Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/78

56 great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks, and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height, by the gradual increase of party and faction.

Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries; for they reason thus, that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live.

Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children, differ extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young, proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason, they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father, for begetting him, or to his mother, for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love-encounters, were otherwise employed. Upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents, are the last of all others, to be trusted with the education of their own children; and therefore they have in every town publick nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their