Almoran and Hamet Part 1

Almoran and Hamet.

by John Hawkesworth.

TO THE KING

SIR,

Amidst the congratulations and praises of a free, a joyful, and now united people, people, who are ambitious to express their duty and their wishes in their various cla.s.ses; I think myself happy to have YOUR MAJESTY'S most gracious permission to approach You, and, after the manner of the people whose character I have a.s.sumed, to bring an humble offering in my hand.

As some part of my subject led me to consider the advantages of our excellent const.i.tution in comparison of others; my thoughts were naturally turned to YOUR MAJESTY, as its warmest friend and most powerful protector: and as the whole is intended, to recommend the practice of virtue, as the means of happiness; to whom could I address it with so much propriety, as to a PRINCE, who ill.u.s.trates and enforces the precepts of the moralist by his life.

I am, May it please Your MAJESTY, Your MAJESTY'S Most faithful, most obliged, And most obedient Subject and Servant,

John Hawkesworth.

CHAP. I.

Who is he among the children of the earth, that repines at the power of the wicked? and who is he, that would change the lot of the righteous?

He, who has appointed to each his portion, is G.o.d; the Omniscient and the Almighty, who fills eternity, and whose existence is from Himself!

but he who murmurs, is man; who yesterday was not, and who to-morrow shall be forgotten: let him listen in silence to the voice of knowlege, and hide the blushes of confusion in the dust.

Solyman, the mighty and the wife, who, in the one hundred and second year of the Hegyra, sat upon the throne of Persia, had two sons, ALMORAN and HAMET, and they were twins. ALMORAN was the first born, but Solyman divided his affection equally between them: they were both lodged in the same part of the seraglio, both were attended by the same servants, and both received instructions from the same teacher.

One of the first things that ALMORAN learnt, was the prerogative of his birth; and he was taught very early to set a high value upon it, by the terms in which those about him expressed their sense of the power, the splendor, and the delights of royalty. As his mind gradually opened, he naturally considered these as the objects of universal define, and the means of supreme felicity: he was often reminded, that the time was coming, when the sole possession of sovereign power would enable him to fulfil all his wishes, to determine the fate of dependent nations with a nod, and dispense life and death, and happiness and misery, at his will: he was flattered by those who hoped to draw wealth and dignity from his favour; and interest prompted all who approached him, to administer to his pleasures with a zeal and a.s.siduity, which had the appearance of reverence to his merit, and affection to his person.

HAMET, on the contrary, soon became sensible of a subordinate station: he was not, indeed, neglected; but he was not much caressed. When the gratification of HAMET came in compet.i.tion with that of ALMORAN, he was always obliged to give it up, except when Solyman interposed: his mind was, therefore, naturally led to seek for happiness in objects very different from those which had fixed the attention of ALMORAN. As he knew not to how narrow a sphere caprice or jealousy might confine him, he considered what pleasures were least dependent upon external advantages; and as the first popular commotion which mould happen after his brother's accession to the throne, might probably cost him his life, he was very inquisitive about the state into which his spirit would be dismissed by the Angel of Death, and very diligent to do whatever might secure him a share of the permanent and unchangeable felicity of Paradise.

This difference in the situation of ALMORAN and HAMET, produced great dissimilarity in their dispositions, habits, and characters; to which, perhaps, nature might also in some degree contribute. ALMORAN was haughty, vain, and voluptuous; HAMET was gentle, courteous, and temperate: ALMORAN was volatile, impetuous, and irascible; HAMET was thoughtful, patient, and forbearing. Upon the heart of HAMET also were written the instructions of the Prophet; to his mind futurity was present by habitual antic.i.p.ation; his pleasure, his pain, his hopes, and his fears, were perpetually referred to the Invisible and Almighty Father of Life, by sentiments of grat.i.tude or resignation, complacency or confidence; so that his devotion was not periodical but constant.

But the views of ALMORAN were terminated by nearer objects: his mind was perpetually busied in the antic.i.p.ation of pleasures and honours, which he supposed to be neither uncertain nor remote; these excited his hopes, with a power sufficient to fix his attention; he did not look beyond them for other objects, nor enquire how enjoyments more distant were to be acquired; and as he supposed these to be already secured to him by his birth, there was nothing he was solicitous to obtain as the reward of merit, nor any thing that he considered himself to possess as the bounty of Heaven. If the sublime and disinterested rect.i.tude that produces and rewards itself, dwells indeed with man, it dwelt not with ALMORAN: with respect to G.o.d, therefore, he was not impressed with a sense either of duty or dependence; he felt neither reverence nor love, grat.i.tude nor resignation: in abstaining from evil, he was not intentionally good; he practised the externals of morality without virtue, and performed the rituals of devotion without piety.

Such were ALMORAN and HAMET, when Solyman their father, full of days and full of honour, slept in peace the sleep of death. With this event they were immediately acquainted. The emotions of ALMORAN were such as it was impossible to conceal: the joy that he felt in secret was so great, that the mere dread of disappointment for a moment suspended his belief of what he heard: when his fears and his doubts gave way, his cheeks were suffused with sudden blushes, and his eyes sparkled with exultation and impatience: he looked eagerly about him, as if in haste to act; yet his looks were embarra.s.sed, and his gestures irresolute, because he knew not what to do: he uttered some incoherent sentences, which discovered at once the joy that he felt, and his sense of its impropriety; and his whole deportment expressed the utmost tumult and perturbation of mind.

Upon HAMET, the death of his father produced a very different effect: as soon as he heard it, his lips trembled and his countenance grew pale; he flood motionless a moment, like a pilgrim transfixed by lightning in the desert; he then smote his breast, and looking upward, his eyes by degrees overflowed with tears, and they fell, like dew distilling from the mountain, in a calm and silent shower. As his grief was thus mingled with devotion, his mind in a short time recovered its tranquillity, though not its chearfulness, and he desired to be conducted to his brother.

He found him surrounded by the lords of his court, his eye still restless and ardent, and his deportment elate and a.s.suming. HAMET pressed hastily through the circle, and prostrated himself before him: ALMORAN received the homage with a tumultuous pleasure; but at length raised him from the ground, and a.s.sured him of his protection, though without any expressions either of kindness or of sorrow: 'HAMET,' says he, 'if I have no cause to complain of you as a subject, you shall have no cause to complain of me as a king.' HAMET, whose heart was again pierced by the cold and distant behaviour of his brother, suppressed the sigh that struggled in his bosom, and secretly wiped away the tear that started to his eye: he retired, with his looks fixed upon the ground, to a remote corner of the apartment; and though his heart yearned to embrace his brother, his modest diffidence restrained him from intruding upon the king.

In this situation were ALMORAN and HAMET, when OMAR entered the apartment. OMAR, upon whose head the hand of time became heavy, had from his youth acquainted himself with wisdom: to him nature had revealed herself in the silence of the night, when his lamp was burning alone, and his eyes only were open: to him was known the power of the Seal of Solomon; and to him the knowlege of things invisible had been revealed.

Nor was the virtue of OMAR inferior to his knowlege; his heart was a fountain of good, which though it flowed through innumerable streams was never dry: yet was the virtue of OMAR cloathed with humility; and he was still pressing nearer to perfection, by a devotion which though elevated was rational, and though regular was warm. From the council of OMAR, Solyman had derived glory and strength; and to him he had committed the education of his children.

When he entered the apartment, the croud, touched at once with reverence and love, drew back; every eye was cast downward, and every tongue was silent. The full of days approached the king, and kneeling before him he put into his hand a sealed paper: the king received it with impatience, seeing it superscribed with the hand of his father; and OMAR looking round, and perceiving HAMET, beckoned him to come forward. HAMET, whose obedience to OMAR had been so long habitual that it was now almost spontaneous, instantly drew near, though with a flow and irresolute pace; and ALMORAN, having broken the seal of the paper, began to read it to himself, with a look that expressed the utmost anxiety and impatience. OMAR kept his eye fixed upon him, and soon perceived that his countenance was disfigured by confusion and trouble, and that he seemed preparing to put up the paper in his bosom: he then produced another paper from under his robe, and gave it to HAMET: 'This,' says he, is a copy of the will of Solyman, your father; the original is in the hand of ALMORAN: read it, and you will find that he has bequeathed his kingdom between you.'

The eyes of all present were now turned upon HAMET, who stood silent and motionless with amazement, but was soon roused to attention by the homage that was paid him. In the mean time, ALMORAN'S confusion increased every moment: his disappointment was aggravated by the sudden attention of those who were present to his brother; and his jealousy made him think himself neglected, while those acts of duty were performed to HAMET, which were now known to be his right, and which he had himself received before him.

HAMET, however, regarded but little what so much excited the envy of ALMORAN; his mind was employed upon superior objects, and agitated by n.o.bler pa.s.sions: the coldness of his brother's behaviour, though it had grieved had not quenched his affection; and as he was now no longer restrained by the deference due from a subject to his king, he ran to him, and catching him to his breast attempted to speak; but his heart was too full, and he could express his affection and joy only by his tears. ALMORAN rather suffered than received the embrace; and after a few ceremonies, to which neither of them could much attend, they retired to separate apartments.

CHAP. II.

When ALMORAN was alone, he immediately locked the door; and throwing himself upon a sofa in an agony of vexation and disapointment, of which he was unwilling there should be any witness, he revolved in his mind all the pleasures and honours of supreme dominion which had now suddenly been s.n.a.t.c.hed from him, with a degree of anguish and regret, not proportioned to their real, but their imaginary value. Of future good, that which we obtain is found to be less than our expectations; but that of which we are disappointed, we suppose would have been more: thus do the children of hope extract evil, both from what they gain, and from what they lose. But ALMORAN, after the first tumult of his mind had subsided, began to consider as well what was left him, as what had been taken away. He was still without a superior, though he had an equal; he was still a king, though he did not govern alone: and with respect to every individual in his dominions, except one, his will would now be a law; though with respect to the public, the concurrence of his brother would be necessary to give it force. 'Let me then,' says he, 'make the most of the power that is now put into my hand, and wait till some favourable opportunity shall offer to increase it. Let me dissemble my jealousy and disappointment, that I may not alarm suspicion, or put the virtues of HAMET upon their guard against me; and let me contrive to give our joint administration such a form, as may best favour my design.'

Such were the reflections, with which ALMORAN soothed the anguish of his mind; while HAMET was busied in speculations of a very different kind.

If he was pleased at reflecting, that he was raised from a subject to a prince; he was pleased still more, when he considered his elevation as a test of his father's affection to his person, and approbation of his conduct: he was also delighted with the thought, that his brother was a.s.sociated with him in the arduous talk which he was now called to perform. 'If I had been appointed to govern alone,' said he, 'I should have had no equal; and he who has no equal, though he may have faithful servants, can have no friend: there cannot be that union of interests, that equal partic.i.p.ation of good, that unrestrained intercourse of mind, and that mutual dependence, which const.i.tutes the pure and exalted happiness of friends.h.i.+p. With ALMORAN, I shall share the supreme delight of wresting the innocent and the helpless from the iron hand of oppression; of animating merit by reward, and restraining the unworthy by fear: I shall share, with ALMORAN, the pleasures of governing a numerous, a powerful, and a happy people; pleasures which, however great, are, like all others, increased by partic.i.p.ation.'

While HAMET was thus enjoying the happiness, which his virtue derived from the same source, from which the vices of ALMORAN had filled his breast with anguish and discontent; OMAR was contriving in what manner their joint government could best be carried into execution.

He knew that Solyman, having considered the dispositions of his sons, was of opinion, that if they had been blended in one person, they would have produced a character more fit to govern in his stead, than either of them alone: ALMORAN, he thought, was too volatile and warm; but he suspected, that HAMET would sink into inactivity for want of spirit: he feared alike ALMORAN'S love of enterprize, and HAMET'S fondness for retirement: he observed, in HAMET, a placid easiness of temper, which might suffer the reins of government to lie too loose; and, in ALMORAN, a quickness of resentment, and jealousy of command, which might hold them too tight: he hoped, therefore, that by leaving them a joint dominion, he should blend their dispositions, at least in their effects, in every act of government that should take place; or that, however they should agree to administer their government, the public would derive benefit from the virtues of both, without danger of suffering from their imperfections, as their imperfections would only operate against each other, while, in whatever was right, their minds would naturally concur, as the coincidence of rect.i.tude with rect.i.tude is necessary and eternal.

But he did not consider, that different dispositions operating separately upon two different wills, would appear in effects very unlike those, which they would concur to produce in one: that two wills, under the direction of dispositions so different, would seldom be brought to coincide; and that more mischiefs would probably arise from the contest, than from the imperfections of either alone.

But Solyman had so long applauded himself for his project before he revealed it to OMAR, that OMAR found him too much displeased with any objection, to consider its weight: and knowing that peculiar notions are more rarely given up, than opinions received from others, and made our own only by adoption, he at length acquiesced, lest he should by farther opposition lose his influence, which on other occasions he might still employ to the advantage of the public; and took a solemn oath, that he would, as far as was in his power, see the will carried into execution.

To this, indeed, he consented without much reluctance, as he had little less reason to fear the sole government of ALMORAN, than a joint administration; and if a struggle for superiority should happen, he hoped the virtues HAMET would obtain the suffrages of the people in his favour, and establish him upon the throne alone. But as change is itself an evil, and as changes in government are seldom produced without great confusion and calamity, he applied himself to consider in what manner the government of ALMORAN and HAMET could be administered, so as most effectually to blend their characters in their administration, and prevent the conduct of one from exciting jealousy in the other.

After much thought, he determined that a system of laws should be prepared, which the sons of Solyman should examine and alter till they perfectly approved, and to which they should then give the sanction of their joint authority: that when any addition or alteration should be thought necessary, it should be made in the same manner; and that when any insuperable difference of sentiment happened, either in this or in any act of prerogative independent of the laws for regulating the manners of the people, the kings should refer it to some person of approved integrity and wisdom, and abide by his determination. OMAR easily foresaw, that when the opinion of ALMORAN and HAMET should differ, the opinion of ALMORAN would be established; for there were many causes that would render ALMORAN inflexible, and HAMET yielding: ALMORAN was naturally confident and a.s.suming, HAMET diffident and modest; ALMORAN was impatient of contradiction, HAMET was attentive to argument, and felicitous only for the discovery of truth. ALMORAN also conceived, that by the will of his father, he had suffered wrong; HAMET, that he had received a favour: ALMORAN, therefore, was disposed to resent the first appearance of opposition; and HAMET, on the contrary, to acquiesce, as in his share of government, whatever it might be, he had more than was his right by birth, and his brother had less. Thus, therefore, the will of ALMORAN would probably predominate in the state: but as the same cause which conferred this superiority, would often prevent contention, OMAR considered it, upon the whole, rather as good than evil.

When he had prepared his plan, therefore, he sent a copy of it, by different messengers at the same time, both to ALMORAN and HAMET, inclosed in a letter, in which he exprest his sense of obligation to their father, and his zeal and affection for them: he mentioned the promise he had made, to devote himself to their service; and the oath he had taken, to propose whatever he thought might facilitate the accomplishment of their father's design, with honour to them and happiness to their people: these motives, which he could not resist without impiety, he hoped would absolve him from presumption; and trusting in the rect.i.tude of his intentions, he left the issue to G.o.d.

CHAP. III.

The receipt of this letter threw ALMORAN into another agony of indignation: he felt again the loss of his prerogative; the offer of advice he disdained as an insult, to which he had been injuriously subjected by the will of his father; and he was disposed to reject whatever was suggested by OMAR, even before his proposal was known. With this temper of mind he began to read, and at every paragraph took new offence; he determined, however, not to admit OMAR to the honour of a conference upon the subject, but to settle a plan of government with his brother, without the least regard to his advice.

A supercilious attention to minute formalities, is a certain indication of a little mind, conscious to the want of innate dignity, and felicitous to derive from others what it cannot supply to itself: as the scrupulous exaction of every trifling tribute discovers the weakness of the tyrant, who fears his claim should be disputed; while the prince, who is conscious of superior and indisputable power, and knows that the states he has subjugated do not dare to revolt, scarce enquires whether such testimonies of allegiance are given or not.

Thus, the jealousy of ALMORAN already enslaved him to the punctilios of state; and the most trifling circ.u.mstances involved him in perplexity, or fired him with resentment: the friends.h.i.+p and fidelity of OMAR stung him with rage, as insolent and intrusive; and though it determined him to an immediate interview with his brother, yet he was embarra.s.sed how to procure it. At first he rose, and was about to go to him; but he stopped short with disdain, upon reflecting, that it was an act of condescension which might be deemed an acknowledgement of superiority: he then thought of sending for HAMET to come to him; but this he feared might provoke him, as implying a denial of his equality: at length he determined to propose a meeting in the chamber of council, and was just dispatching an officer with the message, when HAMET entered the apartment.

The countenance of HAMET was flushed with joy, and his heart was warmed with the pleasing sensations of affection and confidence, by the same letter, from which ALMORAN had extracted the bitterness of jealousy and resentment, and as he had no idea that an act of courtesy to his brother could derogate from his own dignity or importance, he indulged the honest impatience of his heart to communicate the pleasure with which it overflowed: he was, indeed, somewhat disappointed, to find no traces of satisfaction in the countenance of ALMORAN, when he saw the same paper in his hand, which had impressed so much upon his own.

He waited some time after the first salutations, without mentioning the scheme of government he was come to concert; because having observed that ALMORAN was embarra.s.sed and displeased, he expected that he would communicate the cause, and pleased himself with the hope that he might remove it: finding, however, that this expectation was disappointed, he addressed him to this effect:

'How happy are we, my dear brother, in the wisdom and fidelity, of OMAR!

how excellent is the system of government that he has proposed! how easy and honourable will it be to us that govern, and how advantageous to the people that obey!'

'The advantages,' said ALMORAN, 'which you seem to have discovered, are not evident to me: tell me, then, what you imagine they are, and I will afterwards give you my opinion.'

'By establis.h.i.+ng a system of laws as the rule of government,' said HAMET, 'many evils will be avoided, and many benefits procured. If the law is the will only of the sovereign, it can never certainly be known to the people: many, therefore, may violate that rule of right, which the hand of the Almighty has written upon the living tablets of the heart, in the presumptuous hope, that it will not subject them to punishment; and those, by whom that rule is fulfilled, will not enjoy that consciousness of security, which they would derive from the protection of a prescribed law, which they have never broken. Neither will those who are inclined to do evil, be equally restrained by the fear of punishment; if neither the offence is ascertained, nor the punishment prescribed. One motive to probity, therefore, will be wanting; which ought to be supplied, as well for the sake of those who may be tempted to offend, as of those who may suffer by the offence.

Besides, he who governs not by a written and a public law, must either administer that government in person, or by others: if in person, he will sink under a labour which no man is able to sustain; and if by others, the inferiority of their rank must subject them to temptations which it cannot be hoped they will always resist, and to prejudices which it will perhaps be impossible for them to surmount. But to administer government by a law which ascertains the offence, and directs the punishment, integrity alone will be sufficient; and as the perversion of justice will in this case be notorious, and depend not upon opinion but fact, it will seldom be practised, because it will be easily punished.'

ALMORAN, who had heard the opinions of HAMET with impatience and scorn, now started from his feat with a proud and contemptuous aspect: he first glanced his eyes upon his brother; and then looking disdainfully downward, he threw back his robe, and stretching out his hand from him, 'Shall the son of Solyman,' said he, 'upon whose will the fate of nations was suspended, whose smiles and frowns were alone the criterions of right and wrong, before whom the voice of wisdom itself was silent, and the pride even of virtue humbled in the dust; shall the son of Solyman be harnessed, like a mule, in the trammels of law? shall he become a mere instrument to execute what others have devised? shall he only declare the determinations of a statute, and shall his ear be affronted by claims of right? It is the glory of a prince, to punish for what and whom he will; to be the sovereign, not only of property, but of life; and to govern alike without prescription or appeal.'