It was, however,
begun as a political satire; in the insignificance of the court of
pigmies, he attacks the feebleness and folly of the new reign. _Flimnap_,
the prime minister of Lilliput, is a caricature of Walpole; the _Big
Indians_ and _Little Indians_ represent the Protestants and Roman
Catholics; the _High Heels_ and _Low Heels_ stand for the Whigs and
Tories; and the heir-apparent, who wears one heel high and the other low,
is the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., who favored both parties in
order to gain both to his purpose.
In his second voyage, that to Brobdignag, his satirical imagination took a
wider range--European politics as they appear to a superior intelligence,
illustrated by a man of _sixty_ feet in comparison with one of _six_. As
Gulliver had looked with curious contempt upon the united efforts of the
Lilliputians, he now found himself in great jeopardy and fear when in the
hands of a giant of Brobdignag. As the pigmy metropolis, five hundred
yards square, was to London, so were London and other European capitals to
the giants' city, two thousand miles in circumference.
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