PROPOSED REMEDY. 247 



without another aid that of emigration, which was also yearly 

 resorted to. In this most loyal, if not most monarchical of 

 states, nothing could be done without the presence of the 

 queen (who indeed, as the only matron, was truly the mother of 

 her subjects), and it had always been the custom, whenever a 

 party of colonizers set forth, for the reigning sovereign either 

 to lead or accompany them, a young princess being always 

 kept guarded in a snug corner, safe from her elder's jealousy, 

 and in readiness to nil her vacant place, Never was emigra- 

 tion more requisite than at the period which followed the 

 accession of the new mesmer-modelled queen. Her totally 

 subdued " Destructiveness " having led her to spare her two 

 royal rivals, these, having long since given up their places as 

 maids of honour, had become, as well as herself, wives and 

 mothers of a numerous progeny, and the same benevolising 

 influence having caused her, as we have seen, to spare the lives 

 both of the aged and of the idle of the community, the hive 

 had never before been so overflowing with inhabitants, or so 

 deficient in provisions for their support. Death and threatened 

 famine were the result, and emigration (under the present 

 humanized order of things) the only remedy; but both the 

 reformed queen and the princesses, either of whom the would-be 

 emigrants would have been content to follow, were much too 

 domestic or spiritless to lead them. Collected in a hungry 

 crowd, they wanted only a royal conductress to desert their 

 native, in search of a distant home, but no such leader could 



