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diff --git a/4243-h/4243-h.htm b/4243-h/4243-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45f9249 --- /dev/null +++ b/4243-h/4243-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5513 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Colloquies on Society, by Robert Southey</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, by Robert Southey</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Robert Southey</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: Henry Morley</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 18, 2001 [eBook #4243]<br /> +[Most recently updated: August 25, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLOQUIES ON SOCIETY ***</div> + +<h1>COLLOQUIES ON SOCIETY.</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br /> +ROBERT SOUTHEY. +</p> +<p style="text-align: center">CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:<br +/> +<span class="smcap"><i>london</i></span>, <span +class="smcap"><i>paris</i></span>, <span class="smcap"><i>new +york & melbourne</i></span>.<br /> +1887. +</p> +<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2> +<p>It was in 1824 that Robert Southey, then fifty years old, +published “Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress +and Prospects of Society,” a book in two octavo volumes +with plates illustrating lake scenery. There were later +editions of the book in 1829, and in 1831, and there was an +edition in one volume in 1837, at the beginning of the reign of +Queen Victoria. +</p> + +<p>These dialogues with a meditative and patriotic ghost form +separate dissertations upon various questions that concern the +progress of society. Omitting a few dissertations that have +lost the interest they had when the subjects they discussed were +burning questions of the time, this volume retains the whole +machinery of Southey’s book. It gives unabridged the +Colloquies that deal with the main principles of social life as +Southey saw them in his latter days; and it includes, of course, +the pleasant Colloquy that presents to us Southey himself, happy +in his library, descanting on the course of time as illustrated +by the bodies and the souls of books. As this volume does +not reproduce all the Colloquies arranged by Southey under the +main title of “Sir Thomas More,” it avoids use of the +main title, and ventures only to describe itself as +“Colloquies on Society, by Robert Southey.” +</p> + +<p>They are of great interest, for they present to us the form +and character of the conservative reaction in a mind that was in +youth impatient for reform. In Southey, as in Wordsworth, +the reaction followed on experience of failure in the way taken +by the revolutionists of France, with whose aims for the +regeneration of Europe they had been in warmest accord. +Neither Wordsworth nor Southey ever lowered the ideal of a higher +life for man on earth. Southey retains it in these +Colloquies, although he balances his own hope with the +questionings of the ghost, and if he does look for a crowning +race, regards it, with Tennyson, as a +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “<i>far off</i> divine event<br /> +To which the whole Creation moves.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The conviction brought to men like Wordsworth and Southey by +the failure of the French Revolution to attain its aim in the +sudden elevation of society was not of vanity in the aim, but of +vanity in any hope of its immediate attainment by main +force. Southey makes More say to himself upon this question +(page 37), “I admit that such an improved condition of +society as you contemplate is possible, and that it ought always +to be kept in view; but the error of supposing it too near, of +fancying that there is a short road to it, is, of all the errors +of these times, the most pernicious, because it seduces the young +and generous, and betrays them imperceptibly into an alliance +with whatever is flagitious and detestable.” All +strong reaction of mind tends towards excess in the opposite +direction. Southey’s detestation of the excesses of +vile men that brought shame upon a revolutionary movement to +which some of the purest hopes of earnest youth had given +impulse, drove him, as it drove Wordsworth, into dread of +everything that sought with passionate energy immediate change of +evil into good. But in his own way no man ever strove more +patiently than Southey to make evil good; and in his own home and +his own life he gave good reason to one to whom he was as a +father, and who knew his daily thoughts and deeds, to speak of +him as “upon the whole the best man I have ever +known.” +</p> + +<p>In the days when this book was written, Southey lived at Greta +Hall, by Keswick, and had gathered a large library about +him. He was Poet Laureate. He had a pension from the +Civil List, worth less than £200 a year, and he was living +at peace upon a little income enlarged by his yearly earnings as +a writer. In 1818 his whole private fortune was £400 +in consols. In 1821 he had added to that some savings, and +gave all to a ruined friend who had been good to him in former +years. Yet in those days he refused an offer of +£2,000 a year to come to London and write for the +<i>Times</i>. He was happiest in his home by Skiddaw, with +his books about him and his wife about him. +</p> + +<p>Ten years after the publishing of these Colloquies, +Southey’s wife, who had been, as Southey said, “for +forty years the life of his life,” had to be placed in a +lunatic asylum. She returned to him to die, and then his +gentleness became still gentler as his own mind failed. He +died in 1843. Three years before his death his friend +Wordsworth visited him at Keswick, and was not recognised. +But when Southey was told who it was, “then,” +Wordsworth wrote, “his eyes flashed for a moment with their +former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had +found him, patting with both his hands his books affectionately, +like a child.” +</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas More, whose ghost communicates with Robert Southey, +was born in 1478, and at the age of fifty-seven was beheaded for +fidelity to conscience, on the 6th of July, 1535. He was, +like Southey, a man of purest character, and in 1516, when his +age was thirty-eight, there was published at Louvain his +“Utopia,” which sketched wittily an ideal +commonwealth that was based on practical and earnest thought upon +what constitutes a state, and in what direction to look for +amendment of ills. More also withdrew from his most +advanced post of opinion. When he wrote +“Utopia” he advocated absolute freedom of opinion in +matters of religion; in after years he believed it necessary to +enforce conformity. King Henry VIII., stiff in his own +opinions, had always believed that; and because More would not +say that he was of one mind with him in the matter of the divorce +of Katherine he sent him to the scaffold. +</p> +<p style="text-align: right">H. M. +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY I.—THE INTRODUCTION.</h2> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Posso aver certezza</i>, <i>e non +paura</i>,<br /> +<i>Che raccontando quel che m’ è accaduto</i>,<br /> +<i>Il ver dirò</i>, <i>nè mi sarà +creduto</i>.” +</p> + +<p>“Orlando Innamorato,” c. 5. st. 53. +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>It was during that melancholy November when the death of the +Princess Charlotte had diffused throughout Great Britain a more +general sorrow than had ever before been known in these kingdoms; +I was sitting alone at evening in my library, and my thoughts had +wandered from the book before me to the circumstances which made +this national calamity be felt almost like a private +affliction. While I was thus musing the post-woman +arrived. My letters told me there was nothing exaggerated +in the public accounts of the impression which this sudden loss +had produced; that wherever you went you found the women of the +family weeping, and that men could scarcely speak of the event +without tears; that in all the better parts of the metropolis +there was a sort of palsied feeling which seemed to affect the +whole current of active life; and that for several days there +prevailed in the streets a stillness like that of the Sabbath, +but without its repose. I opened the newspaper; it was +still bordered with broad mourning lines, and was filled with +details concerning the deceased Princess. Her coffin and +the ceremonies at her funeral were described as minutely as the +order of her nuptials and her bridal dress had been, in the same +journal, scarce eighteen months before. “Man,” +says Sir Thomas Brown, “is a noble animal, splendid in +ashes, and pompous in the grave; solemnising nativities and +deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in +the infamy of his nature.” These things led me in +spirit to the vault, and I thought of the memorable dead among +whom her mortal remains were now deposited. Possessed with +such imaginations I leaned back upon the sofa and closed my +eyes. +</p> + +<p>Ere long I was awakened from that conscious state of slumber +in which the stream of fancy floweth as it listeth by the +entrance of an elderly personage of grave and dignified +appearance. His countenance and manner were remarkably +benign, and announced a high degree of intellectual rank, and he +accosted me in a voice of uncommon sweetness, saying, +“Montesinos, a stranger from a distant country may intrude +upon you without those credentials which in other cases you have +a right to require.” “From America!” I +replied, rising to salute him. Some of the most gratifying +visits which I have ever received have been from that part of the +world. It gives me indeed more pleasure than I can express +to welcome such travellers as have sometimes found their way from +New England to those lakes and mountains; men who have not +forgotten what they owe to their ancient mother; whose +principles, and talents, and attainments would render them an +ornament to any country, and might almost lead me to hope that +their republican constitution may be more permanent than all +other considerations would induce me either to suppose or +wish. +</p> + +<p>“You judge of me,” he made answer, “by my +speech. I am, however, English by birth, and come now from +a more distant country than America, wherein I have long been +naturalised.” Without explaining himself further, or +allowing me time to make the inquiry which would naturally have +followed, he asked me if I were not thinking of the Princess +Charlotte when he disturbed me. “That,” said I, +“may easily be divined. All persons whose hearts are +not filled with their own grief are thinking of her at this +time. It had just occurred to me that on two former +occasions when the heir apparent of England was cut off in the +prime of life the nation was on the eve of a religious revolution +in the first instance, and of a political one in the +second.” +</p> + +<p>“Prince Arthur and Prince Henry,” he +replied. “Do you notice this as ominous, or merely as +remarkable?” +</p> + +<p>“Merely as remarkable,” was my answer. +“Yet there are certain moods of mind in which we can +scarcely help ascribing an ominous importance to any remarkable +coincidence wherein things of moment are concerned.” +</p> + +<p>“Are you superstitious?” said he. +“Understand me as using the word for want of a more +appropriate one—not in its ordinary and contemptuous +acceptation.” +</p> + +<p>I smiled at the question, and replied, “Many persons +would apply the epithet to me without qualifying it. This, +you know, is the age of reason, and during the last hundred and +fifty years men have been reasoning themselves out of everything +that they ought to believe and feel. Among a certain +miserable class, who are more numerous than is commonly supposed, +he who believes in a First Cause and a future state is regarded +with contempt as a superstitionist. The religious +naturalist in his turn despises the feebler mind of the Socinian; +and the Socinian looks with astonishment or pity at the weakness +of those who, having by conscientious inquiry satisfied +themselves of the authenticity of the Scriptures, are contented +to believe what is written, and acknowledge humility to be the +foundation of wisdom as well as of virtue. But for myself, +many, if not most of those even who agree with me in all +essential points, would be inclined to think me superstitious, +because I am not ashamed to avow my persuasion that there are +more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their +philosophy.” +</p> + +<p>“You believe, then, in apparitions,” said my +visitor. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Even so, sir. That such things +should be is probable <i>à priori</i>; and I cannot refuse +assent to the strong evidence that such things are, nor to the +common consent which has prevailed among all people, everywhere, +in all ages a belief indeed which is truly catholic, in the +widest acceptation of the word. I am, by inquiry and +conviction, as well as by inclination and feeling, a Christian; +life would be intolerable to me if I were not so. +“But,” says Saint Evremont, “the most devout +cannot always command their belief, nor the most impious their +incredulity.” I acknowledge with Sir Thomas Brown +that, “as in philosophy, so in divinity, there are sturdy +doubts and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of +our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us;” and I confess +with him that these are to be conquered, “not in a martial +posture, but on our knees.” If then there are moments +wherein I, who have satisfied my reason, and possess a firm and +assured faith, feel that I have in this opinion a strong hold, I +cannot but perceive that they who have endeavoured to dispossess +the people of their old instinctive belief in such things have +done little service to individuals and much injury to the +community. +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—Do you extend this to a belief in +witchcraft? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The common stories of witchcraft +confute themselves, as may be seen in all the trials for that +offence. Upon this subject I would say with my old friend +Charles Lamb— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I do not love to credit tales of magic!<br +/> +Heaven’s music, which is order, seems unstrung.<br /> +And this brave world<br /> +(The mystery of God) unbeautified,<br /> +Disordered, marred, where such strange things are +acted.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The only inference which can be drawn from the confession of +some of the poor wretches who have suffered upon such charges is, +that they had attempted to commit the crime, and thereby incurred +the guilt and deserved the punishment. Of this indeed there +have been recent instances; and in one atrocious case the +criminal escaped because the statute against the imaginary +offence is obsolete, and there exists no law which could reach +the real one. +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—He who may wish to show with what +absurd perversion the forms and technicalities of law are applied +to obstruct the purposes of justice, which they were designed to +further, may find excellent examples in England. But +leaving this allow me to ask whether you think all the stories +which are related of an intercourse between men and beings of a +superior order, good or evil, are to be disbelieved like the +vulgar tales of witchcraft? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If you happen, sir, to have read some +of those ballads which I threw off in the high spirits of youth +you may judge what my opinion then was of the grotesque +demonology of the monks and middle ages by the use there made of +it. But in the scale of existences there may be as many +orders above us as below. We know there are creatures so +minute that without the aid of our glasses they could never have +been discovered; and this fact, if it were not notorious as well +as certain, would appear not less incredible to sceptical minds +than that there should be beings which are invisible to us +because of their subtlety. That there are such I am as +little able to doubt as I am to affirm anything concerning them; +but if there are such, why not evil spirits, as well as wicked +men? Many travellers who have been conversant with savages +have been fully persuaded that their jugglers actually possessed +some means of communication with the invisible world, and +exercised a supernatural power which they derived from it. +And not missionaries only have believed this, and old travellers +who lived in ages of credulity, but more recent observers, such +as Carver and Bruce, whose testimony is of great weight, and who +were neither ignorant, nor weak, nor credulous men. What I +have read concerning ordeals also staggers me; and I am sometimes +inclined to think it more possible that when there has been full +faith on all sides these appeals to divine justice may have been +answered by Him who sees the secrets of all hearts than that +modes of trial should have prevailed so long and so generally, +from some of which no person could ever have escaped without an +interposition of Providence. Thus it has appeared to me in +my calm and unbiassed judgment. Yet I confess I should want +faith to make the trial. May it not be, that by such means +in dark ages, and among blind nations, the purpose is effected of +preserving conscience and the belief of our immortality, without +which the life of our life would be extinct? And with +regard to the conjurers of the African and American savages, +would it be unreasonable to suppose that, as the most elevated +devotion brings us into fellowship with the Holy Spirit, a +correspondent degree of wickedness may effect a communion with +evil intelligences? These are mere speculations which I +advance for as little as they are worth. My serious belief +amounts to this, that preternatural impressions are sometimes +communicated to us for wise purposes: and that departed spirits +are sometimes permitted to manifest themselves. +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—If a ghost, then, were disposed to pay +you a visit, you would be in a proper state of mind for receiving +such a visitor? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I should not credit my senses +lightly; neither should I obstinately distrust them, after I had +put the reality of the appearance to the proof, as far as that +were possible. +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—Should you like to have an opportunity +afforded you? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Heaven forbid! I have suffered +so much in dreams from conversing with those whom even in sleep I +knew to be departed, that an actual presence might perhaps be +more than I could bear. +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—But if it were the spirit of one with +whom you had no near ties of relationship or love, how then would +it affect you? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—That would of course be according to +the circumstances on both sides. But I entreat you not to +imagine that I am any way desirous of enduring the +experiment. +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—Suppose, for example, he were to +present himself as I have done; the purport of his coming +friendly; the place and opportunity suiting, as at present; the +time also considerately chosen—after dinner; and the spirit +not more abrupt in his appearance nor more formidable in aspect +than the being who now addresses you? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Why, sir, to so substantial a ghost, +and of such respectable appearance, I might, perhaps, have +courage enough to say with Hamlet, +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Thou com’st in such a questionable +shape,<br /> +That I will speak to thee!” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—Then, sir, let me introduce myself in +that character, now that our conversation has conducted us so +happily to the point. I told you truly that I was English +by birth, but that I came from a more distant country than +America, and had long been naturalised there. The country +whence I come is not the New World, but the other one: and I now +declare myself in sober earnest to be a ghost. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A ghost! +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—A veritable ghost, and an honest one, +who went out of the world with so good a character that he will +hardly escape canonisation if ever you get a Roman Catholic king +upon the throne. And now what test do you require? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I can detect no smell of brimstone; +and the candle burns as it did before, without the slightest +tinge of blue in its flame. You look, indeed, like a spirit +of health, and I might be disposed to give entire belief to that +countenance, if it were not for the tongue that belongs to +it. But you are a queer spirit, whether good or evil! +</p> + +<p><i>Stranger</i>.—The headsman thought so, when he made a +ghost of me almost three hundred years ago. I had a +character through life of loving a jest, and did not belie it at +the last. But I had also as general a reputation for +sincerity, and of that also conclusive proof was given at the +same time. In serious truth, then, I am a disembodied +spirit, and the form in which I now manifest myself is subject to +none of the accidents of matter. You are still +incredulous! Feel, then, and be convinced! +</p> + +<p>My incomprehensible guest extended his hand toward me as he +spoke. I held forth mine to accept it, not, indeed, +believing him, and yet not altogether without some apprehensive +emotion, as if I were about to receive an electrical shock. +The effect was more startling than electricity would have +produced. His hand had neither weight nor substance; my +fingers, when they would have closed upon it, found nothing that +they could grasp: it was intangible, though it had all the +reality of form. +</p> + +<p>“In the name of God,” I exclaimed, “who are +you, and wherefore are you come?” +</p> + +<p>“Be not alarmed,” he replied. “Your +reason, which has shown you the possibility of such an appearance +as you now witness, must have convinced you also that it would +never be permitted for an evil end. Examine my features +well, and see if you do not recognise them. Hans Holbein +was excellent at a likeness.” +</p> + +<p>I had now for the first time in my life a distinct sense of +that sort of porcupinish motion over the whole scalp which is so +frequently described by the Latin poets. It was +considerably allayed by the benignity of his countenance and the +manner of his speech, and after looking him steadily in the face +I ventured to say, for the likeness had previously struck me, +“Is it Sir Thomas More?” +</p> + +<p>“The same,” he made answer, and lifting up his +chin, displayed a circle round the neck brighter in colour than +the ruby. “The marks of martyrdom,” he +continued, “are our insignia of honour. Fisher and I +have the purple collar, as Friar Forrest and Cranmer have the +robe of fire.” +</p> + +<p>A mingled feeling of fear and veneration kept me silent, till +I perceived by his look that he expected and encouraged me to +speak; and collecting my spirits as well as I could, I asked him +wherefore he had thought proper to appear, and why to me rather +than to any other person? +</p> + +<p>He replied, “We reap as we have sown. Men bear +with them from this world into the intermediate state their +habits of mind and stores of knowledge, their dispositions and +affections and desires; and these become a part of our +punishment, or of our reward, according to their kind. +Those persons, therefore, in whom the virtue of patriotism has +predominated continue to regard with interest their native land, +unless it be so utterly sunk in degradation that the moral +relationship between them is dissolved. Epaminondas can +have no sympathy at this time with Thebes, nor Cicero with Rome, +nor Belisarius with the imperial city of the East. But the +worthies of England retain their affection for their noble +country, behold its advancement with joy, and when serious danger +appears to threaten the goodly structure of its institutions they +feel as much anxiety as is compatible with their state of +beatitude.” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—What, then, may doubt and anxiety +consist with the happiness of heaven? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Heaven and hell may be said to +begin on your side the grave. In the intermediate state +conscience anticipates with unerring certainty the result of +judgment. We, therefore, who have done well can have no +fear for ourselves. But inasmuch as the world has any hold +upon our affections we are liable to that anxiety which is +inseparable from terrestrial hopes. And as parents who are +in bliss regard still with parental love the children whom they +have left on earth, we, in like manner, though with a feeling +different in kind and inferior in degree, look with apprehension +upon the perils of our country. +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “<i>sub +pectore forti</i><br /> +<i>Vivit adhuc patriæ pietas</i>; <i>stimulatque +sepultum</i><br /> +<i>Libertatis amor</i>: <i>pondus mortale necari</i><br /> +<i>Si potuit</i>, <i>veteres animo post funera vires</i><br /> +<i>Mansere</i>, <i>et prisci vivit non immemor +ævi</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>They are the words of old Mantuan. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I am to understand, then, that you +cannot see into the ways of futurity? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Enlarged as our faculties are, +you must not suppose that we partake of prescience. For +human actions are free, and we exist in time. The future is +to us therefore as uncertain as to you; except only that having a +clearer and more comprehensive knowledge of the past, we are +enabled to reason better from causes to consequences, and by what +has been to judge of what is likely to be. We have this +advantage also, that we are divested of all those passions which +cloud the intellects and warp the understandings of men. +You are thinking, I perceive, how much you have to learn, and +what you should first inquire of me. But expect no +revelations! Enough was revealed when man was assured of +judgment after death, and the means of salvation were afforded +him. I neither come to discover secret things nor hidden +treasures; but to discourse with you concerning these portentous +and monster-breeding times; for it is your lot, as it was mine, +to live during one of the grand climacterics of the world. +And I come to you, rather than to any other person, because you +have been led to meditate upon the corresponding changes whereby +your age and mine are distinguished; and because, notwithstanding +many discrepancies and some dispathies between us (speaking of +myself as I was, and as you know me), there are certain points of +sympathy and resemblance which bring us into contact, and enable +us at once to understand each other. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—<i>Et in Utopiâ ego</i>. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You apprehend me. We have +both speculated in the joys and freedom of our youth upon the +possible improvement of society; and both in like manner have +lived to dread with reason the effects of that restless spirit +which, like the Titaness Mutability described by your immortal +master, insults heaven and disturbs the earth. By comparing +the great operating causes in the age of the Reformation, and in +this age of revolutions, going back to the former age, looking at +things as I then beheld them, perceiving wherein I judged +rightly, and wherein I erred, and tracing the progress of those +causes which are now developing their whole tremendous power, you +will derive instruction, which you are a fit person to receive +and communicate; for without being solicitous concerning present +effect, you are contented to cast your bread upon the +waters. You are now acquainted with me and my +intention. To-morrow you will see me again; and I shall +continue to visit you occasionally as opportunity may +serve. Meantime say nothing of what has passed—not +even to your wife. She might not like the thoughts of a +ghostly visitor: and the reputation of conversing with the dead +might be almost as inconvenient as that of dealing with the +devil. For the present, then, farewell! I will never +startle you with too sudden an apparition; but you may learn to +behold my disappearance without alarm. +</p> + +<p>I was not able to behold it without emotion, although he had +thus prepared me; for the sentence was no sooner completed than +he was gone. Instead of rising from the chair he vanished +from it. I know not to what the instantaneous disappearance +can be likened. Not to the dissolution of a rainbow, +because the colours of the rainbow fade gradually till they are +lost; not to the flash of cannon, or to lightning, for these +things are gone as soon as they are come, and it is known that +the instant of their appearance must be that of their departure; +not to a bubble upon the water, for you see it burst; not to the +sudden extinction of a light, for that is either succeeded by +darkness or leaves a different hue upon the surrounding +objects. In the same indivisible point of time when I +beheld the distinct, individual, and, to all sense of sight, +substantial form—the living, moving, reasonable +image—in that self-same instant it was gone, as if +exemplifying the difference between to <i>be</i> and <i>not</i> +to <i>be</i>. It was no dream, of this I was well assured; +realities are never mistaken for dreams, though dreams may be +mistaken for realities. Moreover I had long been accustomed +in sleep to question my perceptions with a wakeful faculty of +reason, and to detect their fallacy. But, as well may be +supposed, my thoughts that night, sleeping as well as waking, +were filled with this extraordinary interview; and when I arose +the next morning it was not till I had called to mind every +circumstance of time and place that I was convinced the +apparition was real, and that I might again expect it. +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY II.—THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD.</h2> +<p>On the following evening when my spiritual visitor entered the +room, that volume of Dr. Wordsworth’s ecclesiastical +biography which contains his life was lying on the table beside +me. “I perceive,” said he, glancing at the +book, “you have been gathering all you can concerning me +from my good gossiping chronicler, who tells you that I loved +milk and fruit and eggs, preferred beef to young meats, and brown +bread to white; was fond of seeing strange birds and beasts, and +kept an ape, a fox, a weasel, and a ferret.” +</p> + +<p>“I am not one of those fastidious readers,” I +replied, “who quarrel with a writer for telling them too +much. But these things were worth telling: they show that +you retained a youthful palate as well as a youthful heart; and I +like you the better both for your diet and your menagerie. +The old biographer, indeed, with the best intentions, has been +far from understanding the character which he desired to +honour. He seems, however, to have been a faithful +reporter, and has done as well as his capacity permitted. I +observe that he gives you credit for ‘a deep foresight and +judgment of the times,’ and for speaking in a prophetic +spirit of the evils, which soon afterwards were ‘full +heavily felt.’” +</p> + +<p>“There could be little need for a spirit of +prophecy,” Sir Thomas made answer, to “foresee +troubles which were the sure effect of the causes then in +operation, and which were actually close at hand. When the +rain is gathering from the south or west, and those flowers and +herbs which serve as natural hygrometers close their leaves, men +have no occasion to consult the stars for what the clouds and the +earth are telling them. You were thinking of Prince Arthur +when I introduced myself yesterday, as if musing upon the great +events which seem to have received their bias from the apparent +accident of his premature death.” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I had fallen into one of those idle +reveries in which we speculate upon what might have been. +Lord Bacon describes him as “very studious, and learned +beyond his years, and beyond the custom of great +princes.” As this indicates a calm and thoughtful +mind, it seems to show that he inherited the Tudor +character. His brother took after the Plantagenets; but it +was not of their nobler qualities that he partook. He had +the popular manners of his grandfather, Edward IV., and, like +him, was lustful, cruel, and unfeeling. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The blood of the Plantagenets, +as your friends the Spaniards would say, was a strong +blood. That temper of mind which (in some of his +predecessors) thought so little of fratricide might perhaps have +involved him in the guilt of a parricidal war, if his father had +not been fortunate enough to escape such an affliction by a +timely death. We might otherwise be allowed to wish that +the life of Henry VII. had been prolonged to a good old +age. For if ever there was a prince who could so have +directed the Reformation as to have averted the evils wherewith +that tremendous event was accompanied, and yet to have secured +its advantages, he was the man. Cool, wary, far-sighted, +rapacious, politic, and religious, or superstitious if you will +(for his religion had its root rather in fear than in hope), he +was peculiarly adapted for such a crisis both by his good and +evil qualities. For the sake of increasing his treasures +and his power, he would have promoted the Reformation; but his +cautious temper, his sagacity, and his fear of Divine justice +would have taught him where to stop. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A generation of politic sovereigns +succeeded to the race of warlike ones, just in that age of +society when policy became of more importance in their station +than military talents. Ferdinand of Spain, Joam II. whom +the Portuguese called the perfect prince, Louis XI. and Henry +VII. were all of this class. Their individual characters +were sufficiently distinct; but the circumstances of their +situation stamped them with a marked resemblance, and they were +of a metal to take and retain the strong, sharp impress of the +age. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The age required such +characters; and it is worthy of notice how surely in the order of +providence such men as are wanted are raised up. One +generation of these princes sufficed. In Spain, indeed, +there was an exception; for Ferdinand had two successors who +pursued the same course of conduct. In the other kingdoms +the character ceased with the necessity for it. Crimes +enough were committed by succeeding sovereigns, but they were no +longer the acts of systematic and reflecting policy. This, +too, is worthy of remark, that the sovereigns whom you have +named, and who scrupled at no means for securing themselves on +the throne, for enlarging their dominions and consolidating their +power, were each severally made to feel the vanity of human +ambition, being punished either in or by the children who were to +reap the advantage of their crimes. “Verily there is +a God that judgeth the earth!” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—An excellent friend of mine, one of +the wisest, best, and happiest men whom I have ever known, +delights in this manner to trace the moral order of Providence +through the revolutions of the world; and in his historical +writings keeps it in view as the pole-star of his course. I +wish he were present, that he might have the satisfaction of +hearing his favourite opinion confirmed by one from the dead. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—His opinion requires no other +confirmation than what he finds for it in observation and +Scripture, and in his own calm judgment. I should differ +little from that friend of yours concerning the past; but his +hopes for the future appear to me like early buds which are in +danger of March winds. He believes the world to be in a +rapid state of sure improvement; and in the ferment which exists +everywhere he beholds only a purifying process; not considering +that there is an acetous as well as a vinous fermentation; and +that in the one case the liquor may be spilt, in the other it +must be spoilt. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Surely you would not rob us of our +hopes for the human race! If I apprehended that your +discourse tended to this end I should suspect you, +notwithstanding your appearance, and be ready to exclaim, +“Avaunt, tempter!” For there is no opinion from +which I should so hardly be driven, and so reluctantly part, as +the belief that the world will continue to improve, even as it +has hitherto continually been improving; and that the progress of +knowledge and the diffusion of Christianity will bring about at +last, when men become Christians in reality as well as in name, +something like that Utopian state of which philosophers have +loved to dream—like that millennium in which saints as well +as enthusiasts have trusted. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Do you hold that this +consummation must of necessity come to pass; or that it depends +in any degree upon the course of events—that is to say, +upon human actions? The former of these propositions you +would be as unwilling to admit as your friend Wesley, or the old +Welshman Pelagius himself. The latter leaves you little +other foundation for your opinion than a desire, which, from its +very benevolence, is the more likely to be delusive. You +are in a dilemma. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Not so, Sir Thomas. Impossible +as it may be for us to reconcile the free will of man with the +foreknowledge of God, I nevertheless believe in both with the +most full conviction. When the human mind plunges into time +and space in its speculations, it adventures beyond its sphere; +no wonder, therefore, that its powers fail, and it is lost. +But that my will is free, I know feelingly: it is proved to me by +my conscience. And that God provideth all things I know by +His own Word, and by that instinct which He hath implanted in me +to assure me of His being. My answer to your question, +then, is this: I believe that the happy consummation which I +desire is appointed, and must come to pass; but that when it is +to come depends upon the obedience of man to the will of God, +that is, upon human actions. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You hold then that the human +race will one day attain the utmost degree of general virtue, and +thereby general happiness, of which humanity is capable. +Upon what do you found this belief? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The opinion is stated more broadly +than I should choose to advance it. But this is ever the +manner of argumentative discourse: the opponent endeavours to +draw from you conclusions which you are not prepared to defend, +and which perhaps you have never before acknowledged even to +yourself. I will put the proposition in a less disputable +form. A happier condition of society is possible than that +in which any nation is existing at this time, or has at any time +existed. The sum both of moral and physical evil may be +greatly diminished both by good laws, good institutions, and good +governments. Moral evil cannot indeed be removed, unless +the nature of man were changed; and that renovation is only to be +effected in individuals, and in them only by the special grace of +God. Physical evil must always, to a certain degree, be +inseparable from mortality. But both are so much within the +reach of human institutions that a state of society is +conceivable almost as superior to that of England in these days, +as that itself is superior to the condition of the tattooed +Britons, or of the northern pirates from whom we are +descended. Surely this belief rests upon a reasonable +foundation, and is supported by that general improvement (always +going on if it be regarded upon the great scale) to which all +history bears witness. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—I dispute not this: but to +render it a reasonable ground of immediate hope, the predominance +of good principles must be supposed. Do you believe that +good or evil principles predominate at this time? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If I were to judge by that expression +of popular opinion which the press pretends to convey, I should +reply without hesitation that never in any other known age of the +world have such pernicious principles been so prevalent +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Qua terra patet</i>, <i>fera regnat +Erinnys</i>;<br /> +<i>In facinus jurasse putes</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Is there not a danger that these +principles may bear down everything before them? and is not that +danger obvious, palpable, imminent? Is there a considerate +man who can look at the signs of the times without apprehension, +or a scoundrel connected with what is called the public press, +who does not speculate upon them, and join with the anarchists as +the strongest party? Deceive not yourself by the fallacious +notion that truth is mightier than falsehood, and that good must +prevail over evil! Good principles enable men to suffer, +rather than to act. Think how the dog, fond and faithful +creature as he is, from being the most docile and obedient of all +animals, is made the most dangerous, if he becomes mad; so men +acquire a frightful and not less monstrous power when they are in +a state of moral insanity, and break loose from their social and +religious obligations. Remember too how rapidly the plague +of diseased opinions is communicated, and that if it once gain +head, it is as difficult to be stopped as a conflagration or a +flood. The prevailing opinions of this age go to the +destruction of everything which has hitherto been held +sacred. They tend to arm the poor against the rich; the +many against the few: worse than this, for it will also be a war +of hope and enterprise against timidity, of youth against +age. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Sir Ghost, you are almost as dreadful +an alarmist as our Cumberland cow, who is believed to have lately +uttered this prophecy, delivering it with oracular propriety in +verse: +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Two winters, a wet spring,<br /> +A bloody summer, and no king.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—That prophecy speaks the wishes +of the man, whoever he may have been, by whom it was invented: +and you who talk of the progress of knowledge, and the +improvement of society, and upon that improvement build your hope +of its progressive melioration, you know that even so gross and +palpable an imposture as this is swallowed by many of the vulgar, +and contributes in its sphere to the mischief which it was +designed to promote. I admit that such an improved +condition of society as you contemplate is possible, and hath +ought always to be kept in view: but the error of supposing it +too near, of fancying that there is a short road to it, is, of +all the errors of these times, the most pernicious, because it +seduces the young and generous, and betrays them imperceptibly +into an alliance with whatever is flagitious and +detestable. The fact is undeniable that the worst +principles in religion, in morals, and in politics, are at this +time more prevalent than they ever were known to be in any former +age. You need not be told in what manner revolutions in +opinion bring about the fate of empires; and upon this ground you +ought to regard the state of the world, both at home and abroad, +with fear, rather than with hope. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—When I have followed such +speculations as may allowably be indulged, respecting what is +hidden in the darkness of time and of eternity, I have sometimes +thought that the moral and physical order of the world may be so +appointed as to coincide; and that the revolutions of this planet +may correspond with the condition of its inhabitants; so that the +convulsions and changes whereto it is destined should occur, when +the existing race of men had either become so corrupt as to be +unworthy of the place which they hold in the universe, or were so +truly regenerate by the will and word of God, as to be qualified +for a higher station in it. Our globe may have gone through +many such revolutions. We know the history of the last; the +measure of its wickedness was then filled up. For the +future we are taught to expect a happier consummation. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—It is important that you should +distinctly understand the nature and extent of your expectations +on that head. Is it upon the Apocalypse that you rest +them? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If you had not forbidden me to expect +from this intercourse any communication which might come with the +authority of revealed knowledge, I should ask in reply, whether +that dark book is indeed to be received for authentic +Scripture? My hopes are derived from the prophets and the +evangelists. Believing in them with a calm and settled +faith, with that consent of the will and heart and understanding +which constitutes religious belief, and in them the clear +annunciation of that kingdom of God upon earth, for the coming of +which Christ himself has taught and commanded us to pray. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Remember that the Evangelists, +in predicting that kingdom, announce a dreadful advent! And +that, according to the received opinion of the Church, wars, +persecutions, and calamities of every kind, the triumph of evil, +and the coming of Antichrist are to be looked for, before the +promises made by the prophets shall be fulfilled. Consider +this also, that the speedy fulfilment of those promises has been +the ruling fancy of the most dangerous of all madmen, from John +of Leyden and his frantic followers, down to the saints of +Cromwell’s army, Venner and his Fifth-Monarchy men, the +fanatics of the Cevennes, and the blockheads of your own days, +who beheld with complacency the crimes of the French +Revolutionists, and the progress of Bonaparte towards the +subjugation of Europe, as events tending to bring about the +prophecies; and, under the same besotted persuasion, are ready at +this time to co-operate with the miscreants who trade in +blasphemy and treason! But you who neither seek to deceive +others nor yourself, you who are neither insane nor insincere, +you surely do not expect that the millennium is to be brought +about by the triumph of what are called liberal opinions; nor by +enabling the whole of the lower classes to read the incentives to +vice, impiety, and rebellion which are prepared for them by an +unlicensed press; nor by Sunday schools, and religious tract +societies; nor by the portentous bibliolatry of the age! +And if you adhere to the letter of the Scriptures, methinks the +thought of that consummation for which you look, might serve +rather for consolation under the prospect of impending evils, +than for a hope upon which the mind can rest in security with a +calm and contented delight. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—To this I must reply, that the +fulfilment of those calamitous events predicted in the Gospels +may safely be referred, as it usually is, and by the best +Biblical scholars, to the destruction of Jerusalem. +Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they are, I +speak with less hesitation, and dismiss them from my thoughts, as +more congenial to the fanatics of whom you have spoken than to +me. And for the coming of Antichrist, it is no longer a +received opinion in these days, whatever it may have been in +yours. Your reasoning applies to the enthusiastic +millenarians who discover the number of the beast, and calculate +the year when a vial is to be poured out, with as much precision +as the day and hour of an eclipse. But it leaves my hope +unshaken and untouched. I know that the world has improved; +I see that it is improving; and I believe that it will continue +to improve in natural and certain progress. Good and evil +principles are widely at work: a crisis is evidently approaching; +it may be dreadful, but I can have no doubts concerning the +result. Black and ominous as the aspects may appear, I +regard them without dismay. The common exclamation of the +poor and helpless, when they feel themselves oppressed, conveys +to my mind the sum of the surest and safest philosophy. I +say with them, “God is above,” and trust Him for the +event. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—God is above—but the devil +is below. Evil principles are, in their nature, more active +than good. The harvest is precarious, and must be prepared +with labour, and cost, and care; weeds spring up of themselves, +and flourish and seed whatever may be the season. Disease, +vice, folly, and madness are contagious; while health and +understanding are incommunicable, and wisdom and virtue hardly to +be communicated! We have come, however, to some conclusion +in our discourse. Your notion of the improvement of the +world has appeared to be a mere speculation, altogether +inapplicable in practice; and as dangerous to weak heads and +heated imaginations as it is congenial to benevolent +hearts. Perhaps that improvement is neither so general nor +so certain as you suppose. Perhaps, even in this country +there may be more knowledge than there was in former times and +less wisdom, more wealth and less happiness, more display and +less virtue. This must be the subject of future +conversation. I will only remind you now, that the French +had persuaded themselves this was the most enlightened age of the +world, and they the most enlightened people in it—the +politest, the most amiable, and the most humane of +nations—and that a new era of philosophy, philanthropy, and +peace, was about to commence under their auspices, when they were +upon the eve of a revolution which, for its complicated +monstrosities, absurdities, and horrors, is more disgraceful to +human nature than any other series of events in history. +Chew the cud upon this, and farewell +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY III.—THE DRUIDICAL STONES.—VISITATIONS +OF PESTILENCE.</h2> +<p>Inclination would lead me to hibernate during half the year in +this uncomfortable climate of Great Britain, where few men who +have tasted the enjoyments of a better would willingly take up +their abode, if it were not for the habits, and still more for +the ties and duties which root us to our native soil. I +envy the Turks for their sedentary constitutions, which seem no +more to require exercise than an oyster does or a toad in a +stone. In this respect, I am by disposition as true a Turk +as the Grand Seignior himself; and approach much nearer to one in +the habit of inaction than any person of my acquaintance. +Willing however, as I should be to believe, that anything which +is habitually necessary for a sound body, would be unerringly +indicated by an habitual disposition for it, and that if exercise +were as needful as food for the preservation of the animal +economy, the desire of motion would recur not less regularly than +hunger and thirst, it is a theory which will not bear the test; +and this I know by experience. +</p> + +<p>On a grey sober day, therefore, and in a tone of mind quite +accordant with the season, I went out unwillingly to take the +air, though if taking physic would have answered the same +purpose, the dose would have been preferred as the shortest, and +for that reason the least unpleasant remedy. Even on such +occasions as this, it is desirable to propose to oneself some +object for the satisfaction of accomplishing it, and to set out +with the intention of reaching some fixed point, though it should +be nothing better than a mile-stone, or a directing post. +So I walked to the Circle of Stones on the Penrith road, because +there is a long hill upon the way which would give the muscles +some work to perform; and because the sight of this rude monument +which has stood during so many centuries, and is likely, if left +to itself, to outlast any edifice that man could have erected, +gives me always a feeling, which, however often it may be +repeated, loses nothing of its force. +</p> + +<p>The circle is of the rudest kind, consisting of single stones, +unhewn and chosen without any regard to shape or magnitude, being +of all sizes, from seven or eight feet in height, to three or +four. The circle, however, is complete, and is thirty-three +paces in diameter. Concerning this, like all similar +monuments in Great Britain, the popular superstition prevails, +that no two persons can number the stones alike, and that no +person will ever find a second counting confirm the first. +My children have often disappointed their natural inclination to +believe this wonder, by putting it to the test and disproving +it. The number of the stones which compose the circle, is +thirty-eight, and besides these there are ten which form three +sides of a little square within, on the eastern side, three +stones of the circle itself forming the fourth; this being +evidently the place where the Druids who presided had their +station; or where the more sacred and important part of the rites +and ceremonies (whatever they may have been) were +performed. All this is as perfect at this day as when the +Cambrian bards, according to the custom of their ancient order, +described by my old acquaintances, the living members of the +Chair of Glamorgan, met there for the last time, +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“On the green turf and under the blue +sky,<br /> +Their heads in reverence bare, and bare of foot.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The site also precisely accords with the description which +Edward Williams and William Owen give of the situation required +for such meeting places: +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “—a high hill +top,<br /> +Nor bowered with trees, nor broken by the plough:<br /> +Remote from human dwellings and the stir<br /> +Of human life, and open to the breath<br /> +And to the eye of Heaven.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The high hill is now enclosed and cultivated; and a clump of +larches has been planted within the circle, for the purpose of +protecting an oak in the centre, the owner of the field having +wished to rear one there with a commendable feeling, because that +tree was held sacred by the Druids, and therefore, he supposed, +might be appropriately placed there. The whole plantation, +however, has been so miserably storm-stricken that the poor +stunted trees are not even worth the trouble of cutting them down +for fuel, and so they continue to disfigure the spot. In +all other respects this impressive monument of former times is +carefully preserved; the soil within the enclosure is not broken, +a path from the road is left, and in latter times a +stepping-stile has been placed to accommodate Lakers with an +easier access than by striding over the gate beside it. +</p> + +<p>The spot itself is the most commanding which could be chosen +in this part of the country, without climbing a mountain. +Derwentwater and the Vale of Keswick are not seen from it, only +the mountains which enclose them on the south and west. +Lattrigg and the huge side of Skiddaw are on the north; to the +east is the open country towards Penrith expanding from the Vale +of St. John’s, and extending for many miles, with Mellfell +in the distance, where it rises alone like a huge tumulus on the +right, and Blencathra on the left, rent into deep ravines. +On the south-east is the range of Helvellyn, from its termination +at Wanthwaite Crags to its loftiest summits, and to +Dunmailraise. The lower range of Nathdalefells lies nearer, +in a parallel line with Helvellyn; and the dale itself, with its +little streamlet, immediately below. The heights above +Leatheswater, with the Borrowdale mountains, complete the +panorama. +</p> + +<p>While I was musing upon the days of the Bards and Druids, and +thinking that Llywarc Hen himself had probably stood within this +very circle at a time when its history was known, and the rites +for which it was erected still in use, I saw a person +approaching, and started a little at perceiving that it was my +new acquaintance from the world of spirits. “I am +come,” said he, “to join company with you in your +walk: you may as well converse with a ghost as stand dreaming of +the dead. I dare say you have been wishing that these +stones could speak and tell their tale, or that some record were +sculptured upon them, though it were as unintelligible as the +hieroglyphics, or as an Ogham inscription.” +</p> + +<p>“My ghostly friend,” I replied, “they tell +me something to the purport of our last discourse. Here +upon ground where the Druids have certainly held their +assemblies, and where not improbably, human sacrifices have been +offered up, you will find it difficult to maintain that the +improvement of the world has not been unequivocal, and very +great.” +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Make the most of your vantage +ground! My position is, that this improvement is not +general; that while some parts of the earth are progressive in +civilisation, others have been retrograde; and that even where +improvement appears the greatest, it is partial. For +example; with all the meliorations which have taken place in +England since these stones were set up (and you will not suppose +that I who laid down my life for a religious principle, would +undervalue the most important of all advantages), do you believe +that they have extended to all classes? Look at the +question well. Consider your fellow-countrymen, both in +their physical and intellectual relations, and tell me whether a +large portion of the community are in a happier or more hopeful +condition at this time, than their forefathers were when +Cæsar set foot upon the island? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If it be your aim to prove that the +savage state is preferable to the social, I am perhaps the very +last person upon whom any arguments to that end could produce the +slightest effect. That notion never for a moment deluded +me: not even in the ignorance and presumptuousness of youth, when +first I perused Rousseau, and was unwilling to feel that a writer +whose passionate eloquence I felt and admired so truly could be +erroneous in any of his opinions. But now, in the evening +of life, when I know upon what foundation my principles rest, and +when the direction of one peculiar course of study has made it +necessary for me to learn everything which books could teach +concerning savage life, the proposition appears to me one of the +most untenable that ever was advanced by a perverse or a +paradoxical intellect. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—I advanced no such paradox, and +you have answered me too hastily. The Britons were not +savages when the Romans invaded and improved them. They +were already far advanced in the barbarous stage of society, +having the use of metals, domestic cattle, wheeled carriages, and +money, a settled government, and a regular priesthood, who were +connected with their fellow-Druids on the Continent, and who were +not ignorant of letters. Understand me! I admit that +improvements of the utmost value have been made, in the most +important concerns: but I deny that the melioration has been +general; and insist, on the contrary, that a considerable portion +of the people are in a state, which, as relates to their physical +condition, is greatly worsened, and, as touching their +intellectual nature, is assuredly not improved. Look, for +example, at the great mass of your populace in town and +country—a tremendous proportion of the whole +community! Are their bodily wants better, or more easily +supplied? Are they subject to fewer calamities? Are +they happier in childhood, youth, and manhood, and more +comfortably or carefully provided for in old age, than when the +land was unenclosed, and half covered with woods? With +regard to their moral and intellectual capacity, you well know +how little of the light of knowledge and of revelation has +reached them. They are still in darkness, and in the shadow +of death! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I perceive your drift: and perceive +also that when we understand each other there is likely to be +little difference between us. And I beseech you, do not +suppose that I am disputing for the sake of disputation; with +that pernicious habit I was never infected, and I have seen too +many mournful proofs of its perilous consequences. Towards +any person it is injudicious and offensive; towards you it would +be irreverent. Your position is undeniable. Were +society to be stationary at its present point, the bulk of the +people would, on the whole, have lost rather than gained by the +alterations which have taken place during the last thousand +years. Yet this must be remembered, that in common with all +ranks they are exempted from those dreadful visitations of war, +pestilence, and famine by which these kingdoms were so frequently +afflicted of old. +</p> + +<p>The countenance of my companion changed upon this, to an +expression of judicial severity which struck me with awe. +“Exempted from these visitations!” he exclaimed; +“mortal man! creature of a day, what art thou, that thou +shouldst presume upon any such exemption! Is it from a +trust in your own deserts, or a reliance upon the forbearance and +long-suffering of the Almighty, that this vain confidence +arises?” +</p> + +<p>I was silent. +</p> + +<p>“My friend,” he resumed, in a milder tone, but +with a melancholy manner, “your own individual health and +happiness are scarcely more precarious than this fancied +security. By the mercy of God, twice during the short space +of your life, England has been spared from the horrors of +invasion, which might with ease have been effected during the +American war, when the enemy’s fleet swept the Channel, and +insulted your very ports, and which was more than once seriously +intended during the late long contest. The invaders would +indeed have found their graves in that soil which they came to +subdue: but before they could have been overcome, the atrocious +threat of Buonaparte’s general might have been in great +part realised, that though he could not answer for effecting the +conquest of England, he would engage to destroy its prosperity +for a century to come. You have been spared from that +chastisement. You have escaped also from the imminent +danger of peace with a military tyrant, which would inevitably +have led to invasion, when he should have been ready to undertake +and accomplish that great object of his ambition, and you must +have been least prepared and least able to resist him. But +if the seeds of civil war should at this time be quickening among +you—if your soil is everywhere sown with the dragon’s +teeth, and the fatal crop be at this hour ready to spring +up—the impending evil will be a hundredfold more terrible +than those which have been averted; and you will have cause to +perceive and acknowledge, that the wrath has been suspended only +that it may fall the heavier!” +</p> + +<p>“May God avert this also!” I exclaimed. +</p> + +<p>“As for famine,” he pursued, “that curse +will always follow in the train of war: and even now the public +tranquillity of England is fearfully dependent upon the +seasons. And touching pestilence, you fancy yourselves +secure, because the plague has not appeared among you for the +last hundred and fifty years: a portion of time, which long as it +may seem when compared with the brief term of mortal existence, +is as nothing in the physical history of the globe. The +importation of that scourge is as possible now as it was in +former times: and were it once imported, do you suppose it would +rage with less violence among the crowded population of your +metropolis, than it did before the fire, or that it would not +reach parts of the country which were never infected in any +former visitation? On the contrary, its ravages would be +more general and more tremendous, for it would inevitably be +carried everywhere. Your provincial cities have doubled and +trebled in size; and in London itself, great part of the +population is as much crowded now as it was then, and the space +which is covered with houses is increased at least +fourfold. What if the sweating-sickness, emphatically +called the English disease, were to show itself again? Can +any cause be assigned why it is not as likely to break out in the +nineteenth century as in the fifteenth? What if your +manufactures, according to the ominous opinion which your +greatest physiologist has expressed, were to generate for you new +physical plagues, as they have already produced a moral +pestilence unknown to all preceding ages? What if the +small-pox, which you vainly believed to be subdued, should have +assumed a new and more formidable character; and (as there seems +no trifling grounds for apprehending) instead of being protected +by vaccination from its danger, you should ascertain that +inoculation itself affords no certain security? Visitations +of this kind are in the order of nature and of providence. +Physically considered, the likelihood of their recurrence becomes +every year more probable than the last; and looking to the moral +government of the world, was there ever a time when the sins of +this kingdom called more cryingly for chastisement?” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Μαντι +κακων! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—I denounce no judgments. +But I am reminding you that there is as much cause for the prayer +in your Litany against plague, pestilence, and famine, as for +that which entreats God to deliver you all from sedition, privy +conspiracy, and rebellion; from all false doctrine, heresy, and +schism. In this, as in all things, it behoves the Christian +to live in a humble and grateful sense of his continual +dependence upon the Almighty: not to rest in a presumptuous +confidence upon the improved state of human knowledge, or the +altered course of natural visitations. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Oh, how wholesome it is to receive +instruction with a willing and a humble mind! In attending +to your discourse I feel myself in the healthy state of a pupil, +when without one hostile or contrarient prepossession, he listens +to a teacher in whom he has entire confidence. And I feel +also how much better it is that the authority of elder and wiser +intellects should pass even for more than it is worth, than that +it should be undervalued as in these days, and set at +nought. When any person boasts that he is— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Nullias addictus jurare in verba +magistri</i>,” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>the reason of that boast may easily be perceived; it is +because he thinks, like Jupiter, that it would be disparaging his +own all-wiseness to swear by anything but himself. But +wisdom will as little enter into a proud or a conceited mind as +into a malicious one. In this sense also it may be said, +that he who humbleth himself shall be exalted. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—It is not implicit assent that I +require, but reasonable conviction after calm and sufficient +consideration. David was permitted to choose between the +three severest dispensations of God’s displeasure, and he +made choice of pestilence as the least dreadful. Ought a +reflecting and religious man to be surprised, if some such +punishment were dispensed to this country, not less in mercy than +in judgment, as the means of averting a more terrible and abiding +scourge? An endemic malady, as destructive as the plague, +has naturalised itself among your American brethren, and in +Spain. You have hitherto escaped it, speaking with +reference to secondary causes, merely because it has not yet been +imported. But any season may bring it to your own shores; +or at any hour it may appear among you homebred. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—We should have little reason, then, +to boast of our improvements in the science of medicine; for our +practitioners at Gibraltar found themselves as unable to stop its +progress, or mitigate its symptoms, as the most ignorant empirics +in the peninsula. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You were at one time near enough +that pestilence to feel as if you were within its reach? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—It was in 1800, the year when it +first appeared in Andalusia. That summer I fell in at +Cintra with a young German, on the way from his own country to +his brothers at Cadiz, where they were established as +merchants. Many days had not elapsed after his arrival in +that city when a ship which was consigned to their firm brought +with it the infection; and the first news which reached us of our +poor acquaintance was that the yellow fever had broken out in his +brother’s house, and that he, they, and the greater part of +the household, were dead. There was every reason to fear +that the pestilence would extend into Portugal, both governments +being, as usual, slow in providing any measures of precaution, +and those measures being nugatory when taken. I was at Faro +in the ensuing spring, at the house of Mr. Lempriere, the British +Consul. Inquiring of him upon the subject, the old man +lifted up his hands, and replied in a passionate manner, which I +shall never forget, “Oh, sir, we escaped by the mercy of +God; only by the mercy of God!” The governor of +Algarve, even when the danger was known and acknowledged, would +not venture to prohibit the communication with Spain till he +received orders from Lisbon; and then the prohibition was so +enforced as to be useless. The crew of a boat from the +infected province were seized and marched through the country to +Tavira: they were then sent to perform quarantine upon a little +insulated ground, and the guards who were set over them, lived +with them, and were regularly relieved. When such were the +precautionary measures, well indeed might it be said, that +Portugal escaped only by the mercy of God! I have often +reflected upon the little effect which this imminent danger +appeared to produce upon those persons with whom I +associated. The young, with that hilarity which belongs to +thoughtless youth, used to converse about the places whither they +should retire, and the course of life and expedients to which +they should be driven in case it were necessary for them to fly +from Lisbon. A few elder and more considerate persons said +little upon the subject, but that little denoted a deep sense of +the danger, and more anxiety than they thought proper to +express. The great majority seemed to be altogether +unconcerned; neither their business nor their amusements were +interrupted; they feasted, they danced, they met at the +card-table as usual; and the plague (for so it was called at that +time, before its nature was clearly understood) was as regular a +topic of conversation as the news brought by the last packet. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—And what was your own state of +mind? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Very much what it has long been with +regard to the moral pestilence of this unhappy age, and the +condition of this country more especially. I saw the danger +in its whole extent and relied on the mercy of God. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—In all cases that is the surest +reliance: but when human means are available, it becomes a +Mahommedan rather than a Christian to rely upon Providence or +fate alone, and make no effort for its own preservation. +Individuals never fall into this error among you, drink as deeply +as they may of fatalism; that narcotic will sometimes paralyse +the moral sense, but it leaves the faculty of worldly prudence +unimpaired. Far otherwise is it with your government: for +such are the notions of liberty in England, that evils of every +kind—physical, moral, and political, are allowed their free +range. As relates to infectious diseases, for example, this +kingdom is now in a less civilised state than it was in my days, +three centuries ago, when the leper was separated from general +society; and when, although the science of medicine was at once +barbarous and fantastical, the existence of pesthouses showed at +least some approaches towards a medical police. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—They order these things better in +Utopia. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—In this, as well as in some +other points upon which we shall touch hereafter, the difference +between you and the Utopians is as great as between the existing +generation and the race by whom yonder circle was set up. +With regard to diseases and remedies in general, the real state +of the case may be consolatory, but it is not comfortable. +Great and certain progress has been made in chirurgery; and if +the improvements in the other branch of medical science have not +been so certain and so great, it is because the physician works +in the dark, and has to deal with what is hidden and +mysterious. But the evils for which these sciences are the +palliatives have increased in a proportion that heavily +overweighs the benefit of improved therapeutics. For as the +intercourse between nations has become greater, the evils of one +have been communicated to another. Pigs, Spanish dollars, +and Norway rats, are not the only commodities and incommodities +which have performed the circumnavigation, and are to be found +wherever European ships have touched. Diseases also find +their way from one part of the inhabited globe to another, +wherever it is possible for them to exist. The most +formidable endemic or contagious maladies in your nosology are +not indigenous; and as far as regards health therefore, the +ancient Britons, with no other remedies than their fields and +woods afforded them, and no other medical practitioners than +their deceitful priests, were in a better condition than their +descendants, with all the instruction which is derived from +Sydenham and Heberden, and Hunter, and with all the powers which +chemistry has put into their hands. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—You have well said that there is +nothing comfortable in this view of the case: but what is there +consolatory in it? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The consolation is upon your +principle of expectant hope. Whenever improved morals, +wiser habits, more practical religion, and more efficient +institutions shall have diminished the moral and material causes +of disease, a thoroughly scientific practice, the result of long +experience and accumulated observations, will then exist, to +remedy all that is within the power of human art, and to +alleviate what is irremediable. To existing individuals +this consolation is something like the satisfaction you might +feel in learning that a fine estate was entailed upon your family +at the expiration of a lease of ninety-nine years from the +present time. But I had forgotten to whom I am +talking. A poet always looks onward to some such distant +inheritance. His hopes are usually <i>in nubibus</i>, and +his expectations in the <i>paulo post futurum</i> tense. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—His state is the more gracious then +because his enjoyment is always to come. It is however a +real satisfaction to me that there is some sunshine in your +prospect. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—More in mine than in yours, +because I command a wider horizon: but I see also the storms +which are blackening, and may close over the sky. Our +discourse began concerning that portion of the community who form +the base of the pyramid; we have unawares taken a more general +view, but it has not led us out of the way. Returning to +the most numerous class of society, it is apparent that in the +particular point of which we have been conversing, their +condition is greatly worsened: they remain liable to the same +indigenous diseases as their forefathers, and are exposed +moreover to all which have been imported. Nor will the +estimate of their condition be improved upon farther +inquiry. They are worse fed than when they were hunters, +fishers, and herdsmen; their clothing and habitations are little +better, and, in comparison with those of the higher classes, +immeasurably worse. Except in the immediate vicinity of the +collieries, they suffer more from cold than when the woods and +turbaries were open. They are less religious than in the +days of the Romish faith; and if we consider them in relation to +their immediate superiors, we shall find reason to confess that +the independence which has been gained since the total decay of +the feudal system, has been dearly purchased by the loss of +kindly feelings and ennobling attachments. They are less +contented, and in no respect more happy—that look implies +hesitation of judgment, and an unwillingness to be +convinced. Consider the point; go to your books and your +thoughts; and when next we meet, you will feel little inclination +to dispute the irrefragable statement. +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY IV.—FEUDAL SLAVERY.—GROWTH OF +PAUPERISM.</h2> +<p>The last conversation had left a weight upon me, which was not +lessened when I contemplated the question in solitude. I +called to mind the melancholy view which Young has taken of the +world in his unhappy poem: +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“A part how small of the terraqueous +globe<br /> +Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,<br /> +Rocks, deserts, frozen seas and burning sands,<br /> +Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death.<br /> +Such is earth’s melancholy map! But, far<br /> +More sad, this earth is a true map of man.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Sad as this representation is, I could not but acknowledge +that the moral and intellectual view is not more consolatory than +the poet felt it to be; and it was a less sorrowful consideration +to think how large a portion of the habitable earth is possessed +by savages, or by nations whom inhuman despotisms and monstrous +superstitions have degraded in some respects below the savage +state, than to observe how small a part of what is called the +civilised world is truly civilised; and in the most civilised +parts to how small a portion of the inhabitants the real +blessings of civilisation are confined. In this mood how +heartily should I have accorded with Owen of Lanark if I could +have agreed with that happiest and most beneficent and most +practical of all enthusiasts as well concerning the remedy as the +disease! +</p> + +<p>“Well, Montesinos,” said the spirit, when he +visited me next, “have you recollected or found any solid +arguments for maintaining that the labouring classes, who form +the great bulk of the population, are in a happier condition, +physical, moral, or intellectual, in these times, than they were +in mine?” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Perhaps, Sir Thomas, their condition +was better precisely during your age than it ever has been either +before or since. The feudal system had well-nigh lost all +its inhuman parts, and the worse inhumanity of the commercial +system had not yet shown itself. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—It was, indeed, a most important +age in English history, and, till the Reformation so fearfully +disturbed it, in many respects a happy and an enviable one. +But the process was then beginning which is not yet +completed. As the feudal system relaxed and tended to +dissolution the condition of the multitude was changed. Let +us trace it from earlier times! In what state do you +suppose the people of this island to have been when they were +invaded by the Romans? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Something worse than the Greeks of +the Homeric age: something better than the Sandwich or Tonga +islanders when they were visited by Captain Cook. Inferior +to the former in arts, in polity, and, above all, in their +domestic institutions; superior to the latter as having the use +of cattle and being under a superstition in which, amid many +abominations, some patriarchal truths were preserved. Less +fortunate in physical circumstances than either, because of the +climate. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—A viler state of morals than +their polyandrian system must have produced can scarcely be +imagined; and the ferocity of their manners, little as is +otherwise known of them, is sufficiently shown by their scythed +war-chariots, and the fact that in the open country the path from +one town to another was by a covered way. But in what +condition were the labouring classes? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—In slavery, I suppose. When the +Romans first attacked the island it was believed at Rome that +slaves were the only booty which Britain could afford; and +slaves, no doubt, must have been the staple commodity for which +its ports were visited. Different tribes had at different +times established themselves here by conquest, and wherever +settlements are thus made slavery is the natural +consequence. It was a part of the Roman economy; and when +the Saxons carved out their kingdoms with the sword, the slaves, +and their masters too, if any survived, became the property of +the new lords of the land, like the cattle who pastured upon +it. It is not likely even that the Saxons should have +brought artificers of any kind with them, smiths perhaps alone +excepted. Trades of every description must have been +practised by the slaves whom they found. The same sort of +transfer ensued upon the Norman conquest. After that event +there could have been no fresh supply of domestic slaves, unless +they were imported from Ireland, as well as carried thither for +sale. That trade did not continue long. Emancipation +was promoted by the clergy, and slavery was exchanged for +vassalage, which in like manner gradually disappeared as the +condition of the people improved. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You are hurrying too fast to +that conclusion. Hitherto more has been lost than gained in +morals by the transition; and you will not maintain that anything +which is morally injurious can be politically advantageous. +Vassalage I know is a word which bears no favourable acceptation +in this liberal age; and slavery is in worse repute. But we +must remember that slavery implies a very different state in +different ages of the world, and in different stages of +society. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—In many parts of the East, and of the +Mohammedan world, as in the patriarchal times, it is scarcely an +evil. Among savages it is as little so. In a +luxurious state more vices are called into action, the condition +of the slave depends more upon the temper of the owner, and the +evil then predominates. But slavery is nowhere so bad as in +commercial colonies, where the desire of gain hardens the +heart—the basest appetites have free scope there; and the +worst passions are under little restraint from law, less from +religion, and none from public opinion. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You have omitted in this +enumeration that kind of slavery which existed in England. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The slavery of the feudal ages may +perhaps be classed midway between the best description of that +state and the worst. I suppose it to have been less humane +than it generally is in Turkey, less severe than it generally was +in Rome and Greece. In too many respects the slaves were at +the mercy of their lords. They might be put in irons and +punished with stripes; they were sometimes branded; and there is +proof that it has been the custom to yoke them in teams like +cattle. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Are you, then, Montesinos, so +much the dupe of words as to account among their grievances a +mere practice of convenience? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The reproof was merited. But I +was about to say that there is no reason to think their treatment +was generally rigorous. We do not hear of any such office +among them as that of the Roman <i>Lorarii</i>, whose office +appears by the dramatists to have been no sinecure. And it +is certain that they possessed in the laws, in the religion, and +probably in the manners of the country, a greater degree of +protection than existed to alleviate the lot of the Grecian and +Roman slaves. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The practical difference between +the condition of the feudal slave, and of the labouring +husbandman who succeeded to the business of his station, was +mainly this, that the former had neither the feeling nor the +insecurity of independence. He served one master as long as +he lived; and being at all times sure of the same sufficient +subsistence, if he belonged to the estate like the cattle, and +was accounted with them as part of the live stock, he resembled +them also in the exemption which he enjoyed from all cares +concerning his own maintenance and that of his family. The +feudal slaves, indeed, were subject to none of those vicissitudes +which brought so many of the proudest and most powerful barons to +a disastrous end. They had nothing to lose, and they had +liberty to hope for; frequently as the reward of their own +faithful services, and not seldom from the piety or kindness of +their lords. This was a steady hope depending so little +upon contingency that it excited no disquietude or +restlessness. They were therefore in general satisfied with +the lot to which they were born, as the Greenlander is with his +climate, the Bedouin with his deserts, and the Hottentot and the +Calmuck with their filthy and odious customs; and going on in +their regular and unvaried course of duty generation after +generation, they were content. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—“Fish, fish, are you in your +duty?” said the young lady in the Arabian tales, who came +out of the kitchen wall clad in flowered satin, and with a rod in +her hand. The fish lifted up their heads and replied, +“Yes, yes; if you reckon, we reckon; if you pay your debts +we pay ours; if you fly we overcome, and are +content.” The fish who were thus content, and in +their duty, had been gutted, and were in the frying-pan. I +do not seek, however, to escape from the force of your argument +by catching at the words. On the other hand, I am sure it +is not your intention to represent slavery otherwise than as an +evil, under any modification. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—That which is a great evil in +itself become relatively a good when it prevents or removes a +greater evil; for instance, loss of a limb when life is preserved +by the sacrifice, or the acute pain of a remedy by which a +chronic disease is cured. Such was slavery in its origin: a +commutation for death, gladly accepted as mercy under the arm of +a conqueror in battle, or as the mitigation of a judicial +sentence. But it led immediately to nefarious abuses; and +the earliest records which tell us of its existence show us also +that men were kidnapped for sale. With the principles of +Christianity, the principles of religious philosophy—the +only true policy, to which mankind must come at last, by which +alone all the remediable ills of humanity are to be remedied, and +for which you are taught to pray when you entreat that your +Father’s kingdom may come—with those principles +slavery is inconsistent, and therefore not to be tolerated, even +in speculation. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Yet its fitness, as a commutation for +other punishments, is admitted by Michaelis (though he decides +against it) to be one of the most difficult questions connected +with the existing state of society. And in the age of the +Revolution, one of the sturdiest Scotch republicans proposed the +reestablishment of slavery, as the best or only means for +correcting the vices and removing the miseries of the poor. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The proposal of such a remedy +must be admitted as full proof of the malignity of the +disease. And in further excuse of Andrew Fletcher, it +should be remembered that he belonged to a country where many of +the feudal virtues (as well as most of the feudal vices) were at +that time in full vigour. But let us return to our +historical view of the subject. In feudal servitude there +was no motive for cruelty, scarcely any for oppression. +There were no needy slave-owners, as there are in commercial +colonies; and though slaves might sometimes suffer from a wicked, +or even a passionate master, there is no reason to believe that +they were habitually over-tasked, or subjected to systematic +ill-treatment; for that, indeed, can only arise from avarice, and +avarice is not the vice of feudal times. Still, however, +slavery is intolerable upon Christian principles; and to the +influence of those principles it yielded here in England. +It had ceased, so as even to be forgotten in my youth; and +villenage was advancing fast towards its natural +extinction. The courts decided that a tenant having a lease +could not be a villein during its term, for if his labour were at +the command of another how could he undertake to pay rent? +Landholders had thus to choose between rent and villenage, and +scarcely wanted the Field of the Cloth of Gold at Ardres to show +them which they stood most in need of. And as villenage +disappeared, free labourers of various descriptions multiplied; +of whom the more industrious and fortunate rose in society, and +became tradesmen and merchants; the unlucky and the reprobate +became vagabonds. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The latter class appears to have been +far more numerous in your age than in mine. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Waiving for the present the +question whether they really were so, they appear to have been so +partly in consequence of the desperate wars between the houses of +York and Lancaster, partly because of the great change in society +which succeeded to that contest. During those wars both +parties exerted themselves to bring into the field all the force +they could muster. Villeins in great numbers were then +emancipated, when they were embodied in arms; and great numbers +emancipated themselves, flying to London and other cities for +protection from the immediate evils of war, or taking advantage +of the frequent changes of property, and the precarious tenure by +which it was held, to exchange their own servile condition for a +station of freedom with all its hopes and chances. This +took place to a great extent, and the probabilities of success +were greatly in their favour; for whatever may have been +practised in earlier and ruder times, in that age they certainly +were not branded like cattle, according to the usage of your +sugar islands. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A planter, who notwithstanding this +curious specimen of his taste and sensibility, was a man of +humane studies and humane feelings, describes the refined and +elegant manner in which the operation is performed, by way of +mitigating the indignation which such a usage ought to +excite. He assures us that the stamp is not a branding +iron, but a silver instrument; and that it is heated not in the +fire, but over the flame of spirits of wine. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Excellent planter! worthy to +have been flogged at a gilt whipping-post with a scourge of gold +thread! The practice of marking slaves had fallen into +disuse; probably it was only used at first with captives, or with +those who were newly-purchased from a distant country, never with +those born upon the soil. And there was no means of raising +a hue and cry after a runaway slave so effectually as is done by +your colonial gazettes, the only productions of the British +colonial press. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Include, I pray you, in the former +part of your censure the journals of the United States, the land +of democracy and equal rights. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—How much more honourable was the +tendency of our laws, and of national feeling in those days, +which you perhaps as well as your trans-Atlantic brethren have +been accustomed to think barbarous, when compared with this your +own age of reason and liberality! The master who killed his +slave was as liable to punishment as if he had killed a +freeman. Instead of impeding enfranchisement, the laws, as +well as the public feeling, encouraged it. If a villein who +had fled from his lord remained a year and a day unclaimed upon +the King’s demesne lands, or in any privileged town, he +became free. All doubtful cases were decided <i>in favorem +libertatis</i>. Even the established maxim in law, +<i>partus sequitur ventrem</i>, was set aside in favour of +liberty; the child of a neif was free if the father were a +freeman, or if it were illegitimate, in which case it was settled +that the free condition of the father should always be +presumed. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Such a principle must surely have +tended to increase the illegitimate population. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—That inference is drawn from the +morals of your own age, and the pernicious effect of your poor +laws as they are now thoroughly understood and deliberately acted +upon by a race who are thinking always of their imaginary rights, +and never of their duties. You forget the efficacy of +ecclesiastical discipline; and that the old Church was more +vigilant, and therefore more efficient than that which rose upon +its ruins. And you suppose that personal liberty was more +valued by persons in a state of servitude than was actually the +case. For if in earlier ages emancipation was an act of +piety and benevolence, afterwards, when the great crisis of +society came on, it proceeded more frequently from avarice than +from any worthier motive; and the slave who was set free +sometimes found himself much in the situation of a household dog +that is turned into the streets. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Are you alluding to the progress of +inclosures, which from the accession of the Tudors to the age of +the Stuarts were complained of as the great and crying evil of +the times? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—That process originated as soon +as rents began to be of more importance than personal services, +and money more convenient to the landlords than payments in +kind. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—And this I suppose began to be the +case under Edward III. The splendour of his court, and the +foreign wars in which he was engaged, must have made money more +necessary to the knights and nobles than it had ever been before, +except during the Crusades. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The wars of York and Lancaster +retarded the process; but immediately after the termination of +that fierce struggle it was accelerated by the rapid growth of +commerce, and by the great influx of wealth from the new found +world. Under a settled and strong and vigilant government +men became of less value as vassals and retainers, because the +boldest barons no longer dared contemplate the possibility of +trying their strength against the crown, or attempting to disturb +the succession. Four-legged animals therefore were wanted +for slaughter more than two-legged ones; and moreover, sheep +could be shorn, whereas the art of fleecing the tenantry was in +its infancy, and could not always be practised with the same +certain success. A trading spirit thus gradually superseded +the rude but kindlier principle of the feudal system: profit and +loss became the rule of conduct; in came calculation, and out +went feeling. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I remember your description (for +indeed who can forget it?) how sheep, more destructive than the +Dragon of Wantley in those days, began to devour men and fields +and houses. The same process is at this day going on in the +Highlands, though under different circumstances; some which +palliate the evil, and some which aggravate the injustice. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The real nature of the evil was +misunderstood by my contemporaries, and for some generations +afterward. A decrease of population was the effect +complained of, whereas the greater grievance was that a different +and worse population was produced. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I comprehend you. The same +effect followed which has been caused in these days by the +extinction of small farms. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The same in kind, but greater in +degree; or at least if not greater, or so general in extent, it +was more directly felt. When that ruinous fashion prevailed +in your age there were many resources for the class of people who +were thus thrown out of their natural and proper place in the +social system. Your fleets and armies at that time required +as many hands as could be supplied; and women and children were +consumed with proportionate rapidity by your manufactures. +</p> + +<p>Moreover, there was the wholesome drain of emigration open +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Facta est immensi copia +mundi</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>But under the Tudors there existed no such means for disposing +of the ejected population, and except the few who could obtain +places as domestic servants, or employment as labourers and +handicraftsmen (classes, it must be remembered, for all which the +employ was diminished by the very ejectment in question), they +who were turned adrift soon found themselves houseless and +hopeless, and were reduced to prey upon that society which had so +unwisely as well as inhumanly discarded them. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Thus it is that men collectively as +well as individually create for themselves so large a part of the +evils they endure. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Enforce upon your contemporaries +that truth which is as important in politics as in ethics, and +you will not have lived in vain! Scatter that seed upon the +waters, and doubt not of the harvest! Vindicate always the +system of nature, in other and sounder words, the ways of God, +while you point out with all faithfulness +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “what +ills<br /> +Remediable and yet unremedied<br /> + Afflict man’s wretched race,” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>and the approbation of your own heart will be sufficient +reward on earth. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The will has not been wanting. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—There are cases in which the +will carries with it the power; and this is of them. No man +was ever yet deeply convinced of any momentous truth without +feeling in himself the power as well as the desire of +communicating it. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—True, Sir Thomas; but the perilous +abuse of that feeling by enthusiasts and fanatics leads to an +error in the opposite extreme. +</p> + +<p>We sacrifice too much to prudence; and, in fear of incurring +the danger or the reproach of enthusiasm, too often we stifle the +holiest impulses of the understanding and the heart. +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “Our +doubts are traitors,<br /> +And make us lose the good we oft might win,<br /> +By fearing to attempt.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>—But I pray you, resume your discourse. The +monasteries were probably the chief palliatives of this great +evil while they existed. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Their power of palliating it was +not great, for the expenditure of those establishments kept a +just pace with their revenues. They accumulated no +treasures, and never were any incomes more beneficially +employed. The great abbeys vied with each other in +architectural magnificence, in this more especially, but likewise +in every branch of liberal expenditure, giving employment to +great numbers, which was better than giving unearned food. +They provided, as it became them, for the old and helpless +also. That they prevented the necessity of raising rates +for the poor by the copious alms which they distributed, and by +indiscriminately feeding the indigent, has been inferred, because +those rates became necessary immediately after the suppression of +the religious houses. But this is one of those hasty +inferences which have no other foundation than a mere coincidence +of time in the supposed cause and effect. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—For which you have furnished a +proverbial illustration in your excellent story of Tenterden +Steeple and Goodwin Sands. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—That illustration would have +been buried in the dust if it had not been repeated by Hugh +Latimer at St. Paul’s Cross. It was the only thing in +my writings by which he profited. If he had learnt more +from them he might have died in his bed, with less satisfaction +to himself and less honour from posterity. We went +different ways, but we came to the same end, and met where we had +little expectation of meeting. I must do him the justice to +say that when he forwarded the work of destruction it was with +the hope and intention of employing the materials in a better +edifice; and that no man opposed the sacrilegious temper of the +age more bravely. The monasteries, in the dissolution of +which he rejoiced as much as he regretted the infamous disposal +of their spoils, delayed the growth of pauperism, by the +corrodies with which they were charged; the effect of these +reservations on the part of the founders and benefactors being, +that a comfortable and respectable support was provided for those +who grew old in the service of their respective families; and +there existed no great family, and perhaps no wealthy one, which +had not entitled itself thus to dispose of some of its aged +dependants. And the extent of the depopulating system was +limited while those houses endured: because though some of the +great abbots were not less rapacious than the lay lords, and more +criminal, the heads in general could not be led, like the nobles, +into a prodigal expenditure, the burthen of which fell always +upon the tenants; and rents in kind were to them more convenient +than in money, their whole economy being founded upon that +system, and adapted to it. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Both facts and arguments were indeed +strongly on your side when you wrote against the supplication of +beggars; but the form in which you embodied them gave the +adversary an advantage, for it was connected with one of the +greatest abuses and absurdities of the Romish Church. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Montesinos, I allow you to call +it an abuse; but if you think any of the abuses of that church +were in their origin so unreasonable as to deserve the +appellation of absurdities, you must have studied its history +with less consideration and a less equitable spirit than I have +given you credit for. Both Master Fish and I had each our +prejudices and errors. We were both sincere; Master Fish +would undoubtedly have gone to the stake in defence of his +opinions as cheerfully as I laid down my neck upon the block; +like his namesake in the tale which you have quoted, he too when +in Nix’s frying-pan would have said he was in his duty, and +content. But withal he cannot be called an honest man, +unless in that sort of liberal signification by which, in these +days, good words are so detorted from their original and genuine +meaning as to express precisely the reverse of what was formerly +intended by them. More gross exaggerations and more +rascally mis-statements could hardly be made by one of your own +thorough-paced revolutionists than those upon which the whole +argument of his supplication is built. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If he had fallen into your hands you +would have made a stock-fish of him. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Perhaps so. I had not then +I learnt that laying men by the heels is not the best way of +curing them of an error in the head. But the King protected +him. Henry had too much sagacity not to perceive the +consequences which such a book was likely to produce, and he +said, after perusing it, “If a man should pull down an old +stone wall, and begin at the bottom, the upper part thereof might +chance to fall upon his head.” But he saw also that +it tended to serve his immediate purpose. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I marvel that good old John Fox, +upright, downright man as he was, should have inserted in his +“Acts and Monuments” a libel like this, which +contains no arguments except such as were adapted to ignorance, +cupidity, and malice. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Old John Fox ought to have known +that, however advantageous the dissolution of the monastic houses +might be to the views of the Reformers, it was every way +injurious to the labouring classes. As far as they were +concerned, the transfer of property was always to worse +hands. The tenantry were deprived of their best landlords, +artificers of their best employers, the poor and miserable of +their best and surest friends. There would have been no +insurrections in behalf of the old religion if the zeal of the +peasantry had not been inflamed by a sore feeling of the injury +which they suffered in the change. A great increase of the +vagabond population was the direct and immediate +consequence. They who were ejected from their tenements or +deprived of their accustomed employment were turned loose upon +society; and the greater number, of course and of necessity, ran +wild. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Wild, indeed! The old +chroniclers give a dreadful picture of their numbers and of their +wickedness, which called forth and deserved the utmost severity +of the law. They lived like savages in the woods and +wastes, committing the most atrocious actions, stealing children, +and burning, breaking, or otherwise disfiguring their limbs for +the purpose of exciting compassion, and obtaining alms by this +most flagitious of all imaginable crimes. Surely we have +nothing so bad as this. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The crime of stealing children +for such purposes is rendered exceedingly difficult by the ease +and rapidity with which a hue and cry can now be raised +throughout the land, and the eagerness and detestation with which +the criminal would be pursued; still, however, it is sometimes +practised. In other respects the professional beggars of +the nineteenth century are not a whit better than their +predecessors of the sixteenth; and your gipsies and travelling +potters, who, gipsy-like, pitch their tents upon the common, or +by the wayside, retain with as much fidelity the manners and +morals of the old vagabonds as they do the <i>cant</i>, or +pedlar’s French, which this class of people are said to +have invented in the age whereof we are now speaking. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—But the number of our vagabonds has +greatly diminished. In your Henry’s reign it is +affirmed that no fewer than 72,000 criminals were hanged; you +have yourself described them as strung up by scores upon a gibbet +all over the country. Even in the golden days of good Queen +Bess the executions were from three to four hundred +annually. A large allowance must be made for the increased +humanity of the nation, and the humaner temper with which the +laws are administered: but the new crimes which increased wealth +and a system of credit on one hand, and increased ingenuity, and +new means of mischief on the part of the depredators have +produced, must also be taken into the account. And the +result will show a diminution in the number of those who prey +upon society either by open war or secret wiles. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Add your paupers to the list, +and you will then have added to it not less than an eighth of +your whole population. But looking at the depredators +alone, perhaps it will be found that the evil is at this time +more widely extended, more intimately connected with the +constitution of society, like a chronic and organic disease, and +therefore more difficult of cure. Like other vermin they +are numerous in proportion as they find shelter; and for this +species of noxious beast large towns and manufacturing districts +afford better cover than the forest or the waste. The fault +lies in your institutions, which in the time of the Saxons were +better adapted to maintain security and order than they are +now. No man in those days could prey upon society unless he +were at war with it as an outlaw, a proclaimed and open +enemy. Rude as the laws were, the purposes of law had not +then been perverted: it had not been made a craft; it served to +deter men from committing crimes, or to punish them for the +commission; never to shield notorious, acknowledged, impudent +guilt from condign punishment. And in the fabric of +society, imperfect as it was, the outline and rudiments of what +it ought to be were distinctly marked in some main parts, where +they are now well-nigh utterly effaced. Every person had +his place. There was a system of superintendence +everywhere, civil as well as religious. They who were born +in villenage were born to an inheritance of labour, but not of +inevitable depravity and wretchedness. If one class were +regarded in some respects as cattle they were at least taken care +of; they were trained, fed, sheltered and protected; and there +was an eye upon them when they strayed. None were wild, +unless they ran wild wilfully, and in defiance of control. +None were beneath the notice of the priest, nor placed out of the +possible reach of his instruction and his care. But how +large a part of your population are like the dogs at Lisbon and +Constantinople, unowned, unbroken to any useful purpose, +subsisting by chance or by prey, living in filth, mischief, and +wretchedness, a nuisance to the community while they live, and +dying miserably at last! This evil had its beginning in my +days; it is now approaching fast to its consummation. +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY V.—DECAY OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.—EDWARD +VI.—ALFRED.</h2> +<p>I had retired to my library as usual after dinner, and while I +was wishing for the appearance of my ghostly visitor he became +visible. “Behold me to your wish!” said +he. “Thank you,” I replied, “for those +precious words.” +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Wherefore precious? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Because they show that spirits who +are in bliss perceive our thoughts;—that that communion +with the departed for which the heart yearns in its moods of +intensest feeling is in reality attained when it is desired. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You deduce a large inference +from scanty premises. As if it were not easy to know +without any super-human intuition that you would wish for the +arrival of one whose company you like, at a time when you were +expecting it. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—And is this all? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—All that the words necessarily +imply. For the rest, <i>crede quod habeas et habes</i>, +according to the scurvy tale which makes my friend Erasmus a +horse-stealer, and fathers Latin rhymes upon him. But let +us take up the thread of our discourse, or, as we used to say in +old times, “begin it again and mend it, for it is neither +mass nor matins.” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—You were saying that the evil of a +vagrant and brutalised population began in your days, and is +approaching to its consummation at this time. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The decay of the feudal system +produced it. When armies were no longer raised upon that +system soldiers were disbanded at the end of a war, as they are +now: that is to say, they were turned adrift to fare as they +could—to work if they could find employment; otherwise to +beg, starve, live upon the alms of their neighbours, or prey upon +a wider community in a manner more congenial to the habits and +temper of their old vocation. In consequence of the gains +which were to be obtained by inclosures and sheep-farming, +families were unhoused and driven loose upon the country. +These persons, and they who were emancipated from villenage, or +who had in a more summary manner emancipated themselves, +multiplied in poverty and wretchedness. Lastly, owing to +the fashion for large households of retainers, great numbers of +men were trained up in an idle and dissolute way of life, liable +at any time to be cast off when age or accident invalided them, +or when the master of the family died; and then if not ashamed to +beg, too lewd to work, and ready for any kind of mischief. +Owing to these co-operating causes, a huge population of outcasts +was produced, numerous enough seriously to infest society, yet +not so large as to threaten its subversion. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A derangement of the existing system +produced them then; they are a constituent part of the system +now. With you they were, as you have called them, outcasts: +with us, to borrow an illustration from foreign institutions, +they have become a caste. But during two centuries the evil +appears to have decreased. Why was this? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Because it was perceived to be +an evil, and could never at any time be mistaken for a healthful +symptom. And because circumstances tended to suspend its +progress. The habits of these unhappy persons being at +first wholly predatory, the laws proclaimed a sort of crusade +against them, and great and inhuman riddance was made by the +executioner. Foreign service opened a drain in the +succeeding reigns: many also were drawn off by the spirit of +maritime adventure, preferring the high seas to the high way, as +a safer course of plundering. Then came an age of civil +war, with its large demand for human life. Meanwhile as the +old arrangements of society crumbled and decayed new ones were +formed. The ancient fabric was repaired in some parts and +modernised in others. And from the time of the Restoration +the people supposed their institutions to be stable because after +long and violent convulsions they found themselves at rest, and +the transition which was then going on was slow, silent, and +unperceived. The process of converting slaves and villeins +into servants and free peasantry had ended; that of raising a +manufacturing populace and converting peasantry into poor was but +begun; and it proceeded slowly for a full hundred years. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Those hundred years were the happiest +which England has ever known. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Perhaps so: +καρπος +μέyιστος +αταραξία. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—With the exception of the efforts +which were made for restoring the exiled family of the Stuarts +they were years of quiet uniform prosperity and +advancement. The morals of the country recovered from the +contagion which Charles II. imported from France, and for which +Puritanism had prepared the people. Visitations of +pestilence were suspended. Sectarians enjoyed full +toleration, and were contented. The Church proved itself +worthy of the victory which it had obtained. The +Constitution, after one great but short struggle, was well +balanced and defined; and if the progress of art, science, and +literature was not brilliant, it was steady, and the way for a +brighter career was prepared. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The way was prepared meantime +for evil as well as for good. You were retrograde in sound +policy, sound philosophy and sound learning. Our business +at present is wholly with the first. Because your policy, +defective as it was at the best, had been retrograde, discoveries +in physics, and advances in mechanical science which would have +produced nothing but good in Utopia, became as injurious to the +weal of the nation as they were instrumental to its wealth. +But such had your system imperceptibly become, and such were your +statesmen, that the wealth of nations was considered as the sole +measure of their prosperity. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—In feudal ages the object of those +monarchs who had any determinate object in view was either to +extend their dominions by conquest from their neighbours, or to +increase their authority at home by breaking the power of a +turbulent nobility. In commercial ages the great and sole +object of government, when not engaged in war, was to augment its +revenues, for the purpose of supporting the charges which former +wars had induced, or which the apprehension of fresh ones +rendered necessary. And thus it has been, that of the two +main ends of government, which are the security of the subjects +and the improvement of the nation, the latter has never been +seriously attempted, scarcely indeed taken into consideration; +and the former imperfectly attained. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Fail not, however, I entreat +you, to bear in mind that this has not been the fault of your +rulers at any time. It has been their misfortune—an +original sin in the constitution of the society wherein they were +born. Circumstances which they did not make and could not +control have impelled them onward in ways which neither for +themselves nor the nation were ways of pleasantness and +peace. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—There is one beautiful +exception—Edward VI. +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“That blessed Prince whose saintly name +might move<br /> +The understanding heart to tears of reverent love.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>He would have struck into the right course. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You have a Catholic feeling +concerning saints, Montesinos, though you look for them in the +Protestant calendar. Edward deserves to be remembered with +that feeling. But had his life been prolonged to the full +age of man it would not have been in his power to remedy the evil +which had been done in his father’s reign and during his +own minority. To have effected that would have required a +strength and obduracy of character incompatible with his meek and +innocent nature. In intellect and attainments he kept pace +with his age, a more stirring and intellectual one than any which +had gone before it: but in the wisdom of the heart he was far +beyond that age, or indeed any that has succeeded it. It +cannot be said of him as of Henry of Windsor, that he was fitter +for a cloister than a throne, but he was fitter for a heavenly +crown than a terrestrial one. This country was not worthy +of him!—scarcely this earth! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—There is a homely verse common in +village churchyards, the truth of which has been felt by many a +heart, as some consolation in its keenest afflictions:— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“God calls them first whom He loves +best.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>But surely no prince ever more sedulously employed himself to +learn his office. His views in some respects were not in +accord with the more enlarged principles of trade, which +experience has taught us. But on the other hand he judged +rightly what “the medicines were by which the sores of the +commonwealth might be healed.” His prescriptions are +as applicable now as they were then, and in most points as +needful: they were “good education, good example, good +laws, and the just execution of those laws: punishing the +vagabond and idle, encouraging the good, ordering well the +customers, and engendering friendship in all parts of the +commonwealth.” In these, and more especially in the +first of these, he hoped and purposed to have “shown his +device.” But it was not permitted. +Nevertheless, he has his reward. It has been more wittily +than charitably said that Hell is paved with good intentions: +they have their place in Heaven also. Evil thoughts and +desires are justly accounted to us for sin; assuredly therefore +the sincere goodwill will be accounted for the deed, when means +and opportunity have been wanting to bring it to effect. +There are feelings and purposes as well as “thoughts, +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>—whose very sweetness yieldeth proof<br /> +That they were born for immortality.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Those great legislative measures +whereby the character of a nation is changed and stamped are more +practicable in a barbarous age than in one so far advanced as +that of the Tudors; under a despotic government, than under a +free one; and among an ignorant, rather than inquiring +people. Obedience is then either yielded to a power which +is too strong to be resisted, or willingly given to the +acknowledged superiority of some commanding mind, carrying with +it, as in such ages it does, an appearance of divinity. Our +incomparable Alfred was a prince in many respects favourably +circumstanced for accomplishing a great work like this, if his +victory over the Danes had been so complete as to have secured +the country against any further evils from that tremendous +enemy. And had England remained free from the scourge of +their invasion under his successors, it is more than likely that +his institutions would at this day have been the groundwork of +your polity. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If you allude to that part of the +Saxon law which required that all the people should be placed +under <i>borh</i>, I must observe that even those writers who +regard the name of Alfred with the greatest reverence always +condemn this part of his system of government. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—It is a question of +degree. The just medium between too much superintendence +and too little: the mystery whereby the free will of the subject +is preserved, while it is directed by the fore purpose of the +State (which is the secret of true polity), is yet to be found +out. But this is certain, that whatever be the origin of +government, its duties are patriarchal, that is to say, parental: +superintendence is one of those duties, and is capable of being +exercised to any extent by delegation and sub-delegation. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The Madras system, my excellent +friend Dr. Bell would exclaim if he were here. That which, +as he says, gives in a school to the master, the hundred eyes of +Argus, and the hundred hands of Briareus, might in a state give +omnipresence to law, and omnipotence to order. This is +indeed the fair ideal of a commonwealth. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—And it was this at which Alfred +aimed. His means were violent, because the age was +barbarous. Experience would have shown wherein they +required amendment, and as manners improved the laws would have +been softened with them. But they disappeared altogether +during the years of internal warfare and turbulence which +ensued. The feudal order which was established with the +Norman conquest, or at least methodised after it, was in this +part of its scheme less complete: still it had the same +bearing. When that also went to decay, municipal police did +not supply its place. Church discipline then fell into +disuse; clerical influence was lost; and the consequence now is, +that in a country where one part of the community enjoys the +highest advantages of civilisation with which any people upon +this globe have ever in any age been favoured, there is among the +lower classes a mass of ignorance, vice, and wretchedness, which +no generous heart can contemplate without grief, and which, when +the other signs of the times are considered, may reasonably +excite alarm for the fabric of society that rests upon such a +base. It resembles the tower in your own vision, its +beautiful summit elevated above all other buildings, the +foundations placed upon the sand, and mouldering. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>. +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Rising so high, and built so insecure,<br +/> +Ill may such perishable work endure!” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>You will not, I hope, come to that conclusion! You will +not, I hope, say with the evil prophet— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The fabric of her power is undermined;<br /> + The Earthquake underneath it will have way,<br /> +And all that glorious structure, as the wind<br /> + Scatters a summer cloud, be swept away!” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Look at the populace of London, +and ask yourself what security there is that the same blind fury +which broke out in your childhood against the Roman Catholics may +not be excited against the government, in one of those +opportunities which accident is perpetually offering to the +desperate villains whom your laws serve rather to protect than to +punish! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—It is an observation of +Mercier’s, that despotism loves large cities. The +remark was made with reference to Paris only a little while +before the French Revolution! But even if he had looked no +farther than the history of his own country and of that very +metropolis, he might have found sufficient proof that +insubordination and anarchy like them quite as well. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—London is the heart of your +commercial system, but it is also the hot-bed of +corruption. It is at once the centre of wealth and the sink +of misery; the seat of intellect and empire: and yet a wilderness +wherein they, who live like wild beasts upon their +fellow-creatures, find prey and cover. Other wild beasts +have long since been extirpated: even in the wilds of Scotland, +and of barbarous, or worse than barbarous Ireland, the wolf is no +longer to be found; a degree of civilisation this to which no +other country has attained. Man, and man alone, is +permitted to run wild. You plough your fields and harrow +them; you have your scarifiers to make the ground clean; and if +after all this weeds should spring up, the careful cultivator +roots them out by hand. But ignorance and misery and vice +are allowed to grow, and blossom, and seed, not on the waste +alone, but in the very garden and pleasure-ground of society and +civilisation. Old Thomas Tusser’s coarse remedy is +the only one which legislators have yet thought of applying. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—What remedy is that? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—’Twas the +husbandman’s practice in his days and mine: +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Where plots full of nettles annoyeth the +eye,<br /> +Sow hempseed among them, and nettles will die.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The use of hemp indeed has not been +spared. But with so little avail has it been used, or +rather to such ill effect, that every public execution, instead +of deterring villains from guilt, serves only to afford them +opportunity for it. Perhaps the very risk of the gallows +operates upon many a man among the inducements to commit the +crime whereto he is tempted; for with your true gamester the +excitement seems to be in proportion to the value of the +stake. Yet I hold as little with the humanity-mongers, who +deny the necessity and lawfulness of inflicting capital +punishment in any case, as with the shallow moralists, who +exclaim against vindictive justice, when punishment would cease +to be just, if it were not vindictive. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—And yet the inefficacious +punishment of guilt is less to be deplored and less to be +condemned than the total omission of all means for preventing +it. Many thousands in your metropolis rise every morning +without knowing how they are to subsist during the day, or many +of them where they are to lay their heads at night. All +men, even the vicious themselves, know that wickedness leads to +misery; but many, even among the good and the wise, have yet to +learn that misery is almost as often the cause of wickedness. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—There are many who know this, but +believe that it is not in the power of human institutions to +prevent this misery. They see the effect, but regard the +causes as inseparable from the condition of human nature. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—As surely as God is good, so +surely there is no such thing as necessary evil. For by the +religious mind sickness and pain and death are not to be +accounted evils. Moral evils are of your own making, and +undoubtedly the greater part of them may be prevented; though it +is only in Paraguay (the most imperfect of Utopias) that any +attempt at prevention has been carried into effect. +Deformities of mind, as of body, will sometimes occur. Some +voluntary castaways there will always be, whom no fostering +kindness and no parental care can preserve from self-destruction; +but if any are lost for want of care and culture, there is a sin +of omission in the society to which they belong. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The practicability of forming such a +system of prevention may easily be allowed, where, as in +Paraguay, institutions are fore-planned, and not, as everywhere +in Europe, the slow and varying growth of circumstances. +But to introduce it into an old society, <i>hic labor</i>, <i>hoc +opus est</i>! The Augean stable might have been kept clean +by ordinary labour, if from the first the filth had been removed +every day; when it had accumulated for years, it became a task +for Hercules to cleanse it. Alas, the age of heroes and +demigods is over! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—There lies your error! As +no general will ever defeat an enemy whom he believes to be +invincible, so no difficulty can be overcome by those who fancy +themselves unable to overcome it. Statesmen in this point +are, like physicians, afraid, lest their own reputation should +suffer, to try new remedies in cases where the old routine of +practice is known and proved to be ineffectual. Ask +yourself whether the wretched creatures of whom we are +discoursing are not abandoned to their fate without the highest +attempt to rescue them from it? The utmost which your laws +profess is, that under their administration no human being shall +perish for want: this is all! To effect this you draw from +the wealthy, the industrious, and the frugal, a revenue exceeding +tenfold the whole expenses of government under Charles I., and +yet even with this enormous expenditure upon the poor it is not +effected. I say nothing of those who perish for want of +sufficient food and necessary comforts, the victims of slow +suffering and obscure disease; nor of those who, having crept to +some brick-kiln at night, in hope of preserving life by its +warmth, are found there dead in the morning. Not a winter +passes in which some poor wretch does not actually die of cold +and hunger in the streets of London! With all your public +and private eleemosynary establishments, with your eight million +of poor-rates, with your numerous benevolent associations, and +with a spirit of charity in individuals which keeps pace with the +wealth of the richest nation in the world, these things happen, +to the disgrace of the age and country, and to the opprobrium of +humanity, for want of police and order! You are silent! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Some shocking examples occurred to +me. The one of a poor Savoyard boy with his monkey starved +to death in St. James’s Park. The other, which is, if +that be possible, a still more disgraceful case, is recorded +incidentally in Rees’s Cyclopædia under the word +“monster.” It is only in a huge overgrown city +that such cases could possibly occur. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The extent of a metropolis ought +to produce no such consequences. Whatever be the size of a +bee-hive or an ant-hill, the same perfect order is observed in +it. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—That is because bees and ants act +under the guidance of unerring instinct. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—As if instinct were a superior +faculty to reason! But the statesman, as well as the +sluggard, may be told to “go to the ant and the bee, +consider their ways and be wise!” It is for reason to +observe and profit by the examples which instinct affords it. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A country modelled upon Apiarian laws +would be a strange Utopia! the bowstring would be used there as +unmercifully as it is in the seraglio, to say nothing of the +summary mode of bringing down the population to the means of +subsistence. But this is straying from the subject. +The consequences of defective order are indeed frightful, whether +we regard the physical or the moral evils which are produced. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—And not less frightful when the +political evils are contemplated. To the dangers of an +oppressive and iniquitous order, such, for example, as exists +where negro slavery is established, you are fully awake in +England; but to those of defective order among yourselves, though +they are precisely of the same nature, you are blind. And +yet you have spirits among you who are labouring day and night to +stir up a <i>bellum servile</i>, an insurrection like that of Wat +Tyler, of the Jacquerie, and of the peasants in Germany. +There is no provocation for this, as there was in all those +dreadful convulsions of society: but there are misery and +ignorance and desperate wickedness to work upon, which the want +of order has produced. Think for a moment what London, nay, +what the whole kingdom would be, were your Catilines to succeed +in exciting as general an insurrection as that which was raised +by one madman in your own childhood! Imagine the infatuated +and infuriated wretches, whom not Spitalfields, St. +Giles’s, and Pimlico alone, but all the lanes and alleys +and cellars of the metropolis would pour out—a frightful +population, whose multitudes, when gathered together, might +almost exceed belief! The streets of London would appear to +teem with them, like the land of Egypt with its plague of frogs: +and the lava floods from a volcano would be less destructive than +the hordes whom your great cities and manufacturing districts +would vomit forth! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Such an insane rebellion would +speedily be crushed. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Perhaps so. But three days +were enough for the Fire of London. And be assured this +would not pass away without leaving in your records a memorial as +durable and more dreadful. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Is such an event to be +apprehended? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Its possibility at least ought +always to be borne in mind. The French Revolution appeared +much less possible when the Assembly of Notables was convoked; +and the people of France were much less prepared for the career +of horrors into which they were presently hurried. +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY XIV.—THE LIBRARY.</h2> +<p>I was in my library, making room upon the shelves for some +books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less +conspicuous station others which were of less value and in worse +dress, when Sir Thomas entered. You are employed, said he, +to your heart’s content. Why, Montesinos, with these +books, and the delight you take in their constant society, what +have you to covet or desire? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Nothing, except more books. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Crescit</i>, <i>indulgens sibi</i>, +<i>dirus hydrops</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at +least is no diseased desire. If I covet more, it is for the +want I feel and the use which I should make of them. +“Libraries,” says my good old friend George Dyer, a +man as learned as he is benevolent, “libraries are the +wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might +bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more +for use.” These books of mine, as you well know, are +not drawn up here for display, however much the pride of the eye +may be gratified in beholding them, they are on actual +service. Whenever they may be dispersed, there is not one +among them that will ever be more comfortably lodged, or more +highly prized by its possessor; and generations may pass away +before some of them will again find a reader. It is well +that we do not moralise too much upon such subjects. +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“For foresight is a melancholy gift,<br /> +Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift.” +</p> +<p style="text-align: right">H. T. +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or in +anticipation, is always to me a melancholy thing. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—How many such dispersions must +have taken place to have made it possible that these books should +thus be brought together here among the Cumberland mountains. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Many, indeed; and in many instances +most disastrous ones. Not a few of these volumes have been +cast up from the wreck of the family or convent libraries during +the late Revolution. Yonder “Acta Sanctorum” +belonged to the Capuchins, at Ghent. This book of St. +Bridget’s Revelations, in which not only all the initial +letters are illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume +was coloured, came from the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges. +That copy of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits’ College at +Louvain; that <i>Imago Primi Sæculi Societatis</i>, from +their college at Ruremond. Here are books from +Colbert’s library, here others from the Lamoignon +one. And here are two volumes of a work, not more rare than +valuable for its contents, divorced, unhappily, and it is to be +feared for ever, from the one which should stand between them; +they were printed in a convent at Manila, and brought from thence +when that city was taken by Sir William Draper; they have given +me, perhaps, as many pleasurable hours (passed in acquiring +information which I could not otherwise have obtained), as Sir +William spent years of anxiety and vexation in vainly soliciting +the reward of his conquest. +</p> + +<p>About a score of the more out-of-the-way works in my +possession belonged to some unknown person, who seems carefully +to have gleaned the bookstalls a little before and after the year +1790. He marked them with certain ciphers, always at the +end of the volume. They are in various languages, and I +never found his mark in any book that was not worth buying, or +that I should not have bought without that indication to induce +me. All were in ragged condition, and having been +dispersed, upon the owner’s death probably, as of no value, +to the stalls they had returned; and there I found this portion +of them just before my old haunts as a book-hunter in the +metropolis were disforested, to make room for the improvements +between Westminster and Oxford Road. I have endeavoured +without success to discover the name of their former +possessor. He must have been a remarkable man, and the +whole of his collection, judging of it by that part which has +come into my hands, must have been singularly curious. A +book is the more valuable to me when I know to whom it has +belonged, and through what “scenes and changes” it +has passed. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You would have its history +recorded in the fly-leaf as carefully as the pedigree of a +racehorse is preserved. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I confess that I have much of that +feeling in which the superstition concerning relics has +originated, and I am sorry when I see the name of a former owner +obliterated in a book, or the plate of his arms defaced. +Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something saved for a +while from oblivion, and I should be almost as unwilling to +destroy them as to efface the <i>Hic jacet</i> of a +tombstone. There may be sometimes a pleasure in recognising +them, sometimes a salutary sadness. +</p> + +<p>Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and +yonder “General History of Spain,” by Esteban de +Garibay, are signed by their respective authors. The minds +of these laborious and useful scholars are in their works, but +you are brought into a more personal relation with them when you +see the page upon which you know that their eyes have rested, and +the very characters which their hands have traced. This +copy of Casaubon’s Epistles was sent to me from Florence by +Walter Landor. He had perused it carefully, and to that +perusal we are indebted for one of the most pleasing of his +Conversations; these letters had carried him in spirit to the age +of their writer, and shown James I. to him in the light wherein +James was regarded by contemporary scholars, and under the +impression thus produced Landor has written of him in his +happiest mood, calmly, philosophically, feelingly, and with no +more of favourable leaning than justice will always manifest when +justice is in good humour and in charity with all men. The +book came from the palace library at Milan, how or when +abstracted I know not, but this beautiful dialogue would never +have been written had it remained there in its place upon the +shelf, for the worms to finish the work which they had +begun. Isaac Casaubon must be in your society, Sir Thomas, +for where Erasmus is you will be, and there also Casaubon will +have his place among the wise and the good. Tell him, I +pray you, that due honour has in these days been rendered to his +name by one who as a scholar is qualified to appreciate his +merits, and whose writings will be more durable than monuments of +brass or marble. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Is there no message to him from +Walter Landor’s friend? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Say to him, since you encourage me to +such boldness, that his letters could scarcely have been perused +with deeper interest by the persons to whom they were addressed +than they have been by one, at the foot of Skiddaw, who is never +more contentedly employed than when learning from the living +minds of other ages, one who would gladly have this expression of +respect and gratitude conveyed to him, and who trusts that when +his course is finished here he shall see him face to face. +</p> + +<p>Here is a book with which Lauderdale amused himself, when +Cromwell kept him prisoner in Windsor Castle. He has +recorded his state of mind during that imprisonment by inscribing +in it, with his name, and the dates of time and place, the Latin +word <i>Durate</i>, and the Greek +Οιστέον +και +ελπιστέον. +Here is a memorial of a different kind inscribed in this +“Rule of Penance of St. Francis, as it in ordered for +religious women.” “I beseech my deare mother +humbly to accept of this exposition of our holy rule, the better +to conceive what your poor child ought to be, who daly beges your +blessing. Constantia Francisco.” And here in +the Apophthegmata, collected by Conrad Lycosthenes, and published +after drastic expurgation by the Jesuits as a commonplace book, +some Portuguese has entered a hearty vow that he would never part +with the book, nor lend it to any one. Very different was +the disposition of my poor old Lisbon acquaintance, the +Abbé, who, after the old humaner form, wrote in all his +books (and he had a rare collection) <i>Ex libris Francisci +Garnier</i>, <i>et amicorum</i>. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—How peaceably they stand +together—Papists and Protestants side by side. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Their very dust reposes not more +quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and modern, Jew and +Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French and English, Spaniards +and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their own battles, +silently now, upon the same shelf: Fernam Lopez and Pedro de +Ayala; John de Laet and Barlæus, with the historians of +Joam Fernandes Vieira; Foxe’s Martyrs and the Three +Conversions of Father Parsons; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner; +Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and Philosophe (equally +misnamed); Churchmen and Sectarians; Round-heads and +Cavaliers +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Here are God’s conduits, grave +divines; and here<br /> +Is Nature’s secretary, the philosopher:<br /> +And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie<br /> +The sinews of a city’s mystic body;<br /> +Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand<br /> +Giddy fantastic poets of each land.”—<span +class="smcap">Donne</span>. +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest +of so many generations, laid up in my garners: and when I go to +the window there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, +and the illimitable sky. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Felicemque voco pariter studiique +locique</i>!” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“—<i>meritoque probas artesque +locumque</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The simile of the bees, +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Sic vos non vobis mellificatis +apes</i>,” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>has often been applied to men who have made literature their +profession; and they among them to whom worldly wealth and +worldly honours are objects of ambition, may have reason enough +to acknowledge its applicability. But it will bear a +happier application and with equal fitness: for, for whom is the +purest honey hoarded that the bees of this world elaborate, if it +be not for the man of letters? The exploits of the kings +and heroes of old, serve now to fill story-books for his +amusement and instruction. It was to delight his leisure +and call forth his admiration that Homer sung and Alexander +conquered. It is to gratify his curiosity that adventurers +have traversed deserts and savage countries, and navigators have +explored the seas from pole to pole. The revolutions of the +planet which he inhabits are but matters for his speculation; and +the deluges and conflagrations which it has undergone, problems +to exercise his philosophy, or fancy. He is the inheritor +of whatever has been discovered by persevering labour, or created +by inventive genius. The wise of all ages have heaped up a +treasure for him, which rust doth not corrupt, and which thieves +cannot break through and steal. I must leave out the moth, +for even in this climate care is required against its +ravages. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Yet, Montesinos, how often does +the worm-eaten volume outlast the reputation of the worm-eaten +author! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Of the living one also; for many +there are of whom it may be said, in the words of Vida, +that— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “—<i>ipsi</i><br /> +<i>Sæpe suis superant monumentis</i>; +<i>illaudatique</i><br /> +<i>Extremum ante diem fætus flevere caducos</i>,<br /> +<i>Viventesque suæ viderunt funera +famæ</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Some literary reputations die in the birth; a few are nibbled +to death by critics, but they are weakly ones that perish thus, +such only as must otherwise soon have come to a natural +death. Somewhat more numerous are those which are overfed +with praise, and die of the surfeit. Brisk reputations, +indeed, are like bottled twopenny, or pop “they sparkle, +are exhaled, and fly”—not to heaven, but to the +Limbo. To live among books, is in this respect like living +among the tombs; you have in them speaking remembrancers of +mortality. “Behold this also is vanity!” +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Has it proved to you +“vexation of spirit” also? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Oh, no! for never can any man’s +life have been passed more in accord with his own inclinations, +nor more answerably to his own desires. Excepting that +peace which, through God’s infinite mercy, is derived from +a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am +beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, but for every +blessing which I enjoy; health of mind and activity of mind, +contentment, cheerfulness, continual employment, and therewith +continual pleasure. <i>Sua vissima vita indies</i>, +<i>sentire se fieri meliorem</i>; and this as Bacon has said, and +Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys in +retirement. To the studies which I have faithfully pursued +I am indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed +an honour to have lived in friendship; and as for the enemies +which they have procured to me in sufficient numbers, happily I +am not of the thin-skinned race: they might as well fire +small-shot at a rhinoceros, as direct their attacks upon +me. <i>In omnibus requiem quæsivi</i>, said Thomas +à Kempis, <i>sed non inveni nisi in angulis et +libellis</i>. I too have found repose where he did, in +books and retirement, but it was there alone I sought it: to +these my nature, under the direction of a merciful Providence, +led me betimes, and the world can offer nothing which should +tempt me from them. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—If wisdom were to be found in +the multitude of books, what a progress must this nation have +made in it since my head was cut off! A man in my days +might offer to dispute <i>de omni scibile</i>, and in accepting +the challenge I, as a young man, was not guilty of any +extraordinary presumption, for all which books could teach was, +at that time, within the compass of a diligent and ardent +student. Even then we had difficulties to contend with +which were unknown to the ancients. The curse of Babel fell +lightly upon them. The Greeks despised other nations too +much to think of acquiring their languages for the love of +knowledge, and the Romans contented themselves with learning only +the Greek. But tongues which, in my lifetime, were hardly +formed, have since been refined and cultivated, and are become +fertile in authors; and others, the very names of which were then +unknown in Europe, have been discovered and mastered by European +scholars, and have been found rich in literature. The +circle of knowledge has thus widened in every generation; and you +cannot now touch the circumference of what might formerly have +been clasped. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—We are fortunate, methinks, who live +in an age when books are accessible and numerous, and yet not so +multiplied, as to render a competent, not to say thorough, +acquaintance with any one branch of literature, impossible. +He has it yet in his power to know much, who can be contented to +remain in ignorance of more, and to say with Scaliger, <i>non sum +ex illis gloriosulis qui nihil ignorant</i>. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—If one of the most learned men +whom the world has ever seen felt it becoming in him to say this +two centuries ago, how infinitely smaller in these days must the +share of learning which the most indefatigable student can hope +to attain, be in proportion to what he must wish to learn! +The sciences are simplified as they are improved; old rubbish and +demolished fabrics serve there to make a foundation for new +scaffolding, and more enduring superstructures; and every +discoverer in physics bequeaths to those who follow him greater +advantages than he possessed at the commencement of his +labours. The reverse of this is felt in all the higher +branches of literature. You have to acquire what the +learned of the last age acquired, and in addition to it, what +they themselves have added to the stock of learning. Thus +the task is greater in every succeeding generation, and in a very +few more it must become manifestly impossible. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>. Pope Ganganelli is said to have +expressed a whimsical opinion that all the books in the world +might be reduced to six thousand volumes in folio—by +epitomising, expurgating, and destroying whatever the chosen and +plenipotential committee of literature should in their wisdom +think proper to condemn. It is some consolation to know +that no Pope, or Nero, or Bonaparte, however great their power, +can ever think such a scheme sufficiently within the bounds of +possibility for them to dream of attempting it; otherwise the +will would not be wanting. The evil which you anticipate is +already perceptible in its effects. Well would it be if men +were as moderate in their desire of wealth, as those who enter +the ranks of literature, and lay claim to distinction there, are +in their desire of knowledge! A slender capital suffices to +begin with, upon the strength of which they claim credit, and +obtain it as readily as their fellow adventurers in trade. +If they succeed in setting up a present reputation, their +ambition extends no further. The very vanity which finds +its present food produces in them a practical contempt for any +fame beyond what they can live to enjoy; and this sense of its +insignificance to themselves is what better minds hardly attain, +even in their saddest wisdom, till this world darkens upon them, +and they feel that they are on the confines of eternity. +But every age has had its sciolists, and will continue to have +them; and in every age literature has also had, and will continue +to have its sincere and devoted followers, few in number, but +enough to trim the everlasting lamp. It is when sciolists +meddle with State affairs that they become the pests of a nation; +and this evil, for the reason which you have assigned, is more +likely to increase than to be diminished. In your days all +extant history lay within compassable bounds: it is a fearful +thing to consider now what length of time would be required to +make studious man as conversant with the history of Europe since +those days, as he ought to be, if he would be properly qualified +for holding a place in the councils of a kingdom. Men who +take the course of public life will not, nor can they be expected +to, wait for this. Youth and ardour, and ambition and +impatience, are here in accord with worldly prudence; if they +would reach the goal for which they start, they must begin the +career betimes; and such among them as may be conscious that +their stock of knowledge is less than it ought to be for such a +profession, would not hesitate on that account to take an active +part in public affairs, because they have a more comfortable +consciousness that they are quite as well informed as the +contemporaries, with whom they shall have to act, or to +contend. The <i>quantulum</i> at which Oxenstern admired +would be a large allowance now. For any such person to +suspect himself of deficiency would, in this age of pretension, +be a hopeful symptom; but should he endeavour to supply it, he is +like a mail-coach traveller, who is to be conveyed over +macadamised roads at the rate of nine miles an hour, including +stoppages, and must therefore take at his minuted meals whatever +food is readiest. He must get information for immediate +use, and with the smallest cost of time; and therefore it is +sought in abstracts and epitomes, which afford meagre food to the +intellect, though they take away the uneasy sense of +inanition. <i>Tout abregé sur un bon livre est un +sot abregé</i>, says Montaigne; and of all abridgments +there are none by which a reader is liable, and so likely, to be +deceived as by epitomised histories. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Call to mind, I pray you, my +foliophagous friend, what was the extent of Michael +Montaigne’s library; and that if you had passed a winter in +his château you must, with that appetite of yours, have but +yourself upon short allowance there. Historical knowledge +is not the first thing needful for a statesman, nor the +second. And yet do not hastily conclude that I am about to +disparage its importance. A sailor might as well put to sea +without chart or compass as a minister venture to steer the ship +of the State without it. For as “the strong and +strange varieties” in human nature are repeated in every +age, so “the thing which hath been, it is that which shall +be. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is +new? it hath been already of old time which was before +us.” +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“For things forepast are precedents to +us,<br /> +Whereby we may things present now, discuss,” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>as the old poet said who brought together a tragical +collection of precedents in the mirror of magistrates. This +is what Lord Brooke calls +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “the second light of +government<br /> +Which stories yield, and no time can disseason:” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>“the common standard of man’s reason,” he +holds to be the first light which the founders of a new state, or +the governors of an old one, ought to follow. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Rightly, for though the most +sagacious author that ever deduced maxims of policy from the +experience of former ages has said that the misgovernment of +States, and the evils consequent thereon, have arisen more from +the neglect of that experience—that is, from historical +ignorance—than from any other cause, the sum and substance +of historical knowledge for practical purposes consists in +certain general principles; and he who understands those +principles, and has a due sense of their importance, has always, +in the darkest circumstances, a star in sight by which he may +direct his course surely. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The British ministers who began and +conducted the first war against revolutionary France, were once +reminded, in a memorable speech, that if they had known, or +knowing had borne in mind, three maxims of Machiavelli, they +would not have committed the errors which cost this country so +dearly. They would not have relied upon bringing the war to +a successful end by aid of a party among the French: they would +not have confided in the reports of emigrants; and they would not +have supposed that because the French finances were in confusion, +France was therefore incapable of carrying on war with vigour and +ability; men and not money being the sinews of war, as +Machiavelli had taught, and the revolutionary rulers and +Buonaparte after them had learnt. Each of these errors they +committed, though all were marked upon the chart! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Such maxims are like beacons on +a dangerous shore, not the less necessary, because the seaman may +sometimes be deceived by false lights, and sometimes mistaken in +his distances; but the possibility of being so misled will be +borne in mind by the cautious. Machiavelli is always +sagacious, but the tree of knowledge of which he had gathered +grew not in Paradise; it had a bitter root, and the fruit savours +thereof, even to deadliness. He believed men to be so +malignant by nature that they always act malevolently from +choice, and never well except by compulsion, a devilish doctrine, +to be accounted for rather than excused by the circumstances of +his age and country. For he lived in a land where intellect +was highly cultivated, and morals thoroughly corrupted, the Papal +Church having by its doctrines, its practices, and its example, +made one part of the Italians heathenism and superstitious, the +other impious, and both wicked. +</p> + +<p>The rule of policy as well as of private morals is to be found +in the Gospel; and a religious sense of duty towards God and man +is the first thing needful in a statesman: herein he has an +unerring guide when knowledge fails him, and experience affords +no light. This, with a clear head and a single heart, will +carry him through all difficulties; and the just confidence +which, having these, he will then have in himself, will obtain +for him the confidence of the nation. In every nation, +indeed, which is conscious of its strength, the minister who +takes the highest tone will invariably be the most popular; let +him uphold, even haughtily, the character of his country, and the +heart and voice of the people will be with him. But +haughtiness implies always something that is hollow: the tone of +a wise minister will be firm but calm. He will neither +truckle to his enemies in the vain hope of conciliating them by a +specious candour, which they at the same time flatter and +despise; nor will he stand aloof from his friends, lest he should +be accused of regarding them with partiality; and thus while he +secures the attachment of the one he will command the respect of +the other. He will not, like the Lacedemonians, think any +measures honourable which accord with his inclinations, and just +if they promote his views; but in all cases he will do that which +is lawful and right, holding this for a certain truth, that in +politics the straight path is the sure one! Such a minister +will hope for the best, and expect the best; by acting openly, +steadily, and bravely, he will act always for the best: and so +acting, be the issue what it may, he will never dishonour himself +or his country, nor fall under the “sharp judgment” +of which they that are in “high places” are in +danger. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I am pleased to hear you include +hopefulness among the needful qualifications. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—It was a Jewish maxim that the +spirit of prophecy rests only upon eminent, happy, and cheerful +men. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A wise woman, by which I do not mean +in vulgar parlance one who pretends to prophecy, has a maxim to +the same effect: <i>Toma este aviso</i>, she says, <i>guardate de +aquel que no tiene esperanza de bien</i>! take care of him who +hath no hope of good! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—“Of whole heart cometh +hope,” says old Piers Plowman. And these maxims are +warranted by philosophy, divine and human; by human wisdom, +because he who hopes little will attempt little—fear is +“a betrayal of the succours which reason offereth,” +and in difficult times, <i>pericula magna non nisi periculis +depelli solent</i>; by religion, because the ways of providence +are not so changed under the dispensation of Grace from what they +were under the old law but that he who means well, and acts well, +and is not wanting to himself, may rightfully look for a blessing +upon the course which he pursues. The upright individual +may rest his heal in peace upon this hope; the upright minister +who conducts the affairs of a nation may trust in it; for as +national sins bring after them in sure consequence their merited +punishment, so national virtue, which is national wisdom, obtains +in like manner its temporal and visible reward. +</p> + +<p>Blessings and curses are before you, and which are to be your +portion depends upon the direction of public opinion. The +march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its +progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in +morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more +violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin. +</p> + +<p>One of the first effects of printing was to make proud men +look upon learning as disgraced by being thus brought within +reach of the common people. Till that time learning, such +as it was, had been confined to courts and convents, the low +birth of the clergy being overlooked because they were privileged +by their order. But when laymen in humble life were enabled +to procure books the pride of aristocracy took an absurd course, +insomuch that at one time it was deemed derogatory for a nobleman +if he could read or write. Even scholars themselves +complained that the reputation of learning, and the respect due +to it, and its rewards were lowered when it was thrown open to +all men; and it was seriously proposed to prohibit the printing +of any book that could be afforded for sale below the price of +three <i>soldi</i>. This base and invidious feeling was +perhaps never so directly avowed in other countries as in Italy, +the land where literature was first restored; and yet in this +more liberal island ignorance was for some generations considered +to be a mark of distinction, by which a man of gentle birth +chose, not unfrequently, to make it apparent that he was no more +obliged to live by the toil of his brain, than by the sweat of +his brow. The same changes in society which rendered it no +longer possible for this class of men to pass their lives in +idleness have completely put an end to this barbarous +pride. It is as obsolete as the fashion of long +finger-nails, which in some parts of the East are still the +distinctive mark of those who labour not with their hands. +All classes are now brought within the reach of your current +literature, that literature which, like a moral atmosphere, is as +it were the medium of intellectual life, and on the quality of +which, according as it may be salubrious or noxious, the health +of the public mind depends. There is, if not a general +desire for knowledge, a general appearance of such a +desire. Authors of all kinds have increased and are +increasing among you. Romancers— +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Some of whom attempt things which had +hitherto been unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, because among +all the extravagant intellects with which the world has teemed +none were ever before so utterly extravagant as to choose for +themselves themes of such revolting monstrosity. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Poets— +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Tanti Rome non ha preti, o dottori<br /> +<i>Bologna</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Critics— +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—More numerous yet; for this is a +corps in which many who are destined for better things engage, +till they are ashamed of the service; and a much greater number +who endeavour to distinguish themselves in higher walks of +literature, and fail, take shelter in it; as they cannot attain +reputation themselves they endeavour to prevent others from being +more successful, and find in the gratification of envy some +recompense for disappointed vanity. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Philosophers— +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—True and false; the philosophers and +the philosophists; some of the former so full, that it would +require, as the rabbis say of a certain pedigree in the Book of +Chronicles, four hundred camel loads of commentaries to expound +the difficulties in their text; others so empty, that nothing can +approximate so nearly to the notion of an infinitesimal quantity +as their meaning. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—With this multiplication of +books, which in its proportionate increase marvellously exceeds +that of your growing population, are you a wiser, a more +intellectual, or more imaginative people than when, as in my +days, the man of learning, while he sat at his desk, had his +whole library within arm’s-length? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If we are not wiser, it must be +because the means of knowledge, which are now both abundant and +accessible, are either neglected or misused. +</p> + +<p>The sciences are not here to be considered: in these our +progress has been so great, that seeing the moral and religious +improvement of the nation has in no degree kept pace with it, you +have reasonably questioned whether we have not advanced in +certain branches, farther and faster than is conducive to, or +perhaps consistent with, the general good. But there can be +no question that great advancement has been made in many +departments of literature conducive to innocent recreation (which +would be alone no trifling good, even were it not, as it is, +itself conducive to health both of body and of mind), to sound +knowledge, and to moral and political improvement. There +are now few portions of the habitable earth which have not been +explored, and with a zeal and perseverance which had slept from +the first age of maritime discovery till it was revived under +George III. in consequence of this revival, and the awakened +spirit of curiosity and enterprise, every year adds to our ample +store of books relating to the manners of other nations, and the +condition of men in states and stages of society different to our +own. And of such books we cannot have too many; the idlest +reader may find amusement in them of a more satisfactory kind +than he can gather from the novel of the day or the criticism of +the day; and there are few among them so entirely worthless that +the most studious man may not derive from them some information +for which he ought to be thankful. Some memorable instances +we have had in this generation of the absurdities and errors, +sometimes affecting seriously the public service and the national +character, which have arisen from the want of such knowledge as +by means of such books is now generally diffused. Skates +and warming-pans will not again be sent out as ventures to +Brazil. The Board of Admiralty will never again attempt to +ruin an enemy’s port by sinking a stone-ship, to the great +amusement of that enemy, in a tide harbour. Nor will a +cabinet minister think it sufficient excuse for himself and his +colleagues, to confess that they were no better informed than +other people, and had everything to learn concerning the interior +of a country into which they had sent an army. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—This is but a prospective +benefit; and of a humble kind, if it extend no further than to +save you from any future exposure of an ignorance which might +deserve to be called disgraceful. We profited more by our +knowledge of other countries in the age when +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Hops and turkeys, carp and beer,<br /> +Came into England all in one year.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—And yet in that age you profited +slowly by the commodities which the eastern and western parts of +the world afforded. Gold, pearls, and spices were your +first imports. For the honour of science and of humanity, +medicinal plants were soon sought for. But two centuries +elapsed before tea and potatoes—the most valuable products +of the East and West—which have contributed far more to the +general good than all their spices and gems and precious +metals—came into common use; nor have they yet been +generally adopted on the Continent, while tobacco found its way +to Europe a hundred years earlier; and its filthy abuse, though +here happily less than in former times, prevails everywhere. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—<i>Pro pudor</i>! There is +a snuff-box on the mantelpiece—and thou revilest +tobacco! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Distinguish, I pray you, gentle +ghost! I condemn the abuse of tobacco as filthy, implying +in those words that it has its allowable and proper use. To +smoke, is, in certain circumstances, a wholesome practice; it may +be regarded with a moral complacency as the poor man’s +luxury, and with liking by any one who follows a lighted pipe in +the open air. But whatever may be pleaded for its soothing +and intellectualising effects, the odour within doors of a +defunct pipe is such an abomination, that I join in +anathematising it with James, the best-natured of kings, and +Joshua Sylvester, the most voluble of poets. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Thou hast written verses praise +of snuff! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—And if thy nose, sir Spirit, were +anything more than the ghost of an olfactor, I would offer it a +propitiatory pinch, that you might the more feelingly understand +the merit of the said verses, and admire them accordingly. +But I am no more to be deemed a snuff-taker because I carry a +snuff-box when travelling, and keep one at hand for occasional +use, than I am to be reckoned a casuist or a pupil of the Jesuits +because the “Moral Philosophy” of Escobar and the +“Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius Loyola are on +my shelves. Thank Heaven, I bear about with me no habits +which I cannot lay aside as easily as my clothes. +</p> + +<p>The age is past in which travellers could add much to the +improvement, the comfort, or the embellishment of this country by +imparting anything which they have newly observed in foreign +parts. We have happily more to communicate now than to +receive. Yet when I tell you that since the commencement of +the present century there have been every year, upon an average, +more than a hundred and fifty plants which were previously +unknown here introduced into the nurseries and market-gardens +about London, you will acknowledge that in this branch at least, +a constant desire is shown of enriching ourselves with the +produce of other hands. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Philosophers of old travelled to +observe the manners of men and study their institutions. I +know not whether they found more pleasure in the study, or +derived more advantages from it, than the adventurers reap who, +in these latter times, have crossed the seas and exposed +themselves to dangers of every kind, for the purpose of extending +the catalogue of plants. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Of all travels, those of the mere +botanist are the least instructive— +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—To any but botanists—but +for them alone they are written. Do not depreciate any +pursuit which leads men to contemplate the works of their +Creator! The Linnean traveller who, when you look over the +pages of his journal, seems to you a mere botanist, has in his +pursuit, as you have in yours, an object that occupies his time, +and fills his mind, and satisfies his heart. It is as +innocent as yours, and as disinterested—perhaps more so, +because it is not so ambitious. Nor is the pleasure which +he partakes in investigating the structure of a plant less pure, +or less worthy, than what you derive from perusing the noblest +productions of human genius. You look at me as if you +thought this reprehension were undeserved! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The eye, then, Sir Thomas, is +proditorious, and I will not gainsay its honest testimony: yet +would I rather endeavour to profit by the reprehension than seek +to show that it was uncalled for. If I know myself I am +never prone to undervalue either the advantages or acquirements +which I do not possess. That knowledge is said to be of all +others the most difficult; whether it be the most useful the +Greeks themselves differ, for if one of their wise men left the +words yνωθι +σεαυτον as his maxim +to posterity, a poet, who perhaps may have been not less +deserving of the title, has controverted it, and told us that for +the uses of the world it is more advantageous for us to +understand the character of others than to know ourselves. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Here lies the truth; he who best +understands himself is least likely to be deceived in others; you +judge of others by yourselves, and therefore measure them by an +erroneous standard whenever your autometry is false. This +is one reason why the empty critic is usually contumelious and +flippant, the competent one as generally equitable and +humane. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—This justice I would render to the +Linnean school, that it produced our first devoted travellers; +the race to which they succeeded employed themselves chiefly in +visiting museums and cataloguing pictures, and now and then +copying inscriptions; even in their books notices are found for +which they who follow them may be thankful; and facts are +sometimes, as if by accident, preserved, for useful +application. They went abroad to accomplish or to amuse +themselves—to improve their time, or to get rid of it; the +botanists travelled for the sake of their favourite science, and +many of them, in the prime of life, fell victims to their ardour +in the unwholesome climates to which they were led. +Latterly we have seen this ardour united with the highest genius, +the most comprehensive knowledge, and the rarest qualities of +perseverance, prudence, and enduring patience. This +generation will not leave behind it two names more entitled to +the admiration of after ages than Burckhardt and Humboldt. +The former purchased this pre-eminence at the cost of his life; +the latter lives, and long may he live to enjoy it. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—This very important branch of +literature can scarcely be said to have existed in my time; the +press was then too much occupied in preserving such precious +remains of antiquity as could be rescued from destruction, and in +matters which inflamed the minds of men, as indeed they concerned +their dearest and most momentous interests. Moreover +reviving literature took the natural course of imitation, and the +ancients had left nothing in this kind to be imitated. +Nothing therefore appeared in it, except the first inestimable +relations of the discoveries in the East and West, and these +belong rather to the department of history. As travels we +had only the chance notices which occurred in the Latin +correspondence of learned men when their letters found their way +to the public. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Precious remains these are, but all +too few. The first travellers whose journals or memoirs +have been preserved were ambassadors; then came the adventurer of +whom you speak; and it is remarkable that two centuries +afterwards we should find men of the same stamp among the +buccaneers, who recorded in like manner with faithful dilligence +whatever they had opportunity of observing in their wild and +nefarious course of life. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—You may deduce from thence two +conclusions, apparently contrarient, yet both warranted by the +fact which you have noticed. It may be presumed that men +who, while engaged in such an occupation, could thus +meritoriously employ their leisure, were rather compelled by +disastrous circumstances to such a course than engaged in it by +inclination: that it was their misfortune rather than their fault +if they were not the benefactors and ornaments of society, +instead of being its outlaws; and that under a wise and parental +government such persons never would be lost. This is a +charitable consideration, nor will I attempt to impugn it; the +other may seem less so, but is of more practical +importance. For these examples are proof, if proof were +needed, that intellectual attainments and habits are no security +for good conduct unless they are supported by religious +principles; without religion the highest endowments of intellect +can only render the possessor more dangerous if he be ill +disposed, if well disposed only more unhappy. +</p> + +<p>The conquerors, as they called themselves, were followed by +missionaries. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Our knowledge of the remoter parts of +the world, during the first part of the seventeenth century, must +chiefly be obtained from their recitals. And there is no +difficulty in separating what may be believed from their fables, +because their falsehoods being systematically devised and +circulated in pursuance of what they regarded as part of their +professional duty, they told truth when they had no motive for +deceiving the reader. Let any person compare the relations +of our Protestant missionaries with those of the Jesuits, +Dominicans, Franciscans, or any other Romish order, and the +difference which he cannot fail to perceive between the plain +truth of the one and the audacious and elaborate mendacity of the +other may lead him to a just inference concerning the two +churches. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Their fables were designed, by +exciting admiration, to call forth money for the support of +missions, which, notwithstanding such false pretences, were +piously undertaken and heroically pursued. They scrupled +therefore as little at interlarding their chronicles and annual +letters with such miracles, as poets at the use of machinery in +their verses. Think not that I am excusing them; but thus +it was that they justified their system of imposition to +themselves, and this part of it must not be condemned as if it +proceeded from an evil intention. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Yet, Sir Thomas, the best of those +missionaries are not more to be admired for their exemplary +virtue, and pitied for the superstition which debased their +faith, than others of their respective orders are to be +abominated for the deliberate wickedness with which, in pursuance +of the same system, they imposed the most blasphemous and +atrocious legends upon the credulous, and persecuted with fire +and sword those who opposed their deceitful villainy. One +reason wherefore so few travels were written in the age of which +we are speaking is, that no Englishman, unless he were a Papist, +could venture into Italy, or any other country where the Romish +religion was established in full power, without the danger of +being seized by the Inquisition! +</p> + +<p>Other dangers, by sea and by land, from corsairs and banditti, +including too the chances of war and of pestilence, were so great +in that age, that it was not unusual for men when they set out +upon their travels to put out a sum upon their own lives, which +if they died upon the journey was to be the underwriter’s +gain, but to be repaid if they returned, within such increase as +might cover their intervening expenses. The chances against +them seem to have been considered as nearly three to one. +But danger, within a certain degree, is more likely to provoke +adventurers than to deter them. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—There thou hast uttered a +comprehensive truth. No legislator has yet so graduated his +scale of punishment as to ascertain that degree which shall +neither encourage hope nor excite the audacity of desperate +guilt. It is certain that there are states of mind in which +the consciousness that he is about to play for life or death +stimulates a gamester to the throw. This will apply to most +of those crimes which are committed for cupidity, and not +attended with violence. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Well then may these hazards have +acted as incentives where there was the desire of honour, the +spirit of generous enterprise, or even the love of +notoriety. By the first of these motives Pietro della Valle +(the most romantic in his adventures of all true travellers) was +led abroad, the latter spring set in motion my comical +countryman, Tom Coriat, who by the engraver’s help has +represented himself at one time in full dress, making a leg to a +courtesan at Venice, and at another dropping from his rags the +all-too lively proofs of prolific poverty. +</p> + +<p>Perhaps literature has never been so directly benefited by the +spirit of trade as it was in the seventeenth century, when +European jewellers found their most liberal customers in the +courts of the East. Some of the best travels which we +possess, as well as the best materials for Persian and Indian +history, have been left us by persons engaged in that +trade. From that time travelling became less dangerous and +more frequent in every generation, except during the late years +when Englishmen were excluded from the Continent by the military +tyrant whom (with God’s blessing on a rightful cause) we +have beaten from his imperial throne. And now it is more +customary for females in the middle rank of life to visit Italy +than it was for them in your days to move twenty miles from +home. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Is this a salutary or an +injurious fashion? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—According to the subject, and to the +old school maxim <i>quicquid recipitur</i>, <i>recipitur in modum +recipientis</i>. The wise come back wiser, the +well-informed with richer stores of knowledge, the empty and the +vain return as they went, and there are some who bring home +foreign vanities and vices in addition to their own. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—And what has been imported by +such travellers for the good of their country? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Coffee in the seventeenth century, +inoculation in that which followed; since which we have had now +and then a new dance and a new game at cards, curry and +mullagatawny soup from the East Indies, turtle from the West, and +that earthly nectar to which the East contributes its arrack, and +the West its limes and its rum. In the language of men it +is called Punch; I know not what may be its name in the Olympian +speech. But tell not the Englishmen of George the +Second’s age, lest they should be troubled for the +degeneracy of their grandchildren, that the punchbowl is now +become a relic of antiquity, and their beloved beverage almost as +obsolete as metheglin, hippocras, chary, or morat! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—It is well for thee that thou +art not a young beagle instead of a grey-headed bookman, or that +rambling vein of thine would often bring thee under the lash of +the whipper-in! Off thou art and away in pursuit of the +smallest game that rises before thee. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Good Ghost, there was once a wise +Lord Chancellor, who in a dialogue upon weighty matters thought +it not unbecoming to amuse himself with discursive merriment +concerning St. Appollonia and St. Uncumber. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Good Flesh and Blood, that was a +nipping reply! And happy man is his dole who retains in +grave years, and even to grey hairs, enough of green +youth’s redundant spirits for such excursiveness! He +who never relaxes into sportiveness is a wearisome companion, but +beware of him who jests at everything! Such men disparage +by some ludicrous association all objects which are presented to +their thoughts, and thereby render themselves incapable of any +emotion which can either elevate or soften them, they bring upon +their moral being an influence more withering than the blast of +the desert. A countenance, if it be wrinkled either with +smiles or with frowns, is to be shunned; the furrows which the +latter leave show that the soil is sour, those of the former are +symptomatic of a hollow heart. +</p> + +<p>None of your travellers have reached Utopia, and brought from +thence a fuller account of its institutions? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—There was one, methinks, who must +have had it in view when he walked over the world to discover the +source of moral motion. He was afflicted with a tympany of +mind produced by metaphysics, which was at that time a common +complaint, though attended in him with unusual symptoms, but his +heart was healthy and strong, and might in former ages have +enabled him to acquire a distinguished place among the saints of +the Thebais or the philosophers of Greece. +</p> + +<p>But although we have now no travellers employed in seeking +undiscoverable countries, and although Eldorado, the city of the +Cesares, and the Sabbatical River, are expunged even from the +maps of credulity and imagination, Welshmen have gone in search +of Madoc’s descendants, and scarcely a year passes without +adding to the melancholy list of those who have perished in +exploring the interior of Africa. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Whenever there shall exist a +civilised and Christian negro state Providence will open that +country to civilisation and Christianity, meantime to risk +strength and enterprise and science against climate is contending +against the course of nature. Have these travellers yet +obtained for you the secret of the Psylli? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—We have learnt from savages the mode +of preparing their deadliest poisons. The more useful +knowledge by which they render the human body proof against the +most venomous serpents has not been sought with equal diligence; +there are, however, scattered notices which may perhaps afford +some clue to the discovery. The writings of travellers are +not more rich in materials for the poet and the historian than +they are in useful notices, deposited there like seeds which lie +deep in the earth till some chance brings them within reach of +air, and then they germinate. These are fields in which +something may always be found by the gleaner, and therefore those +general collections in which the works are curtailed would be to +be reprobated, even if epitomisers did not seem to possess a +certain instinct of generic doltishness which leads them +curiously to omit whatever ought especially to be preserved. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—If ever there come a time, +Montesinos, when beneficence shall be as intelligent, and wisdom +as active, as the spirit of trade, you will then draw from +foreign countries other things beside those which now pay duties +at the custom-house, or are cultivated in nurseries for the +conservatories of the wealthy. Not that I regard with +dissatisfaction these latter importations of luxury, however far +they may be brought, or at whatever cost; for of all mere +pleasures those of a garden are the most salutary, and approach +nearest to a moral enjoyment. But you will then (should +that time come) seek and find in the laws, usages and experience +of other nations palliatives for some of those evils and diseases +which have hitherto been inseparable from society and human +nature, and remedies, perhaps, for others. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Happy the travellers who shall be +found instrumental to such good! One advantage belongs to +authors of this description; because they contribute to the +instruction of the learned, their reputation suffers no +diminution by the course of time: age rather enhances their +value. In this respect they resemble historians, to whom, +indeed, their labours are in a great degree subsidiary. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—They have an advantage over +them, my friend, in this, that rarely can they leave evil works +behind them, which either from a mischievous persuasion, or a +malignant purpose, may heap condemnation upon their own souls as +long as such works survive them. Even if they should +manifest pernicious opinions and a wicked will, the venom is in a +great degree sheathed by the vehicle in which it is +administered. And this is something; for let me tell thee, +thou consumer of goose quills, that of all the Devil’s +laboratories there is none in which more poison is concocted for +mankind than in the inkstand! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—“My withers are +unwrung!” +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Be thankful, therefore, in life, +as thou wilt in death. +</p> + +<p>A principle of compensation may be observed in literary +pursuits as in other things. Reputations that never flame +continue to glimmer for centuries after those which blaze highest +have gone out. And what is of more moment, the humblest +occupations are morally the safest. Rhadamanthus never puts +on his black cap to pronounce sentence upon a dictionary-maker or +the compiler of a county history. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>. I am to understand, then, that in the +archangel’s balance a little book may sink the scale toward +the pit; while all the tomes of Thomas Hearne and good old John +Nichols will be weighed among their good works! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Sport as thou wilt in allusions +to allegory and fable; but bear always in thy most serious mind +this truth, that men hold under an awful responsibility the +talents with which they are entrusted. Kings have not so +serious an account to render as they who exercise an intellectual +influence over the minds of men! +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—If evil works, so long as they +continue to produce evil, heap up condemnation upon the authors, +it is well for some of the wickedest writers that their works do +not survive them. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Such men, my friend, even by the +most perishable of their wicked works, lay up sufficient +condemnation for themselves. The maxim that <i>malitia +supplet ætatem</i> is rightfully admitted in human laws: +should there not then, by parity of justice, be cases where, when +the secrets of the heart are seen, the intention shall be +regarded rather than the act? +</p> + +<p>The greatest portion of your literature, at any given time, is +ephemeral; indeed, it has ever been so since the discovery of +printing; and this portion it is which is most influential, +consequently that by which most good or mischief is done. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Ephemeral it truly may be called; it +is now looked for by the public as regularly as their food; and, +like food, it affects the recipient surely and permanently, even +when its effect is slow, according as it is wholesome or +noxious. But how great is the difference between the +current literature of this and of any former time! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—From that complacent tone it may +be presumed that you see in it proof both of moral and +intellectual improvement. Montesinos, I must disturb that +comfortable opinion, and call upon you to examine how much of +this refinement which passes for improvement is +superficial. True it is that controversy is carried on with +more decency than it was by Martin Lutherand a certain Lord +Chancellor, to whom you just now alluded; but if more courtesy is +to be found in polemical writers, who are less sincere than +either the one or the other, there is as much acerbity of feeling +and as much bitterness of heart. You have a class of +miscreants which had no existence in those days—the panders +of the press, who live by administering to the vilest passions of +the people, and encouraging their most dangerous errors, +practising upon their ignorance, and inculcating whatever is most +pernicious in principle and most dangerous to society. This +is their golden age; for though such men would in any age have +taken to some villainy or other, never could they have found a +course at once so gainful and so safe. Long impunity has +taught them to despise the laws which they defy, and the +institutions which they are labouring to subvert; any further +responsibility enters not into their creed, if that may be called +a creed, in which all the articles are negative. I? we turn +from politics to what should be humaner literature, and look at +the self-constituted censors of whatever has passed the press, +there also we shall find that they who are the most incompetent +assume the most authority, and that the public favour such +pretensions; for in quackery of every kind, whether medical, +political, critical, or hypocritical, <i>quo quis impudentior eo +doctior habetur</i>. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The pleasure which men take in acting +maliciously is properly called by Barrow a <i>rascally</i> +delight. But this is no new form of malice. +“<i>Avant nous</i>,” says the sagacious but +iron-hearted Montluc—“<i>avant nous ces envies ont +regné</i>, <i>et regneront encore après nous</i>, +<i>si Dieu ne nous voulait tous refondre</i>.” Its +worst effect is that which Ben Jonson remarked: “The gentle +reader,” says he, “rests happy to hear the worthiest +works misrepresented, the clearest actions obscured, the +innocentest life traduced; and in such a licence of lying, a +field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to +his laughter? Hence comes the epidemical infection: for how +can they escape the contagion of the writings whom the virulency +of the calumnies hath not staved off from reading?” +</p> + +<p>There is another mischief, arising out of ephemeral +literature, which was noticed by the same great author. +“Wheresoever manners and fashions are corrupted,” +says he, “language is. It imitates the public +riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a +sick state; and the wantonness of language of a sick +mind.” This was the observation of a man well versed +in the history of the ancients and in their literature. The +evil prevailed in his time to a considerable degree; but it was +not permanent, because it proceeded rather from the affectation +of a few individuals than from any general cause: the great poets +were free from it; and our prose writers then, and till the end +of that century, were preserved, by their sound studies and +logical habits of mind, from any of those faults into which men +fall who write loosely because they think loosely. The +pedantry of one class and the colloquial vulgarity of another had +their day; the faults of each were strongly contrasted, and +better writers kept the mean between them. More lasting +effect was produced by translators, who in later times have +corrupted our idiom as much as, in early ones, they enriched our +vocabulary; and to this injury the Scotch have greatly +contributed; for composing in a language which is not their +mother tongue, they necessarily acquired an artificial and formal +style, which, not so much through the merit of a few as owing to +the perseverance of others, who for half a century seated +themselves on the bench of criticism, has almost superseded the +vernacular English of Addison and Swift. Our journals, +indeed, have been the great corrupters of our style, and continue +to be so, and not for this reason only. Men who write in +newspapers, and magazines, and reviews, write for present effect; +in most cases this is as much their natural and proper aim as it +would be in public speaking; but when it is so they consider, +like public speakers, not so much what is accurate or just, +either in matter or manner, as what will be acceptable to those +whom they address. Writing also under the excitement of +emulation and rivalry, they seek, by all the artifices and +efforts of an ambitious style, to dazzle their readers; and they +are wise in their generation, experience having shown that common +minds are taken by glittering faults, both in prose and verse, as +larks are with looking-glasses. +</p> + +<p>In this school it is that most writers are now trained; and +after such training anything like an easy and natural movement is +as little to be looked for in their compositions as in the step +of a dancing master. To the vices of style which are thus +generated there must be added the inaccuracies inevitably arising +from haste, when a certain quantity of matter is to be supplied +for a daily or weekly publication which allows of no +delay—the slovenliness that confidence, as well as fatigue +and inattention, will produce—and the barbarisms, which are +the effect of ignorance, or that smattering of knowledge which +serves only to render ignorance presumptuous. These are the +causes of corruption in our current style; and when these are +considered there would be ground for apprehending that the best +writings of the last century might become as obsolete as yours in +the like process of time, if we had not in our Liturgy and our +Bible a standard from which it will not be possible wholly to +depart. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Will the Liturgy and the Bible +keep the language at that standard in the colonies, where little +or no use is made of the one, and not much, it may be feared, of +the other? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—A sort of hybrid speech, a <i>Lingua +Anglica</i>, more debased, perhaps, than the <i>Lingua Franca</i> +of the Levant, or the Portuguese of Malabar, is likely enough to +grow up among the South Sea Islands; like the mixture of Spanish +with some of the native languages in South America, or the +mingle-mangle which the negroes have made with French and +English, and probably with other European tongues in the colonies +of their respective states. The spirit of mercantile +adventure may produce in this part of the new world a process +analogous to what took place throughout Europe on the breaking up +of the Western Empire; and in the next millennium these +derivatives may become so many cultivated tongues, having each +its literature. These will be like varieties in a +flower-garden, which the florist raises from seed; but in the +colonies, as in our orchards, the graft takes with it, and will +preserve, the true characteristics of the stock. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—But the same causes of +deterioration will be at work there also. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Not nearly in the same degree, nor to +an equal extent. Now and then a word with the American +impress comes over to us which has not been struck in the mint of +analogy. But the Americans are more likely to be infected +by the corruption of our written language than we are to have it +debased by any importations of this kind from them. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—There is a more important +consideration belonging to this subject. The cause which +you have noticed as the principal one of this corruption must +have a farther and more mischievous effect. For it is not +in the vices of an ambitious style that these ephemeral writers, +who live upon the breath of popular applause, will rest. +Great and lasting reputations, both in ancient and modern times, +have been raised notwithstanding that defect, when the ambition +from which it proceeded was of a worthy kind, and was sustained +by great powers and adequate acquirements. But this +ambition, which looks beyond the morrow, has no place in the +writers of a day. Present effect is their end and aim; and +too many of them, especially the ablest, who have wanted only +moral worth to make them capable of better things, are persons +who can “desire no other mercy from after ages than silence +and oblivion.” Even with the better part of the +public that author will always obtain the most favourable +reception, who keeps most upon a level with them in +intellectuals, and puts them to the least trouble of +thinking. He who addresses himself with the whole +endeavours of a powerful mind to the understanding faculty may +find fit readers; but they will be few. He who labours for +posterity in the fields of research, must look to posterity for +his reward. Nay, even they whose business is with the +feelings and the fancy, catch most fish when they angle in +shallow waters. Is it not so, Piscator? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—In such honest anglers, Sir Thomas, I +should look for as many virtues, as good old happy Izaak Walton +found in his brethren of the rod and line. Nor will you, I +think, disparage them; for you were of the Rhymers’ +Company, and at a time when things appear to us in their true +colours and proportion (if ever while we are yet in the body), +you remembered your verses with more satisfaction than your +controversial writings, even though you had no misgivings +concerning the part which you had chosen. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—My verses, friend, had none of +the <i>athanasia</i> in their composition. Though they have +not yet perished, they cannot be said to have a living existence; +even you, I suspect, have sought for them rather because of our +personal acquaintance than for any other motive. Had I been +only a poet, those poems, such as they were, would have preserved +my name; but being remembered for other grounds, better and +worse, the name which I have left has been one cause why they +have passed into oblivion, sooner than their perishable nature +would have carried them thither. If in the latter part of +my mortal existence I had misgivings concerning any of my +writings, they were of the single one, which is still a living +work, and which will continue so to be. I feared that +speculative opinions, which had been intended for the possible +but remote benefit of mankind, might, by unhappy circumstances, +be rendered instrumental to great and immediate evil; an +apprehension, however, which was altogether free from +self-reproach. +</p> + +<p>But my verses will continue to exist in their mummy state, +long after the worms shall have consumed many of those poetical +reputations which are at this time in the cherry-cheeked bloom of +health and youth. Old poets will always retain their value +for antiquaries and philologists, modern ones are far too +numerous ever to acquire an accidental usefulness of this kind, +even if the language were to undergo greater changes than any +circumstances are likely to produce. There will now be more +poets in every generation than in that which preceded it; they +will increase faster than your population; and as their number +increases, so must the proportion of those who will be remembered +necessarily diminish. Tell the Fitz-Muses this! It is +a consideration, Sir Poet, which may serve as a refrigerant for +their ardour. Those of the tribe who may flourish hereafter +(as the flourishing phrase is) in any particular age, will be +little more remembered in the next than the Lord Mayors and +Sheriffs who were their contemporaries. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Father in verse, if you had not put +off flesh and blood so long, you would not imagine that this +consideration will diminish their number. I am sure it +would not have affected me forty years ago, had I seen this truth +then as clearly as I perceive and feel it now. Though it +were manifest to all men that not one poet in an age, in a +century, a millennium, could establish his claim to be for ever +known, every aspirant would persuade himself that he is the happy +person for whom the inheritance of fame is reserved. And +when the dream of immortality is dispersed, motives enough remain +for reasonable ambition. +</p> + +<p>It is related of some good man (I forget who), that upon his +death-bed he recommended his son to employ himself in cultivating +a garden, and in composing verses, thinking these to be at once +the happiest and the most harmless of all pursuits. Poetry +may be, and too often has been, wickedly perverted to evil +purposes; what indeed is there that may not, when religion itself +is not safe from such abuses! but the good which it does +inestimably exceeds the evil. It is no trifling good to +provide means of innocent and intellectual enjoyment for so many +thousands in a state like ours; an enjoyment, heightened, as in +every instance it is within some little circle, by personal +considerations, raising it to a degree which may deserve to be +called happiness. It is no trifling good to win the ear of +children with verses which foster in them the seeds of humanity +and tenderness and piety, awaken their fancy, and exercise +pleasurably and wholesomely their imaginative and meditative +powers. It is no trifling benefit to provide a ready mirror +for the young, in which they may see their own best feelings +reflected, and wherein “whatsoever things are honest, +whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, +whatsoever things are lovely,” are presented to them in the +most attractive form. It is no trifling benefit to send +abroad strains which may assist in preparing the heart for its +trials, and in supporting it under them. But there is a +greater good than this, a farther benefit. Although it is +in verse that the most consummate skill in composition is to be +looked for, and all the artifice of language displayed, yet it is +in verse only that we throw off the yoke of the world, and are as +it were privileged to utter our deepest and holiest +feelings. Poetry in this respect may be called the salt of +the earth; we express in it, and receive in it, sentiments for +which, were it not for this permitted medium, the usages of the +world would neither allow utterance nor acceptance. And who +can tell in our heart-chilling and heart-hardening society, how +much more selfish, how much more debased, how much worse we +should have been, in all moral and intellectual respects, had it +not been for the unnoticed and unsuspected influence of this +preservative? Even much of that poetry, which is in its +composition worthless, or absolutely bad, contributes to this +good. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Such poetry, then, according to +your view, is to be regarded with indulgence. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Thank Heaven, Sir Thomas, I am no +farther critical than every author must necessarily be who makes +a careful study of his own art. To understand the +principles of criticism is one thing; to be what is called +critical, is another; the first is like being versed in +jurisprudence, the other like being litigious. Even those +poets who contribute to the mere amusement of their readers, +while that amusement is harmless, are to be regarded with +complacency, if not respect. They are the butterflies of +literature, who during the short season of their summer, enliven +the garden and the field. It were pity to touch them even +with a tender hand, lest we should brush the down from their +wings. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—These are they of whom I spake +as angling in shallow waters. You will not regard with the +same complacency those who trouble the stream; still less those +who poison it. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.— +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“<i>Vesanum tetigisse timent</i>, +<i>fugiuntque poetam</i><br /> +<i>Qui sapiunt</i>; <i>agitant pueri</i>, <i>incautique +sequuntur</i>.” +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—This brings us again to the +point at which you bolted. The desire of producing present +effect, the craving for immediate reputation, have led to another +vice, analogous to and connected with that of the vicious style, +which the same causes are producing, but of worse +consequences. The corruption extends from the manner to the +matter; and they who brew for the press, like some of those who +brew for the publicans, care not, if the potion has but its +desired strength, how deleterious may be the ingredients which +they use. Horrors at which the innocent heart quails, and +the healthy stomachs heaves in loathing, are among the least +hurtful of their stimulants. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—This too, Sir Thomas, is no new +evil. An appetite for horrors is one of the diseased +cravings of the human mind; and in old times the tragedies which +most abounded in them, were for that reason the most +popular. The dramatists of our best age, great Ben and +greater Shakespeare excepted, were guilty of a farther sin, with +which the writers whom you censure are also to be reproached; +they excited their auditors by the representation of monstrous +crimes—crimes out of the course of nature. Such +fables might lawfully be brought upon the Grecian stage, because +the belief of the people divested them of their odious and +dangerous character; there they were well known stories, regarded +with a religious persuasion of their truth; and the personages, +being represented as under the overruling influence of dreadful +destiny, were regarded therefore with solemn commiseration, not +as voluntary and guilty agents. There is nothing of this to +palliate or excuse the production of such stories in later times; +the choice, and, in a still greater degree, the invention of any +such, implies in the author, not merely a want of judgment, but a +defect in moral feeling. Here, however, the dramatists of +that age stopped. They desired to excite in their audience +the pleasure of horror, and this was an abuse of the poet’s +art: but they never aimed at disturbing their moral perceptions, +at presenting wickedness in an attractive form, exciting sympathy +with guilt, and admiration for villainy, thereby confounding the +distinctions between right and wrong. This has been done in +our days; and it has accorded so well with the tendency of other +things, that the moral drift of a book is no longer regarded, and +the severest censure which can be passed upon it is to say that +it is in bad taste; such is the phrase—and the phrase is +not confined to books alone. Anything may be written, said, +or done, in bad feeling and with a wicked intent; and the public +are so tolerant of these, that he who should express a +displeasure on that score would be censured for bad taste +himself! +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—And yet you talked of the +improvement of the age, and of the current literature as +exceeding in worth that of any former time +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—The portion of it which shall reach +to future times will justify me; for we have living minds who +have done their duty to their own age and to posterity. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Has the age in return done its +duty to them? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—They complain not of the age, but +they complain of an anomalous injustice in the laws. They +complain that authors are deprived of a perpetual property in the +produce of their own labours, when all other persons enjoy it as +an indefeasible and acknowledged right. And they ask upon +what principle, with what equity, or under what pretence of +public good they are subjected to this injurious enactment? +Is it because their labour is so light, the endowments which are +required for it so common, the attainments so cheaply and easily +acquired, and the present remuneration in all cases so adequate, +so ample, and so certain? +</p> + +<p>The act whereby authors are deprived of that property in their +own works which, upon every principle of reason, natural justice, +and common law, they ought to enjoy, is so curiously injurious in +its operation, that it bears with most hardship upon the best +works. For books of great immediate popularity have their +run and come to a dead stop: the hardship is upon those which win +their way slowly and difficultly, but keep the field at +last. And it will not appear surprising that this should +generally have been the case with books of the highest merit, if +we consider what obstacles to the success of a work may be +opposed by the circumstances and obscurity of the author, when he +presents himself as a candidate for fame, by the humour or the +fashion of the times; the taste of the public, more likely to be +erroneous than right at any time; and the incompetence, or +personal malevolence of some unprincipled critic, who may take +upon himself to guide the public opinion, and who if he feels in +his own heart that the fame of the man whom he hates is +invulnerable, lays in wait for that reason the more vigilantly to +wound him in his fortunes. In such cases, when the +copyright as by the existing law departs from the author’s +family at his death, or at the end of twenty-eight years from the +first publication of every work, (if he dies before the +expiration of that term,) his representatives are deprived of +their property just as it would begin to prove a valuable +inheritance. +</p> + +<p>The last descendants of Milton died in poverty. The +descendants of Shakespeare are living in poverty, and in the +lowest condition of life. Is this just to these +individuals? Is it grateful to the memory of those who are +the pride and boast of their country? Is it honourable, or +becoming to us as a nation, holding—the better part of us +assuredly, and the majority affecting to hold—the names of +Shakespeare and Milton in veneration? +</p> + +<p>To have placed the descendants of Shakespeare and Milton in +respectability and comfort—in that sphere of life where, +with a full provision for our natural wants and social +enjoyments, free scope is given to the growth of our intellectual +and immortal part, simple justice was all that was required, only +that they should have possessed the perpetual copyright of their +ancestors’ works, only that they should not have been +deprived of their proper inheritance. +</p> + +<p>The decision which time pronounces upon the reputation of +authors, and upon the permanent rank which they are to hold in +the estimation of posterity, is unerring and final. Restore +to them that perpetuity in the property of their works, of which +the law has deprived them, and the reward of literary labour will +ultimately be in just proportion to its deserts. +</p> + +<p>However slight may be the hope of obtaining any speedy +redress, there is some satisfaction in earnestly protesting +against this injustice. And believing as I do, that if +society continues to improve, no injustice will long be permitted +to continue after it has been fairly exposed, and is clearly +apprehended, I cannot but believe that a time must come when the +rights of literature will be acknowledged and its wrongs +redressed; and that those authors hereafter who shall deserve +well of posterity, will have no cause to reproach themselves for +having sacrificed the interests of their children when they +disregarded the pursuit of fortune for themselves. +</p> +<h2>COLLOQUY XV.—THE CONCLUSION.</h2> +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Here Sir Thomas is the opinion which +I have attempted to maintain concerning the progress and tendency +of society, placed in a proper position, and inexpugnably +entrenched here according to the rules of art, by the ablest of +all moral engineers. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Who may this political Achilles +be whom you have called in to your assistance? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—Whom Fortune rather has sent to my +aid, for my reading has never been in such authors. I have +endeavoured always to drink from the spring-head, but never +ventured out to fish in deep waters. Thor, himself, when he +had hooked the Great Serpent, was unable to draw him up from the +abyss. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The waters in which you have now +been angling have been shallow enough, if the pamphlet in your +hand is, as it appears to be, a magazine. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—“<i>Ego sum is</i>,” said +Scaliger, “<i>qui ab omnibus discere volo</i>; <i>neque tam +malum librum esse puto</i>, <i>ex quo non aliquem fructum +colligere possum</i>.” I think myself repaid, in a +monkish legend, for examining a mass of inane fiction, if I +discover a single passage which elucidates the real history or +manners of its age. In old poets of the third and fourth +order we are contented with a little ore, and a great deal of +dross. And so in publications of this kind, prejudicial as +they are to taste and public feeling, and the public before +deeply injurious to the real interests of literature, something +may sometimes be found to compensate for the trash and tinsel and +insolent flippancy, which are now become the staple commodities +of such journals. This number contains Kant’s idea of +a Universal History on a Cosmo-Political plan; and that Kant is +as profound a philosopher as his disciples have proclaimed him to +be, this little treatise would fully convince me, if I had not +already believed it, in reliance upon one of the very few men who +are capable of forming a judgment upon such a writer. +</p> + +<p>The sum of his argument is this: that as deaths, births, and +marriages, and the oscillations of the weather, irregular as they +seem to be in themselves, are nevertheless reduceable upon the +great scale to certain rules; so there may be discovered in the +course of human history a steady and continuous, though slow +development of certain great predispositions in human nature, and +that although men neither act under the law of instinct, like +brute animals, nor under the law of a preconcerted plan, like +rational cosmopolites, the great current of human actions flows +in a regular stream of tendency toward this development; +individuals and nations, while pursuing their own peculiar and +often contradictory purposes, following the guidance of a great +natural purpose, and thus promoting a process which, even if they +perceived it, they would little regard. What that process +is he states in the following series of propositions:— +</p> + +<p>1st. All tendencies of any creature, to which it is +predisposed by nature, are destined in the end to develop +themselves perfectly and agreeably to their final purpose. +</p> + +<p>2nd. In man, as the sole rational creature upon earth, +those tendencies which have the use of his reason for their +object are destined to obtain their perfect development in the +species only, and not in the individual. +</p> + +<p>3rd. It is the will of nature that man should owe to +himself alone everything which transcends the mere mechanic +constitution of his animal existence, and that he should be +susceptible of no other happiness or perfection than what he has +created for himself, instinct apart, through his own reason. +</p> + +<p>4th. The means which nature employs to bring about the +development of all the tendencies she has laid in man, is the +antagonism of those tendencies in the social state, no farther, +however, than to that point at which this antagonism becomes the +cause of social arrangements founded in law. +</p> + +<p>5th. The highest problem for the human species, to the +solution of which it is irresistibly urged by natural impulses, +is the establishment of a universal civil society, founded on the +empire of political justice. +</p> + +<p>6th. This problem is, at the same time, the most +difficult of all, and the one which is latest solved by man. +</p> + +<p>7th. The problem of the establishment of a perfect +constitution of society depends upon the problem of a system of +international relations, adjusted to law, and apart from this +latter problem cannot be solved. +</p> + +<p>8th. The history of the human race, as a whole, may be +regarded as the unravelling of a hidden plan of nature for +accomplishing a perfect state of civil constitution for society +in its internal relations (and as the condition of that, by the +last proposition, in its external relations also), as the sole +state of society in which the tendencies of human nature can be +all and fully developed. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—This is indeed a master of the +sentences, upon whose text it may be profitable to dwell. +Let us look to his propositions. From the first this +conclusion must follow, that as nature has given men all his +faculties for use, any system of society in which the moral and +intellectual powers of any portion of the people are left +undeveloped for want of cultivation, or receive a perverse +direction, is plainly opposed to the system of nature, in other +words, to the will of God. Is there any government upon +earth that will bear this test? +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—I should rather ask of you, will +there ever be one? +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Not till there be a system of +government conducted in strict conformity to the precepts of the +Gospel. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>. +</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Offer these truths to Power, will she +obey?<br /> +It prunes her pomp, perchance ploughs up the root.” +</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Lord Brooke</span>. +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Yet, in conformity to those principles alone, it is that +subjects can find their perfect welfare, and States their full +security. Christianity may be long in obtaining the victory +over the powers of this world, but when that consummation shall +have taken place the converse of his second proposition will hold +good, for the species having obtained its perfect development, +the condition of society must then be such that individuals will +obtain it also as a necessary consequence. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Here you and your philosopher +part company. For he asserts that man is left to deduce +from his own unassisted reason everything which relates not to +his mere material nature. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—There, indeed, I must diverge from +him, and what in his language is called the hidden plan of +nature, in mine will be the revealed will of God. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—The will is revealed; but the +plan is hidden. Let man dutifully obey that will, and the +perfection of society and of human nature will be the result of +such obedience; but upon obedience they depend. Blessings +and curses are set before you—for nations as for +individuals—yea, for the human race. +</p> + +<p>Flatter not yourself with delusive expectations! The end +may be according to your hope—whether it will be so (which +God grant!) is as inscrutable for angels as for men. But to +descry that great struggles are yet to come is within reach of +human foresight—that great tribulations must needs +accompany them—and that these may be—you know not how +near at hand! +</p> + +<p>Throughout what is called the Christian world there will be a +contest between Impiety and Religion; the former everywhere is +gathering strength, and wherever it breaks loose the foundations +of human society will be shaken. Do not suppose that you +are safe from this danger because you are blest with a pure +creed, a reformed ritual, and a tolerant Church! Even here +the standard of impiety has been set up; and the drummers who +beat the march of intellect through your streets, lanes, and +market-places, are enlisted under it. +</p> + +<p>The struggle between Popery and Protestanism is renewed. +And let no man deceive himself by a vain reliance upon the +increased knowledge, or improved humanity of the times! +Wickedness is ever the same; and you never were in so much danger +from moral weakness. +</p> + +<p>Co-existent with these struggles is that between the feudal +system of society as variously modified throughout Europe, and +the levelling principle of democracy. That principle is +actively and indefatigably at work in these kingdoms, allying +itself as occasion may serve with Popery or with Dissent, with +atheism or with fanaticism, with profligacy or with hypocrisy, +ready confederates, each having its own sinister views, but all +acting to one straightforward end. Your rulers meantime +seem to be trying that experiment with the British Constitution +which Mithridates is said to have tried upon his own; they suffer +poison to be administered in daily doses, as if they expected +that by such a course the public mind would at length be rendered +poison-proof! +</p> + +<p>The first of these struggles will affect all Christendom; the +third may once again shake the monarchies of Europe. The +second will be felt widely; but nowhere with more violence than +in Ireland, that unhappy country, wherein your government, after +the most impolitic measures into which weakness was ever deluded, +or pusillanimity intimidated, seems to have abdicated its +functions, contenting itself with the semblance of an authority +which it has wanted either wisdom or courage to exert. +</p> + +<p>There is a fourth danger, the growth of your manufacturing +system; and this is peculiarly your own. You have a great +and increasing population, exposed at all times by the +fluctuations of trade to suffer the severest privations in the +midst of a rich and luxurious society, under little or no +restraint from religious principle, and if not absolutely +disaffected to the institutions of the country, certainly not +attached to them: a class of men aware of their numbers and of +their strength; experienced in all the details of combination; +improvident when they are in the receipt of good wages, yet +feeling themselves injured when those wages, during some failure +of demand, are so lowered as no longer to afford the means of +comfortable subsistence; and directing against the government and +the laws of the country their resentment and indignation for the +evils which have been brought upon them by competition and the +spirit of rivalry in trade. They have among them +intelligent heads and daring minds; and you have already seen how +perilously they may be wrought upon by seditious journalists and +seditious orators in a time of distress. +</p> + +<p>On what do you rely for security against these dangers? +On public opinion? You might as well calculate upon the +constancy of wind and weather in this uncertain climate. On +the progress of knowledge? it is such knowledge as serves only to +facilitate the course of delusion. On the laws? the law +which should be like a sword in a strong hand, is weak as a +bulrush if it be feebly administered in time of danger. On +the people? they are divided. On the Parliament? every +faction will be fully and formidably represented there. On +the government? it suffers itself to be insulted and defied at +home, and abroad it has shown itself incapable of maintaining the +relations of peace and amity with its allies, so far has it been +divested of power by the usurpation of the press. It is at +peace with Spain, and it is at peace with Turkey; and although no +government was ever more desirous of acting with good faith, its +subjects are openly assisting the Greeks with men and money +against the one, and the Spanish Americans against the +other. Athens, in the most turbulent times of its +democracy, was not more effectually domineered over by its +demagogues than you are by the press—a press which is not +only without restraint, but without responsibility; and in the +management of which those men will always have most power who +have least probity, and have most completely divested themselves +of all sense of honour and all regard for truth. +</p> + +<p>The root of all your evils is in the sinfulness of the +nation. The principle of duty is weakened among you; that +of moral obligation is loosened; that of religious obedience is +destroyed. Look at the worldliness of all classes—the +greediness of the rich, the misery of the poor, and the appalling +depravity which is spreading among the lower classes through town +and country; a depravity which proceeds unchecked because of the +total want of discipline, and for which there is no other +corrective than what may be supplied by fanaticism, which is +itself an evil. +</p> + +<p>If there be nothing exaggerated in this representation, you +must acknowledge that though the human race, considered upon the +great scale, should be proceeding toward the perfectibility for +which it may be designed, the present aspects in these kingdoms +are nevertheless rather for evil than for good. Sum you up +now upon the hopeful side. +</p> + +<p><i>Montesinos</i>.—First, then. I rest in a humble +but firm reliance upon that Providence which sometimes in its +mercy educes from the errors of men a happier issue than could +ever have been attained by their wisdom;—that Providence +which has delivered this nation from so many and such imminent +dangers heretofore. +</p> + +<p>Looking, then, to human causes, there is hope to be derived +from the humanising effects of Literature, which has now first +begun to act upon all ranks. Good principles are indeed +used as the stalking-horse under cover of which pernicious +designs may be advanced; but the better seeds are thus +disseminated and fructify after the ill design has failed. +</p> + +<p>The cruelties of the old criminal law have been +abrogated. Debtors are no longer indiscriminately punished +by indefinite imprisonment. The iniquity of the slave trade +has been acknowledged, and put an end to, so far as the power of +this country extends; and although slavery is still tolerated, +and must be so for awhile, measures have been taken for +alleviating it while it continues, and preparing the way for its +gradual and safe removal. These are good works of the +government. And when I look upon the conduct of that +government in all its foreign relations, though there may be some +things to disapprove, and some sins of omission to regret, it has +been, on the whole, so disinterested, so magnanimous, so just, +that this reflection gives me a reasonable and a religious ground +of hope. And the reliance is strengthened when I call to +mind that missionaries from Great Britain are at this hour +employed in spreading the glad tidings of the Gospel far and wide +among heathen nations. +</p> + +<p>Descending from these wider views to the details of society, +there, too, I perceive ground, if not for confidence, at least +for hope. There is a general desire throughout the higher +ranks for bettering the condition of the poor, a subject to which +the government also has directed its patient attention: minute +inquiries have been made into their existing state, and the +increase of pauperism and of crimes. In no other country +have the wounds of the commonwealth been so carefully +probed. By means of colonisation, of an improved parochial +order and of a more efficient police, the further increase of +these evils may be prevented; while, by education, by providing +means of religious instruction for all by savings banks, and +perhaps by the establishment of Owenite communities among +themselves, the labouring classes will have their comforts +enlarged, and their well-being secured, if they are not wanting +to themselves in prudence and good conduct. A beginning has +been made—an impulse given: it may be hoped—almost, I +will say, it may be expected—that in a few generations this +whole class will be placed within the reach of moral and +intellectual gratifications, whereby they may be rendered +healthier, happier, better in all respects, an improvement which +will be not more beneficial to them as individuals, than to the +whole body of the commonweal. +</p> + +<p>The diffusion of literature, though it has rendered the +acquirement of general knowledge impossible, and tends inevitably +to diminish the number of sound scholars, while it increases the +multitude of sciolists, carries with it a beneficial influence to +the lower classes. Our booksellers already perceive that it +is their interest to provide cheap publications for a wide +public, instead of looking to the rich alone as their +customers. There is reason to expect that, in proportion as +this is done—in proportion as the common people are +supplied with wholesome entertainment (and wholesome it is, if it +be only harmless) they will be less liable to be acted upon by +fanaticism and sedition. +</p> + +<p>You have not exaggerated the influence of the newspaper press, +nor the profligacy of some of those persons, by whom this +unrestrained and irresponsible power is exercised. +Nevertheless it has done, and is doing, great and essential +good. The greatest evils in society proceed from the abuse +of power; and this, though abundantly manifested in the +newspapers themselves, they prevent in other quarters. No +man engaged in public life could venture now upon such +transactions as no one, in their station half a century ago, +would have been ashamed of. There is an end of that +scandalous jobbing which at that time existed in every department +of the State, and in every branch of the public service; and a +check is imposed upon any scandalous and unfit promotion, civil +or ecclesiastical. By whatever persons the government may +be administered, they are now well aware that they must do +nothing which will not bear daylight and strict +investigation. The magistrates also are closely observed by +this self-constituted censorship; and the inferior officers +cannot escape exposure for any perversion of justice, or undue +exercise of authority. Public nuisances are abated by the +same means, and public grievances which the Legislature might +else overlook, are forced upon its attention. Thus, in +ordinary times, the utility of this branch of the press is so +great that one of the worst evils to be apprehended from the +abuse of its power at all times, and the wicked purposes to which +it is directed in dangerous ones, is the ultimate loss of a +liberty, which is essential to the public good, but which when it +passes into licentiousness, and effects the overthrow of a State, +perishes in the ruin it has brought on. +</p> + +<p>In the fine arts, as well as in literature, a levelling +principle is going on, fatal, perhaps, to excellence, but +favourable to mediocrity. Such facilities are afforded to +imitative talent, that whatever is imitable will be +imitated. Genius will often be suppressed by this, and when +it exerts itself, will find it far more difficult to obtain +notice than in former times. There is the evil here that +ingenious persons are seduced into a profession which is already +crowded with unfortunate adventurers; but, on the other hand, +there is a great increase of individual and domestic +enjoyment. Accomplishments which were almost exclusively +professional in the last age, are now to be found in every family +within a certain rank of life. Wherever there is a +disposition for the art of design, it is cultivated, and in +consequence of the general proficiency in this most useful of the +fine arts, travellers represent to our view the manners and +scenery of the countries which they visit, as well by the pencil +as the pen. By means of two fortunate discoveries in the +art of engraving, these graphic representations are brought +within the reach of whole classes who were formerly precluded by +the expense of such things from these sources of gratification +and instruction. Artists and engravers of great name are +now, like authors and booksellers, induced to employ themselves +for this lower and wider sphere of purchasers. In all this +I see the cause as well as the effect of a progressive +refinement, which must be beneficial in many ways. This +very diffusion of cheap books and cheap prints may, in its +natural consequences, operate rather to diminish than to increase +the number of adventurers in literature and in the arts. +For though at first it will create employment for greater +numbers, yet in another generation imitative talent will become +so common, that neither parents nor possessors will mistake it +for an indication of extraordinary genius, and many will thus be +saved from a ruinous delusion. More pictures will be +painted but fewer exhibited, more poetry written but less +published, and in both arts talents which might else have been +carried to an overstocked and unprofitable market, will be +cultivated for their own sakes, and for the gratification of +private circles, becoming thus a source of sure enjoyment and +indirectly of moral good. Scientific pursuits will, in like +manner, be extended, and pursuits which partake of science, and +afford pleasures within the reach of humble life. +</p> + +<p>Here, then, is good in progress which will hold on its course, +and the growth of which will only be suspended, not destroyed, +during any of those political convulsions which may too probably +be apprehended—too probably, I say, because when you call +upon me to consider the sinfulness of this nation, my heart +fails. There can be no health, no soundness in the state, +till government shall regard the moral improvement of the people +as its first great duty. The same remedy is required for +the rich and for the poor. Religion ought to be so blended +with the whole course of instruction, that its doctrines and +precepts should indeed “drop as the rain, and distil as the +dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers +upon the grass”—the young plants would then imbibe +it, and the heart and intellect assimilate it with their +growth. We are, in a great degree, what our institutions +make us. Gracious God were those institutions adapted to +Thy will and word—were we but broken in from childhood to +Thy easy yoke—were we but carefully instructed to believe +and obey—in that obedience and belief we should surely find +our temporal welfare and our eternal happiness! +</p> + +<p>Here, indeed, I tremble at the prospect! Could I look +beyond the clouds and the darkness which close upon it, I should +then think that there may come a time when that scheme for a +perpetual peace among the states of Christendom which Henri IV. +formed, and which has been so ably digested by the Abbé +St. Pierre, will no longer be regarded as the speculation of a +visionary. The Holy Alliance, imperfect and unstable as it +is, is in itself a recognition of the principle. At this +day it would be practicable, if one part of Europe were as well +prepared for it as the other; but this cannot be, till good shall +have triumphed over evil in the struggles which are brooding, or +shall have obtained such a predominance as to allay the conflict +of opinions before it breaks into open war. +</p> + +<p>God in his mercy grant that it be so! If I looked to +secondary causes alone, my fears would preponderate. But I +conclude as I began, in firm reliance upon Him who is the +beginning and the end. Our sins are manifold, our danger is +great, but His mercy is infinite. +</p> + +<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.—Rest there in full faith. +I leave you to your dreams; draw from them what comfort you +can. And now, my friend, farewell! +</p> + +<p>The look which he fixed on me, as he disappeared, was +compassionate and thoughtful; it impressed me with a sad feeling, +as if I were not to see him again till we should meet in the +world of spirits. +</p> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLOQUIES ON SOCIETY ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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