actices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had
great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions.

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man
incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves
to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be
more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority
under which he acts.

In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to
mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions,
into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man. For,
as to that infamous practice of acquiring 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 public nurseries, where
all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their
infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to