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15 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift · Classic Adventure Books Library

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  Chapter seven, the author's love of his country. He makes a proposal of
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  much advantage to the king, which is rejected the king's great ignorance in politics,
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  the learning of that country, very imperfect and confined, the laws and
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  military affairs and parties in the state. Nothing but an extreme love of truth
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  could have hindered me from concealing this part of my story. It was in
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  vain to discover my resentments, which were always turned into ridicule, and I
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  was forced to rest with patience while my noble and beloved country was so injuriously
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  treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers can possibly be
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  that such an occasion was given. But this prince happened to be so curious
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  and inquisitive upon every particular that it could not consist, either with gratitude or
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  good manners to refuse giving him what satisfaction I want. Yet, thus much
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  I may be allowed to say in my own vindication that I artfully eluded many
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  of his questions and gave to every point a more favorable turn by many degrees.
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  Then the strictness of truth would allow, For I have always borne that
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  laudable partiality to my own country which Dionysius Halicarnassus, with so much justice,
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  recommends to a historian. I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political
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  mother and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light. This was
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  my sincere endeavor in those many discourses I had with that monarch, although it
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  unfortunately failed a success. But great allowances should be given to a king who
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  lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether
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  unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other nations, the want
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  of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices and a certain narrowness of thinking,
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  for which we and the politer countries of Europe are wholly exempt. And it
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  would be hard, indeed, if so remote of Prince's notions of virtue and
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  vice were to be offered as a standard for all mankind. To confirm what
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  I have now said, and further to show the miserable effects of confined education,
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  I shall hear in cert a passage which will hardly obtain belief. In
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  hopes to ingratiate myself further into His Majesty's favor, I told him of an
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  invention discovered between three and four hundred years ago to make a certain powder into
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  a heap of which the smallest spark of fire falling would kindle the whole in
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  a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it
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  all fly up in the air, together with a noise and agitation greater than
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  thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder, rammed into a hollow tube
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  of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of
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  iron or lead with such violence and speed as nothing was able to sustain its
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  force, that the largest balls thus discharged would not only destroy whole ranks of
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  an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink
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  down ships with a thousand men in each to the bottom of the sea,
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  and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging,
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  divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them.
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  That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron and discharge them
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  by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the
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  pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side,
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  dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I knew the
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  ingredients very well, which were cheap and common, I understood the manner of
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  compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes of a
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  size proportional to all other things in His Majesty's kingdom, and the largest need
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  not be above a hundred feet long, twenty or thirty of which tubes,
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  charged with the proper quantity of powder and bulls, would batter down the walls
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  of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the
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  whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands. This
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  I humbly offered to His Majesty as a small tribute of acknowledgment, in turn
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  for so many marks that I had received of his royal favor and protection.
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  The King was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible
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  engines and the proposal I had made. He was amazed, how so impotent
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  and groveling an insector's eye, these were his expressions could entertain such inhuman ideas,
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  and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at the scenes
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  of blood and desolation, which I had painted as the common effects of those
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  destructive machines, whereof he said, some evil genius enemy to mankind, must
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  have been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested that although a
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  few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature,
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  yet he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret,
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  which he commanded me as I valued my life, never to mention any
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  more a strange effect of narrow principles and views, that the Prince, possessed
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  of airrequality, which procures venetration, love and esteem, of strong parts,
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  great wisdom and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by
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  his subjects, should from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we
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  can have no conception let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have
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  made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of
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  his people. Neither do I say this with the least intention to distract from
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  the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character I am sensible, will
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  on this account be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader.
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  But I take this defect among them to have ridden and from their ignorance,
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  by not having Hithero reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits
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  of Europe have done. For I remember very well in a discourse one day
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  with the King, when I happened to say that there were several thousand books
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  among us written upon the art of government. It gave him, directly contrary
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  to my intention, a very mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both
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  to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a
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  prince or a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of
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  state where an enemy or some rival nation were not in the case. He
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  confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds to common sense and reason,
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  to justice and leniity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes,
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  with some other obvious topics which are not worth considering, And he gave it
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  for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of
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  grass to grow upon a spot of ground where any one grew before, would
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  deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the
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  whole race of politicians put together. The learning of this people is very defective,
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  consisting only a morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they
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  must be allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly apply to
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  what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all
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  mechanical arts, so that among us it would be little esteemed. And as
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  to ideas, entreaties, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive the
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  least conception into their heads. No law in that country must exceed in words
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  the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty.
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  But indeed few of them extend even to that length. They are expressed
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  in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough
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  to discover above one interpretation, and to write a comment upon any law is
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  a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes or proceedings against criminals,
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  their precedents are so few that they have little reason to boast of any
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  extraordinary skill in either. They have had the art of printing as well as
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  the Chinese time out of mind. But their libraries are not very large.
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  For that of the King, which is reckoned. The largest does not amount
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  to above a thousand volumes placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long.
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  Whence they had liberty to borrow what books they please. The Queen's joiner had
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  contrived in one of Glumdaleklitch's rooms a kind of wooden machine five and twenty feet
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  high, formed like a standing ladder. The steps were each fifty feet long.
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  It was indeed a movable pair of stairs, the lowest end placed at
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  ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber. The book I had a
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  mind to read was put up leaning against the wall. I first mounted to
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  the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face towards the book,
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  began at the top of the page, and so walking to the right and
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  left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the lines,
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  till I had gotten a little below the level of mine eyes, and then
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  ascended gradually till I came to the bottom, after which I mounted again and
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  began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over the leaf,
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  which I could easily do with both my hands for it was as thick
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  and stiff as a pasteboard, and in the largest folios not above eighteen or
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  twenty feet long. Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but
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  not florid, for they avoid nothing more than modiplying unnecessary words or using various
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  expressions. I have perused many of their books, especially those in history and
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  morality. Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little old treatise
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  which always lay in Glumduklitch's bedchamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave,
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  elderly gentlewoman who dwelt in writings of morality and devotion. The book treats
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  of the weakness of humankind, and is in little esteem except among the women
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  and the vulgar. However, I was curious to see what an author of
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  that country could say upon such a subject. This writer went through all the
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  usual topics of European moralists, showing had diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an
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  animal was man in his own nature, how unable to defend himself from inclemencies
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  of the air or the fury of wild beasts. How he was much excelled
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  by one creature in strength by another in speed, by a third in foresight,
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  by a fourth in industry. He added that nature was degenerated in these
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  latter declining ages of the world, and could now produce only small, abortive
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  births in comparison of those in ancient times. He said, it was very
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  reasonable to think not only that the species of men were originally much larger,
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  but also that there must have been giants in former ages, which, as
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  it is asserted by history and tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge
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  bones and skulls casually dug up in several parts of the Kingdom, far exceeding
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  the common dwindled race of men in our days. He argued that the very
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  laws of nature absolutely required we should have been made in the beginning of a
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  size more large and robust, not so liable to destruction from every little corner,
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  or of a tile falling from a house, or a stone cast from
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  the hand of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook. From
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  this way of reasoning, the author drew several moral applications useful in the conduct
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  of life, but needless here to repeat. For my own part, I
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  could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was spread of drawing lectures, immorality,
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  or indeed rather matter of discontent and repining, from the quarrel we raise
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  with nature, and I believe, upon a strict inquiry, those quarrels might
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  be shown as ill grounded among us as they are among that people. As
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  to their military affairs, they boast that the King's army consists of one hundred
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  and seventy six thousand foot and thirty two thousand horse, if that may be
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  called an army which is made up of tradesmen in the several cities, and
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  farmers in the country, whose commanders are only the nobility and gentry, without
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  pay or reward. They are indeed perfect enough in their exercises, and under
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  very good discipline, wherein I saw no great merit. For how should it
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  be otherwise, were every farmer is under the command of his own landlord,
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  and every citizen under that of the prince, or men in his own city
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  chosen after the manner of venice by ballot. Often seen the militia of Loberal
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  Grud drawn out to exercise in a great field near the city of twenty miles
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  square. They were, in all not above twenty five thousand foot and six
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  thousand horse, But it was impossible for me to compute their number, considering
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  the space of ground they took up. A cavalier mounted on a large steed
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  might be about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse,
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  upon a word of command, draw their swords at once and brandish them
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  in the air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and
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  so astonishing. It looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting at
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  the same time from every quarter of the sky. I was curious to know
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  how this prince, to whose dominions there is no access from any other country,
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  came to think of armies or to teach his people the practice of military
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  discipline. But are soon informed, both by conversation and reading their histories,
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  For in the course of many ages they have been troubled with the same disease
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  to which the whole race of mankind is subject. The nobility often contending for
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  power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion, all
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  which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been sometimes
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  violated by each of the three parties, and have more than once occasioned civil
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  wars, the last whereof was happily put an end to by this Prince's grandfather
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  in a general composition, and the militia, then settled with common consent,
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  has been ever since kept in the strictest duty. End of Part two,
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  Chapter seven,