CHAP. 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

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 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 virtuet; 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 continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

* Transubstantiation.

+ Church musick. Kissing a cross.

§ The colour and make of sacred vestments, and different orders of popish ecclesiasticks.

6

Sometimes

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 compact.

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

VOL. VI.

U

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, seafights, 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, vic

h tory; 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

* It would perhaps be impossible, by the most laboured argument, or forcible eloquence, to show the absurd injustice and horrid cruelty of war so effectually, as by this simple exhibition of them in a new light with war, including every species of iniquity and every art of destruction, we become familiar by degrees under specious terms, which are seldom examined, because they are learned at an age, in which the mind implicitly receives and retains whatever is impressed: thus it happens, that when one man murders another to gratify his lust, we shudder; but when one man murders a million to gratify his vanity we approve and we admire, we envy and we applaud. If, when this and the preceding pages are read, we discover with astonishment, that when the same events have occurred in history we felt no emotion, and acquiesced in wars which we could not but know to have been commenced for such causes, and carried on by such means; let not him be censured for too much debasing his species, who has contributed to their felicity and preservation, by stripping off the veil of custom und prejudice, and holding up in their native deformity the vices by which they become wretched, and the arts by which they are destroyed.