A.D. 1516.

to acquire new kingdoms, than how to govern well CHAP.XII. those which they have already. Besides, their ministers either are, or think that they are, too wise to listen to any new counsellor; and, if they ever do so, it is only to attach to their own interest some one whom they see to be rising in their prince's favour.

After this, Raphael having made a remark which showed that he had been in England, the conversation turned incidentally upon English affairs, and Raphael proceeded to tell how once at the table of Cardinal Morton he had expressed his opinions freely upon the social evils of England. He had on this occasion, he Raphael said, ventured to condemn the system of the wholesale number of execution of thieves, who were hanged so fast that England. there were sometimes twenty on a gibbet.1 The severity was both unjustly great, and also ineffectual. No punishment, however severe, could deter those from robbing who can find no other means of livelihood.

Then Raphael is made to allude to three causes why the number of thieves was so large :—

1st. There are numbers of wounded and disbanded soldiers who are unable to resume their old employments, and are too old to learn new ones.

2nd. The gentry who live at ease out of the labour of others, keep around them so great a number of idle fellows not brought up to any trade, that often, from the death of their lord or their own illness, numbers of these idle fellows are liable to be thrown upon the world without resources, to steal or starve. Raphael then is made to ridicule the notion that it is needful to maintain this idle class, as some argue, in order to keep up a reserve of men ready for the army, and still

1 Leaf b, 4.

on the

thieves in

CHAP. XII. more severely to criticise the notion that it is necessary A.D. 1516. to keep a standing army in time of peace. France, he said, had found to her cost the evil of keeping in readiness these human wild beasts, as also had Rome, Carthage, and Syria, in ancient times.

on the rage

farming.

6

6

3rd. Raphael pointed out as another cause of the number of thieves-an evil peculiar to England-the Raphael rage for sheep-farming, and the ejections consequent for pasture- upon it. For,' he said, when some greedy and ' insatiable fellow, the pest of his county, chooses to 'enclose several thousand acres of contiguous fields ' within the circle of one sheepfold, farmers are ejected from their holdings, being got rid of either by fraud or force, or tired out by repeated injuries into parting with their property. In this way it 'comes to pass that these poor wretches, men, women, husbands, wives, orphans, widows, parents with little children-households greater in number than in wealth, for arable-farming requires many hands '-all these emigrate from their native fields without 'knowing where to go. Their effects are not worth 'much at best; they are obliged to sell them for 'almost nothing when they are forced to go. And 'the produce of the sale being spent, as it soon must be, what resource then is left to them but either to steal, and to be hanged, justly forsooth, for stealing, or to wander about and beg? If they do the latter, they are thrown into prison as idle vaga• bonds when they would thankfully work if only some 'one would give them employment. For there is 6 no work for husbandmen when there is no arable'farming. One shepherd and herdsman will suffice for a pasture-farm, which, while under tillage, em

6

'ployed many hands. Corn has in the meantime CHAP. XII. been made dearer in many places by the same cause. A.D. 1516.

Wool, too, has risen in price, owing to the rot

amongst the sheep, and now the little clothmakers

are unable to supply themselves with it. For the sheep are falling into few and powerful hands; and 'these, if they have not a monopoly, have at least an oligopoly, and can keep up the price.

Add to these causes the increasing luxury and 'extravagance of the upper classes, and indeed of all

' classes-the tippling houses, taverns, brothels, and On beerother dens of iniquity, wine and beer houses, and houses, &c.

places for gambling. Do not all these, after rapidly

exhausting the resources of their devotees, educate them for crime?

remedies

'Let these pernicious plagues be rooted out. Enact Practical that those who destroy agricultural hamlets or suggested. ' towns should rebuild them, or give them up to those 'who will do so. Restrain these engrossings of the rich, and the license of exercising what is in fact a monopoly. Let fewer persons be bred up in idleness. Let tillage farming be restored. Let the woollen manufacture be introduced, so that honest employ'ment may be found for those whom want has already 'made into thieves, or who, being now vagabonds or ⚫ idle retainers, will become thieves ere long. Surely ' if you do not remedy these evils, your rigorous execution of justice in punishing thieves will be in vain, 'which indeed is more specious than either just or efficacious. For verily if you allow your people to be badly educated, their morals corrupted from childhood, and then, when they are men, punish them for the very crimes to which they have been trained from

6

6

CC

CHAP. XJL.

A.D. 1516.

More's

connec

tion with

Henry VIII.

childhood, what is this, I ask, but first to make the thieves, and then to punish them?'1

Raphael then went on to show that, in his opinion, it was both a bad and a mistaken policy to inflict the same punishment in the case of both theft and murder, such a practice being sure to operate as an encouragement to the thief to commit murder to cover his crime, and suggested that hard labour on public works would be a better punishment for theft than hanging.

After Raphael had given an amusing account of the way in which these suggestions of his had been received at Cardinal Morton's table, More repeated his regret that his talents could not be turned to practical account at some royal court, for the benefit of mankind. Thus the point of the story was brought round again to the question, whether Raphael should or should not attach himself to some royal court-the question which Henry VIII. was pressing upon More, and which he would have finally to settle, in the course of a few months, one way or the other. It is obvious that, in framing Raphael's reply to this question, More intended to express his own feelings, and to do so in such a way that if, after the publication of the Utopia,' Henry VIII. were still to press him into his service, it would be with a clear understanding of his strong disapproval of the King's most cherished schemes, as well as of many of those expedients which would be likely to be suggested by courtiers as the best means of tiding over the evils which must of necessity be entailed upon the country by his persistence in them.

6

Raphael, in his reply, puts the supposition that the

1 Leaves b, iv. to c, ii. These extracts are somewhat abridged and condensed.

councillors were proposing schemes of international CHAP. XII. intrigue, with a view to the furtherance of the King's A.D. 1516. desires for the ultimate extension of his empire :—

6

reference

and More's

What if Raphael were then to express his own Evident judgment that this policy should be entirely changed, to English the notion of extension of empire given up, that the politics kingdom was already too great to be governed by one position. man, and that the King had better not think of adding others to it? What if he were to put the case of the Achorians,' neighbours of the Utopians, who some time ago waged war to obtain possession of another kingdom to which their king contended that he was entitled by descent through an ancient marriage alliance [just as Henry VIII. had claimed France as his 6 very true patrimony and inheritance'], but which people, after conquering the new kingdom, found the trouble of keeping it a constant burden [just as England was already finding Henry's recent conquests in France], involving the continuance of a standing army, the burden of taxes, the loss of their property, the shedding of their blood for another's glory, the destruction of domestic peace, the corrupting of their morals by war, the nurture of the lust of plunder and robbery, till murders became more and more audacious, and the laws were treated with contempt ? What if Raphael were to suggest that the example of these Achorians should be followed, who under such circumstances refused to be governed by half a king, and insisted that their king should choose which of his two kingdoms he would govern, and give up the other; how, Raphael was made to ask, would such counsel be received?

And further: what if the question of ways and