass the electric effect of some of those preachers on their audiences; you could hear strong men weep, and women that were usually marvels of silence cry out in wild ecstasy; thousands would sway as one soul to the passion of the speaker, or again a ripple of laughter would freshen over the throng, to be followed by a shadow of pathos like a summer cloud over corn-fields. I have seen men and women who had entered the building with smiling faces fall prostrate on the marble floors in an agony of repentance. It was one of their greatest luxuries in religion to have those strong emotions. They came to the church purposely to be moved out of their sluggish routine of feeling; and, having suffered the wild ecstasy, they had all the enjoyment of convalescence from the spiritual stroke of paralysis. The hysterical passions that were often lit by the flame of church oratory were like strong drink to them amid the level conventions of their daily life.
Nor did the state permit any preacher to pall upon his audience. As soon as the enthusiasm began to slacken, he was removed to another locality and church, and another brawny young orator fresh from the collegiate hulks was launched on his career of appeal to the emotions. The only danger was that in abandoning himself to the stream of his eloquence he might depart too far from the written sermon that had been revised by the state critics and utter something that might clash with state formulæ. But there were always in his audience guardians who kept their eye on him and by a threatening look pulled him up. And if he persisted, his promising career was broken off, for a time at least. The fear of this was generally sufficient to deter these oratorical and pious criminals from indulging in unlawful flights. For it was a terrible punishment for those who had the talent of persuasive talk to be shut up and have their speech throttled for ever in silent and repulsive cells. Indeed it was whispered that there had been attempts at suicide on the part of some budding orators who had so far transgressed as to be condemned to lifelong absence from the rostrum; whilst some who could not get their oratorical passions slaked or even recognised have been known to commit a serious crime and then stir up disturbance in prison in order to get scope for their power of influencing the emotions of others.
And it was marvellous to see the fervour of these convict-priests; they were most eloquent and convincing on the evils of the vice to which they were most addicted; they knew its subtlety and its fascinations; they could describe with the most picturesque realism its insidious progress and its resultant misery; they would enact the scenes of its various stages and phases with a truth and histrionic power that made the worshippers shudder. And then the appeals they made to repentance were really addressed to their own ideal selves; and so fervid and sincere were they, so full of pathos and melting prayer, that none could resist. I have heard a vast crowd of Aleofanians of the most righteous lives cry out in response, as if they had been the most abandoned of sinners.
What could not the state do with its people, when it had command of such channels into their very hearts! Whatever new purpose it had it subtly introduced into the sermons and church services, either didactically or dramatically; songs and hymns and ceremonies were manufactured for it; gorgeous spectacles were invented and drew crowds to the churches for months. But never was the purpose allowed to show itself obtrusively; it penetrated the spirit of these like a delicate perfume. And the people could not help being fascinated by it, so subtly did it ally itself with all the sweetest anodynes of care and pain and all the most tempting delights of the senses. Sweet savours, delicious perfumes, melodious sounds, the most artistic and beautiful sights soon made the new state policy the very atmosphere of the inner shrine of memory. And the priests and church orators touched the springs of emotion with hidden but concrete presentments of it; they were handsomely rewarded for every new and successful method they invented of getting it interwoven with the most popular feelings and the most sacred passions and memories.
But there was an ecclesiastical engine of state that promised to be more effective than any of these. For ages there had been in the church an institution that had somewhat fallen into neglect except with morbid women of the upper classes. They were accustomed to go at stated times into a box like a horse-stall and whisper the secrets that burdened them into an aperture like an ear; from this the sound passed by a tube into the secret chamber of the priests of the church; and there came back to the ear of the client spiritual advice that would console her in her difficulties or help her out of them. Neither priest nor worshipper was supposed to see or know the other; the act and communication were purely impersonal.
This custom the state revived and expanded, after it had begun to see what a powerful engine the church could be made. And it grafted it on to one of its few failures. When it had discovered how useful it might make criminals, one of its most ingenious and ambitious ministers determined to annex it to the medical profession. He saw its subtle and secret power in detail, and thought that, if he could weld this into a unity and make it an engine of state, it would be almost omnipotent; for the physician had complete command of his patients, and could make them believe what he would. He had their spirits and imaginations at a time when, at the lowest ebb of life’s tide, they were most the prey of superstition. Whether hypochondriac or really sick, they were at his mercy, and what he prescribed or even loosely remarked sank deeply into them. Was not this the very vantage the state needed for riveting its chains upon the spirits of its subjects? The invalid periods of a man’s life, and still more those of a woman’s, and the invalid members of a household, are the very fulcra of the levers of existence. Such points of spiritual omnipotence should not be in the hands of private bunglers. The only thing that kept the physicians from ruling the nation was their mutual jealousy and perpetual disunion.
As a fact it was the state that supported the colleges of medicine and guaranteed the ability of the licentiates sent out by them. What could be easier than to go a step farther and make the physicians servants of the state? Some of the most astute convicts who had tastes in that direction were selected and trained in the full course of the medical schools, and sent out to practise with instructions to use their opportunities for the state. But there could be no check upon their proceedings as there was over the convict-priests. They revelled in doing evil, and a most obnoxious practice grew up amongst them. It was soon noticed that they became most luxurious in their style of living, and at last the death of several of their patients along with a new codicil to their wills bequeathing to the convict-doctor large legacies aroused suspicion and confirmed the long-unheeded outcry that the professional physicians had raised against them. It was found on close inquiry that they had milked their richest patients of most of their fortune, and the more alert and obstinate of them they had drugged into subservience to their will and then given them euthanasia. No custom could live in the midst of the odium that this revelation stirred. And the great statesman had to swallow his ingenious invention and policy.
But he was not content to remain passive under this recoil. He adapted his contrivance to the ecclesiastical organisation of the state, and turned his convict-physicians into confessors. They had been chosen to some extent for their soft, low voices, their refined and feminine manners, and their insinuating and confidential air. A little more training in the arts of sophistry and in the subtle distinctions and precepts of theology would fit them exactly to be spiritual advisers in the church. To warn them from the use of their posts for purposes of extortion, their brethren who had gone astray in medicine were severely punished. And to hold check on their conduct and advice, the confessional chambers of all the churches were connected by auditory tubes with the central office of public worship, and every confession and every consolation could be heard by the minister or his officials if he liked.
The practice of consultation in the auricular stalls of the church grew with amazing rapidity. The insinuating young voices, the subtle consolation, the efficient advice so soothed the perturbed spirits of the mentally sick that on the slightest commotion in the atmosphere of their life they rushed again to the ecclesiastical ear. Even the men began, at first in a shamefaced way, to await a vacancy in the stalls, afterwards most boldly and as a habit of fashionable life they indulged in the practice.
It reduced the revenues of the physicians by more than half; and they could make no outcry against it, for it was more powerful than they. At last one great financial minister of public worship organised the new departure; he had all the auricular stalls of all the churches of the nation connected directly with his central office; and in his presence all the spiritual advisers sat and received confessions and gave consolations. He had an army of clerks to insert in the secret doomsday-book opposite the name of each citizen anything in his or her confession that seemed of importance, whilst every morning he gave out the general policy and tone of the advices to be communicated; on exceptional cases he had always to be consulted at once.
He also offered a percentage on the legacies left by any worshipper to the church; this was given to the criminal on whose advice it was left. The department of public worship was coming to be the wealthiest in the state; for he fitted up the auricular boxes of the church as the most luxurious boudoirs, where a lady could lounge in the midst of the sweetest perfumes and music and the most beautiful paintings and statuary. He even allowed at a large rental auricular stalls to be let by the month or year to single individuals or families. Hither could the invalid or convalescent come in her moods of despair or depression and pour her sorrows into the ear of the soft-voiced comforter who shed, by his casuistries and gentle persuasiveness, balm upon her spiritual wounds. At last he permitted auricular tubes to be laid to the private chambers of confirmed invalids and of the dying, at a large premium. And this added such enormous sums to the revenue in the shape of legacies that he reduced the rate. Yet he left it as a policy of the office that it should never be so far lowered as to bring the privilege within the reach of those who had but moderate incomes.
Never had such a powerful engine come into the hands of the state; and every precaution was taken that it should not be abused and that no secret of this great confession bureau should leak out. But, whenever any citizen grew restive or obstreperous, an appeal was made to the pages of the doomsday-book, and some secret found there was applied to him with the effect that he curled up into unobtrusive silence. The convict-confessors were, of course, all locked up at night in a well-sentried building, and by day every action of theirs was under unseen surveillance.
They still continued their medical studies and duties, and were able to prescribe through the auditory tubes to whatever patient could give a clear account of his symptoms. If anyone had symptoms that did not permit of a clear diagnosis of his disease, he was encouraged to come into the consulting-room of the office of public worship, and there the various convict-physicians questioned him and examined him unseen; the diseased organ or part was placed under powerful microscopes into which they looked; then the whole staff consulted on his case and gave him advice accordingly. But these were rare instances; as a rule, the patients were satisfied with the impersonal advice and acted upon it. Half the diseases had their source in the mind and only needed spiritual advice; and most were both mental and physical; none but felt great benefit from unburdening their spirits and receiving sympathy and consolation.
Half the confessor-physicians were on duty by night and half by day; and the former section consisted of the ablest and the most subtle and persuasive; for it was found that night patients and worshippers needed more spiritual consolation than day clients. It was during the sleepless hours of the dark that the soul sank into the abyss of morbid weakness and often into the paralysis of terror. It was then that it seemed to absorb the functions of the body and infect them with its own diseases. It was then that most succumbed to the assaults of sickness, the life ebbed farthest away and left the sensitive nerves naked to the irritations of thought and passion. It was then that the great harvest of bequests was reaped; seized by superstitious fears, by the terrors of the darkness around and to come, the spirit was ready to abandon the mere dross of life for a little support on the threshold of the grave, for a little religion. And the office of public worship never hesitated to promise all they asked for beyond the final darkness, provided they paid well for the boon. It was then that the most hideous secrets of life were whispered into the ear of the church, then that terror drove the soul into the refuge of complete disburthenment. Even when death was years off, the feebleness of the morbid or invalid or convalescent spirit during hours when sleep would not approach laid it open to assault; for the footfall of the awful destroyer seemed to be heard in the dread silence. It was then that it sought the consolations of the auditory tube and opened the flood-gates of repentance into the ear of the confessor-physician. The morning brought regret for the rash candour, but the secret was recorded; the office of public worship had undying power over the fate of the unburthened soul.
By the time I arrived in the island, the physicians felt that their profession was doomed, that the wily statesman had outwitted them; and doubtless before many generations most of them would plead to be admitted into the service of the state. When that occurred they would have to resign themselves body and soul to it; it would receive none but those who were completely in its power. Of course there was still much scope for them in families that would not trust mere impersonal advice or feared to resign their independence of spirit into the power of an office of state. They were also much employed in seeing the treatment recommended by the convict-physicians carried out; and in this they often retaliated upon the state by contradicting the advice and sowing doubt of its soundness in the minds of the patients. Doubtless the next move of the department of public worship would be to blow through pneumatic tubes into the auricular stalls of the churches, or into the chambers of the sick the drugs and medical requisites that were recommended.
By means of these three uses of the talents of convicts the state church had become a reality and was far more powerful than the press. Journalism poured suggestion into the public mind; but it was into the healthy, wide-awake, often recoiling public mind; its reasonings, eloquence, or imaginative schemes and suggestions were not always accepted; they had often to lie ungerminated in the soil of the national spirit for years, till they were forgotten and some new occasion laid them bare and made them seem to spring up spontaneously. The personality of the writers though not unfelt was unseen, and so far had the potence of that which is mysterious; but they could not, like the ecclesiastical convicts, use the shadowy distance of the world to come in the way of threats and promises; they could not stir the soil of the present to immediate harvest with the plough of the future. They had to depend on the weapons and tools of the average man; they had to reason and persuade, explain, or appeal to the emotions, as neighbour to neighbour, except that they had the impersonality and anonymity of confessors and could gag their opponents in any attempt at reply.
Their power would have seemed enormous, had it not been put into comparison with the complete state organisation of the church and been overshadowed by it. They were used as the dogs of war, gathering as they did into the hands of a minister the loose fangs of irresponsible gossip, leashed as they were to one purpose and one spirit or policy. They knew that they had but one master to please, one master who had their liberty and still more their luxury in his power; and him they served with all their faculties and especially their faculties of invention, personal venom, and vituperation. They had no principle, no scruple except towards him and the government he embodied. If they entertained the majority, they did not care who suffered. Their first object was to strengthen the roots of the state, and especially of the minister of the department; their next was to make the largest number possible read their articles and paragraphs. If any one of their victims turned upon them and denied the news about him as a slander, they were at once made by the head of the department to apologise and explain that by some mistake the paragraph had slipped out of the pure fiction column into that of news, and that the name of the citizen had strayed out of the column of eulogies in transferring type. Where this was impossible as an explanation, the minister could easily appease the wrath of his victim by showing him how an especially unscrupulous convict had been introduced new into the office and had acted on his own responsibility and ignorance of the rules of revision.
I wondered at so great and virtuous a people enduring such an institution in their midst. They marvelled at my wonder, and thought of it as based on the very laws of nature. How could any marble citizen indulge in such work and retain his self-respect, and how could a state be accountable for the vagaries of irresponsible writers, whose dignity and self-respect were lost? The only means of producing a united and vigorous literature was to make the writers bond to the state. The only means of keeping it pure and free from attacks on the nation and the national spirit was to put the journalists body and soul into the hands of a department, and to make the department responsible for their productions. This was a provision of nature as soon as such an institution arose.