“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.
“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.”
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.”
[A continuation of the state of England under Queen
Anne. The character of a first minister of state
in European courts.]
My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what
motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex,
disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy
of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their
fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I
meant in saying, they did it for hire. Whereupon
I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money,
the materials it was made of, and the value of the
metals; “that when a Yahoo had got a great store
of this precious substance, he was able to purchase
whatever he had a mind to; the finest clothing, the
noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly
meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most
beautiful females. Therefore since money alone
was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought
they could never have enough of it to spend, or to
save, as they found themselves inclined, from their
natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that
the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s
labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion
to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced
to live miserably, by labouring every day for small
wages, to make a few live plentifully.”
