FURTHER DISCOURSE RELATING TO THE HON. MIDDLETON FLAM—CORRECTION IN THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF HIS FAMILY SEAT—HIS RESPECT FOR THE PEOPLE—VERY ORIGINAL VIEWS ENTERTAINED BY HIM ON THIS SUBJECT—HIS LIBERALITY IN MONEY MATTERS—AVERSION TO THE LAW REGARDING INTEREST—DEMOCRATIC VIEW OF THAT QUESTION—HIS ENCOURAGEMENT OF INDUSTRY AND THE WORKING PEOPLE—INGENIOUS AND PROFOUND ILLUSTRATION OF THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE.

Holding, as I do, our Democratic leader, the Hon. Middleton Flam, in the most deservedly profound respect, and knowing him to be, if I may be allowed the expression, a bright exemplar of Democracy, and containing in himself, metaphorically speaking, the epitome of all sound opinions, I am fully authorized by the common usage regarding public characters to bring him and his affairs conspicuously into the view of the world, not for censure, neither for praise, although no man is better entitled to the latter, but for instruction. Such is the destiny of distinguished men, that their lives are common property for the teaching of their generation. Duly acknowledging the weight of this maxim, I shall venture in the present chapter to give my reader a still closer insight into the private concerns of our representative; for which task I feel myself somewhat specially qualified, through the bountiful hospitality of that excellent gentleman, who has not only welcomed me to his board often on week days, and always on Sundays, but who has even flattered me, more than once, by the remark that he would not take umbrage at such impartial development of his life and opinions as he knew I, better than any other of his friends, (truly herein his kindness has overrated my worthiness,) had it in my power to make.

The old family seat of the Flams is about two miles from Quodlibet. It is upon the Bickerbray road; and, taking in all the grounds belonging to the domicile, the tract is somewhere about eight hundred acres; by far the greater portion of which is a flat range of woodland and field, watered by Grasshopper Run, which falls into the Rumblebottom. The tract used to be called, in Judge Flam's time, "The Poplar Flats," and the house, at that day, went by the name of "Quality Hall:" but ever since Mr. Middleton has had it, which, as may be gathered from what I have imparted in the last chapter, has been from the time that the old Black Cockades began to think of turning Democrats; ever since that day the spelling has been gradually changing, and the house now goes by the settled name of "Equality Hall," and the tract is always written by our people "The Popular Flats." Mr. Middleton greatly approves of this change, for two reasons which he has had occasion to take into his serious reflections—First; "Because," he says, "in the Quodlibetarian Democratic system, as now understood, words are things." "Not only things, sir," said he, in a discourse one day, at his own table, "but important and valuable things. I have observed," he continued, "in our country, especially among the unflinching, uncompromising Democrats, that a name is always half the battle. For instance, sir, we wish to destroy the bank; we have only to call it a Monster: we desire to put down an opposition ticket, and keep the offices among ourselves; all that we have to do is to set up a cry of Aristocracy. If we want to stop a canal, we clamor against Consolidation: if we wish it to go on, it is only to change the word—Develop the Resources. When it was thought worth our while to frighten Calhoun with the notion that we were going to hang him, we hurraed for the Proclamation; and after that, when we wanted to gain over his best friends to our side—State-Rights was the word. Depend upon it, gentlemen, with the true Quodlibetarian Democracy, names are things: that is the grand secret of the 'New-Light system.'"

Mr. Flam's second reason for approving the change in the spelling of Poplar Flats and Quality Hall, did not depend upon such a philosophical subtlety as the first; it was simply because he had very nigh lost his first election to Congress from inattention to this material point of orthography. Quality Hall, some of the Democrats of our region were unreasonable and headstrong enough to say, was not so Democratic a name as their candidate ought to have for his place of residence; and if it had not been that our representative discovered this in time to convince them that it was an old-fashioned way of spelling Equality Hall, I believe, in my conscience, he would have made out very badly: but luckily for this district, and I may say, for the nation, this error in spelling was corrected in time to set all straight; and Mr. Flam, from that day, not only put the E before the Q, but, in token of that incident, and by way of a remembrancer, always spoke of Equality Hall as built upon Popular Flats, which sounded very well in the ears of the New Lights, and no doubt went a great way to keep him in Congress ever after. Therefore I repeat, after my patron and friend, words are things;—and, democratically speaking, in the sense of a New Light, I might even say better than things.

Equality Hall is a building which looks larger than it is, from the circumstance that it was originally a one-storied, irregular cottage of brick, but in the Judge's time a second story was put to it; and, almost immediately after Mr. Middleton came to be the owner, he enlarged the eastern gable by widening it to nearly forty feet, and building it up considerably above the roof, and then adding to it a grand Grecian Temple porch with niches for statues, and with fluted Doric columns of wood, which thus constituted what Mr. Middleton calls his faÇade and principal front to the building. The effect of this piece of magnificence was to screen the old-cottage from view, and to impress the beholder with the idea of a grand building peeping out upon the Bickerbray road between the foliage of two weeping willows, which the old Judge put there before Mr. Jefferson's election.

I have heard some fastidious, not to say malevolent critics, find fault with this new addition to the building, upon the score that it had too much pretense about it; and that one was always disappointed upon finding all this grandeur of outside to be but a mere piece of theatrical show, without having anything to correspond to it within. Mr. Flam has heard the same objection, but he has always treated it with the contempt it deserved. "It was intended for show," he observed one day addressing the people from the hustings, when he had occasion to notice a remark of one of these caviling gentlemen, who had said something about having walked behind the portico to find the house—and I shall never forget how his eye kindled and his form dilated as he spoke—"Show, sir! Of course, it was put there for show. What else could it be put for? What is any portico put up for? It faces toward the road, sir—it was designed to face toward the road. When I built that portico, I wished the people, sir, to see it; the best I have shall always be shown to the people. I trust, sir, that my respect for the people shall never so far abate, as to induce me to neglect them. My house, sir, intrinsically is that of an humble citizen; there are a dozen equal to it in this county; but that part of it which is intended to gratify the people is unsurpassed here or anywhere else. I have laid out, sir, a small fortune on that portico to gratify the people: all that I have comes from them—all that I ever expect to be, I hope to derive from them: who has so good a right as they to require me to put my best foot foremost, when they are the spectators? On the same principle, sir, when I appear in public, I dress in the most expensive attire, I drive the best horses, and procure the finest coach. My turnout is altogether elaborate, studiously particular—simply because I hold the people in too much esteem, to shab them off with anything of a secondary quality, while Providence has blessed me with the means of providing them the best. That, sir, is what I call a keystone principle in the arch of Democratic government: that is the sentiment, and that alone, which is to give perpetuity to this——"

"Fair fabric of freedom," said Theodore Fog, who was among the auditory, and perceived that Mr. Flam hesitated for a word to convey his idea.

"Thank you, my friend," courteously replied Mr. Flam, "I am indebted to you for the word—fair fabric of freedom."

Coming back from this digression, which I have the rather indulged because of the eloquence, as well as the just Democratic sentiment it breathes, I proceed with my sketch of the homestead of our distinguished leader of the politics of Quodlibet.

If I were asked what constituted the most striking feature in the arrangements of this very admirable establishment, I should say it was the judicious admixture of a laudable economy, with the greatest possible effect in the way of outward exhibition. For instance, the grounds were embellished with sundry structures, apparently at great cost, and producing a most satisfactory impression on the eye, but which, when examined, would be found to be, for the most part, painted imitations of a very cheap kind. Thus there was to be seen from the portico, peering above a thicket on the Grasshopper Run, an old castle with ivy-crowned battlements, greatly enriching the view; at the end of the long walk in the garden, a magnificent obelisk rose forty feet above a bed of asparagus; the entrance to the stable-yard was through the Gothic archway of an old chapel, exceeding pleasant to behold; and the ice pond was guarded by a palisade composed of muskets, lances, swords, shields, and cannon, flanked at each end by a pile of drums and colors. All these several embellishments a nice observation would determine to be executed in oil painting, upon wooden screens sawed into the requisite figures. But even this expense would, perhaps, have been avoided, had it not been that Quipes, our artist, owed Mr. Flam twenty-five dollars on account of a debt which Mr. Flam had to pay for him, to get him out of jail, for the sake of his vote, when we first elected our public-spirited representative to Congress. Owing to this circumstance, connected with the fact that Sam Hardesty, the joiner, became insolvent on his contract for building the big portico, whereby Mr. Flam was obliged to advance money to him in order to get it finished, our member conceived that it would be a good plan to work these debts out of his two friends, by setting them about the decorations I have described. Besides, he reasoned with himself that it was always well to give employment to the working people about him, with a view to encourage industry and afford a practical illustration of the benignant influence of the great Democratic principle upon society—a consideration which Mr. Flam on no occasion ever permitted himself to lose sight of. By this judicious management he accomplished a fourfold purpose: namely, the beautifying of Popular Flats; the execution of these rich specimens of art, at less than half their value; the employment of two very meritorious fragments of the people; and, above all, a most satisfactory development of the excellence and usefulness of the great New-Light Democratic principle.

Mr. Flam never was what you might call a moneyed man. For although his farms were very productive, and he had a considerable income from stock in the United States Bank; and although the expenses of his family were very far short of what the world might, from the show he made, suppose them to be; yet he was in the habit of parting with his money as fast as it came to hand. There were a great number of deserving but needy persons who were often at the Popular Flats, and who did not hesitate to borrow all the funds Mr. Flam could spare, (if he had a fault it was the generosity of his lendings,) and in this way to keep him, as he has often told me himself, very bare. To make sure against loss he had the prudence never to lend without bond and mortgage, with a power of attorney to confess judgment; and as he ever avowed what he called his most irrevocable opinion, that the interest law was exceedingly oppressive upon the industry of the country, he invariably made his own bargain on that point—sagaciously remarking, as I once heard him to Nicholas Hardup, the cattle dealer, who was under execution upon a judgment, and came to borrow the amount from Mr. Flam, "Money, sir, is a commodity like wheat or cattle; its value is regulated by the relations of supply and demand. Society will never prosper till that principle is universally recognized. We go for it, Mr. Hardup, as cardinal in the Democratic creed. Labor, to be free, requires that the money contract also should be free. Why should the poor man pay six per cent. when money is worth but five? Why should he be prevented paying seven, eight, or nine, even, if he finds it his interest to give it—or cannot do without it? No, sir, Equal Rights, Liberty of Conscience, and Unrestricted Freedom of Contract—there is the buttress of Democratic government!"

It often happened, as such things will happen, that Mr. Flam became the loser by his generosity; and as it was a maxim with him to inculcate the most rigid punctuality in all engagements, he has never felt himself at liberty to relax what he regarded this salutary rule; so that, on many occasions, he has been compelled to submit to the unpleasant and expensive operation of closing his accounts on the bond and mortgage, by taking possession of the mortgaged property; and in this way, as he sometimes feelingly complains to his friends, he has become encumbered with more land than he knows what to do with. He has, however, gradually got through a great deal of this trouble by renting out his farms; a course which he intends to persevere in until his children are able to take the management of them.

Mr. Handy has several times endeavored to persuade him to make his improvements rather more permanent, and to take down these embellishments I have been describing; rather rashly as I thought, calling them, to Mr. Flam's face, pasteboard scenery, gingerbread nonsense, and twopenny gimcracks: and he insinuated that if our worthy representative would lay out some of his "accommodation" in a more solid manner upon Popular Flats, it would tell hereafter to his advantage. But Mr. Flam turns a deaf ear to all Nicodemus's preaching. He says that the accommodation is better laid out in the Chickasaw Reserve, where he means to realize a large fortune; and as to what Mr. Handy is pleased to call gimcracks and gingerbread, that, in fact, is the only kind of decoration in which a man, who respects the simplicity and purity of Democratic government, ought to indulge his taste. "If," said he, "my old castle, my obelisk, or my Gothic gateway were built of stone instead of white pine, a fair inference might be made against me of a lurking wish to restore the exploded aristocratic system of primogeniture and entails. It would be said I was building for my son and his eldest born. Thank God, no such treasonable design can be inferred from this gimcrack and gingerbread, as you wittily term it. When I go, sir, my estate is to be cut up as our Democratic republican laws ordain; and my gimcrack and gingerbread can be plowed in as easily as the dockweed. Strange as it may sound to the ears of some, gimcrack and gingerbread are the elements of our new Democratic theory. Sir, our government should glory in it:—it does glory in it. There is no reproach in the fact that we neither build, legislate, think, nor determine for the next generation. We attend to ourselves—that is genuine New-Light Democracy. We oppose Vested Rights, we oppose Chartered Privileges, we oppose Pledges to bind future Legislatures, we oppose Tariffs, Internal Improvements, Colleges, and Universities, on the broad Democratic ground that we have nothing to do with Posterity. Posterity will be as free as we are. Let it take care of itself. I glory, sir, in saying New-Light Democracy riots in gimcrack and gingerbread."

This eloquent outburst of sentiment effectually silenced Mr. Handy, and brought him thoroughly into Mr. Flam's opinion. I rejoice that my intimacy with this able statesman should have afforded me this opportunity to show the brilliancy with which his mind sparkles in the demonstration of political truth, and the wonderful power with which it converts apparently trivial thoughts into golden illustrations of the Democratic theory as lately discovered and practiced.