Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 4/Chapter 6
from the Collection “Gulliver's Travels. Part 4”
The division of this summary into sections is editorial.
In the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver continued explaining English society to his master. Their conversation followed Gulliver’s account of lawyers, whose willingness to cause injustice for hire had puzzled the horse.
Money, luxury and poverty
Gulliver explained that money bought land, houses, fine food and other pleasures. People sought it endlessly, whether to spend or to hoard. The rich enjoyed the labour of the poor, while most people worked for small wages so that a few could live in abundance.
His master assumed that all animals were entitled to a share of the earth’s produce and could not understand why anyone lacked food or drink. Gulliver described elaborate meals whose ingredients and vessels came from across the world. His master concluded that a country unable to feed its inhabitants must be miserable.
Gulliver replied that England produced far more food and drink than its people needed. He blamed luxury and vanity for sending necessities abroad in exchange for goods that brought disease and vice. As a result, he said, many people had to live by begging, theft, deception and other disreputable occupations.
He explained that wine was imported not because England lacked water, but because it temporarily drove away fear and reason. Its pleasures were followed by sickness and dejection. He added that many people earned their living supplying the rich: his clothes and house employed hundreds of tradesmen, and his wife’s adornment employed still more.
Disease and the practices of doctors
Gulliver’s master understood injury and the weakness preceding death, but struggled to believe that nature allowed diseases to develop inside the body. Gulliver attributed human illnesses to excessive and incompatible food and drink, sexual disease and inherited conditions.
Drawing on his own medical knowledge, Gulliver gave a hostile account of physicians. He said they assumed that illness came from overfilling the body and prescribed repulsive mixtures to make patients vomit or empty their bowels. They also supplied imaginary remedies for imaginary ailments, which he claimed particularly afflicted women.
Gulliver further accused doctors of predicting death in serious cases and ensuring that their predictions came true if a patient unexpectedly improved. He told his master that physicians could consequently be useful to people who wanted a spouse, relative or political figure out of the way.
The rise and influence of ministers
After Gulliver mentioned a minister of state, his master later asked what sort of Yahoo held that office. Gulliver described a chief minister driven by wealth, power and titles, whose words concealed rather than revealed his intentions. In Gulliver’s account, criticism could signal favour, while praise and promises offered reason to despair.
Gulliver told his master that a man could become chief minister by exploiting female relatives, undermining a predecessor or loudly denouncing court corruption. He claimed that princes favoured the last kind because such critics became especially obedient once appointed.
Once in office, ministers distributed appointments and bribed a majority in the great council. Before retiring with the nation’s wealth, they protected themselves through an Act of Indemnity, a law shielding them from later punishment for their conduct. Their servants learned insolence, lying and bribery, and some eventually succeeded them. Gulliver added that a minister’s mistress or favourite servant often controlled access to his favours and thus exercised power over the kingdom.
A mistaken compliment about noble birth
In a later conversation, Gulliver’s master complimented him by supposing that he must be nobly born. Gulliver was cleaner and better shaped than the local Yahoos, though weaker and less agile; he could also speak and showed some capacity for reason. The master compared him with the Houyhnhnms, among whom certain coat colours were associated with superior shape and ability, while others remained servants and did not marry outside their own kind.
Gulliver thanked him but said his parents were ordinary, honest people who could afford him a reasonable education. He insisted that English nobility was quite different from what his master imagined. In his account, young noblemen grew up idle and luxurious, damaged their health and fortunes, then married for money. Their children were often sickly, unless their wives had children by healthier men.
Gulliver claimed that weakness and illness had become marks of noble blood, while a healthy nobleman was suspected of having a servant for a father. He portrayed nobles’ minds as defective too. Nevertheless, he told his master, this body held immense legal power:
Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered; and these have the decision of all our possessions without appeal.