GULLIVER’S
TRAVELS
PART 15
CHAPTER VII.
The 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 mine 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 human kind, 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 grand-father, in a general composition; and the
militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in the
strictest duty.
To be continued
