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132 him that he must certainly be defeated, he suddenly rose in his place, unfolded a paper, called a royal warrant, which had been entirely concocted by himself, without even the king's knowledge, and read to the astonished assembly a formal abrogation by the king of the dynasty of human kings and the substitution of a dynasty of turtles. Parliament was completely checkmated, but they did not resent this self-evident absurdity out of loyalty to the king who had just been superseded; and thus it was that the king of Colymbia formally deposed himself, though it was well known to all that he wished to do nothing of the sort, and had no cognizance of the matter until it was irrevocably accomplished.

The most curious part of the business is that the king accepted meekly his own deposition, and retired into private life without an effort to retain his throne; for, if it was a breach of loyalty in members to find fault with anything nominally done by the king, though he had actually nothing to do with it, so it was unconstitutional in the king to object to anything his ministers or parliament might do, however disagreeable to his feelings, however contrary to his inclinations it might be. Thus it was that parliament submitted to the dethronement of a king they wished to retain, and the king submitted to be dethroned, though he did not like it.

Under the turtle dynasty the same monarchical fiction is kept up, and all actions of the Government are still performed in the king's name—indeed, it made no difference whether the king was man or turtle, for the kingly power was but a name, and even the kingly will had long been nothing but a phrase.

I asked a gentleman who held an important office