Above ty, or to defend the coafts with our fleet. all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He faid, if we were governed by our own confent, in the perfons of our reprefentatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man's houfe might not better be defended by himself, his children, and family, than by half a dozen rafcals, picked up at a venture in the street for fmall wages, who might get an hundred times more for cutting their throats. He laughed at my odd kind of arithmetic (as he was pleafed to call it) in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several fects among us in religion and politics. He faid, he knew no reason why thofe, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public, fhould be obliged to change, or fhould not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to inforce the fecond for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials. : He obferved, that among the diverfions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming; he defired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed: whether it ever went fo high as to affect their fortunes: whether mean vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and fometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them by the loffes they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others. He was perfectly aftonished with the hiftorical account account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of confpiracies, rebellions, murders, maffacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrify, perfidioufnels, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, luft, malice, and ambition could produce. His Majefty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the fum of all I had fpoken; compared the queftions he made, with the anfwers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and froaking me gently, delivered himfelf in the fe words, which I fhall never forget, nor the manner be spoke them in: My little friend Grildrig, you have made a moft admirable panegyric upon your country you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legiflator; that laws are beft explained, interpreted, and applied by those whofe intereft and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you fome lines of an inftitution, which, in its original might have been tolerable, but thefe half erafed, and the reft wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It doth not appear from all you have faid, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less that men are ennobled on account of their virtue, that priests are advanced for their piety or learning, foldiers for their conduct or valour, judges for their integrity, fenators for the love of their country, or counsellors for their wifdom. As for yourfelf, continued the King, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well difpofed to hope you may hitherto have efcaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the anfwers I have with. much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most moft pernicious race of little odious vermin, that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the furface of the earth. CHAP. VII *. The author's love of his country. He makes a propofal of much advantage to the King, which is rejected. The King's great ignorance in politics. The learning of that country very imperfect and confined. The laws, and military affairs, and parties in the state. NOTHING but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from concealing this part of my ftory. It was in vain to difcover my refentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced to reft with patience, while my noble and most beloved country was fo injurioufly treated. I am as heartily forry as any of my readers can poffibly be, that fuch an occafion was given: but this prince happened to be fo curious and inquifitive upon every particular, that it could not confift either with gratitude or good manners to refufe giving him what fatisfaction I was able. Yet thus much I may be allowed to fay in my own vindication, that I artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the ftrictnefs of truth would allow. For I have *This chapter contains fuch farcafms on the structure of the buman body, as too plainly fhew, that the author was unwilling to lose any opportunity of debafing and ridiculing his own fpecies. Here a reflection naturally occurs, which, without any fuperftition, leads tacitly to admire and confefs the ways of Providence. For this great genius, this mighty wit, who feemed to fcoff and fcorn at all mankind, lived not only to be an example to punish his own pride, and to terrify ours, but underwent fome of the greatest miferies to which human nature is liable. Orrery, always that laudable partiality to my country, which Di onyfius Halicarnaffenfis with fo much juftice recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advanta. geous light. This was my fincere endeavour in thofe many difcourfes I had with that monarch, although it unfortunately failed of fuccefs. But great allowances fhould be given to a King, who lives wholly fecluded from the rest of the world, and muft therefore be altogether unacquaint ed with the manners and cuftoms that most prevail in other nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices, and a certain nar rowness of thinking, from which we and the po liter countries of Europe are wholly exempted. And it would be hard indeed, if fo remote a prince's no tions of virtue and vice were to be offered as a ftandard for all mankind. To confirm what I have now faid, and further to fhew the miferable effects of a confined educa tion, I fhall here infert a paffage which will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myfelf farther into his Majefty's favour, I told him of an invention difcovered between three and four hundred years ago to make a certain powder, into an heap of which the fmalleft fpark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noife and agitation greater than thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder, rammed into an hollow tube of brafs or iron, according to its bignefs, would drive a ball of iron or lead with fuch violence and fpeed, as nothing was able to fuftain its force. That the largest balls thus discharged would not only deftroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the ftrongest walls to the ground, fink down fhips, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the fea; and, when linkVOL. V. F ed The learning of this people is very defective, confifting only in morality, hiftory, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But the laft of thefe is wholly applied to what may be ufeful in life, to the improvement of agricul ture, and all mechanical arts; fo that among us it would be little efteemed. And as to ideas, entities, abstractions, and tranfcendantals, I could never drive the least conception into their heads. No law of that country muft exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which confifts only in two and twenty. But indeed few of them extend even to that length. They are expreffed in the most plain and fimple terms, wherein thofe people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law is a capital crime. As to the decifion of civil caufes, or proceedings against criminals, their precedents are fo 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 Chinefe, time out of mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the King, which is reckoned the largest, doth not amount to above a thousand volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, from whence I had liberty to borrow what books I pleased. The Queen's joiner 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, the lowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber. The book I had a mind to read was put up leaning against the wall: I first mounted to the upper ftep of the ladder, and turning my face towards the book, began at the top of the page, and fo walking to the right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of |