The king of Brobdingnag is completely horrified by Gulliver's account of English society and savagery, and, from this, we can infer that Brobdingnagian society is quite peace-loving and pacifistic. When Gulliver gleefully offers to share the recipe for gunpowder with the king, describing its effects and the way it can blow men into pieces that fairly rain from the sky, the monarch declares that he and his countrymen must be the most "'pernicious race of little odious vermin'" that ever lived. In other words, the king believes Gulliver and his fellow Englishmen to be destructive and harmful, inspiring a strong hatred from others, as well as compares them to harmful little pests that are disgusting and difficult to get rid of (like rats or lice or roaches). This metaphor, comparing the English to the worst kind of pests in the world, makes it clear that the king feels that the usefulness of a society is determined by what they can create rather than what they can destroy.
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