been forgotten by all the Subjects so they had been also broken by them and that the levying of the Penalties of these Laws as it would bring in a vast Treasure so there might be a very good Pretence for it since it would look like the executing of Law and the doing of Justice A fourth proposes the prohibiting of many things under severe Penalties especially such things as were against the Interest of the People and then the dispensing with these Prohibitions upon great Compositions to those who might make Advantages by breaking them This would serve two ends both of them acceptable to many for as those whose Avarice led them to transgress would be severely fined so the selling Licences dear would look as if a Prince were tender of his People and would not easily or at low Rates dispense with any thing that might be against the Publick Good Another proposes that the Judges must be made sure that they may declare always in favor of the Prerogative that they must be often sent for to Court that the King may hear them argue those Points in which he is concerned since that how unjust soever any of his Pretensions may be yet still some one or other of them either out of contradiction to others or the pride of singularity or that they may make their Court would find out some Pretence or other to give the King a fair colour to carry the Point For if the Judges but differ in Opinion the clearest thing in the World is made by that means disputable and Truth being once brought in question the King upon that may take advantage to expound the Law for his own profit the Judges that stand out will be brought over either out of fear or modesty and they being thus gained all of them may be sent to the Bench to give Sentence boldly as the King would have it for fair Pretences will never be wanting when Sentence is to be given in the Prince's Favor it will either be said that Equity lies of his side or some words in the Law will be found sounding that way or some forced sence will be put on them and when all other things fail the King 's undoubted Prerogative will be pretended as that which is above all Law and to which a Religious Judg ought to have a special regard Thus all consent to that Maxim of Grassus That a Prince cannot have Treasure enough since he must maintain his Armies out of it that a King even tho he would can do nothing unjustly that all Property is in him not excepting the very Persons of his Subjects And that no Man has any other Property but that which the King out of his goodness thinks fit to leave him and they think it is the Prince's Interest that there be as little of this left as may be as if it were his advantage that his People should have neither Riches nor Liberty since these things make them less easy and tame to a cruel and injust Government whereas Necessity and Poverty blunts them makes them patient and bears them down and breaks that height of Spirit that might otherwise dispose them to rebel Now what if after all these Propositions were made I should rise up and assert That such Councels were both unbecoming a King and mischievous to him and that not only his Honor but his Safety consisted more in his Peoples Wealth than in his own if I should shew that they choose a King for their own sake and not for his that by his care and endeavors they may be both easy and safe and that therefore a Prince ought to take more care of his Peoples Happiness than of his own as a Shepherd is to take more care of his Flock than of himself It is also certain that they are much mistaken that think the Poverty of a Nation is a means of the Publick Safety Who quarrel more than Beggers do who does more earnestly long for a change than he that is uneasy in his present Circumstances and who run in to create Confusions with so desperate a boldness as those who having nothing to lose hope to gain by them If a King should fall under so much contempt or envy that he could not keep his Subjects in their Duty but by Oppression and ill Usage and by impoverishing them it were certainly better for him to quit his Kingdom than to retain it by such Methods by which tho he keeps the Name of Authority yet he loses the Majesty due to it Nor is it so becoming the Dignity of a King to reign over Beggars as to reign over rich and happy Subjects And therefore Fabritius that was a Man of a noble and exalted Temper said He would rather govern rich Men than be rich himself and for one Man to abound in Wealth and Pleasure when all about him are mourning and groaning is to be a Goaler and not a King He is an unskilful Physician that cannot cure a Disease but by casting his Patient into another So he that can find no other way for correcting the Errors of his People but by taking from them the Conveniences of Life shews that he knows not what it is to govern a free Nation He himself ought rather to shake off his Sloth or to lay down his Pride for the Contempt or Hatred that his People have for him takes its rise from the Vices in himself Let him live upon what belongs to himself without wronging others and accommodate his Expence to his Revenue Let him punish Crimes and by his wise Conduct let him endeavour to prevent them rather than be severe when he has suffered them to be too common Let him not rashly revive Laws that are abbrogated by disuse especially if they have been long forgotten and never wanted And let him never take any Penalty for the breach of them to which a Judg would not give way in a private Man but would look on him as a crafty and unjust Person for pretending to it To these things I would add that Law among the Macarians that lie not far from Vtopia by which their King in the day on which he begins to reign is tied by an Oath confirmed by solemn Sacrifices never to have at once above a thousand Pounds of Gold in his Treasures or so much Silver as is equal to that in value This Law as they say was made by an excellent King who had more regard to the Riches of his Country than to his own Wealth and so provided against the heaping up of so much Treasure as might impoverish the People he thought that moderate Sum might be sufficient for any Accident if either the King had occasion for it against Rebels or the Kingdom against the Invasion of an Enemy but that it was not enough to encourage a Prince to invade other Mens Rights which was the chief cause of his making that Law He also thought that it was a good Provision for a free circulation of
or of a Crown but is only known by a Sheaf of Corn that is carried before him as the High Priest is also known by a Wax Light that is carried before him They have but few Laws and such is their Constitution that they need not many They do very much condemn other Nations whose Laws together with the Commentaries on them swell up to so many Volumes for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige Men to obey a Body of Laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark that they cannot be read or understood by every one of the Subjects They have no Lawyers among them for they consider them as a sort of People whose Profession it is to disguise Matters as well as to wrest Laws and therefore they think it is much better that every Man should plead his own Cause and trust it to the Judg as well as in other places the Client does it to a Counsellor By this means they both cut off many delays and find out Truth more certainly for after the Parties have laid open the Merits of their Cause without those Artifices which Lawyers are apt to suggest the Judg examines the whole Matter and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning Persons whom otherwise crafty Men would be sure to run down And thus they avoid those Evils which appear very remarkably among all those Nations that labour under a vast load of Laws Every one of them is skilled in their Law for as it is a very short study so the plainnest meaning of which words are capable is always the sense of their Laws And they argue thus All Laws are promulgated for this end that every Man may know his Duty and therefore the plainest and most obvious sense of the words is that which must be put on them since a more refined Exposition cannot be easily comprehended and Laws become thereby useless to the greater part of Mankind who need most the direction of them for to them it is all one not to make a Law at all and to couch it in such tearms that without a quick apprehension and much study a Man cannot find out the true meaning of it and the generality of Mankind are both so dull and so much imployed in their several Trades that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity requisite for such an enquiry Some of their Neighbours who are Masters of their own Liberties having long ago by the assistance of the Vtopians shaken off the Yoke of Tyranny and being much taken with those Vertues that they observe among them have come to them and desired that they would send Magistrates among them to govern them some changing them every Year and others every five Years At the end of their Government they bring them back to Vtopia with great expressions of honour and esteem and carry away others to govern in their stead In this they seem to have fallen upon a very good Expedient for their own happiness and safety For since the good or ill Condition of a Nation depends so much upon their Magistrates they could not have made a better choice than by pitching on Men whom no Advantages can biass for Wealth is of no use to them since they must go so soon back to their own Country and they being strangers among them are not engaged in any of their Heats or Animosities And it is certain that when Publick Judicatories are swayed either by partial Affections or by Avarice there must follow upon it a dissolution of all Justice which is the chief Sinew of Society The Vtopians call those Nations that come and ask Magistrates from them Neighbours but they call those to whom they have been more particularly assisting Friends And whereas all other Nations are perpetually either making Leagues or breaking them they never enter into any Alliance with any other State They think Leagues are useless things and reckon that if the common Ties of Humane Nature do not knit Men together the Faith of Promises will have no great effect on them And they are the more confirmed in this by that which they see among the Nations round about them who are no strict observers of Leagues and Treaties We know how religiously they are observed in Europe more particularly where the Christian Doctrine is received among whom they are sacred and inviolable Which is partly owing to the Justice and Goodness of the Princes themselves and partly to their Reverence that they pay to the Popes who as they are most religious observers of their own Promises so they exhort all other Princes to perform theirs and when fainter Methods do not prevail they compel them to it by the severity of the Pastoral Censure and think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if Men who are particularly designed by the title of the Faithful should not religiously keep the Faith of their Treaties But in that new found World which is not more distant from us in Scituation than it is disagreeing from us in their Manners and course of Life there is no trusting to Leagues even tho they were made with all the pomp of the most Sacred Ceremonies that is possible On the contrary they are the sooner broken for that some slight Pretence being found in the words of the Treaties which are contrived in such ambiguous Terms and that on design that they can never be so strictly bound but they will always find some Loop-hole to escape at and so they break both their Leagues and their Faith And this is done with that impudence that those very Men who value themselves on having suggested these Advices to their Princes would yet with a haughty scorn declaim against such Craft or to speak plainer such Fraud and Deceit if they found private Men make use of it in their Bargains and would readily say that they deserved to be hanged for it By this means it is that all sort of Justice passes in the World but for a low-spirited and vulgar Vertue which is far below the dignity of Royal Greatness Or at least there are two sorts of Justice set up the one is mean and creeps on the Ground and therefore becomes none but the baser sort of Men and so must be kept in severely by many restraints that it may not break out beyond the Bounds that are set to it The other is the peculiar Vertue of Princes which as it is more majestick than that which becomes the Rabble so takes a freer compass and lawful or unlawful are only measured by Pleasure and Interest These practices among the Princes that lie about Vtopia who make so little account of their Faith seem to be the Reasons that determine them to engage in no Confederacies perhaps they would change their mind if they lived among us but yet tho Treaties were more religiously observed they would still dislike the custom of making them since the World has taken up a false Maxim upon it as if there were no
be of his mind only the Cardinal said It is not easy to guess whether it would succeed well or ill since no trial has been made of it But if when the Sentence of Death were past upon a Thief the Prince would reprieve him for a while and make the Experiment upon him denying him the privilege of a Sanctuary then if it had a good effect upon him it might take place and if it succeeded not the worst would be to execute the Sentence on the condemned Persons at last And I do not see said he why it would be either injust or inconvenient or at all dangerous to admit of such a delay And I think the Vagabonds ought to be treated in the same manner against whom tho we have made many Laws yet we have not been able to gain our end by them all When the Cardinal had said this then they all fell to commend the Motion tho they had despised it when it came from me but they did more particularly commend that concerning the Vagabonds because it had been added by him I do not know whether it be worth the while to tell what followed for it was very ridiculous but I shall venture at it for as it is not forreign to this Matter so some good use may be made of it There was a Jester standing by that counterfeited the Fool so naturally that he seemed to be really one The Jests at which he offered were so cold and dull that we laughed more at him than at them yet sometimes he said as it were by chance things that were not unpleasant so as to justify the old Proverb That he who throws the Dice often will sometimes have a lucky Hit When one of the Company had said that I had taken care of the Thieves and the Cardinal had taken care of the Vagabonds so that there remained nothing but that some publick Provision might be made for the Poor whom Sickness or Old Age had disabled from Labour Leave that to me said the Fool and I shall take care of them for there is no sort of People whose sight I abhor more having been so often vexed with them and with their sad Complaints but as dolefully soeveras they have told their Tale to me they could never prevail so far as to draw one Penny of Mony from me for either I had no mind to give them any thing or when I had a mind to it I had nothing to give them and they now know me so well that they will not lose their labour on me but let me pass without giving me any trouble because they hope for nothing from me no more in faith than if I were a Priest But I would have a Law made for sending all these Beggars to Monasteries the Men to the Benedictines to be Lay-Brothers and the Women to be Nuns The Cardinal smiled and approved of it in jest but the rest liked it in earnest There was a Divine present who tho he was a grave morose Man yet he was so pleased with this Reflection that was made on the Priests and the Monks that he began to play with the Fool and said to him This will not deliver you from all Beggers except you take care of us Friars That is done already answered the Fool for the Cardinal has provided for you by what he proposed for the restraining Vagabonds and setting them to work for I know no Vagabonds like you This was well entertained by the whole Company who looking at the Cardinal perceived that he was not ill pleased at it only the Friar himself was so bit as may be easily imagined and fell out into such a passion that he could not forbear railing at the Fool and called him Knave Slanderer Backbiter and Son of Perdition and cited some dreadful Threatnings out of the Scriptures against him Now the Jester thought he was in his Element and laid about him freely he said Good Friar be not angry for it is written In patience possess your Soul The Friar answered for I shall give you his own words I am not angry you Hangman at least I do not sin in it for the Psalmist says Be ye angry and sin not Upon this the Cardinal admonished him gently and wished him to govern his Passions No my Lord said he I speak not but from a good Zeal which I ought to have for Holy Men have had a good Zeal as it is said The Zeal of thy House hath eaten me up and we sing in our Church that those who mock'd Elisha as he went up to the House of God felt the Effects of his Zeal which that Mocker that Rogue that Scoundrel will perhaps feel You do this perhaps with a goodintention said the Cardinal but in my Opinion it were wiser in you not to say better for you not to engage in so ridiculous a Contest with a Fool. No my Lord answered he that were not wisely done for Solomon the wisest of Men said Answer a Fool according to his folly which I now do and shew him the Ditch into which he will fall if he is not aware of it for if the many Mockers of Elisha who was but one bald Man felt the Effect of his Zeal What will become of one Mocker of so many Friars among whom there are so many bald Men We have likewise a Bull by which all that jeer us are excommunicated When the Cardinal saw that there was no end of this Matter he made a sign to the Fool to withdraw and turned the Discourse another way and soon after he rose from the Table and dismissing us he went to hear Causes Thus Mr. More I have run out into a tedious Story of the length of which I had been ashamed if as you earnestly begged it of me I had not observed you to hearken to it as if you had no mind to lose any part of it I might have contracted it but I resolved to give it you at large that you might observe how those that had despised what I had proposed no sooner perceived that the Cardinal did not dislike it but they presently approved of it and fawned so on him and flattered him to such a degree that they in good earnest applauded those things that he only liked in jest And from hence you may gather how little Courtiers would value either me or my Counsels To this I answered You have done me a great kindness in this Relation for as every thing has been related by you both wisely and pleasantly so you have made me imagine that I was in my own Country and grown young again by recalling that good Cardinal into my thoughts in whose Family I was bred from my Childhood And tho you are upon other accounts very dear to me yet you are the dearer because you honour his Memory so much but after all this I cannot change my Opinion for I still think that if you could overcome that aversion which you have to the Courts of Princes
you might do a great deal of good to Mankind by the Advices that you would give and this is the chief Design that every good Man ought to propose to himself in living for whereas your Friend Plato thinks that then Nations will be happy when either Philosophers become Kings or Kings become Philosophers No wonder if we are so far from that Happiness if Philosophers will not think it fit for them to assist Kings with their Councels They are not so base minded said he but that they would willingly do it many of them have already done it by their Books if these that are in Power would hearken to their good Advices But Plato judged right that except Kings themselves became Philosophers it could never be brought about that they who from their Childhood are corrupted with false Notions should fall in intirely with the Counsels of Philosophers which he himself found to be true in the Person of Dionysius Do not you think that if I were about any King and were proposing good Laws to him and endeavouring to root out of him all the cursed Seeds of Evil that I found in him I should either be turned out of his Court or at least be laughed at for my pains For Instance What could I signify if I were about the King of France and were called into his Cabinet-Council where several wise Men do in his hearing propose many Expedients as by what Arts and Practices Milan may be kept and Naples that has so oft slip'd out of their hands recovered and how the Venetians and after them the rest of Italy may be subdued and then how Flanders Brabant and all Burgundy and some other Kingdoms which he has swallowed already in his Designs may be added to his Empire One proposes a League with the Venetians to be kept as long as he finds his account in it and that he ought to communicate Councils with them and give them some share of the Spoil till his Success makes him need or fear them less and then it will be easily taken out of their Hands Another proposes the hireing the Germans and the securing the Switzers by Pensions Another proposes the gaining the Emperor by Mony which is Omnipotent with him Another proposes a Peace with the King of Arragon and in order to the cementing it the yielding up the King of Navar 's Pretensions Another thinks the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on by the hope of an Alliance and that some of his Courtiers are to be gained to the French Faction by Pensions The hardest Point of all is what to do with England a Treaty of Peace is to be set on foot and if their Alliance is not to be depended on yet it is to be made as firm as can be and they are to be called Friends but suspected as Enemies Therefore the Scots are to be kept in readiness to be let loose upon England on every occasion and some banished Nobleman is to be supported underhand for by the League it cannot be done avowedly who has a pretension to the Crown by which means that suspected Prince may be kept in awe Now when things are in so great a Fermentation and so many gallant Men are joining Councils how to carry on the War if so mean a Man as I am should stand up and wish them to change all their Councils to let Italy alone and stay at home since the Kingdom of France was indeed greater than that it could be well governed by one Man So that he ought not to think of adding others to it And if after this I should propose to them the Resolutions of the Achorians a People that lie over against the Isle of Vtopia to the South-east who having long ago engaged in a War that they might gain another Kingdom to their King who had a Pretension to it by an old Alliance by which it had descended to him and having conquered it when they found that the trouble of keeping it was equal to that of gaining it for the conquered People would be still apt to rebel or be exposed to Forreign Invasions so that they must always be in War either for them or against them and that therefore they could never disband their Army That in the mean time Taxes lay heavy on them that Mony went out of the Kingdom that their Blood was sacrificed to their King's Glory and that they were nothing the better by it even in time of Peace their Manners being corrupted by a long War Robbing and Murders abounding every where and their Laws falling under contempt because their King being distracted with the Cares of the Kingdom was less able to apply his Mind to any one of them when they saw there would be no end of those Evils they by joint Councils made an humble Address to their King desiring him to chuse which of the two Kingdoms he had the greatest mind to keep since he could not hold both for they were too great a People to be governed by a divided King since no Man would willingly have a Groom that should be in common between him and another Upon which the good Prince was forced to quit his new Kingdom to one of his Friends who was not long after dethroned and to be contented with his old One. To all this I would add that after all those Warlike Attempts and the vast Confusions with the Consumptions both of Treasure and of People that must follow them perhaps upon some Misfortune they might be forced to throw up all at last therefore it seemed much more eligible that the King should improve his ancient Kingdom all he could and make it flourish as much as was possible that he should love his People and be beloved of them that he should live among them and govern them gently and that he should let other Kingdoms alone since that which had fallen to his share was big enough if not too big for him Pray how do you think would such a Speech as this be heard I confess said I I think not very well But what said he if I should sort with another kind of Ministers whose chief Contrivances and Consultations were by what Art Treasure might be heaped up Where one proposes the crying up of Mony when the King had a great Debt on him and the crying it down as much when his Revenues were to come in that so he might both pay much with a little and in a little receive a great deal Another proposes a pretence of a War that so Money might be raised in order to the carrying it on and that a Peace might be concluded as soon as that was done and this was to be made up with such appearances of Religion as might work on the People and make them impute it to the piety of their Prince and to his tenderness of the Lives of his Subjects A third offers some old musty Laws that have been antiquated by a long disuse and which as they had
Mony is the Standard of all other things I cannot think that a Nation can be governed either Justly or Happily Not Justly because the best things will fall to the share of the worst of Men Nor Happily because all things will be divided among a few and even these are not in all respects happy the rest being left to be absolutely miserable Therefore when I reflect on the wise and good Constitutions of the Vtopians among whom all things are so well governed and with so few Laws and among whom as Vertue hath its due reward yet there is such an equality that every Man lives in plenty and when I compare with them so many other Nations that are still making new Laws and yet can never bring their Constitution to a right Regulation among whom tho every one has his Property yet all the Laws that they can invent cannot prevail so far that Men can either obtain or preserve it or be certainly able to distinguish what is their own from what is another Man's of which the many Law Suits that every day break out and depend without any end give too plain a demonstration When I say I ballance all these things in my thoughts I grow more favourable to Plato and do not wonder that he resolved not to make any Laws for such as would not submit to a community of all things For so wise a Man as he was could not but foresee that the setting all upon the Level was the only way to make a Nation happy which cannot be obtained so long as there is Property for when every Man draws to himself all that he can compass by one Title or another it must needs follow that how plentiful soever a Nation may be yet a few dividing the Wealth of it among themselves the rest must fall under Poverty So that there will be two sorts of People among them that deserve that their Fortunes should be interchanged the former being useless but wicked and ravenous and the latter who by their constant industry serve the Publick more than themselves being sincere and modest Men. From whence I am perswaded that till Property is taken away there can be no equitable or just distribution made of things nor can the World be happily governed for as long as that is maintained the greatest and the far best part of Mankind will be still oppressed with a load of Cares and Anxieties I confess without the taking of it quite away those Pressures that lie on a great part of Mankind may be made lighter but they can never be quite removed For if Laws were made determining at how great an extent in Soil and at how much Mony every Man must stop and limiting the Prince that he may not grow too great and restraining the People that they may not become too insolent and that none might factiously aspire to publick Employments and that they might neither be sold nor made burdensome by a great expence since otherwise those that serve in them will be tempted to reimburse themselves by Cheats and Violence and it will become necessary to find out rich Men for undergoing those Employments for which wise Men ought rather to be sought out these Laws I say may have such Effects as good Diet and Care may have on a Sick Man whose recovery is desperate they may allay and mitigate the Disease but it can never be quite healed nor the Body Politick be brought again to a good Habit as long as Property remains and it will fall out as in a complication of Diseases that by applying a Remedy to one Sore you will provoke another and that which removes one ill Symptom produces others while the strengthning of one part of the Body weakens the rest On the contrary answered I it seems to me that Men cannot live conveniently where all things are common How can there be any Plenty where every Man will excuse himself from Labour For as the hope of Gain doth not excite him so the confidence that he has in other Mens Industry may make him slothful And if People come to be pinched with Want and yet cannot dispose of any thing as their own what can follow upon this but perpetual Sedition and Bloodshed especially when the Reverence and Authority due to Magistrates falls to the Ground For I cannot imagine how that can be kept up among those that are in all things equal to one another I do not wonder said he that it appears so to you since you have no Notion or at least no right one of such a Constitution But if you had been in Vtopia with me and had seen their Laws and Rules as I did for the space of five Years in which I lived among them and during which time I was so delighted with them that indeed I would never have left them if it had not been to make the discovery of that new World to the Europeans you would then confess that you had never seen a People so well constituted as they are You will not easily perswade me said Peter that any Nation in that New World is better governed than those among us are For as our Understandings are not worse than theirs so our Government if I mistake not being ancienter a long practice has helped us to find out many Conveniences of Life And some happy Chances have discovered other things to us which no Man's Understanding could ever have invented As for the Antiquity either of their Government or of ours said he you cannot pass a true Judgment of it unless you had read their Histories for if they are to be believed they had Towns among them before these parts were so much as inhabited And as for these Discoveries that have been either hit on by chance or made by ingenious Men these might have hapned there as well as here I do not deny but we are more ingenious than they are but they exceed us much in Industry and Application They knew little concerning us before our arrival among them they call us all by a general Name of the Nations that lie beyond the Equinoctial Line for their Chronicle mentions a Shipwrack that was made on their Coast 1200 Years ago and that some Romans and Egyptians that were in the Ship getting safe a Shore spent the rest of their days amongst them and such was their Ingenuity that from this single Opportunity they drew the advantage of Learning from those unlook'd for Guests all the useful Arts that were then among the Romans which those Shipwrack'd Men knew And by the Hints that they gave them they themselves found out even some of those Arts which they could not fully explain to them so happily did they improve that Accident of having some of our People cast upon their shore But if any such Accident have at any time brought any from thence into Europe we have been so far from improving it that we do not so much as remember it as in after Times perhaps