discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say there
were several thousand books among us, written upon the art of
government, it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean
opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and
despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a
minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an
enemy or some rival nation were not in the case. He confined the
knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and
reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and
criminal causes, with some other obvious topics, which are not worth
considering. And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two
ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground,
where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more
essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put
together.

The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed
to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful
in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so
that among us it would be little esteemed. And as to ideas, entities,
abstractions, and transcendentals,[80] I could never drive the least
conception into their heads.

No law of that country must exceed in words the number of letters in
their alphabet, which consists only in two-and-twenty. But indeed few of
them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most plain
and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial[81] enough to
discover above one interpretation; and to write a comment upon any law
is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings
against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they have little
reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.

They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of
mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king,
which is reckoned the largest, doth not amount to above a thousand
volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, from whence I
had liberty to borrow what books I pleased. The queen's joiner had
contrived in one of Glumdalclitch's rooms, a kind of wooden machine,
five-and-twenty feet high, formed like a standing ladder; the step