Gulliver's Travels

further account of the academy. The author proposes some
improvements, which are honourably received.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the
professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which
is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people
were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites
upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching
ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great
abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true
interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their
people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them,
with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before
into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old
observation, “that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational,
which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.”

But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the Academy, as
to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. There was a most
ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature
and system of government. This illustrious person had very usefully
employed his studies, in finding out effectual remedies for all
diseases and corruptions to which the several kinds of public
administration are subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who
govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey. For
instance: whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is
a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political
body; can there be any thing more evident, than that the health of both
must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions?
It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with
redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of
the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous
contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the
right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous
tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations:
with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others,
needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, “that upon the
meeting of the senate, certain physicians should attend it the three
first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day’s debate feel
the pulses of every senator; after which, having maturely considered
and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies, and the methods
of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate house,
attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines; and before
the members sat, administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives,
abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives,
cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several
cases required; and, according as these medicines should operate,
repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next meeting.”

This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and might
in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in
those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power;
beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now
closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of
the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid,
and damp the pert.

Again, because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of
princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor
proposed, “that whoever attended a first minister, after having told
his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words,
should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose,
or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by
both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and
blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same
operation, till the business were done, or absolutely refused.”

He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a
nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence
of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if
that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of
the public.”

When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance
to reconcile them. The method is this: You take a hundred leaders of
each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are
nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of
each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be
equally divided. Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged,
applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems indeed to
be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor assured us,
“that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible.”
For he argued thus: “that the two half brains being left to debate the
matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon
come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as
regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those,
who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its
motion: and as to the difference of brains, in quantity or quality,
among those who are directors in faction,” the doctor assured us, from
his own knowledge, that “it was a perfect trifle.”

I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most
commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without
grieving the subject. The first affirmed, “the justest method would be,
to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed upon every
man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his
neighbours.” The second was of an opinion directly contrary; “to tax
those qualities of body and mind, for which men chiefly value
themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to the degrees of
excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own
breast.” The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites
of the other sex, and the assessments, according to the number and
nature of the favours they have received; for which, they are allowed
to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness, were likewise
proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by
every person’s giving his own word for the quantum of what he
possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should
not be taxed at all; because they are qualifications of so singular a
kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them
in himself.

The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill
in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the men, to be
determined by their own judgment. But constancy, chastity, good sense,
and good nature, were not rated, because they would not bear the charge
of collecting.

To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the
members should raffle for employments; every man first taking an oath,
and giving security, that he would vote for the court, whether he won
or not; after which, the losers had, in their turn, the liberty of
raffling upon the next vacancy. Thus, hope and expectation would be
kept alive; none would complain of broken promises, but impute their
disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and
stronger than those of a ministry.

Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for
discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised
great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons;
their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand
they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements,
and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the
crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts
and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent,
as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment; for,
in such conjunctures, when he used, merely as a trial, to consider
which was the best way of murdering the king, his ordure would have a
tincture of green; but quite different, when he thought only of raising
an insurrection, or burning the metropolis.

The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many
observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I
conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the author,
and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions. He
received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among
writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing “he
would be glad to receive further information.”

I told him, “that in the kingdom of Tribnia, [454a] by the natives
called Langden, [454b] where I had sojourned some time in my travels,
the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers,
witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers,
together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all
under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and
their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship
of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound
politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle
or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures;
and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best
answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among
them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then,
effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put
the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists,
very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words,
syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool,
to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an
invader; a codshead; a ——; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a
prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of
state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a
broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a
treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed,
a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the
administration. [455]

“When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the
learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can
decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N. shall
signify a plot; B. a regiment of horse; L. a fleet at sea; or,
secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected
paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party.
So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother
Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that
the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the
following words, ‘Resist, a plot is brought home; The tour.’ And this
is the anagrammatic method.”

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these
observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his
treatise.

I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer
continuance, and began to think of returning home to England.