Chapter XIX.
As we walked back to the town, Taee took a new and circuitous
way, in order to show me what, to use a familiar term, I will
100call the 'Station,' from which emigrants or travellers to other
communities commence their journeys. I had, on a former
occasion, expressed a wish to see their vehicles. These I
found to be of two kinds, one for land journeys, one for aerial
voyages: the former were of all sizes and forms, some not
larger than an ordinary carriage, some movable houses of one
story and containing several rooms, furnished according to the
ideas of comfort or luxury which are entertained by the
Vril-ya. The aerial vehicles were of light substances, not the
least resembling our balloons, but rather our boats and
pleasure-vessels, with helm and rudder, with large wings or
paddles, and a central machine worked by vril. All the
vehicles both for land or air were indeed worked by that potent
and mysterious agency.
I saw a convoy set out on its journey, but it had few
passengers, containing chiefly articles of merchandise, and was
bound to a neighbouring community; for among all the tribes of
the Vril-ya there is considerable commercial interchange. I
may here observe, that their money currency does not consist of
the precious metals, which are too common among them for that
purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use are manufactured
from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce remnant
of some very early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, by
which a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as
an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. This coinage
circulates among all the tribes of the Vril-ya. Their larger
transactions are carried on much like ours, by bills of
exchange, and thin metallic plates which answer the purpose of
our bank-notes.
Let me take this occasion of adding that the taxation among the
tribe I became acquainted with was very considerable, compared
with the amount of population. But I never heard that any one
grumbled at it, for it was devoted to purposes of universal
utility, and indeed necessary to the civilisation of the tribe.
The cost of lighting so large a range of country, of providing
101for emigration, of maintaining the public buildings at which
the various operations of national intellect were carried on,
from the first education of an infant to the departments in
which the College of Sages were perpetually trying new
experiments in mechanical science; all these involved the
necessity for considerable state funds. To these I must add an
item that struck me as very singular. I have said that all the
human labour required by the state is carried on by children up
to the marriageable age. For this labour the state pays, and
at a rate immeasurably higher than our own remuneration to
labour even in the United States. According to their theory,
every child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age,
and there terminating the period of labour, should have
acquired enough for an independent competence during life. As,
no matter what the disparity of fortune in the parents, all the
children must equally serve, so all are equally paid according
to their several ages or the nature of their work. Where the
parents or friends choose to retain a child in their own
service, they must pay into the public fund in the same ratio
as the state pays to the children it employs; and this sum is
handed over to the child when the period of service expires.
This practice serves, no doubt, to render the notion of social
equality familiar and agreeable; and if it may be said that all
the children form a democracy, no less truly it may be said
that all the adults form an aristocracy. The exquisite
politeness and refinement of manners among the Vril-ya, the
generosity of their sentiments, the absolute leisure they enjoy
for following out their own private pursuits, the amenities of
their domestic intercourse, in which they seem as members of
one noble order that can have no distrust of each other's word
or deed, all combine to make the Vril-ya the most perfect
nobility which a political disciple of Plato or Sidney could
conceive for the ideal of an aristocratic republic.
