Lilliputian court
The Lilliputian court is the central political institution of the diminutive empire of Lilliput, a miniature monarchy whose elaborate rituals, factional conflicts, and legal codes serve as a sustained satirical mirror of early eighteenth-century European—particularly English—court life. Governed by an emperor whose authority is expressed through a blend of absolute decree and theatrical ceremony, the court is defined by its violent internal divisions (the High-Heel and Low-Heel factions), its obsessive war with the neighboring empire of Blefuscu over the proper way to break eggs, and its peculiar systems of reward and punishment, including the notorious practice of appointing ministers through rope-dancing contests. Through the eyes of the giant visitor Lemuel Gulliver, the court's combination of petty vanity, ruthless ambition, and elaborate legalism is exposed as both absurd and dangerous, culminating in a conspiracy to blind and starve him after his greatest services to the empire.
Structure and Ceremony of the Imperial Court
The Lilliputian court is organized around the person of the emperor, who is described as taller than any of his subjects by almost the breadth of a nail, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, an olive complexion, and a majestic deportment. He was twenty-eight years and three-quarters old at the time of Gulliver's arrival, having reigned about seven years in great felicity and generally victorious. His dress was plain and simple, but he wore a light helmet of gold adorned with jewels and a plume on the crest, and he carried a drawn sword almost three inches long with a hilt and scabbard of gold enriched with diamonds. The ladies and courtiers were magnificently clad, so that the spot they stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread on the ground embroidered with figures of gold and silver. The emperor and his court came out to meet Gulliver when he was first transported to the capital, but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on Gulliver's body. The emperor himself, attended by several of the nobility, visited Gulliver in his confinement, and the empress and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs to observe him. The court's priests and lawyers were present at these early audiences, commanded to address themselves to Gulliver, who spoke to them in several languages but to no purpose.
Factional Divisions: High Heels and Low Heels
The court is riven by two struggling parties, the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan, distinguished by the high and low heels of their shoes. It is alleged that the high heels are most agreeable to the ancient constitution, but the emperor has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government and all offices in the gift of the crown. The emperor's own imperial heels are lower by at least a drurr (about the fourteenth part of an inch) than any of his court. The animosities between these two parties run so high that they will neither eat nor drink nor talk with each other. The Tramecksan, or high heels, exceed the low heels in number, but the power is wholly on the side of the low heels. The heir to the crown is suspected of having some tendency towards the high heels, and it can be plainly discovered that one of his heels is higher than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait. This internal division is compounded by the threat of invasion from the island of Blefuscu, the other great empire of the universe, which is almost as large and powerful as Lilliput.
The Big-Endian War and Foreign Policy
The war between Lilliput and Blefuscu, which has lasted for six-and-thirty moons, began over the proper way to break eggs. The emperor's grandfather, while a boy, happened to cut one of his fingers when breaking an egg according to the ancient practice of breaking it upon the larger end. His father, the emperor, published an edict commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs. This law provoked six rebellions, in which one emperor lost his life and another his crown. The civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu, and the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. It is computed that eleven thousand persons have suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. The Big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu's court, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party at home, that a bloody war has been carried on for six-and-thirty moons, with various success. During this time, Lilliput has lost forty capital ships and a much greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of its best seamen and soldiers. The Blefuscudians have now equipped a numerous fleet and are preparing to make a descent upon Lilliput. The emperor, placing great confidence in Gulliver's valor and strength, commanded Reldresal, the principal secretary for private affairs, to lay this account before him. Gulliver, by an extraordinary stratagem, seizes the entire Blefuscu fleet by wading into the channel, fastening hooks to the ships, and towing them to the royal port of Lilliput. The emperor, upon Gulliver's landing, creates him a nardac upon the spot, the highest title of honor among them. The emperor then desires Gulliver to take some other opportunity of bringing all the rest of the enemy's ships into his ports, seeming to think of nothing less than reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province and compelling that people to break the smaller end of their eggs. Gulliver, however, endeavors to divert him from this design by arguments drawn from policy and justice, plainly protesting that he will never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery. This open, bold declaration is so opposite to the emperor's schemes that he can never forgive Gulliver, and from this time begins an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers maliciously bent against Gulliver, which breaks out in less than two months and has like to end in his utter destruction.
Laws, Rewards, and Punishments
The Lilliputian court administers a legal system with several peculiar laws and customs. All crimes against the state are punished with the utmost severity, but if the person accused makes his innocence plainly appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death, and the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for his loss of time, the danger he underwent, the hardship of his imprisonment, and all charges he has been at in making his defense. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favor, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. Fraud is looked upon as a greater crime than theft and is seldom left unpunished with death, for they allege that care and vigilance may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no fence against superior cunning. Whoever can bring sufficient proof that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons has a claim to certain privileges according to his quality and condition of life, with a proportionable sum out of a fund appropriated for that use, and he acquires the title of snillpall, or legal, which is added to his name but does not descend to his posterity. The image of Justice in their courts of judicature is formed with six eyes—two before, as many behind, and on each side one—to signify circumspection, with a bag of gold open in her right hand and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more disposed to reward than to punish. Ingratitude is a capital crime among them, for they reason that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind. The court also practices the diversions of rope-dancing and leaping over sticks, which are used to select candidates for great employments and high favor. These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, and the danger is much greater when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity, for by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one of them who has not received a fall.
The Conspiracy Against Gulliver and the Court's Betrayal
Despite Gulliver's immense services—capturing the Blefuscu fleet and extinguishing a fire in the empress's apartment—the court turns against him. A cabal of ministers, including Skyrris Bolgolam the high admiral, Flimnap the high treasurer, Limtoc the general, Lalcon the chamberlain, and Balmuff the grand justiciary, prepares articles of impeachment against him for high treason. The articles accuse him of traitorously pulling the empress by the arms to extinguish the fire, of refusing to reduce Blefuscu to a province, of aiding the Blefuscu ambassadors, and of preparing to make a voyage to Blefuscu under color of a verbal license. The treasurer and admiral insist that Gulliver should be put to the most painful and ignominious death by setting fire to his house at night, with the general attending with twenty thousand men armed with poisoned arrows to shoot him in the face and hands. Some of his servants are to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on his shirts and sheets, which would soon make him tear his own flesh and die in the utmost torture. The emperor, resolving if possible to spare Gulliver's life, at last brings off the chamberlain. Reldresal, the principal secretary for private affairs and Gulliver's true friend, delivers his opinion that if his majesty would please to spare Gulliver's life and only give orders to put out both his eyes, justice might in some measure be satisfied. This proposal is received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole board. Bolgolam rises up in fury, saying that the services Gulliver has performed are, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of his crimes, and that he who extinguished the fire in that unprincipled manner might at another time inundate and drown the whole palace. The treasurer shows to what straits his majesty's revenue is reduced by the charge of maintaining Gulliver, and argues that putting out his eyes would probably increase the expense, as blinding some sort of fowls makes them feed faster and grow sooner fat. The secretary, in answer, proposes gradually lessening Gulliver's establishment so that for want of sufficient food he would grow weak and faint, lose his appetite, and consume in a few months, after which five or six thousand subjects might cut his flesh from his bones and bury it in distant parts to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity. The affair is compromised: the project of starving Gulliver by degrees is kept a secret, but the sentence of putting out his eyes is entered on the books, none dissenting except Bolgolam, who, being a creature of the empress, is perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon Gulliver's death, she having borne perpetual malice against him on account of the illegal method he took to remove her and her children the night of the fire. Gulliver, learning of the plot from a friend at court, escapes to Blefuscu, and the court's subsequent demand for his return is politely refused by the emperor of Blefuscu, who hopes that both empires will soon be freed from so insupportable an incumbrance.
