The sovereign Nation had taken possession of the lands of the nobility and
clergy to sell them at a low price to the middle classes and the peasants. The
middle classes and the peasants thought that the revolution was a good thing
for acquiring lands and a bad one for retaining them.
The legislators of the Republic made terrible laws for the defence of
property, and decreed death to anyone who should propose a division of wealth.
But that did not avail the Republic. The peasants who had become proprietors
bethought themselves that though it had made them rich, the Republic had
nevertheless caused a disturbance to wealth, and they desired a system more
respectful of private property and more capable of assuring the permanence of
the new institutions.
They had not long to wait. The Republic, like Agrippina, bore her destroyer in
her bosom.
Having great wars to carry on, it created military forces, and these were
destined both to save it and to destroy it. Its legislators thought they could
restrain their generals by the fear of punishment, but if they sometimes cut
off the heads of unlucky soldiers they could not do the same to the fortunate
soldiers who obtained over it the advantages of having saved its existence.
In the enthusiasm of victory the renovated Penguins delivered themselves up to
a dragon, more terrible than that of their fables, who, like a stork amongst
frogs, devoured them for fourteen years with his insatiable beak.
Half a century after the reign of the new dragon a young Maharajah of Malay,
called Djambi, desirous, like the Scythian Anacharsis, of instructing himself
by travel, visited Penguinia and wrote an interesting account of his travels.
I transcribe the first page of his account:
Read next: BOOK IV - MODERN TIMES: TRINCO#CHAPTER III - ACCOUNT OF THE TRAVELS OF YOUNG DJAMBI IN PENGUINIA
Read previous: BOOK IV - MODERN TIMES: TRINCO#CHAPTER I - MOTHER ROUQUIN
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