He observed, that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming:  he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed:  whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes:  whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others?

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.

His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in:  “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.  I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in its original might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions.  It doth not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required towards the procurement of any one station among you; much less that men are ennobled on account of their virtue, that priests are advanced for their piety or learning, soldiers for their conduct or valor, judges for their integrity, senators for the love of their country, or counsellors for their wisdom.  As for yourself, continued the king, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country.  But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

[Illustration:  “YOU HAVE MADE A MOST ADMIRABLE PANEGYRIC.”  P. 79.]

CHAPTER VII

     THE AUTHOR’S LOVE OF HIS COUNTRY.  HE MAKES A PROPOSAL OF MUCH
     ADVANTAGE TO THE KING, WHICH IS REJECTED. THE KING’S GREAT
     IGNORANCE IN POLITICS.  THE LEARNING OF THAT COUNTRY VERY IMPERFECT
     AND CONFINED. THE LAWS, AND MILITARY AFFAIRS, AND PARTIES IN THE
     STATE.