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_ CHAPTER VI
[A further account of the academy. The author proposes some
improvements, which are honourably received.]
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained;
the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their
senses, which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy.
These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs
to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and
virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of
rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent services; of instructing
princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same
foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employments
persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild,
impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of
man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, "that
there is nothing so extravagant and irrational, which some
philosophers have not maintained for truth."
But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the
Academy, as to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary.
There was a most ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly
versed in the whole nature and system of government. This
illustrious person had very usefully employed his studies, in
finding out effectual remedies for all diseases and corruptions to
which the several kinds of public administration are subject, by
the vices or infirmities of those who govern, as well as by the
licentiousness of those who are to obey. For instance: whereas
all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is a strict
universal resemblance between the natural and the political body;
can there be any thing more evident, than that the health of both
must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same
prescriptions? It is allowed, that senates and great councils are
often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant
humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart;
with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves
and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen,
flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of
fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine
appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others,
needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, "that upon
the meeting of the senate, certain physicians should attend it the
three first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day's
debate feel the pulses of every senator; after which, having
maturely considered and consulted upon the nature of the several
maladies, and the methods of cure, they should on the fourth day
return to the senate house, attended by their apothecaries stored
with proper medicines; and before the members sat, administer to
each of them lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, corrosives,
restringents, palliatives, laxatives, cephalalgics, icterics,
apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several cases required; and,
according as these medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit
them, at the next meeting."
This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and
might in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of
business, in those countries where senates have any share in the
legislative power; beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few
mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now
open; curb the petulancy of the young, and correct the positiveness
of the old; rouse the stupid, and damp the pert.
Again: because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of
princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor
proposed, "that whoever attended a first minister, after having
told his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest
words, should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by
the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him
thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm
black and blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day,
repeat the same operation, till the business were done, or
absolutely refused."
He likewise directed, "that every senator in the great council of a
nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the
defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly
contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly
terminate in the good of the public."
When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful
contrivance to reconcile them. The method is this: You take a
hundred leaders of each party; you dispose them into couples of
such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators
saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a
manner that the brain may be equally divided. Let the occiputs,
thus cut off, be interchanged, applying each to the head of his
opposite party-man. It seems indeed to be a work that requires
some exactness, but the professor assured us, "that if it were
dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible." For he
argued thus: "that the two half brains being left to debate the
matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon
come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well
as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of
those, who imagine they come into the world only to watch and
govern its motion: and as to the difference of brains, in quantity
or quality, among those who are directors in faction, the doctor
assured us, from his own knowledge, that "it was a perfect trifle."
I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most
commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without
grieving the subject. The first affirmed, "the justest method
would be, to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum
fixed upon every man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a
jury of his neighbours." The second was of an opinion directly
contrary; "to tax those qualities of body and mind, for which men
chiefly value themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to
the degrees of excelling; the decision whereof should be left
entirely to their own breast." The highest tax was upon men who
are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the assessments,
according to the number and nature of the favours they have
received; for which, they are allowed to be their own vouchers.
Wit, valour, and politeness, were likewise proposed to be largely
taxed, and collected in the same manner, by every person's giving
his own word for the quantum of what he possessed. But as to
honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed at
all; because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no
man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them in
himself.
The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and
skill in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the
men, to be determined by their own judgment. But constancy,
chastity, good sense, and good nature, were not rated, because they
would not bear the charge of collecting.
To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that
the members should raffle for employment; every man first taking an
oath, and giving security, that he would vote for the court,
whether he won or not; after which, the losers had, in their turn,
the liberty of raffling upon the next vacancy. Thus, hope and
expectation would be kept alive; none would complain of broken
promises, but impute their disappointments wholly to fortune, whose
shoulders are broader and stronger than those of a ministry.
Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for
discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He
advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected
persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed;
with which hand they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of
their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the
consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a
judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so
serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which
he found by frequent experiment; for, in such conjunctures, when he
used, merely as a trial, to consider which was the best way of
murdering the king, his ordure would have a tincture of green; but
quite different, when he thought only of raising an insurrection,
or burning the metropolis.
The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing
many observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as
I conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the
author, and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some
additions. He received my proposition with more compliance than is
usual among writers, especially those of the projecting species,
professing "he would be glad to receive further information."
I told him, "that in the kingdom of Tribnia, {3} by the natives
called Langdon, {4} where I had sojourned some time in my travels,
the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers,
witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers,
together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments,
all under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of
state, and their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually
the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own
characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a
crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to
fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise, or sink the opinion
of public credit, as either shall best answer their private
advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them, what
suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual care
is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners
in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very
dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words,
syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close
stool, to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a
lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a
prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of
state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court
lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a
bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a
favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a
general; a running sore, the administration. {5}
"When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which
the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they
can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N,
shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea;
or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any
suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a
discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter
to a friend, 'Our brother Tom has just got the piles,' a skilful
decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that
sentence, may be analysed into the following words, 'Resist -, a
plot is brought home--The tour.' And this is the anagrammatic
method."
The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these
observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his
treatise.
I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer
continuance, and began to think of returning home to England.
Footnotes:
{3} Britannia.--Sir W. Scott.
{4} London.--Sir W. Scott.
{5} This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766).
The above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another
form, commencing:- "I told him that should I happen to live in a
kingdom where lots were in vogue," &c. The names Tribnia and
Langdon an not mentioned, and the "close stool" and its
signification do not occur.
_____
Content of PART III - A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, AND JAPAN - CHAPTER VI [Jonathan Swift's novel: Gulliver's Travels] _
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