The Coming Race

  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 call the'Station,' from which emigrants or travellers to other communitiescommence their journeys. I had, on a former occasion, expressed a wishto see their vehicles. These I found to be of two kinds, one for landjourneys, one for aerial voyages: the former were of all sizes andforms, some not larger than an ordinary carriage, some movable houses ofone story and containing several rooms, furnished according to the ideasof comfort or luxury which are entertained by the Vril-ya. The aerialvehicles were of light substances, not the least resembling ourballoons, but rather our boats and pleasure-vessels, with helm andrudder, with large wings or paddles, and a central machine worked byvril. All the vehicles both for land or air were indeed worked by thatpotent 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 aneighbouring community; for among all the tribes of the Vril-ya thereis considerable commercial interchange. I may here observe, that theirmoney currency does not consist of the precious metals, which are toocommon among them for that purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary useare manufactured from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarceremnant of some very early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, bywhich a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as an oyster,and takes a jewel-like polish. This coinage circulates among all thetribes of the Vril-ya. Their larger transactions are carried on muchlike ours, by bills of exchange, and thin metallic plates which answerthe purpose of our bank-notes.

  Let me take this occasion of adding that the taxation among the tribe Ibecame acquainted with was very considerable, compared with the amountof population. But I never heard that any one grumbled at it, for it wasdevoted to purposes of universal utility, and indeed necessary to thecivilisation of the tribe. The cost of lighting so large a rangeof country, of providing for emigration, of maintaining the publicbuildings at which the various operations of national intellect werecarried on, from the first education of an infant to the departments inwhich the College of Sages were perpetually trying new experiments inmechanical science; all these involved the necessity for considerablestate funds. To these I must add an item that struck me as verysingular. I have said that all the human labour required by the state iscarried on by children up to the marriageable age. For this labour thestate pays, and at a rate immeasurably higher than our own remunerationto labour even in the United States. According to their theory, everychild, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age, and thereterminating the period of labour, should have acquired enough for anindependent competence during life. As, no matter what the disparity offortune in the parents, all the children must equally serve, so allare equally paid according to their several ages or the nature of theirwork. Where the parents or friends choose to retain a child in theirown service, they must pay into the public fund in the same ratio as thestate pays to the children it employs; and this sum is handed over tothe child when the period of service expires. This practice serves, nodoubt, to render the notion of social equality familiar and agreeable;and if it may be said that all the children form a democracy, no lesstruly it may be said that all the adults form an aristocracy. Theexquisite politeness and refinement of manners among the Vril-ya, thegenerosity of their sentiments, the absolute leisure they enjoy forfollowing out their own private pursuits, the amenities of theirdomestic intercourse, in which they seem as members of one noble orderthat can have no distrust of each other's word or deed, all combine tomake the Vril-ya the most perfect nobility which a political discipleof Plato or Sidney could conceive for the ideal of an aristocraticrepublic.