"'Eleemosynary?"" The lawyer raised his eyebrows.
"It's a fancy word for 'charitable."" He saw that meant a nothing to Jeremiah either, simplified again: " 'Giving to those who lack." What are you looking at, anyhow?"
Jeremiah held up a law book, wondering if he was in trouble.
Douglas only said, "Oh," and returned to the brief a he was drafting.
When he was done, he sanded the ink dry, set the paper aside, and pulled a slim volume from the shelf (by this time, things were easy to find).
He offered the book to Jeremiah. "Here, try this. You have to walk before you can run."
"The Articles of Independence of the Federated Commonwealths and the Terms of Their Federation," Jeremiah read aloud.
"Al else springs from those," Douglas said. "Without - them, we'd have only chaos, or a tyrant as they do these days in England.
But go through them and understand them point by point, and you've made a fair beginning toward - becoming a Iawyer."
Jeremiah stared at him. "There's no nigger lawyers in Portsmouth." He spoke with assurance; he had gotten to know the black part of town well.
It boasted scores of preachers, a few doctors, even a printer, but no lawyers.
"I know there aren't," Douglas said. "Perhaps there should be."
When Jeremiah asked him what he meant, he changed the subject, as if afraid he had said too much.
The book Douglas gave Jeremiah perplexed and astonished him at the same time. "This is how the government is put together?" he asked the lawyer after he had struggled through the first third.
"So it is." Douglas looked at him keenly, as if his next question was to be some kind of test. "What do you think of it?"
"I think it's purely crazy, begging your pardon," Jeremiah blurted.
Douglas said nothing, waiting for him to go on. He fumbled ahead, trying to clarify his feelings: "The censors each with a veto on the other one, the Popular Assembly chose by all the free people and the senators by-I forgot how the senators happen."
"Censors and commonwealth governors become senators for life after their terms end," Douglas supplied.
Jeremiah smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.
"That's right. And the censors enforce the laws-and lead the armies, but only if the Senate decides to spend the money the armies need. And it's the Popular Assembly that makes the laws (if the Senate agrees) and decides if it's peace or war It in the first place. If you ask me, Mr.
Douglas, I don't think any one of 'em knows for certain he can fart without checking the Terms of Federation first."
"That's also why we have courts," Douglas smiled.
"Why do you suppose the Conscript Fathers arranged things this way?
Remember, after we won our freedom from England, we could have done anything we wanted."
Having had scant occasion to think about politics before, Jeremiah took a long time to answer. When he did, all he could remember was the discussion Charles Gil en and ' Harry Stowe had had the spring before.
"For the sake of argufying?" he guessed.
To his surprise, Douglas said, "You know, you're not far wrong.
They tried to strike a balance, so everyone would have some power and no one group could get enough to take anybody else's freedom away. The Conscript Fathers modeled our government on the mixed constitution the Roman Republic had. You know who the Romans were, don't you, Jeremiah?"
"They crucified Jesus, a long time ago," Jeremiah said, exhausting his knowledge of the subject.
"So they did, but they were also fine lawyers and good, practical men of affairs, not showy like the Greeks, but effective, and able to rule a large state for a long time. If we do half so well, we'll have something to be proud of."
The discussion broke off there, because Zachary Hayes came in to borrow a book. Now that Jeremiah had Douglas's Iibrary in order, Hayes stopped by every couple of weeks. He never showed any sign of recognizing why he had more luck these days, and spoke directly to Jeremiah only when he could not help it.
This time, he managed to avoid even looking at the black man.
Instead, he said to Douglas, "If you don't mind, you'll see me more often, Alfred. I've a new young man studying d under me, and long since gave away my most basic texts." "No trouble at all, Zachary," Douglas assured him. Once Hayes was gone, Douglas rolled his eyes. "That buzzard never gave away anything, except maybe the clap. I guaran- a tee you he sold his old books, probably for more than he paid for them too; no denying he's able." Jeremiah did not answer. He was deep in the Terms of Federation again. Once the Conscript Fathers had outlined the Federated Commonwealths's self-regulating government, they went on to set further limits on what it could do.
Reading those limits, Jeremiah began to have a sense of what Douglas had meant by practical ruling. Each restriction was prefaced by a brief explanation of why it wasn’t needed "Establishing dogmas having proven in history to engender civic strife, followers of all faiths shall be forever free to fol ow their own beliefs without let or hindrance."
"So that free men shal not live in fear of the state and its agents and form conspiracies against them, no indiscriminate searches of persons or property shall be permitted." - "To keep the state from the risk of tyranny worse than external subjugation, no foreign mercenaries shal be hired, but liberty shal depend on the vigilance of the free men of the nation."
On and on the book went, checking the government for the benefit of the free man. Jeremiah finished it with a strange mixture of admiration and anger. So much talk of freedom, and not a word against slavery! It was as though the Conscript Fathers had not noticed it existed.
Conscious of his own daring, Jeremiah remarked on that to Douglas.
The lawyer nodded. "Slavery has been with us since Greek and Roman times, and you can search the Bible from one end to the other without finding a word against it.
And, of course, when Englishmen came to America, they found the sims. No one would say the sims should not serve us."
Jeremiah almost blurted, "But I'm no sim" Then he remembered Douglas thought him free. He did say, "Sims is different than men."
"There you are right," Douglas said, sounding uncommanly serious. "The difference makes me wonder about our laws at times, it truly does."
Jeremiah hoped he would go on, but when he did, it was not in the vein the black had expected: "Of course, one could argue as well that the sims manifest inequality only points up subtler differences among various groups of men."
Disgusted, Jeremiah found an excuse to knock off early. One thing he had learned about lawyers was that they delighted in argument for its own sake, without much caring about right and wrong.
He had thought Douglas different, but right now he seemed the same as the rest.
A gang of sims came by, moving slowly under the weigh t of the heavy timbers on their shoulders. He glowered at their hairy backs.
Too many white men were like Zachary J Hayes, lumping sims and blacks together because most blacks were slaves.
As it had back on Charles Gil en's estate, that rankled. He was no subhuman . . . and if Hayes doubted what blacks really were, let him get a sim instead of the fancy cook he owned! Soon enough he'd be skeletal, not just lean. Jeremiah grinned, liking the notion.
Another party of sims emerged from a side street. This group was carrying sacks of beans. Neither gang made any effort to get out of the other's way. In an instant, they were hopelessly tangled. Traffic snarled. Because al the sims had their hands full, they could not use their signs to straighten out the mess. Their native hoots and cal s were not adequate for the job. Indeed, they made matters worse.
The sims glared at each other, peeling back their lips to bare their big yellow teeth and grimacing horribly.
"Call the guards!" a nervous man shouted, and several others took up the cry. Jeremiah ducked down an alleyway.