“Sixty? Seventy?”
“—whose lust for domination has led it to suborn all but a handful of Grotum’s most venerable institutions, whose unbridled thirst—”
“Enough!” cried out the lawyer. “We’re being claused to death! It’s all rot—bilge and rot. ‘Tis rather by dint of the Consortium’s mighty efforts—motivated by self-interest, to be sure, but nonetheless admirable and beneficial—that these backward nations of Grotum stand fair to enter the world of modern industry and progress, to take their rightful place beside all other respected and puissant lands!”
Mustelid thrust his face at Zulkeh and continued in an earnest voice. “Do not allow the ravings of this romantic reactionary to sway your logical faculties, good sir. Fine for him—the scion of a great landowner—to preach airily of the joys of simple Groutch life, he who never labored from dawn to dusk in his father’s fields, he whose dronelike existence is made possible by the unceasing toil of his father’s serfs, he whose—”
“Damn you, knave!” shrilled the youth. “Have I not shortened my title, renounced certain excessive portions of my inheritance, urged liberalism in our dealings with the peons, even quarreled with my father—why, even in his own drawing room before guests? Have I not devoted my life to the uplifting of that selfsame squalid peasantry whose plight so suddenly grips your heart? Fraud! Impostor! These paeans to so-called progress spring dishonestly from your lips! Fear, greed, and envy—those are your true idols!”
The lawyer leaned back in his chair. “I am not abashed by your fantasies,” he sneered. “I have no truck with dreaming fools who spout nonsense to the march of progress without accepting the necessary, if unfortunate, concomitants of that selfsame course of national betterment. And as for ‘fear, greed, and envy,’ certainly I do not deny them their rightful place in society’s onward advance. Was it not the Honorable Judge Learned Hound himself who upheld, in the case of The Consortium vs. the Maimed and Injured Wretch, the legal and moral propriety of—and here I quote his exact and immortal phrase—’Fear, Greed, and Envy, the requisite economic waters upon whose lapping waves the Ship of State serenely sails’?”
“And well should you mention that corruption in human flesh!” shrilled Holdabrand. “Aye, indeed! That same Judge Learned Hound whose legalistic machinations made possible the devastation of Pryggia’s stalwart yeomanry!”
“And glad I am,” responded the lawyer with equal heat, “that you have raised this matter! Let us put it to this fine gentleman seated here, to see on which side of this dispute lies reason and the higher justice!”
Turning then to Zulkeh, Mustelid spoke in soft tones filled with great conviction. “Look you, sirrah, the case to which this insolent youth refers is one of the most luminous in the annals—not simply of Groutch jurisprudence—but of Law throughout the civilized world. The decision, jointly written by Judges Hound and Hand, has gained such repute that it is regularly assigned for study at the great School of Law at the University of Ozarae, that most prestigious of all academies. In this most complex and critical case, The Consortium vs. the Hayseed Malcontents, ere then murky and confused in the mind of gentility and plebeian alike, the two brilliant jurists charted a course unswayed by any interests save the upholding of Law, Reason, Truth and Justice.
“In essence, the case involved the claim of the Pryggian peasantry that, inasmuch as they had already given over one quarter of their crop to the noble landlords by way of rent, one quarter to the King by way of taxes, and one quarter to the Ecclesiarchs by way of tithe, they should not be required to cede the remaining one quarter to the Consortium by way of interest, as they would then surely starve. In their opinion, Judges Hound and Hand upheld the counterclaim of the Consortium, saying that—I will cite their very words—” A lightning-like flick through the pages. Then:
” ‘The legal position of the Consortium is, strictly and constitutionally speaking, unassailable. And, though this will undoubtedly produce mass famine and a peasantry driven into a life of vagabondage, prostitution and cannibalism—a state of misery which, needless to say, we personally deplore and condemn, but also note is illegal and can thus serve as the basis for a profitable new prison industry—it is nonetheless crucial that the State not intrude in this matter, for such intervention would surely become but the first and irremediable step on what the great scholar Hayek Laebmauntsforscynneweëld has rightly called ‘the Road to Serfdom.’ “