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 this 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 favorable 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[79] 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 endeavor,

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 farther 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 farther into

his majesty's favor, I told him of an invention discovered between three

and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder into a heap, on

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 workman

how to make those tubes of a size proportionable to all other things in

his majesty's kingdom, and the largest need not to 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 return for so many marks that I had received of his

royal favor and protection.

The king was struck with horror at the description I had given him 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 my life, never to mention any more.

A strange effect of narrow principles and short 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 for government, 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 arisen

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,[80] I could never drive the least

conception into their heads.

No law of that country must exceed in words the number of letters in

their alphabet, which consists only in 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[81] 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, doth not amount to above a thousand

volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, from 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 movable 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 paste-board, 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.

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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

births, in comparison to 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 hath been

confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually dug up in several parts of

the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled race of man 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 grandfather, in a general composition;[82] and the

militia, then settled with common consent, hath been ever since kept in

the strictest duty.

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