Gulliver Explains War and Law — Gulliver's Travels

At his master's command, Gulliver compresses two years of talk into an account of England and Europe. He opens with the Revolution under the Prince of Orange and the long war with France, estimating a million Yahoos killed, a hundred cities taken, and five times as many ships burned or sunk. When the master asks what causes wars, Gulliver lists motives that grow more absurd: ministerial corruption, disputes over bread and wine and coat colour, invading the weak or the strong, and soldiers hired as the most honourable trade because a soldier is a Yahoo paid to kill his own species in cold blood. The master assumes Gulliver has said the thing which was not, since Yahoos seem too weak to bite with purpose. Gulliver then describes cannons, sieges, and bodies blown to pieces for spectators' diversion until the master orders silence. Reason, he concludes, has made humans worse than brutes. That turns the talk to law. Gulliver explains lawyers bred to prove white is black as paid, the cow case where merit never matters, judges promoted from dexterous attorneys, precedents against common justice, and state trials where the judge first sounds those in power. The master wonders why such minds are not teachers; Gulliver replies that outside their trade they are often the most ignorant generation among us.