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32 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift · Classic Adventure Books Collection

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  Chapter five, the author, at his master's command, informs him of the
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  state of England, the causes of war among the princes of Europe. The
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  author begins to explain the English Constitution. The reader may please to observe that
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  the following extract of many conversations I had with my master contains a summary of
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  the most material points which were discoursed at several times for above two years,
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  his honor, often desiring fuller satisfaction, as I farther improved in the Whuinnham
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  tongue I laid before him as well as I could. The whole state of
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  Europe I discoursed, of trade and manufacturers, of arts and sciences. And
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  the answers I gave to all the questions he made as they arose upon several
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  subjects were a fund of conversation not to be exhausted. But I shall here
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  only set down the substance of what passed between us concerned my own country,
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  reducing it in order as well as I can, without any regard to time
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  or other circumstances. While I strictly adhere to truth, my only concern is
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  that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master's arguments and expressions,
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  which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by
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  a translation into our barbarous English. In obedience therefore to his Honor's commands,
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  I related to in the revolution under the Prince of Orange, the long war
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  with France, entered into by the said Prince and renewed by his successor,
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  the present Queen, wherein the greatest powers of Christiandom were engaged, and which
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  still continued. I computed, at his request that about a million yard whose
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  might have been killed in the whole progress of it, and perhaps a hundred
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  or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk.
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  He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go
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  to war with another? I answered they were innumerable, but I should only
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  mention a few of the chief Sometimes the ambition of princes who never think they
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  have land or people enough to govern. Sometimes a corruption of ministers who engage
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  their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamor of the
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  subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives.
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  For instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh, Whether
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  the jews of a certain berry be blood or wine, whether whistling be a
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  vice or a virtue, Whether it be better to kiss a post or throw
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  it into the fire. What is the best color for a coat, whether
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  black, white, red, or gray? And whether it should be long
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  or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean? With many more.
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  Neither are any war so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance,
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  as are those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in
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  things indifferent. Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them
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  shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any
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  right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the other should quarrel with
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  him. Sometimes the war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong,
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  and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbors want the things which
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  we have, or have the things which we want, and we both fight
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  till they take hours or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause
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  of war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine,
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  destroyed by pestilence or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter
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  into a war against our nearest, ally when one of his towns lies convenient
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  for us, or a territory of land that should render our dominions round and
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  complete. If a prince end's forces into a nation, whether people are poor
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  and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death and make slaves
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  of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarious ways
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  of living. It is very kingly honorable and frequent practice when one prince desires
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  the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant,
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  when he is driven out the invader should seize on the dominions himself and kill,
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  in prison, or banish the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by
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  blood or marriage is a frequent cause of war between princes and the nearer.
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  The kindred is, the greater their disposition to quarrel. Poor nations are hungry,
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  and rich nations are proud, and pride and hunger will ever be at
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  variance. For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held to the
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  most honorable of all others, because a soldier is a yahoo hired to kill
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  in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him,
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  as possibly he can. There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in
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  Europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops
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  to richer nations for so much a day to each man, of which they
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  keep three fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their maintenance.
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  Such are those in many northern parts of Europe. What you have told
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  me, said my master, upon the subject of war, does indeed discover
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  most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to. However, it is
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  happy that the shame is greater than the danger, and that nature has left
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  you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For your mouth lying flat with your
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  faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent.
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  Then, as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they
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  are so short and tender that one of our yahoos would drive a dozen of
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  yours before him. And therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who have
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  been killed in battle, I cannot but think you have said the thing which
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  is not. I could not forbear, shaking my head and smiling a little
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  at his ignorance, and being no stranger to the art of war, I
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  gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols,
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  bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks,
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  undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand
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  men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying, groans, limbs flying
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  in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death underhorle his
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  feet, flight, pursuit, victory, fields strewed with carcasses left for food
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  to dogs and wolves and birds of prey, plundering, stripping, ravishing,
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  burning and destroying, And to set forth the valor of my own dear countrymen.
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  I assured him that I had seen them blown up a hundred enemies at
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  once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the
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  dead bodies dropped down in pieces from the clouds to the great diversion of the
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  spectators. I was going on to more particulars when my master commanded me silence.
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  He said, whoever understood the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible
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  for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named,
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  if their strength and cunning equal to their malice. But as my discourse had
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  increased his abhorrence of the whole species, he found it gave him a disturbance
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  in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his
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  ears, being used to such abominable words, might by degrees admit them with
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  less detestation. That although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he
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  no more blamed them for their odious qualities than he did a guneur, a
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  bird of prey for its cruelty, or a sharp stone cutting his hoof.
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  But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he
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  dreaded lest the corruption of that facility might be worse than brutality itself. He
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  seemed therefore confidant that instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality
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  fitted to increase on natural vices, as the reflection from a troubled stream returns
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  the image of an ill shapen body not only larger but more distorted. He
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  added that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in
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  this and some former discourses. There was another point which a little perplexed him.
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  At present I had informed him that some of our crew left their country
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  on account of being ruined by law, that I had already explained the meaning
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  of the word. But he was at a loss how it should come to
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  pass that the law, which was intended for every man's preservation, should be
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  any man's ruin. Therefore, he desired to be further satisfied what I meant
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  by law and the dispenses thereof, according to the present practice of my own
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  country, because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guide for a reasonable animal,
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  as we pretended to be, in showing us what he ought to do
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  and what to avoid. I assured his honor that the law was a science
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  in which I had not much conversed, further than by apploying advocates in vain
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  upon some injustices that had been done me. However, I would give him
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  all the satisfaction I was able. I said, there was a society of
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  men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by
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  words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black as white.
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  According as they are paid to this society, all the rest of the
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  people are slaves. For example, if my neighbor has a mind to my
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  cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow
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  from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being
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  against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself.
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  Now in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie
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  under two great disadvantages. First, my lawyer, being practiced almost from his
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  cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be
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  an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office. He always attempts with
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  great awkwardness, if not with ill will. The second disadvantage is that my
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  lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the
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  judges and abhorred by his brethren as one that would lessen the practice of the
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  law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The
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  first is to gain my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then
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  betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second
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  ways for my lawyer to make my case appear as unjust as he can by
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  allowing the cow to belong to my adversary. And this, if it be
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  skillfully done, will certainly bespeak the favor of the bench. Now, your
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  honor is to know that these judges are persons appointed to decide or controversies of
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  property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from
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  the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been
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  biased all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity
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  of favoring fraud, perjury, and oppression that I have known some of them
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  refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the
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  faculty by doing anything unbecoming their nature or their office. It is a maxim
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  among these lawyers that whatever has been done before may legally be done again,
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  and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common
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  justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedence,
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  they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges
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  never fail of directing accordingly. In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the
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  merits of the cause, but allowed violent and tedious in dwelling upon all circumstances
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  which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned,
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  they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my
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  cow, but whether the said cow are red or black, her horns long
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  or short, whether the field I graze her in be round or square,
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  whether she was milked at home or abroad, what diseases she is subject to,
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  and the like after which they consult precedents, adjoin the cause from time
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  to time, and in ten, twenty or thirty years come to an issue.
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  It is likewise to be observed that this society has a peculiar cant and
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  jargon of their own that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their
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  laws are written, which they take special care to multiply. Whereby they have
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  wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood of right and wrong, so
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  that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my
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  ancestors for six generations belongs to me or to a stranger three hundred miles off.
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  In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state. The method
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  is much more short and commendable. The judge first ends to sound the disposition
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  of those in power, after which he can easily hang or say the criminal,
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  strictly preserving all due forms of law. Here my Master, in deposing,
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  said, it was a pity that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of
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  mind, as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must
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  certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructures of others in wisdom and
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  knowledge. In answer to which I assured his Honor that in all points out
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  of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among
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  us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and
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  learning, and equally disposed to pervert to the general reason of mankind in every
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  other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession. Earned a
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  Part four, Chapter five