The power of one
Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I have wished for such a tongue of oratory that might enable me to celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits and felicity.
I do proclaim my country thus: Our dominions consist of one large and one small island which is composed of six mighty kingdoms, besides our territories. Our soil, when it bloweth not away, is nourished by the most various of climates. Governance rests in an assembly of gentlemen and some few ladies, all freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities, and love of their peers, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation. These then are the very ornament and bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of the most renowned principles held dear by our forbears, whose honour has never once been known to degenerate.
From among these is promoted one special person, as part of that assembly, under the title of prime minister, whose peculiar business it is to instruct the people in how they should be governed. The present personage so titled was deservedly distinguished not only for his depth of erudition and command of the subtleties of our sometimes colourful dialect but also through his prudent management of the nation's treasury.
By dint of principle and vision this man is known to us all as a true believer because he believeth in us all. In such an imperial figure free of avarice, partiality and want, the nation can invest its highest ideals and hopes for the future.
The Right Honourable Paul John Keating, MHR (ALP) for Blaxland, was searched and sought out through the whole nation to become the people's champion, to supply the assembly from the bloodline of its many battlers, thereby sustaining the people's great love for its parliament and their desire to be ruled by its ways.
Such is the people's public spirit that they hang on their minister's every word, which is duly reported to them on many occasions during each day; for the people value his counsel and choose to celebrate his goodness through frequent laudatious outpourings in their many journals.
The degree of honour they bear him and the faithfulness of their loyalty maketh his party at his unchallenged command; for those who may dare to caucus against him do so at their own peril, for his vision is such as to remake our own fair land through the vehicle of his own will and the servility of his followers. In this figure the promise of our people is borne up from the drudgery of its many lives, and we fear ever to lose his confidence, for our champion is vengeful and will bludgeon opponents to enforce his vision of the nation carried forth in the conviction of his belief in the promise of our magnificent endeavour.
Sometimes he doth suggest that his forbearance in us doth waver and with a quality of acrimony that doth touch our very souls he doth threaten us with dissolution. You can but imagine, dear reader, the horrors with which such prospect invests our brains. Only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres — the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice and ambition could produce — lie in wait for us if we were to forgo his pleasure and if he were to elect another people to lie within his governance.
Thus my own dear country settles its affairs by preferring the evil that is known unto its citizens rather than the one that is not. Such, dear reader, is the summation of the cause of our felicity herein described above, for it is only made possible by offering due deference to the power of one.
Dave Riley