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. A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procuresveneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirabletalents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe wecan have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute masterof the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people! Neither do I say this, with the least intention todetract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, bevery much lessened in the opinion of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen fromtheir ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe havedone.For, I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say, there wereseveral thousand books among us written upon the art of government, it gave him (directly contrary to myintention) a very mean opinion of our understandings.He professed both to abominate and despise allmystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister.He could not tell what I meant by secrets ofstate, where an enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the case.He confined the knowledge of governingwithin very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination ofcivil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering.And he gave itfor his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot ofground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to hiscountry, 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, toCHAPTER VII.56 Gulliver's Travelsthe improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed.And asto ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive the least conception into their heads.No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only oftwo and twenty.But indeed few of them extend even to that length.They are expressed in the most plain andsimple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and towrite a comment upon any law, is a capital crime.As to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings againstcriminals, 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 verylarge; for that of the king, which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand volumes, placedin a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had liberty to borrow what books I pleased.The queen'sjoiner 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 moveable pair of stairs, thelowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber.The book I had a mind to read, was putup leaning against the wall: I first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face towards thebook, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the right and left about eight or ten paces, according tothe length of the lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of mine eyes, and then descending gradually tillI came to the bottom: after which I mounted again, and began the other page in the same manner, and soturned over the leaf, which I could easily do with both my hands, for it was as thick and stiff as a pasteboard,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 multiplyingunnecessary words, or using various expressions.I have perused many of their books, especially those inhistory and morality.Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little old treatise, which always lay inGlumdalclitch's bed chamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt inwritings 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 couldsay upon such a subject.This writer went through all the usual topics of European moralists, showing howdiminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend himselffrom 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 degeneratedin these latter declining ages of the world, and could now produce only small abortive births, in comparison ofthose in ancient times. He said it was very reasonable to think, not only that the species of men wereoriginally much larger, but also that there must have been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted byhistory and tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually dug up in several parts ofthe kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled race of men in our days. He argued, that the very laws ofnature absolutely required we should have been made, in the beginning of a size more large and robust; not soliable to destruction from every little accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone cast from the hand of aboy, or being drowned in a little brook. From this way of reasoning, the author drew several moralapplications, useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat.For my own part, I could not avoidreflecting how universally this talent was spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter ofdiscontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature.And I believe, upon a strict inquiry, thosequarrels 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 thousandfoot, and thirty-two thousand horse: if that may be called an army, which is made up of tradesmen in theseveral cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are only the nobility and gentry, without pay orreward
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