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22 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift · Adventure Books Collection

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Chapter six, a further account of the academy, the author proposes some improvements
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which are honorably received. In the school of political projectors. I was but
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ill entertained the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses,
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which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy
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people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their
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wisdom, capacity and virtue, of teaching ministers to consult the public good,
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of rewarding merit great abilities eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true
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interest by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people, of
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choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild, impossible
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chimeras that never entered before into the heart of men to conceive and confirmed in
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me the old observation that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers
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have not maintained for truth. But however, I shall so far do justice
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to this part of the academy as to acknowledge that all of them were not
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so visionary. There was a most ingenious doctor who seemed to be perfectly versed
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in the whole nature and system of government. This illustrious person had very usefully
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employed his studies in finding out effectual remedies for all diseases and corruptions to which
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the several kinds of public administration are subject by the vices or infirmities of those
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who govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey.
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For instance, whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed that there is a
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strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political body, can there be anything
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more evident than that the health of both must be preserved and the diseases cured
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by the same prescriptions. It is allowed that senates and great councils are often
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troubled with redundant, ibuliant and other becant humours, with many diseases of the
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head and more of the heart, with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of
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the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the rite, with spleen
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flatus, vertigoes and deliriums, with scrofulous tumors full of fetid, purulent matter,
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with sour, frothy ricutations, with canine appetites and crudeness of digestion,
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besides many others needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed that upon the meeting
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of the Senate, certain physicians should attend it to the three first days of
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their sitting, and at the close of each day's debate feel the pulses of
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every senator, after which, having maturely considered and consulted upon the nature of
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the several maladies and the methods of cure, they should, on the fourth
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day return to the Senate House, attended by their apothecaries, stored with proper
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medicines, and before the members sat, administer to each of them lenatives,
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apperatives, abstursives, corrosives, restringants, palliatives, laxatives, cephalagics, icterics,
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apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several cases required, and according as these
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medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them at the next meeting.
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This project cannot be of any great expense to the public, and might,
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in my poor opinion, be of much use for the dispatch of business
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in those countries where Senates have any share in the legislative power. Beget unanimity,
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shortened debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and close
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many more which are now open. The petulance of the young, and correct
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the positiveness of the old, rouse the stupid, and damp the pert.
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Again, because it is a general complaint that the favorites of princes are troubled
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with short and weak memories, the same doctor proposed that whoever attended a first
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minister, after having told his business with the utmost brevity and in the plainest
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words, should at his departure give the said minister a tweak by the nose,
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or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or
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like him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech,
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or pinch his arms black and blue to prevent forgetfulness, and at every levee
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day repeat the same operation till the business were done or absolutely refused. He
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likewise directed that every senator in the Great Council of a nation, after he
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had delivered his appear union and argued in the defense of it, should be
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obliged to give his vote direct contrary, because if that were done, the
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result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public. When parties in a
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state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method
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is this. You take a hundred leaders of each party. You dispose them
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into couples, of such whose heads are nearest of a size. Then let
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two nice operators saw off the occupant of each couple at the same time,
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in such a manner that the brain may be equally divided. Let the occupants
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thus cut off be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party
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member. It seems, indeed be a work that requires some exactness, But
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the professor assured us that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be
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infallible. For he argued thus that the two brains, being left to debate
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the matter between themselves within the space of one's skull, would soon come to
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a good understanding and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking,
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so much to be wished for in the heads of those who imagine they come
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into the world only to watch and govern its motion. And as to the
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difference of brains in quantity or quality among those who are directors in faction,
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the doctor assured us from his own knowledge that it was a perfect trifle.
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I heard a very warm debate between two professors about the most commodious and effectual
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ways and means of raising money without grieving the subject. The first affirmed the
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justice method would be to lay a certain tax upon vices and follies, and
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the sum fixed upon every man, to be rated after the fairest manner by
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a jury of his neighbors. The second was of an opinion directly contrary to
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tax those qualities of body and mind for which men chiefly value themselves, the
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rate to be more or less according to the degrees of excelling. The decision
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whereof should be left entirely to their own breast. The highest tax was upon
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men who are the great favorites of the other sex, and the assessments according
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to the number and nature of the favors they have received, for which they
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are allowed to be their own vouchers. Wit, valor, and politeness were
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likewise proposed to be largely taxed and collected in the same manner, by every
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person's giving his own word for the quantum of what he possessed. But as
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to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed
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at all, because they are qualifications of so singular a kind that no man
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will either allow them in his neighbour or value them in himself. The women
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were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill in dressing, wherein
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they head to the same privilege with the men, to be determined by their
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own judgment. But constancy, chastisy, good sense, angered nature were not
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rated, because they would not bear the charge of collecting. To keep senators
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in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the members should raffle
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for employment. Every man first taken an oath and giving security that he would
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vote for the court, whether he won or not, after which the losers
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had in their turn the liberty of raffling upon the next vacancy. Thus hope
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and expectation would be kept alive. None would complain of broken promises, but
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impute the disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and stronger than those
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of a ministry. Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering
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plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised great statesmen to examine into the
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diet of all suspected persons their times of eating upon which side they lay in
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bed, with which hand they wiped their posteriors. Take a strict view of
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their excrements, and from the color, the odor, the taste, the
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consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts
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and designs. Because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as
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when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment. For in
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such conjectures, which he used merely as a trial to consider which was the
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best way of murdering the king, his order would have a tincature of green,
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but quite different when he thought only of raising an insurrection or burning the
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metropolis. The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many observations,
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both curious and useful for politicians, But as I conceived not altogether complete this,
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I ventured to tell the author, and offered, if he pleased,
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to supply him with some additions. He received my proposition with more compliance than
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is usual among writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing he would
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be glad to receive further information. I told him that in the kingdom of
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Trypnia by the natives called Langdon, where I had sojourned some time in my
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travels. The bulk of the people consist, in a manner, wholly of
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discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together
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with the several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colors the conduct and
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the pay of ministers of state and their deputies. The plots in that kingdom
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are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters,
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of profound politicians, to restore new vigor to a crazy administration, to stifle
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or divert general discontents, to fill their coffers with forfeitures, and raise or
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sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage.
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It is first agreed and settled among them what suspected persons shall be accused
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of a plot. Then effect your care is taken to secure all their letters
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and papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to
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a set of artists very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words,
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syllables, and letters. For instance, they can discover a close stool to
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signify a privy council, a flock of geese, a senate, a lame
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dog and invader the plague, a standing army, a buzzard, a prime
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minister, the gout, a high priest, a gibbet, a secretary of
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state, a chamber pot, a committee of grandees, a sieve, a
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court lady, a broomer, revolution, a mousetrap and employment, a bottomless
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pitter, treasury, a sinker court, a cap and bells, a favorite,
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a broken read, a court of justice, an empty ton, a
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general, a running sow the administration. When this method fails, they have
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two others more effectual, which the learned among them call them acrostics and anagrams.
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First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N
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shall signify a plot, B, a regiment of horse, l a fleet
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at sea. Or Secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any
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suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party.
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So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a
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friend, our brother Tom has just got the piles, a skillful decipher will
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discover that the same letters which composed that sentence may be analyzed into the following
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words resist a plot is brought home the tour, and this is the anagrammatic
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method. The Professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised
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to make honorable mention of me in his treatise. I saw nothing in this
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country that could invite me to a longer continuance, and began to think of
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returning home to England. End of Part three, Chapter six,