The Terrible Swift Sword of James Steerforth is a gargantuan, cultured nation, notable for its avant-garde cinema, pith helmet sales, and irreverence towards religion. The quiet, industrious population of 27.287 billion James Steerforthians are prohibited from doing almost everything except voting, which they do timidly and conservatively.

The medium-sized, moralistic, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Spirituality. The average income tax rate is 40.5%, but much higher for the wealthy.

The enormous but inefficient James Steerforthian economy, worth a remarkable 1,072 trillion $$s a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is fairly diversified, is led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with significant contributions from Information Technology, Furniture Restoration, and Automobile Manufacturing. Average income is 39,290 $$s, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The dish 'poisson avec poison' is only available on the black market, discarded pennies litter the streets, the sun rises an hour later on border communities, and the nation's police officers are famously miserable-looking. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. James Steerforth's national animal is the Dolly Varden, which can occasionally be seen sifting through garbage in the nation's cities.

James Steerforth is ranked 122,742^nd in the world and 1^st in International Trotskyist Alliance for Most Eco-Friendly Governments, scoring 631.38 on the Dolphin Recycling Awareness Index.