Today, in honour of the recent festival of Thanksgiving Day in America, I bring you an uplifting tale of the early days of the fledgling United States.
The time was the 1620s, and the weather was very bad indeed. The captain of the tiny ship had intended to land on the sunny shores of Virginia, the new colony named after tobacco, but stormy conditions had driven them hundreds of miles north to a country so bleak and hostile that they called it New England.
"Well, we have a choice," said the captain. "Either we land here in painful safety and make the best of it, or we struggle south again towards the sun and risk destruction."
The passengers, who had all paid for their passage and therefore were deemed to have a voice each, took a vote on it and found they were split in half. Another show of hands received the same result.
"Just a moment !" said a voice from the back. "I showed my hand too, but as I am so small nobody saw it."
The voice belonged to a diminutive passenger called Earnshaw, from Yorkshire, who was a lawyer.
"Then let us vote again," said a clergyman.
"Not so !" said Earnshaw. "As a lawyer, I must insist that my vote be added to one side and that side be declared the winner!"
"And which side do you vote for?" said the chaplain.
"Well" said the lawyer, "may I say, before declaring my voting intentions, that it is consonant with the demands of justice that the decision we reach today..."
But before he could finish his sentence, the storm blew the ship on to the shore and his vote became unnecessary. Luckily, all lives and most of the contents of the ship were saved, and they set up a makeshift camp on the shore where they were befriended by well-meaning natives. These natives showed them how to cook a turkey, and make peanut butter, and dispose of chewing gum hygienically, and many other practical things, and in return the newcomers showed the natives how to use guns, whisky and the Bible.
One day the newcomers held a meeting to discuss their future.
"My feeling," said the ship's captain, whose authority was only slightly diminished by the loss of his ship," is that we need more land for the cultivation of food, and that having claimed this land for King James we are entitled to more territory."
"Just a moment!" said a stranger, who had been listening from the back. "You have no legal entitlement to any land and nor does your chief, King James. May I argue that before any land dispute, we first settle the legal entitlement of you people to be here at all...."
"And who may you be?" said Earnshaw the lawyer.
The young man drew himself up proudly.
"I am a brave of the tribe that lives here. I have been trained in tribal lore and my name is Running Caveat."
"I submit, sir," said Earnshaw the lawyer, "that Brave Running Caveat may be an honourable gentleman in private life, even if he is dressed somewhat skimpily by our standards, but that he has no legal standing in this meeting, which has been called by the British colonists, and that he should be ejected."
"I counter-submit," said Running Caveat," that as the discussion has a direct bearing on the fate of the land which has been held by our forefathers for as long as history holds, our tribe has a right to be represented here."
"May I counter-counter-submit," said Earnshaw the lawyer, "that my learned colleague Brave Running Caveat and his tribe have no perpetual right to their land if they cannot look after it properly."
"Meaning?" said Running Caveat.
"That the smoke from your cooking fires, and from the fires which you build to send smoke signals, and which blow constantly in our direction, constitute a health hazard which are in contravention of our natural rights, and that furthermore these emissions will in time poison the atmosphere..."
"What right have you Europeans to come over here and tell us indigenous Americans how to order our domestic arrangements?" said Running Caveat. "I hereby apply for an injunction ..."
It was at this point that all present, enraged beyond measure, rose up and slew both men, and all other lawyers they could lay their hands on. For a short while America was free. But the next boat from England brought a fresh load of lawyers, and history resumed its course.
