Houyhnhnms, bred up to be servants, is not so strictly limited upon this article; these are allowed to produce three of each sex, to be domestics in the noble families. In their marriages they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen with regard to comeliness. Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements, have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. But the violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of; and the married pair pass their lives with the same friendship and mutual benevolence that they bear to all others of the same species who come in their way, without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling, or discontent. In educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and highly deserves our imitation. These are not suffered to taste a grain of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old; nor milk, but very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning, and as many in the evening, which their parents likewise observe: but the servants are not allowed above half that time, and a great part of their grass is brought home, which they eat at the most convenient hours, when they can be best spared from work. Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons equally enjoined to the young ones of both sexes; and my master thought it monstrous in us to give the females a different kind of education from the males, except in articles of domestic management; whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world; and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of brutality. The Examiner, a weekly political broadside of the same size as the Tatler, was started by St. John in 1710 as the organ of the Tory party, but at first with small success. "Addison had brought into the field his Whig Examiner with such damaging effect that the ministry were in ill case if better advocacy for them could not be found." Then Swift undertook the defence, and thirty-three consecutive Examiners, from the fourteenth (Nov. 2, 1710) to the forty-sixth (June 14th 1711), inclusive, were written by him. They were the "leading articles" of the day, and provided for the first time a statesmanlike exposition of the ministerial policy. The Conduct of the Allies was written and published in Nov. 1711. This tract was intended to make Marlborough unpopular and prepare the way for a peace, by opening the eyes of the people to the cost of the war, the venality of the General and of the Allies, and the interested motives of its upholders, the "monied men ;" and by showing how other powers were profiting at England's expense. It produced a tremendous effect. "The people, who had been amused with bonfires and triumphal processions, and looked with idolatry on the general and his friends, who, as they thought, had made England the arbitress of nations, were confounded between shame and rage, when they found that 'mines had been exhausted and millions destroyed,' to secure the Dutch, or aggrandize the emperor, without any advantage to ourselves; that we had been bribing our neighbours to fight their own quarrel; and that amongst our enemies we might number our allies."-Johnson. The extract here given, which forms but a tenth part of the tract, occurs near the end. Swift has urged his three-headed indictment against the war party and the Allies, and proceeds to show to what a pass the country has been brought by their policy. |