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<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>
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<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 />
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<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 &amp; COMPANY, Limited:<br 
/>
<span class="smcap"><i>london</i></span>, <span 
class="smcap"><i>paris</i></span>, <span class="smcap"><i>new 
york &amp; melbourne</i></span>.<br />
1887.
</p>
<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
<p>It was in 1824 that Robert Southey, then fifty years old, 
published &ldquo;Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress 
and Prospects of Society,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Sir Thomas More,&rdquo; it avoids use of the
main title, and ventures only to describe itself as 
&ldquo;Colloquies on Society, by Robert Southey.&rdquo;
</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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;<i>far off</i> divine  event<br />
To which the whole Creation moves.&rdquo;
</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), &ldquo;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.&rdquo; All 
strong reaction of mind tends towards excess in the opposite 
direction. Southey&rsquo;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 &ldquo;upon the whole the best man I have ever 
known.&rdquo;
</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 &pound;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 &pound;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 
&pound;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&rsquo;s wife, who had been, as Southey said, &ldquo;for 
forty years the life of his life,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;then,&rdquo; 
Wordsworth wrote, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</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 
&ldquo;Utopia,&rdquo; 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 
&ldquo;Utopia&rdquo; 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.&mdash;THE INTRODUCTION.</h2>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;<i>Posso aver certezza</i>, <i>e non 
paura</i>,<br />
<i>Che raccontando quel che m&rsquo; &egrave; accaduto</i>,<br />
<i>Il ver dir&ograve;</i>, <i>n&egrave; mi sar&agrave; 
creduto</i>.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;Orlando Innamorato,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Man,&rdquo; 
says Sir Thomas Brown, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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, 
&ldquo;Montesinos, a stranger from a distant country may intrude 
upon you without those credentials which in other cases you have 
a right to require.&rdquo; &ldquo;From America!&rdquo; 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>&ldquo;You judge of me,&rdquo; he made answer, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said I,
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;Prince Arthur and Prince Henry,&rdquo; he 
replied. &ldquo;Do you notice this as ominous, or merely as
remarkable?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;Merely as remarkable,&rdquo; was my answer. 
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;Are you superstitious?&rdquo; said he. 
&ldquo;Understand me as using the word for want of a more 
appropriate one&mdash;not in its ordinary and contemptuous 
acceptation.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>I smiled at the question, and replied, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;You believe, then, in apparitions,&rdquo; said my 
visitor.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;Even so, sir. That such things 
should be is probable <i>&agrave; 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. 
&ldquo;But,&rdquo; says Saint Evremont, &ldquo;the most devout 
cannot always command their belief, nor the most impious their 
incredulity.&rdquo; I acknowledge with Sir Thomas Brown 
that, &ldquo;as in philosophy, so in divinity, there are sturdy 
doubts and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of 
our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us;&rdquo; and I confess 
with him that these are to be conquered, &ldquo;not in a martial 
posture, but on our knees.&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;Do you extend this to a belief in 
witchcraft?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;I do not love to credit tales of magic!<br 
/>
Heaven&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Should you like to have an opportunity 
afforded you?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;Thou com&rsquo;st in such a questionable 
shape,<br />
That I will speak to thee!&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Stranger</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;A ghost!
</p>

<p><i>Stranger</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;In the name of God,&rdquo; I exclaimed, &ldquo;who are 
you, and wherefore are you come?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;Be not alarmed,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</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, 
&ldquo;Is it Sir Thomas More?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;The same,&rdquo; he made answer, and lifting up his 
chin, displayed a circle round the neck brighter in colour than 
the ruby. &ldquo;The marks of martyrdom,&rdquo; he 
continued, &ldquo;are our insignia of honour. Fisher and I 
have the purple collar, as Friar Forrest and Cranmer have the 
robe of fire.&rdquo;
</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, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;What, then, may doubt and anxiety 
consist with the happiness of heaven?
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;<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>.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>They are the words of old Mantuan.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;I am to understand, then, that you 
cannot see into the ways of futurity?
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;<i>Et in Utopi&acirc; ego</i>.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;the living, moving, reasonable 
image&mdash;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.&mdash;THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD.</h2>
<p>On the following evening when my spiritual visitor entered the
room, that volume of Dr. Wordsworth&rsquo;s ecclesiastical 
biography which contains his life was lying on the table beside 
me. &ldquo;I perceive,&rdquo; said he, glancing at the 
book, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;I am not one of those fastidious readers,&rdquo; I 
replied, &ldquo;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 &lsquo;a deep foresight and 
judgment of the times,&rsquo; and for speaking in a prophetic 
spirit of the evils, which soon afterwards were &lsquo;full 
heavily felt.&rsquo;&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;There could be little need for a spirit of 
prophecy,&rdquo; Sir Thomas made answer, to &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;I had fallen into one of those idle 
reveries in which we speculate upon what might have been. 
Lord Bacon describes him as &ldquo;very studious, and learned 
beyond his years, and beyond the custom of great 
princes.&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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. &ldquo;Verily there is 
a God that judgeth the earth!&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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, 
&ldquo;Avaunt, tempter!&rdquo; 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&mdash;like that millennium in which saints as well
as enthusiasts have trusted.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;Do you hold that this 
consummation must of necessity come to pass; or that it depends 
in any degree upon the course of events&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;<i>Qua terra patet</i>, <i>fera regnat 
Erinnys</i>;<br />
<i>In facinus jurasse putes</i>.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;Two winters, a wet spring,<br />
A bloody summer, and no king.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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, &ldquo;God is above,&rdquo; and trust Him for the 
event.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;God is above&mdash;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&mdash;the 
politest, the most amiable, and the most humane of 
nations&mdash;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.&mdash;THE DRUIDICAL STONES.&mdash;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>&ldquo;On the green turf and under the blue 
sky,<br />
Their heads in reverence bare, and bare of foot.&rdquo;
</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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;I am 
come,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;My ghostly friend,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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. 
&ldquo;Exempted from these visitations!&rdquo; he exclaimed; 
&ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>I was silent.
</p>

<p>&ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; he resumed, in a milder tone, but 
with a melancholy manner, &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;if your soil is everywhere sown with the dragon&rsquo;s
teeth, and the fatal crop be at this hour ready to spring 
up&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>&ldquo;May God avert this also!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
</p>

<p>&ldquo;As for famine,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;&Mu;&alpha;&nu;&tau;&iota; 
&kappa;&alpha;&kappa;&omega;&nu;!
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;<i>Nullias addictus jurare in verba 
magistri</i>,&rdquo;
</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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;You were at one time near enough
that pestilence to feel as if you were within its reach?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Oh, sir, we escaped by the mercy of 
God; only by the mercy of God!&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;And what was your own state of 
mind?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;They order these things better in 
Utopia.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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.&mdash;FEUDAL SLAVERY.&mdash;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>&ldquo;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&rsquo;s melancholy map! But, far<br />
More sad, this earth is a true map of man.&rdquo;
</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>&ldquo;Well, Montesinos,&rdquo; said the spirit, when he 
visited me next, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;You have omitted in this 
enumeration that kind of slavery which existed in England.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;&ldquo;Fish, fish, are you in your 
duty?&rdquo; 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, 
&ldquo;Yes, yes; if you reckon, we reckon; if you pay your debts 
we pay ours; if you fly we overcome, and are 
content.&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s kingdom may come&mdash;with those principles 
slavery is inconsistent, and therefore not to be tolerated, even 
in speculation.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;The latter class appears to have been
far more numerous in your age than in mine.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;Such a principle must surely have 
tended to increase the illegitimate population.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;<i>Facta est immensi copia 
mundi</i>.&rdquo;
</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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;what 
ills<br />
Remediable and yet unremedied<br />
&nbsp; Afflict man&rsquo;s wretched race,&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>and the approbation of your own heart will be sufficient 
reward on earth.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;The will has not been wanting.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Our 
doubts are traitors,<br />
And make us lose the good we oft might win,<br />
By fearing to attempt.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;That illustration would have 
been buried in the dust if it had not been repeated by Hugh 
Latimer at St. Paul&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;If he had fallen into your hands you 
would have made a stock-fish of him.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; But he saw also that 
it tended to serve his immediate purpose.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;I marvel that good old John Fox, 
upright, downright man as he was, should have inserted in his 
&ldquo;Acts and Monuments&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;But the number of our vagabonds has 
greatly diminished. In your Henry&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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.&mdash;DECAY OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.&mdash;EDWARD 
VI.&mdash;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. &ldquo;Behold me to your wish!&rdquo; said 
he. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;for those 
precious words.&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;Wherefore precious?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;Because they show that spirits who 
are in bliss perceive our thoughts;&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;And is this all?
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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, &ldquo;begin it again and mend it, for it is neither 
mass nor matins.&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Those hundred years were the happiest
which England has ever known.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;Perhaps so: 
&kappa;&alpha;&rho;&pi;&omicron;&sigmaf; 
&mu;&#941;y&iota;&sigma;&tau;&omicron;&sigmaf; 
&alpha;&tau;&alpha;&rho;&alpha;&xi;&#943;&alpha;.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;There is one beautiful 
exception&mdash;Edward VI.
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;That blessed Prince whose saintly name 
might move<br />
The understanding heart to tears of reverent love.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>He would have struck into the right course.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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!&mdash;scarcely this earth!
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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:&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;God calls them first whom He loves 
best.&rdquo;
</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 &ldquo;the medicines were by which the sores of the 
commonwealth might be healed.&rdquo; His prescriptions are 
as applicable now as they were then, and in most points as 
needful: they were &ldquo;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.&rdquo; In these, and more especially in the 
first of these, he hoped and purposed to have &ldquo;shown his 
device.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;thoughts,
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&mdash;whose very sweetness yieldeth proof<br />
That they were born for immortality.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;Rising so high, and built so insecure,<br 
/>
Ill may such perishable work endure!&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>You will not, I hope, come to that conclusion! You will 
not, I hope, say with the evil prophet&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;The fabric of her power is undermined;<br />
&nbsp; The Earthquake underneath it will have way,<br />
And all that glorious structure, as the wind<br />
&nbsp; Scatters a summer cloud, be swept away!&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;It is an observation of 
Mercier&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;s coarse remedy is 
the only one which legislators have yet thought of applying.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;What remedy is that?
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;&rsquo;Twas the 
husbandman&rsquo;s practice in his days and mine:
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;Where plots full of nettles annoyeth the 
eye,<br />
Sow hempseed among them, and nettles will die.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Some shocking examples occurred to 
me. The one of a poor Savoyard boy with his monkey starved 
to death in St. James&rsquo;s Park. The other, which is, if
that be possible, a still more disgraceful case, is recorded 
incidentally in Rees&rsquo;s Cyclopædia under the word 
&ldquo;monster.&rdquo; It is only in a huge overgrown city 
that such cases could possibly occur.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;That is because bees and ants act 
under the guidance of unerring instinct.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;As if instinct were a superior 
faculty to reason! But the statesman, as well as the 
sluggard, may be told to &ldquo;go to the ant and the bee, 
consider their ways and be wise!&rdquo; It is for reason to
observe and profit by the examples which instinct affords it.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;s, and Pimlico alone, but all the lanes and alleys 
and cellars of the metropolis would pour out&mdash;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>.&mdash;Such an insane rebellion would 
speedily be crushed.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Is such an event to be 
apprehended?
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;Nothing, except more books.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;<i>Crescit</i>, <i>indulgens sibi</i>, 
<i>dirus hydrops</i>.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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. 
&ldquo;Libraries,&rdquo; says my good old friend George Dyer, a 
man as learned as he is benevolent, &ldquo;libraries are the 
wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might 
bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more 
for use.&rdquo; 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>&ldquo;For foresight is a melancholy gift,<br />
Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift.&rdquo;
</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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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 &ldquo;Acta Sanctorum&rdquo; 
belonged to the Capuchins, at Ghent. This book of St. 
Bridget&rsquo;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&rsquo; College at 
Louvain; that <i>Imago Primi Sæculi Societatis</i>, from 
their college at Ruremond. Here are books from 
Colbert&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;scenes and changes&rdquo; it 
has passed.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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 &ldquo;General History of Spain,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;Is there no message to him from 
Walter Landor&rsquo;s friend?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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 
&Omicron;&iota;&sigma;&tau;&#941;&omicron;&nu; 
&kappa;&alpha;&iota; 
&epsilon;&lambda;&pi;&iota;&sigma;&tau;&#941;&omicron;&nu;.
Here is a memorial of a different kind inscribed in this 
&ldquo;Rule of Penance of St. Francis, as it in ordered for 
religious women.&rdquo; &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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 
Abb&eacute;, 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>.&mdash;How peaceably they stand 
together&mdash;Papists and Protestants side by side.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>&ldquo;Here are God&rsquo;s conduits, grave 
divines; and here<br />
Is Nature&rsquo;s secretary, the philosopher:<br />
And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie<br />
The sinews of a city&rsquo;s mystic body;<br />
Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand<br />
Giddy fantastic poets of each land.&rdquo;&mdash;<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>.&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;<i>Felicemque voco pariter studiique 
locique</i>!&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;&mdash;<i>meritoque probas artesque 
locumque</i>.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The simile of the bees,
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;<i>Sic vos non vobis mellificatis 
apes</i>,&rdquo;
</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>.&mdash;Yet, Montesinos, how often does 
the worm-eaten volume outlast the reputation of the worm-eaten 
author!
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;Of the living one also; for many 
there are of whom it may be said, in the words of Vida, 
that&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&mdash;<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>.&rdquo;
</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 &ldquo;they sparkle, 
are exhaled, and fly&rdquo;&mdash;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. &ldquo;Behold this also is vanity!&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;Has it proved to you 
&ldquo;vexation of spirit&rdquo; also?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;Oh, no! for never can any man&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 
&agrave; 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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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 abreg&eacute; sur un bon livre est un 
sot abreg&eacute;</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>.&mdash;Call to mind, I pray you, my 
foliophagous friend, what was the extent of Michael 
Montaigne&rsquo;s library; and that if you had passed a winter in
his ch&acirc;teau 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 &ldquo;the strong and 
strange varieties&rdquo; in human nature are repeated in every 
age, so &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;For things forepast are precedents to 
us,<br />
Whereby we may things present now, discuss,&rdquo;
</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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;the second light of 
government<br />
Which stories yield, and no time can disseason:&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p>&ldquo;the common standard of man&rsquo;s reason,&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;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&mdash;that is, from historical 
ignorance&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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 &ldquo;sharp judgment&rdquo; 
of which they that are in &ldquo;high places&rdquo; are in 
danger.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;I am pleased to hear you include 
hopefulness among the needful qualifications.
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;It was a Jewish maxim that the 
spirit of prophecy rests only upon eminent, happy, and cheerful 
men.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;&ldquo;Of whole heart cometh 
hope,&rdquo; 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&mdash;fear is 
&ldquo;a betrayal of the succours which reason offereth,&rdquo; 
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&mdash;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Poets&mdash;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;Tanti Rome non ha preti, o dottori<br />
<i>Bologna</i>.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;Critics&mdash;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Philosophers&mdash;
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;s-length?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;Hops and turkeys, carp and beer,<br />
Came into England all in one year.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&mdash;the most valuable products 
of the East and West&mdash;which have contributed far more to the
general good than all their spices and gems and precious 
metals&mdash;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>.&mdash;<i>Pro pudor</i>! There is
a snuff-box on the mantelpiece&mdash;and thou revilest 
tobacco!
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;Thou hast written verses praise 
of snuff!
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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 &ldquo;Moral Philosophy&rdquo; of Escobar and the 
&ldquo;Spiritual Exercises&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Of all travels, those of the mere 
botanist are the least instructive&mdash;
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;To any but botanists&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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 y&nu;&omega;&theta;&iota; 
&sigma;&epsilon;&alpha;&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&nu; 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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;Is this a salutary or an 
injurious fashion?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;And what has been imported by 
such travellers for the good of their country?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&rsquo;s 
laboratories there is none in which more poison is concocted for 
mankind than in the inkstand!
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;My withers are 
unwrung!&rdquo;
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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. 
&ldquo;<i>Avant nous</i>,&rdquo; says the sagacious but 
iron-hearted Montluc&mdash;&ldquo;<i>avant nous ces envies ont 
regn&eacute;</i>, <i>et regneront encore apr&egrave;s nous</i>, 
<i>si Dieu ne nous voulait tous refondre</i>.&rdquo; Its 
worst effect is that which Ben Jonson remarked: &ldquo;The gentle
reader,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>There is another mischief, arising out of ephemeral 
literature, which was noticed by the same great author. 
&ldquo;Wheresoever manners and fashions are corrupted,&rdquo; 
says he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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&mdash;the slovenliness that confidence, as well as fatigue 
and inattention, will produce&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;But the same causes of 
deterioration will be at work there also.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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 &ldquo;desire no other mercy from after ages than silence
and oblivion.&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;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&rsquo; 
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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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 &ldquo;whatsoever things are honest, 
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely,&rdquo; 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>.&mdash;Such poetry, then, according to 
your view, is to be regarded with indulgence.
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;
</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;<i>Vesanum tetigisse timent</i>, 
<i>fugiuntque poetam</i><br />
<i>Qui sapiunt</i>; <i>agitant pueri</i>, <i>incautique 
sequuntur</i>.&rdquo;
</p>
</blockquote>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Has the age in return done its 
duty to them?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;the better part of us 
assuredly, and the majority affecting to hold&mdash;the names of 
Shakespeare and Milton in veneration?
</p>

<p>To have placed the descendants of Shakespeare and Milton in 
respectability and comfort&mdash;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&rsquo; 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.&mdash;THE CONCLUSION.</h2>
<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;Who may this political Achilles 
be whom you have called in to your assistance?
</p>

<p><i>Montesinos</i>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Ego sum is</i>,&rdquo; said
Scaliger, &ldquo;<i>qui ab omnibus discere volo</i>; <i>neque tam
malum librum esse puto</i>, <i>ex quo non aliquem fructum 
colligere possum</i>.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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:&mdash;
</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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;I should rather ask of you, will 
there ever be one?
</p>

<p><i>Sir Thomas More</i>.&mdash;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>&ldquo;Offer these truths to Power, will she 
obey?<br />
It prunes her pomp, perchance ploughs up the root.&rdquo;
</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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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>.&mdash;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&mdash;for nations as for 
individuals&mdash;yea, for the human race.
</p>

<p>Flatter not yourself with delusive expectations! The end
may be according to your hope&mdash;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&mdash;that great tribulations must needs 
accompany them&mdash;and that these may be&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>.&mdash;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;&mdash;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&mdash;an impulse given: it may be hoped&mdash;almost, I
will say, it may be expected&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;drop as the rain, and distil as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers 
upon the grass&rdquo;&mdash;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&mdash;were we but broken in from childhood to 
Thy easy yoke&mdash;were we but carefully instructed to believe 
and obey&mdash;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 Abb&eacute; 
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>.&mdash;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>

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