ow dirt into the
countenance of her late step-mother, she determined that her own
polity should run so near a parallel, and yet should be so obviously an
improvement on that of Leaphigh, as to demonstrate the imperfections
of the latter to the most superficial observer. That this patriotic
resolution was faithfully carried out in practice, I am now about to
demonstrate.

In Leaphigh, the old human principle had long prevailed, that political
authority came from God; though why such a theory should ever have
prevailed anywhere, as Mr. Downright once expressed it, I cannot see,
the devil very evidently having a greater agency in its exercise than
any other influence, or intelligence, whatever. However, the jus divinum
was the regulator of the Leaphigh social compact, until the nobility
managed to get the better of the jus, when the divinum was left to shift
for itself. It was at this epocha the present constitution found its
birth. Any one may have observed that one stick placed on end will fall,
as a matter of course, unless rooted in the earth. Two sticks fare no
better, even with their tops united; but three sticks form a standard.
This simple and beautiful idea gave rise to the Leaphigh polity. Three
moral props were erected in the midst of the community, at the foot of
one of which was placed the king, to prevent it from slipping; for all
the danger, under such a system, came from that of the base slipping;
at the foot of the second, the nobles; and at the foot of the third, the
people. On the summit of this tripod was raised the machine of state.
This was found to be a capital invention in theory, though practice,
as practice is very apt to do, subjected it to some essential
modifications. The king, having his stick all his own way, gave a great
deal of trouble to the two other sets of stick-holders; and, unwilling
to disturb the theory, for that was deemed to be irrevocably settled and
sacred, the nobility, who, for their own particular convenience, paid
the principal workmen at the base of the people's stick to stand steady,
set about the means of keeping the king's stick, also, in a more uniform
and serviceable attitude. It was on this occasion that, discovering the
king never could keep his end of the great social stick in the place
where he had sworn to keep it, they solemnly declared that he must
have forgotten where the constitutional foot-hole was, and that he had
irretrievably lost his memory--a decision th