Latest / Adventure Books Library / 06 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Transcript
- Chapter six of the Inhabitants of Lilliput, their learning, laws and customs, the manner of educating their children, the author's way of living in that country, His vindiction of a great Lady. Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular treatise, yet in the meantime I am content to gratify the curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees. For instance, the tallest horse and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and a half. More or less, they geeze about the bigness of a sparrow, And so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which to my sight were almost invisible. But nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper. For their view. They see with great exactness, but at no great distance, and to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near. I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly, and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven feet high, I mean some of those in the Great Royal Park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched. The other vegetables are in the same proportion. But this I leave to the reader's imagination. I shall say but little at present of their learning, which for many ages has flourished in all its branches among them. But their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left like the Arabians, nor from up to down like the Chinese, but a slant from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England. They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again, in which period the earth, which they conceived be flat, will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine, but the practice still continues in compliance to the vulgar. There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar, and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention relates to informers. All crimes against the state are punished here with the utmost severity. But if the person accused makes his innocent plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death, and out of his goods or lands. The innocent person is quadruplely recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he had been at in making his defense. Or if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The Emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favor, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death. For they allege that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defense against superior cunning. And since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember when I was once interceding with the Emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with, and happening to tell his Majesty by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust. The Emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defense the greatest aggravation of the crime, And truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer that different nations had different customs. For I confess I was heartily ashamed. Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there bring sufficient proof that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy three moons, has a claim to certain privileges according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportional sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use. He likewise acquires the title of snil pal or legal, which is added to his no but does not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us when I told him that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is upon this account that the image of justice in their courts of judicature is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind and on each side, one to signify circumspection, with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more disposed to reward them to punish. In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals and to great abilities, For since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other, and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs and mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, which there are, seldom are three born in an age. But they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like to be in every man's power, the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience in a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified, and at least that the mistakes committed by ignorance in a virtuous disposition would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage to multiply and defend his corruptions. In like manner, the disbelief of a divine providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station. For since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of providence. The Liliputians that nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown their authority under which he acts. In relating these in the following laws, I would only be understood to mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man. For as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes or badges of favor and distinction, by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual inquiries of party and faction. Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries. For they reason thus that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live. Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours, For since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature. In order to propagate and continue the species, the Liliputians will needs have it that men and women are joined together like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence, and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like nature principle, for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world, which, considering that the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in himself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love encounters were otherwise employed. Upon these and the like reasonings, their opinion is that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children, and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes, to be reared and educated when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility. These schools are of several kinds suited to different qualities and both sexes. They have certain professors well skilled in preparing children for such a condition of life as befits the rank of their parents and their own capacities, as well as inclinations. I shall first say something of the male nurseries, and then of the female. The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth are provided with grave and learned professors and their several deputies. The clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. They are bred up in the principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of their country. They are always employed in some business, except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and two hours for diversion consisting of bodily exercises. They are dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves, although their quality be ever so great, and the woman attendant, who are age proportionally two hours at fifty, perform only the most menial offices. They are never suffered to converse with servants, but go together in smaller or greater numbers to take their diversions, and always in the presence of a professor or one of his deputies, whereby they avoid these early bad impressions of folly and vice to which our children are subject. Their parents are suffered to see them only twice a year. The visit is to last but an hour. They are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting, but a professor, who always stands by on those occasions will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presence of toys, sweetmeats and alike. The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a child, upon faire failure of due payment is levied by the Emperor's officers. The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and handicraft are managed proportionally after the same manner. Only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen, which answers to twenty one with us, but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years. In the female nurseries, the young girl's equality are educated much like the males only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own sex, but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be found that the nurses ever presumed to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories or the common follies practiced by chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments beyond decency and cleanliness. Neither did I perceive any difference in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust, and that some rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them for their maximies that among peoples of quality, a wife should always be a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, Their parents or guardians take them home with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions. In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex and their several degrees. Those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven years old, the rest are kept till eleven. The meaner families who have children at these nurseries are obliged, besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to the steward of the nursery, a small monthly share of their gettings to be a portioned for the child. And therefore all parents are limited in their expenses by the law. For the Liliputians think nothing could be more unjust than for people, in subservance to their own appetites to bring children into the world and leave the burden of supporting them on the public. As to persons of quality, they give security to appropriate a certain sum for each child suitable to their condition, and these funds are always managed with good husbandry, and the most exact justice. The cottages and laborers keep their children at home, their business being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education is of little consequence to the public. But the old and diseased among them are supported by hospitals. For begging is a trade unknown in this empire, and here it may perhaps divert the curious reader to give some account of my domestics and my manner of living in this country. During a residence of nine months and thirteen days, having a head mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a table and chair convenient enough out of the largest trees in the royal park. Two hundred seamstresses were employed to make me shirts and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get, which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide and three feet make apiece. The seamstresses took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck and another at my mid leg. With a strong cord extended that each held by their while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more, for by a mathematical computation that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist. And by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes. But they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck. Upon this ladder, one of them mounted and let fall a plumb line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat, but my waist and arms I measured myself when my clothes were finished, which was done in my house, for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them. They looked like the patchwork made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all of a color. I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals in little convenient huts built about my house where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes apiece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand and placed them on the table, a hundred more attendant below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liqueurs slung on their shoulders, all which the waiters above drew up as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket upper well. In Europe, A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liqueur a reasonable draft. Their mutton yielded to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a surloin so large that I have been forced to make three bites of it, but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones and all. As in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceeded hours of their smaller fowl. I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. One day, his Imperial Majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness, as he was pleased to call it, of dining with me. They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs of state upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about them. Filnap, the Lord High Treasurer, attended there likewise, with his white staff, and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual in honor to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe that this visit from his Majesty gave Filmnap an opportunity of doing the ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy. Though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature, he represented to the Emperor the low condition of his treasury, that he was forced to make up money at a great discount, that exchequer bills would not circulate under nine percent below par. That I had cost his Majesty above a million and a half of sprugues their great is gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle, and upon the whole that it would be advisable in the Emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me. I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady who was an innocent sufferer. Upon my account, the Treasurer took a fancy to be jealous of his wife from the malice of some evil tongues, who informed him that her Grace had taken a violent affection for my person, and the court scandal ran for some time that she was once come privately to my lodging. This I solemnly declared to be a most infamous falsehood, without any grounds further than that her Grace was pleased to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship I own. She came often to my house, but always publicly, not ever without three more in the coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter, and some particular acquaintance. But this was common to many other ladies of the court, and I still appealed to my servants round whether they at any time saw a coach at my door without knowing what persons were in it. On those occasions when a servant had given me my notice, my custom was to go immediately to the door, and, after paying my respects, to take up the coach and two horses very carefully in my hands. For if there were six horses the POSTILI had always unharnessed four and placed them on a table where I had fixed a movable rim quite round of five inches high, to prevent accidents. And I often have four coaches and horses at once on my table, full of company, while I sat in my chair, leaning my face towards them. When I was engaged with one, set the coach more gently drive the others round my table. I have passed many afternoon very agreeably in these conversations. But I defy the Treasurer or his two informers. I will name them and let them make the best of it. Clusterrel and drunlow to prove that any person ever came to me incognito except the Secretary Valdressel, who was sent by express command of his Imperial Majesty. As I had before related, I should not have dwelt so long upon this particular if it had not been a point wherein the reputation of a great lady is so nearly concerned to say nothing of my own, though I then had the honor to be an ardec, which the treasure himself is not. For all the world knows that he is only a glum glum, a title inferior by one degree, as that of a marquis is to a duke in England. Yet I allow he preceded me in right of his post. These false informations, which I afterwards came to the knowledge of by an accident not proper to mention, made the Treasurer show his lady for some time an ill countenance, and me are worse. And although he was at last undeceived and reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with him, and found my interest declined very fast with the Emperor himself, who was indeed too much governed by that favorite end of Chapter six, Part one,