<p class="gutsumm">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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Houyhnhnm</i>
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.</p>
<p>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
<i>Yahoos</i> 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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 <i>Yahoo</i> hired to kill, in cold blood,
as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as
possibly he can.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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
<i>Yahoos</i> 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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded
me silence. He said, “whoever understood the nature
of <i>Yahoos</i>, 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 <i>Yahoos</i> of this
country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities,
than he did a <i>gnnayh</i> (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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<h3>IV - CHAPTER VI.</h3>
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