Government on a Neighboring Planet

72:1.1Not­with­stand­ing all these plan­e­tary hand­i­caps a very su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion is evolv­ing on an iso­lated con­ti­nent about the size of Aus­tralia. This na­tion num­bers about 140 mil­lion. Its peo­ple are a mixed race, pre­dom­i­nantly blue and yel­low, hav­ing a slightly greater pro­por­tion of vi­o­let than the so-called white race of Uran­tia. These dif­fer­ent races are not yet fully blended, but they frat­er­nize and so­cial­ize very ac­cept­ably. The av­er­age length of life on this con­ti­nent is now ninety years, fif­teen per cent higher than that of any other peo­ple on the planet.

72:1.2The in­dus­trial mech­a­nism of this na­tion en­joys a cer­tain great ad­van­tage de­rived from the unique to­pog­ra­phy of the con­ti­nent. The high moun­tains, on which heavy rains fall eight months in the year, are sit­u­ated at the very cen­ter of the coun­try. This nat­u­ral ar­range­ment fa­vors the uti­liza­tion of wa­ter power and greatly fa­cil­i­tates the ir­ri­ga­tion of the more arid west­ern quar­ter of the con­ti­nent.

72:1.3These peo­ple are self-sus­tain­ing, that is, they can live in­def­i­nitely with­out im­port­ing any­thing from the sur­round­ing na­tions. Their nat­u­ral re­sources are re­plete, and by sci­en­tific tech­niques they have learned how to com­pen­sate for their de­fi­cien­cies in the es­sen­tials of life. They en­joy a brisk do­mes­tic com­merce but have lit­tle for­eign trade ow­ing to the uni­ver­sal hos­til­ity of their less pro­gres­sive neigh­bors.

72:1.4This con­ti­nen­tal na­tion, in gen­eral, fol­lowed the evo­lu­tion­ary trend of the planet: The de­vel­op­ment from the tribal stage to the ap­pear­ance of strong rulers and kings oc­cu­pied thou­sands of years. The un­con­di­tional monar­chs were suc­ceeded by many dif­fer­ent or­ders of gov­ern­ment—abortive re­publics, com­mu­nal states, and dic­ta­tors came and went in end­less pro­fu­sion. This growth con­tin­ued un­til about five hun­dred years ago when, dur­ing a po­lit­i­cally fer­ment­ing pe­riod, one of the na­tion’s pow­er­ful dic­ta­tor-tri­umvirs had a change of heart. He vol­un­teered to ab­di­cate upon con­di­tion that one of the other rulers, the baser of the re­main­ing two, also va­cate his dic­ta­tor­ship. Thus was the sov­er­eignty of the con­ti­nent placed in the hands of one ruler. The uni­fied state pro­gressed un­der strong monar­chial rule for over one hun­dred years, dur­ing which there evolved a mas­ter­ful char­ter of lib­erty.

72:1.5The sub­se­quent tran­si­tion from monar­chy to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive form of gov­ern­ment was grad­ual, the kings re­main­ing as mere so­cial or sen­ti­men­tal fig­ure­heads, fi­nally dis­ap­pear­ing when the male line of de­scent ran out. The pres­ent re­pub­lic has now been in ex­is­tence just two hun­dred years, dur­ing which time there has been a con­tin­u­ous pro­gres­sion to­ward the gov­ern­men­tal tech­niques about to be nar­rated, the last de­vel­op­ments in in­dus­trial and po­lit­i­cal realms hav­ing been made within the past decade.