So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any pride in anything, it is in the absolute level which characterizes their political and social order.  They profess to be the only true republicans in the solar system.  The fundamental articles of their Constitution are these: 

All Saturnians are born equal, live equal, and die equal.

All Saturnians are born free,—­free, that is, to obey the rules laid down for the regulation of their conduct, pursuits, and opinions, free to be married to the person selected for them by the physiological section of the government, and free to die at such proper period of life as may best suit the convenience and general welfare of the community.

The one great industrial product of Saturn is the bread-root.  The Saturnians find this wholesome and palatable enough; and it is well they do, as they have no other vegetable.  It is what I should call a most uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and drink, having juice enough, so that they get along without water.  They have a tough, dry grass, which, matted together, furnishes them with clothes sufficiently warm for their cold-blooded constitutions, and more than sufficiently ugly.

A piece of ground large enough to furnish bread-root for ten persons is allotted to each head of a household, allowance being made for the possible increase of families.  This, however, is not a very important consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race.  The great object of life being the product of the largest possible quantity of bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger sex, females are considered an undesirable addition to society.  The one thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality.  The whole object of their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in everything,—­social relations, property, so far as they can be said to have anything which can be so called, mode of living, dress, and all other matters.  It is their boast that nobody ever starved under their government.  Nobody goes in rags, for the coarse-fibred grass from which they fabricate their clothes is very durable. (I confess I wondered how a woman could live in Saturn.  They have no looking-glasses.  There is no such article as a ribbon known among them.  All their clothes are of one pattern.  I noticed that there were no pockets in any of their garments, and learned that a pocket would be considered prima facie evidence of theft, as no honest person would have use for such a secret receptacle.) Before the revolution which established the great law of absolute and lifelong equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own private tables.  Since the regeneration of society all meals are taken in common.  The last relic of barbarism was the use of plates,—­one or even more to each individual.  This “odious relic of an effete civilization,” as they called it, has long been superseded by oblong hollow receptacles,