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 of the 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 honor 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 into 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 honor’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 might have been killed in the whole progress of it; and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and thrice 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 clamor 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 virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post or throw it into the fire; what is the best color 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 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 neighbors 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 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, honorable, 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 is 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 honorable of all others; because a soldier is a 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 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 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, 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 carcasses, left for food to dogs, and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And, to set forth the valor 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 might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equaled 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 of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities than he did a (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 farther satisfied what I meant by law, and what sort of dispensers they could be by whose practices the property of any person could be lost instead of preserved. He added that he saw no occasion for this thing called law, as all its intents and purposes might be answered by following the dictates of nature and reason, which were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid.

I assured his honor that law was a science in which I was little conversant, having only such knowledge of it as I had obtained by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me, and by conversing with others who by the same method had first lost their substance and then left their country under the mortification of such disappointments. However, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able.

I said that those who professed this science were exceedingly numerous, being almost equal to the caterpillars in number; they were of diverse degrees, distinctions, and denominations. Their number was such that the fair and justifiable advantage and income of the profession was not sufficient for the decent and handsome maintenance of multitudes who followed it. The result was that it was found needful to supply that by artifice and cunning which could not be procured by just and honest methods; the better to bring which about, there was among us a society of men bred 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. The greatness of the assurance of these men, and the boldness of their pretensions, gained the adherence of the mass of the people, of whom in a manner they made slaves, and got into their hands much the largest share of the practice of their profession. These practitioners were by men of discernment called pettifoggers (that is, confounders, or rather, destroyers of right), and it was my ill luck as well as the misfortune of my acquaintances, to have been at the mercy of this species of the profession. I desired his honor to understand the description I had to give, and the ruin I had complained of, related to these sectaries only, and the means by which the misfortunes we met had been brought upon us by these men might be more easily conceived by explaining to him their method of proceeding, which could not better be done than by giving him an example.

I will suppose that my neighbor has a mind to my cow; he hires one of these advocates 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 shall be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages. First, my advocate, being practiced almost from the cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would argue for right, which, being unnatural to him, he attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill will. The second disadvantage is that my advocate must proceed with great caution, for since the maintenance of so many depends on the practice of law not being lessened by too summary proceedings, even should he fail to incur the displeasure of the judges he is sure to gain the ill will and hatred of his brethren. This being the case, I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is to gain over my adversary’s advocate with a double fee, his education being such that it is reasonable to expect he can be induced to betray his client and let the balance fall on my side. The second way is for my advocate to refrain from insisting on the justice of my cause, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary; and this, if it be skillfully done, will go a long way toward obtaining a favorable verdict, it having been found by careful observation of issues and events, that under the management of such practitioners, the wrong side has the fairer chance of success, more especially if it should happen, as it did in my own and my friend’s case, that the person appointed to decide all controversies concerning property as well as to try criminals, who should be chosen from among the most learned and wise of his profession, is by the recommendation of a great favorite or court mistress taken from the sect before mentioned, and so having been strongly biased all his life against equity and fair dealing, lies, as it were, under a fatal necessity of favoring, double dealing and oppression, and besides, through age, infirmity, and distemper having become lazy and inattentive, he is almost incapacitated from doing anything becoming the duty of his office. The decisions of men so bred and qualified may with reason be expected to be on the wrong side of the cause, for it is little wonder that those who can take harangue and noise (if pursued with warmth and drawn out to great length) for reasoning, will infer the weight of the argument from the heaviness of the pleading.

It is a maxim among these men that whatever has been done before may legally be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made, even those which have through ignorance or corruption contradicted the rules of common justice. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, and thereby endeavor to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and they are so lucky in this practice that they rarely fail to secure decrees according to their expectation.

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 grazed 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 gone near to confound the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it may 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: for if those in power, who know well how to select instruments fit to carry out their purpose, are careful to recommend a proper person, his course of education and method of practice make it easy for him, when his patron’s disposition is understood, without difficulty either to condemn or acquit the criminal and at the same time strictly preserve 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 advocates by the description 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 honor that the business and study of their own profession so took up all their thoughts and time, that they attended to nothing else, and therefore in all points out of their own trade many of them were so ignorant and stupid that it would be difficult to pick out of any profession a generation of men more despicable in common conversation or so much looked upon as avowed enemies of all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reasons of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own calling.