Gulliver's Travels

he author’s love of his country. He makes a proposal of much advantage
to the king, which is rejected. The king’s great ignorance in politics.
The learning of that country very imperfect and confined. The laws, and
military affairs, and parties in the state.

Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from
concealing this part of my story. It was in vain to discover my
resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced
to rest with patience, while my noble and beloved country was so
injuriously treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers can
possibly be, that such an occasion was given: but this prince happened
to be so curious and inquisitive upon every particular, that it could
not consist either with gratitude or good manners, to refuse giving him
what satisfaction I was able. Yet thus much I may be allowed to say in
my own vindication, that I artfully eluded many of his questions, and
gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the
strictness of truth would allow. For I have always borne that laudable
partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with so
much justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties
and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and
beauties in the most advantageous light. This was my sincere endeavour
in those many discourses I had with that monarch, although it
unfortunately failed of success.

But great allowances should be given to a king, who lives wholly
secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether
unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other
nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices,
and a certain narrowness of thinking, from which we, and the politer
countries of Europe, are wholly exempted. And it would be hard indeed,
if so remote a prince’s notions of virtue and vice were to be offered
as a standard for all mankind.

To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable
effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which
will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into
his majesty’s favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered between
three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap
of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in
a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up
in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder.
That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of
brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or
lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its
force. That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy
whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the
ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of
the sea, and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts
and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste
before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of
iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were
besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces,
burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all
who came near. That I knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap
and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could
direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to
all other things in his majesty’s kingdom, and the largest need not be
above a hundred feet long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged
with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the
walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy
the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute
commands.” This I humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of
acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks that I had received, of his
royal favour and protection.

The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those
terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. “He was amazed, how so
impotent and grovelling an insect as I” (these were his expressions)
“could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to
appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I
had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines;
whereof,” he said, “some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been
the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few
things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature,
yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a
secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention
any more.”

A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince
possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem;
of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with
admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a
nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception,
let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him
absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his
people! Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from
the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am
sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion
of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen
from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a
science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. For, I remember
very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to
say, “there were several thousand books among us written upon the art
of government,” it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very
mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and
despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a
minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an
enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the case. He confined the
knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and
reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and
criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth
considering. And he gave it for his opinion, “that whoever could make
two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground
where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do
more essential service to his country, than the whole race of
politicians put together.”

The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be
allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may
be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all
mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as
to ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never
drive the least conception into their heads.

No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in
their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But indeed few
of them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most
plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough
to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any
law, is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes, or
proceedings against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they
have little reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.

They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of
mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king,
which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand
volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had
liberty to borrow what books I pleased. The queen’s joiner had
contrived in one of Glumdalclitch’s rooms, a kind of wooden machine
five-and-twenty feet high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps
were each fifty feet long. It was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the
lowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber.
The book I had a mind to read, was put up leaning against the wall: I
first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face
towards the book, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the
right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the
lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of my eyes, and then
descending gradually till I came to the bottom: after which I mounted
again, and began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over
the leaf, which I could easily do with both my hands, for it was as
thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in the largest folios not above
eighteen or twenty feet long.

Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they
avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various
expressions. I have perused many of their books, especially those in
history and morality. Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little
old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch’s bed chamber, and
belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in
writings of morality and devotion. The book treats of the weakness of
humankind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the
vulgar. However, I was curious to see what an author of that country
could say upon such a subject. This writer went through all the usual
topics of European moralists, showing “how diminutive, contemptible,
and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend
himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how
much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed,
by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry.” He added, “that
nature was degenerated in these latter declining ages of the world, and
could now produce only small abortive births, in comparison of those in
ancient times.” He said “it was very reasonable to think, not only that
the species of men were originally much larger, but also that there
must have been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by
history and tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and
skulls, casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding
the common dwindled race of men in our days.” He argued, “that the very
laws of nature absolutely required we should have been made, in the
beginning of a size more large and robust; not so liable to destruction
from every little accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone
cast from the hand of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook.” From
this way of reasoning, the author drew several moral applications,
useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. For my own
part, I could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was
spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of
discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature. And I
believe, upon a strict inquiry, those quarrels might be shown as
ill-grounded among us as they are among that people.

As to their military affairs, they boast that the king’s army consists
of a hundred and seventy-six thousand foot, and thirty-two thousand
horse: if that may be called an army, which is made up of tradesmen in
the several cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are
only the nobility and gentry, without pay or reward. They are indeed
perfect enough in their exercises, and under very good discipline,
wherein I saw no great merit; for how should it be otherwise, where
every farmer is under the command of his own landlord, and every
citizen under that of the principal men in his own city, chosen after
the manner of Venice, by ballot?

I have often seen the militia of Lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise, in
a great field near the city of twenty miles square. They were in all
not above twenty-five thousand foot, and six thousand horse; but it was
impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of
ground they took up. A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might be
about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a
word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the
air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so
astonishing! It looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were
darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky.

I was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no
access from any other country, came to think of armies, or to teach his
people the practice of military discipline. But I was soon informed,
both by conversation and reading their histories; for, in the course of
many ages, they have been troubled with the same disease to which the
whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for
power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion. All
which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been
sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have more than
once occasioned civil wars; the last whereof was happily put an end to
by this prince’s grandfather, in a general composition; and the
militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in
the strictest duty.