________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER V
[The author at his master's command, informs him of the state of
England. The causes of war among the princes of Europe. The author
begins to explain the English constitution.]
The reader may please to observe, that the following extract of
many conversations I had with my master, contains a summary of the
most material points which were discoursed at several times for
above two years; his honour often desiring fuller satisfaction, as
I farther improved in the Houyhnhnm tongue. I laid before him, as
well as I could, the whole state of Europe; I discoursed of trade
and manufactures, of arts and sciences; and the answers I gave to
all the questions he made, as they arose upon several subjects,
were a fund of conversation not to be exhausted. But I shall here
only set down the substance of what passed between us concerning my
own country, reducing it in order as well as I can, without any
regard to time or other circumstances, while I strictly adhere to
truth. My only concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do
justice to my master's arguments and expressions, which must needs
suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our
barbarous English.
In obedience, therefore, to his honour's commands, I related to him
the Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with
France, entered into by the said prince, and renewed by his
successor, the present queen, wherein the greatest powers of
Christendom were engaged, and which still continued: I computed,
at his request, "that about a million of Yahoos might have been
killed in the whole progress of it; and perhaps a hundred or more
cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk."
He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one
country go to war with another?" I answered "they were
innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief.
Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land
or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers,
who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the
clamour of the subjects against their evil administration.
Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for
instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the
juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a
vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it
into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black,
white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow
or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so
furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those
occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things
indifferent.
"Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of
them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of
them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with
another for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a
war is entered upon, because the enemy is too strong; and
sometimes, because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want
the things which we have, or have the things which we want, and we
both fight, till they take ours, or give us theirs. It is a very
justifiable cause of a war, to invade a country after the people
have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled
by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter into war
against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for
us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round
and complete. If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the
people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to
death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce
them from their barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly,
honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the
assistance of another, to secure him against an invasion, that the
assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the
dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish, the prince he
came to relieve. Alliance by blood, or marriage, is a frequent
cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the
greater their disposition to quarrel; poor nations are hungry, and
rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at
variance. For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the
most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired
to kill, in cold blood, as many of his own species, who have never
offended him, as possibly he can.
"There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able
to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer
nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they keep three-
fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their
maintenance: such are those in many northern parts of Europe."
"What you have told me," said my master, "upon the subject of war,
does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you
pretend to: however, it is happy that the shame is greater than
the danger; and that nature has left you utterly incapable of doing
much mischief. For, your mouths lying flat with your faces, you
can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then
as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short
and tender, that one of our Yahoos would drive a dozen of yours
before him. And therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who
have been killed in battle, I cannot but think you have said the
thing which is not."
I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his
ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a
description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols,
bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats,
attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships
sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side,
dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion,
trampling to death under horses' feet, flight, pursuit, victory;
fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and
birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and
destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen,
I assured him, "that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at
once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies
drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the
spectators."
I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me
silence. He said, "whoever understood the nature of Yahoos, might
easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of
every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled
their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of
the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his
mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his
ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit
them with less detestation: that although he hated the Yahoos of
this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious
qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty,
or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature
pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he
dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than
brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that, instead of
reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase
our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns
the image of an ill shapen body, not only larger but more
distorted."
He added, "that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both
in this and some former discourses. There was another point, which
a little perplexed him at present. I had informed him, that some
of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by law;
that I had already explained the meaning of the word; but he was at
a loss how it should come to pass, that the law, which was intended
for every man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. Therefore
he desired to be further satisfied what I meant by law, and the
dispensers thereof, according to the present practice in my own
country; because he thought nature and reason were sufficient
guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing
us what he ought to do, and what to avoid."
I assured his honour, "that the law was a science in which I had
not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain,
upon some injustices that had been done me: however, I would give
him all the satisfaction I was able."
I said, "there was a society of men among us, bred up from their
youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose,
that white is black, and black is white, according as they are
paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For
example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to
prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire
another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that
any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case,
I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages:
first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in
defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be
an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always
attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second
disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or
else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his
brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And
therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is,
to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then
betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side.
The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust
as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary: and
this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of
the bench. Now your honour is to know, that these judges are
persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well
as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most
dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been
biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a
fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I
have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where
justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing
unbecoming their nature or their office.
"It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done
before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special
care to record all the decisions formerly made against common
justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name
of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most
iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing
accordingly.
"In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the
cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all
circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the
case already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or
title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red
or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in
be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what
diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult
precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten,
twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.
"It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar
cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand,
and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special
care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very
essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will
take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my
ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three
hundred miles off.
"In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the
method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends
to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can
easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms
of law."
Here my master interposing, said, "it was a pity, that creatures
endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these lawyers,
by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not
rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and
knowledge." In answer to which I assured his honour, "that in all
points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant
and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common
conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and
equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every
other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession."
______
Content of PART IV - A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS CHAPTER V [Jonathan Swift's novel: Gulliver's Travels] _
Read next: PART IV - A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS: CHAPTER VI
Read previous: PART IV - A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS: CHAPTER IV
Table of content of Gulliver's Travels
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
