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.
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