In Lilliput, Gulliver is visited by Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, who explains that the country is plagued by political partisanship. He tells Gulliver that “for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves.” It is thought that the king favors the low heels, because “his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch.”

The best is yet to come. The two parties are so at odds, they cannot even dine together. The high heels have more numbers, but the low heels have all the power. But this might change because the king’s son, the heir to the crown, has “one of his heels … higher than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait.” The wife of the actual heir to the crown is known to have found this passage hilarious when the Travels were published. Reldresal goes on to relate the terrible religious civil wars Lilliput has experienced, all because of a dispute about whether an egg ought to be cracked at the big end or the little end. The real twist comes when we are told the religious text that inspires this dispute: “that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.”

Swift speaks to us beyond Gulliver, satirizing the practices of his own society.