Gulliver first tells the reader what follows. It is a summary of the main points from many talks with his master over more than two years. The better Gulliver spoke the Houyhnhnm tongue, the more his master wanted to hear.
He described the whole state of Europe as well as he could. He spoke of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences, and his answers to his master’s questions were an endless source of conversation. But here he will set down only what concerns his own country, in order, keeping strictly to the truth.
His one worry is that he cannot do justice to his master’s arguments and words. His ability is too small, and they must be translated into barbarous English.
A million Yahoos
At his master’s command, Gulliver told of the Revolution under the Prince of Orange. Then he told of the long war with France, begun by that prince and renewed by the present queen. The greatest powers of Christendom were engaged in it, and it was still going on.
At his master’s request he made a reckoning. About a million Yahoos might have been killed in the whole course of it. Perhaps a hundred or more cities had been taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk.
His master asked what usually caused one country to go to war with another.
Causes without number
Gulliver said they were innumerable, but he would name a few of the chief.
Sometimes it is the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to rule. Sometimes it is the corruption of ministers. When the people clamour against their bad government, ministers drag their master into war to stifle or divert the noise.
Differences of opinion have cost many millions of lives. Whether flesh is bread or bread is flesh, whether the juice of a certain berry is blood or wine. Whether whistling is a vice or a virtue, whether it is better to kiss a post or throw it in the fire. What colour a coat should be, black, white, red or grey, and whether long or short.
“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.” (Part IV, Chapter 5)
Too strong, too weak, too tempting
Sometimes two princes quarrel over which of them shall seize a third prince’s land, to which neither has any right. Sometimes one prince picks a quarrel for fear the other will pick one first.
Sometimes a war begins because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak. If our neighbours want what we have or have what we want, we fight until they take ours or give us theirs.
It is a very just cause of war to invade a country whose people have been wasted by famine or plague, or divided by factions. It is just to go to war even with our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us. Or when a piece of his land would make ours round and complete.
A prince who sends an army into a poor and ignorant nation may lawfully put half of them to death and enslave the rest. That is how he civilises them and lifts them out of their barbarous way of life.
Sometimes a prince asks another to help him against an invader. The helper drives out the invader, then seizes the land himself and kills, imprisons or banishes the prince he came to help. That is a very kingly, honourable and common practice.
Kinship by blood or marriage is a common cause of war between princes. The closer the kin, the readier they are to quarrel. Poor nations are hungry and rich ones proud, and pride and hunger will always be at odds.
For these reasons, Gulliver said, a soldier’s trade is held the most honourable of all. For a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own kind as he can, people who have never wronged him.
There are also beggarly princes in Europe who cannot make war themselves, he added. They hire out their troops to richer nations at so much a day per man. They keep three quarters of it, and that is the best part of their income.
Short claws
His master said that what Gulliver had told him about war showed admirably the effects of the reason he claimed. Still, it was lucky that the shame was greater than the danger. Nature had left them quite unable to do much harm.
With their mouths flat to their faces, they could hardly bite each other unless both agreed. Their claws, front and back, were so short and soft that one Yahoo of his country could drive off a dozen of theirs. So when Gulliver gave the numbers killed in battle, the master could only think he had said the thing which was not.
Gulliver could not help shaking his head and smiling a little at his master’s ignorance. He was no stranger to the art of war.
He described cannons, muskets and pistols, bullets and powder, swords and bayonets. He described battles, sieges, retreats and attacks, mines and countermines, bombardments and sea fights. He spoke of ships sunk with a thousand men aboard and twenty thousand killed on each side. He described dying groans, limbs flying through the air, smoke, noise and confusion. There was trampling to death under horses’ feet, flight, pursuit and victory. There were fields strewn with corpses left for dogs, wolves and birds of prey, and plundering, burning and destruction.
And to show the courage of his dear countrymen, he assured his master he had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege. As many again in a ship, he said, and the bodies came down in pieces from the clouds, to the great amusement of the spectators.
A troubled stream
Gulliver was going on to more particulars when his master commanded him to be silent.
Anyone who understood the nature of Yahoos, the master said, could easily believe so vile an animal capable of everything Gulliver had named, if its strength and cunning matched its malice. But Gulliver’s talk had increased his loathing for the whole species and stirred an unease he had never known before.
He feared his ears, growing used to such abominable words, might by degrees hear them with less horror. He hated the Yahoos of his country, he said, but he no more blamed them for their odious qualities than he blamed a bird of prey for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof.
But if a creature claiming to have reason could commit such enormities, things were different. He feared the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself.
So he had come to believe this. What they had was not reason but some quality fitted to increase their natural vices. It was like a troubled stream that reflects an ill-shapen body not only larger but more distorted.
A law that ruins people
The master said he had heard too much about war, both now and before. But there was another point that puzzled him.
Gulliver had said some of his crew left their country because they were ruined by law. The law was meant to protect everyone, so how could it ruin anyone? A rational animal ought to know from nature and reason alone what to do and what to avoid. So he wanted to know more about law and those who administer it.
Gulliver said law was a science he knew little of, except from hiring lawyers in vain over some wrongs done to him. Still, he would explain as well as he could.
A neighbour who wants my cow
Gulliver said this. Among us there is a society of men trained from their youth in the art of proving, with words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white, depending on who pays. All the rest of the people are slaves to this society.
Suppose my neighbour wants my cow. He hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have it. Then I must hire another to defend my right. It is against every rule of law for anyone to speak for himself.
In this case I, the true owner, have two great disadvantages. First, my lawyer has practised defending falsehood almost from the cradle, so he is out of his element defending justice. Second, my lawyer must be very careful, or the judges will rebuke him and his brethren will hate him, as one who would lessen the practice of the law.
So I have only two ways to keep my cow. One is to pay my adversary’s lawyer a double fee. Then he will betray his client by hinting that justice is on my side. The other is for my lawyer to make my case look as unjust as he can, by granting that the cow belongs to my adversary. Done skilfully, that will surely win the favour of the bench.
Precedent and the colour of the cow
Judges are chosen from the cleverest lawyers who have grown old or lazy. Having been set against truth and fairness all their lives, they cannot help favouring fraud, perjury and oppression. Gulliver had known some refuse a large bribe from the side that was in the right, rather than harm their profession by doing anything unworthy of it.
These lawyers hold that whatever has been done before may lawfully be done again. So they carefully record every past decision made against justice and common sense. Under the name of precedents they cite these to support the most unjust opinions.
In pleading, they carefully avoid the merits of the case. They never ask what claim my adversary has to my cow. Instead they argue loudly and at length whether the cow is red or black, her horns long or short, whether her field is round or square. Then they consult precedents and adjourn the case, and in ten, twenty or thirty years come to a decision.
They have a jargon of their own that no one else can understand, and all their laws are written in it. They take care to multiply those laws. So it can take thirty years to decide whether a field left to me by six generations of ancestors belongs to me or to a stranger three hundred miles away.
Trials for crimes against the state are much shorter and more commendable. The judge first sounds out the wishes of those in power. Then he can easily hang or save the accused, while strictly observing every form of law.
Such remarkable minds
His master broke in. By Gulliver’s account, these lawyers must have remarkable minds, he said. It was a pity they were not encouraged to teach others wisdom and knowledge instead.
Gulliver answered that outside their own trade they were usually the most ignorant and stupid people among us. They are the most despised in ordinary conversation and sworn enemies of all knowledge and learning. On every other subject they twist common sense just as they do in their profession.
Today, a troubled stream
In this chapter Gulliver lists the reasons his own kind go to war and proudly describes the weapons they use.
His master does not blame beasts for their fierceness, he said, but if a creature claiming reason did such things, he feared that reason might be worse than a brute’s nature. As a troubled stream reflects a body larger and more distorted, their reason only enlarged their natural vices.
Is there a talent of mine that, used badly, would be worse than not having it at all?