Chapter XII (2)

But the Christianity he spoke of was a very different thing from what it was thought to be by many. ‘Do not think,’ he wrote, ‘that Christianity consists in ceremonies, that is, in the observance of the decrees and constitutions of the Church. The Christian is not he who is baptized, or he who is consecrated, or he who is present at holy rites; but he who is united to Christ in closest affection, and who shows it by his holy actions.... Do not think that you have done your duty to Christ when you have sent a fleet against the Turks, or when you have founded a church or a monastery. There is no duty by the performance of which _you_ can more secure the favour of God _than by making yourself a prince useful to the people_.’[586]

Having taken at the outset this healthy and practical view of the relations of Christianity to the conduct of a prince, Erasmus proceeded to refer everything to the Christian standard. Thus he continued:--

‘If you find that you cannot defend your kingdom, without violating justice, without shedding much human blood, without much injury to religion, rather lay it down and retire from it.’

But he was not to retire from the duties of his kingdom merely to save himself from trouble or danger. ‘If you cannot defend the interests of your people without risk to your life, prefer the public good even to your own life.’[587]... The Christian prince should be a true father to his people.[588]

The good of the people was from the Christian point of view to override everything else, even royal prerogatives.

[Sidenote: Limited monarchy the best.]

‘If princes were perfect in every virtue, a pure and simple monarchy might be desirable; but as this can hardly ever be in actual practice, as human affairs are now, a _limited monarchy_[589] is preferable, one in which the aristocratic and democratic elements are mixed and united, and so balance one another.’[590] And lest Prince Charles should kick against the pricks, and shrink from the abridgment of his autocratic power, Erasmus tells him that ‘if a prince wish well to the republic, his power will not be restrained, but aided by these means.’[591]

After contrasting the position of the pagan and Christian prince, Erasmus further remarks:--

[Sidenote: Consent of the people makes a Prince.]

‘He who wields his empire as becomes a Christian, does not _part_ with his right, but he holds it in a different way; both more gloriously and more safely.... Those are not your subjects whom you _force_ to obey you, for it is _consent_ which makes a prince, but those are your true subjects who serve you voluntarily.... The duties between a prince and people are _mutual_. The people owe _you_ taxes, loyalty, and honour; you in your turn ought to be to the people a good and watchful prince. If you wish to levy taxes on your people as of right, take care that you first perform your part--first in the discharge of your duties pay _your_ taxes to them.’[592]

[Sidenote: Taxes should not oppress the poor.]

Proceeding from the general to the particular, there is a separate chapter, ‘De Vectigalibus et Exactionibus,’ remarkable for the clear expression of the views which More had advanced in his ‘Utopia,’ and which the Oxford Reformers held in common, with regard to the unchristian way in which the interests of the poor were too often sacrificed and lost sight of in the levying of taxes. The great aim of a prince, he contended, should be to reduce taxation as much as possible. Rather than increase it, it would be better, he wrote, for a prince to reduce his unnecessary expenditure, to dismiss idle ministers, to avoid wars and foreign enterprises, to restrain the rapacity of ministers, and rather to study the right administration of revenues than their augmentation. If it should be really necessary to exact something from the people, then, he maintained, it is the part of a good prince to choose such ways of doing so as should cause as little inconvenience as possible to those of _slender means_. It may perhaps be expedient to call upon the rich to be frugal; but to reduce the _poor_ to hunger and crime would be both most inhuman and also hardly _safe_.... It requires care also, he continued, lest the inequality of property should be too great. ‘Not that I would wish to take away any property from any one by force, but that means should be taken to prevent the wealth of the multitude from getting into few hands.’[593]

[Sidenote: Necessaries of life should not be taxed.]

[Sidenote: It is best to tax luxuries.]

Erasmus then proceeded to inquire what mode of taxation would prove least burdensome to the people. And the conclusion he came to was, that ‘a good prince will burden with as few taxes as possible such things as are in _common use amongst the lowest classes_, such things as corn, bread, beer, wine, clothes, and other things necessary to life. Whereas these are what are now most burdened, and that in more than one way; first by heavy taxes which are farmed out, and commonly called _assizes_; then by _customs_, which again are farmed out in the same way; lastly by _monopolies_, from which little revenue comes to the prince, while the poor are mulcted with great charges. Therefore it would be best, as I have said, that a prince should increase his revenue by contracting his expenditure; ... and if he cannot avoid taxing something, and the affairs of the people require it, let those foreign products be taxed which minister not so much to the necessities of life as to _luxury and pleasure, and which are used only by the rich_; as, for instance, fine linen, silk, purple, pepper, spices, ointments, gems, and whatever else is of that kind.’[594]

Erasmus wound up this chapter on taxation by applying the principles of common honesty to the question of _coinage_, in connection with which many iniquities were perpetrated by princes in the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: Honesty in regard to the coinage.]

‘Finally, in coining money a good prince will maintain that good faith which he owes to both God and man, ... in which matter there are four ways in which the people are wont to be plundered, as we saw some time ago after the death of Charles, when a long anarchy more hurtful than any tyranny afflicted your dominions. First the metal of the coins is deteriorated by mixture with alloys, next its weight is lessened, then it is diminished by clipping, and lastly its nominal value is increased or lowered whenever such a process would be likely to suit the exchequer of the prince.’[595]

In the chapter on the ‘_Making and Amending of Laws_,’[596] Erasmus in the same way fixes upon some of the points which are so prominently mentioned in the ‘Utopia.’

[Sidenote: Prevention of crime rather than punishment.]

Thus he urges that the greatest attention should be paid, not to the punishment of crimes when committed, but to the prevention of the commission of crimes worthy of punishment. Again, there is a paragraph in which it is urged that just as a wise surgeon does not proceed to amputation except as a last resort, so all remedies should be tried before _capital punishment_ is resorted to.[597] This was one of the points urged by More.

[Sidenote: The nobility.]

[Sidenote: War.]

Thus also in speaking of the removal of occasions and causes of crime, he urged, just as More had done, that idle people should either be set to work or banished from the realm. The number of priests and monasteries should be kept in moderation. Other idle classes--especially soldiers--should not be allowed. As to the nobility, he would not, he said, detract from the honour of their noble birth, if their character were noble also. ‘But if they are such as we see plenty nowadays, softened by ease, made effeminate by pleasure, unskilled in all good arts, revellers, eager sportsmen, not to say anything worse; ... why should this race of men be preferred to shoemakers or husbandmen?’[598] The next chapter is ‘_De Magistratibus et Officiis_,’ and then follows one, ‘_De Fœderibus_,’[599] in which Erasmus takes the same ground as that taken by More, that Christianity itself is a bond of union between Christian nations which ought to make leagues unnecessary.[600] In the chapter ‘_De Bello suscipiendo_,’ he expressed his well-known hatred of war. ‘A good prince,’ he said, ‘will never enter upon any war at all unless after trying all possible means it cannot be avoided. If we were of this mind, scarcely any wars would ever occur between any nations. Lastly, if so pestilential a thing cannot be avoided, it should be the next care of a prince that it should be waged with as little evil as possible to his people, and as little expense as possible of Christian blood, and as quickly as possible brought to an end.’ It was natural that, holding as he did in common with Colet and More such strong views against war, he should express them as strongly in this little treatise as he had already done elsewhere. It is not needful here to follow his remarks throughout. It would involve much repetition. But it may be interesting to inquire what remedy or substitutes for war be proposed. He mentioned two. First, the reference of disputes between princes to arbitrators; second, the disposition on the part of princes rather to concede a point in dispute than to insist upon it at far greater cost than the thing is worth.[601]

[Sidenote: Conclusion.]

He concludes this, the last chapter of the book, with a personal appeal to Prince Charles. ‘Christ founded a bloodless empire. He wished it always to be bloodless. He delighted to call himself the “Prince of _Peace_.” May He grant likewise that by _your_ good offices and by _your_ wisdom there may be a cessation at last from the maddest of wars. The remembrance of past evils will commend peace to our acceptance, and the calamities of former times redouble the honour of the benefits conferred by _you_!’

This was the ‘Institutio Principis Christiani’ of Erasmus; a work written, as I have said, while More was writing his ‘Utopia,’ but printed in August 1516, at Louvain, while Erasmus was in England, and while the manuscript of the ‘Utopia’ was lying unpublished, waiting for the completion of More’s Introduction.

V. MORE COMPLETES HIS ‘UTOPIA’--THE INTRODUCTORY BOOK (1516).

More’s Introduction was still unwritten, and the ‘Utopia’ thus in an unfinished state, when Erasmus arrived in England in the autumn of 1516. Erasmus seems on this occasion to have spent more time with Fisher at Rochester than with More in London; but he at least paid the latter a short visit on his way to Rochester,[602] and repeated it before leaving England. The latter visit seems also to have been more than a flying one, for we find him writing to Ammonius, that he might possibly stay a few days longer in England, were he not ‘afraid of making himself a stale guest to More’s wife.’[603] Encouraged as More doubtless was by Erasmus, and spurred on by the knowledge that the ‘Institutio Principis Christiani’ was already in the press, he still does not seem to have been able to find time to complete his manuscript before Erasmus left England. Probably, however, it was arranged between them that it should be completed and printed with as little delay as possible at the same press and in the same type and form as Erasmus’s work.

[Sidenote: ‘Utopia’ sent to the press.]

The manuscript was accordingly sent after Erasmus in October,[604] and by him and Peter Giles at once placed in the hands of Thierry Martins for publication at Louvain.[605]

This long delay in the completion of the ‘Utopia’ had been caused by a concurrence of circumstances. More had been closely occupied by public matters, in addition to his judicial duties in the city, and a large private practice at the bar--a combination of pressing engagements likely to leave him but little leisure for literary purposes. Even when the daily routine of public labours was completed, there were domestic duties which it was not in his nature to neglect. He was passionately fond of his home, and ‘reckoned the enjoyment of his family a necessary part of the business of the man who does not wish to be a stranger in his own house.’[606]

Nor did the ‘Utopia’ itself suffer from the delay in its publication. Instead of losing its freshness it gained in interest and point; for, as it happened, the introductory book was written under circumstances which gave it a peculiar value which it could not otherwise have had.

On More’s return to England from his foreign mission, he had been obliged to throw himself again into the vortex of public business. The singular discretion and ability displayed by him in the conduct of the delicate negotiations entrusted to his charge on this and another occasion, had induced Henry VIII. to try to attach him to his court.

[Sidenote: More declines to enter the Royal service.]

Hitherto he had acted more on behalf of the London merchants than directly for the King. Now Wolsey was ordered to retain him in the King’s service. More was unwilling, however, to accede to the proposal, and made excuses. Wolsey, thinking no doubt that he shrank from relinquishing the emoluments of his position as undersheriff, and the income arising from his practice at the bar, offered him a pension, and suggested that the King could not, consistently with his honour, offer him less than the income he would relinquish by entering his service.[607] More wrote to Erasmus that he had declined the pension, and thought he should continue to do so; he preferred, he said, his present judicial position to a higher one, and was afraid that were he to accept a pension without relinquishing it, his fellow-citizens would lose their confidence in his impartiality in case any questions were to arise, as they sometimes did, between them and the Crown. The fact that he was indebted to the King for his pension might make them think him a little the less true to their cause.[608] Wolsey reported More’s refusal to the King, who it seems honourably declined to press him further at present.[609] Such, however, was More’s popularity in the city, and the rising estimation in which he was held, that it was evident the King would not rest until he had drawn him into his service--yes, ‘_dragged_,’ exclaims Erasmus, ‘for no one ever tried harder to get admitted to court than he did to keep out of it.’[610]

[Sidenote: Writes the Introductory Book to explain his reasons.]

As the months of 1516 went by, More, feeling that his entry into Royal service was only a question of time, determined, it would seem, to take the opportunity, while as yet he was free and unfettered, to insert in the introduction to his unfinished ‘Utopia’ still more pointed allusion to one or two matters relating to the social condition of the country and the policy of Henry VIII.; also at the same time to make some public explanation of his reluctance to enter the service of his sovereign.

The prefatory book which More now added to his description of the commonwealth of Utopia was arranged so as to introduce the latter to the reader in a way likely to attract his interest, and to throw an air of reality over the romance.

[Sidenote: More’s imaginary story.]

[Sidenote: Meets Raphael.]

More related how he had been sent as an ambassador to Flanders in company with Tunstal, to compose some important disputes between Henry VIII. and Prince Charles. They met the Flemish ambassadors at Bruges. They had several meetings without coming to an agreement. While the others went back to Brussels to consult their prince, More went to Antwerp to see his friend Peter Giles. One day, coming from mass, he saw Giles talking to a stranger--a man past middle age, his face tanned, his beard long, his cloak hanging carelessly about him, and wearing altogether the aspect of a seafaring man.

More then related how he had joined in the conversation, which turned upon the manners and habits of the people of the new lands which Raphael (for that was the stranger’s name) had visited in voyages he had recently taken with Vespucci. After he had told them how well and wisely governed were some of these newly-found peoples, and especially the Utopians, and here and there had thrown in just criticisms on the defects of European governments, Giles asked the question, why, with all his knowledge and judgment, he did not enter into Royal service, in which his great experience might be turned to so good an account? Raphael expressed in reply his unwillingness to enter into Royal servitude. Giles explained that he did not mean any ‘_servitude_’ at all, but _honourable service_, in which he might confer great public benefits, as well as increase his own happiness. The other replied that he did not see how he was to be made happier by doing what would be so entirely against his inclinations. Now he was free to do as he liked, and he suspected very few courtiers could say the same.

[Sidenote: Why Raphael will not enter into Royal service.]

Here More put in a word, and urged that even though it might be against the grain to Raphael, he ought not to throw away the great influence for good which he might exert by entering the council of some great prince. Raphael replied that his friend More was doubly mistaken. His talents were not so great as he supposed, and if they were, his sacrifice of rest and peace would be thrown away. It would do no good, for nearly all princes busy themselves far more in military affairs (of which, he said, he neither had, nor wished to have, any experience), than in the good arts of peace. They care a great deal more how, by fair means or foul, to acquire new kingdoms, than how to govern well those which they have already. Besides, their ministers either are, or think that they are, too wise to listen to any new counsellor; and, if they ever do so, it is only to attach to their own interest some one whom they see to be rising in their prince’s favour.

[Sidenote: Raphael on the number of thieves in England.]

After this, Raphael having made a remark which showed that he had been in England, the conversation turned incidentally upon _English_ affairs, and Raphael proceeded to tell how once at the table of Cardinal Morton he had expressed his opinions freely upon the social evils of England. He had on this occasion, he said, ventured to condemn the system of the wholesale execution of thieves, who were hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on a gibbet.[611] The severity was both unjustly great, and also ineffectual. No punishment, however severe, could deter those from robbing who can find no other means of livelihood.

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

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

2nd. The gentry who live at ease out of the labour of others, keep around them so great a number of idle fellows not brought up to any trade, that often, from the death of their lord or their own illness, numbers of these idle fellows are liable to be thrown upon the world without resources, to steal or starve. Raphael then is made to ridicule the notion that it is needful to maintain this idle class, as some argue, in order to keep up a reserve of men ready for the army, and still more severely to criticise the notion that it is necessary to keep a standing army in time of peace. France, he said, had found to her cost the evil of keeping in readiness these human wild beasts, as also had Rome, Carthage, and Syria, in ancient times.

[Sidenote: Raphael on the rage for pasture-farming.]

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

[Sidenote: On beer-houses, &c.]

‘Add to these causes the increasing luxury and extravagance of the upper classes, and indeed of all classes--the tippling houses, taverns, brothels, and other dens of iniquity, wine and beer houses, and places for gambling. Do not all these, after rapidly exhausting the resources of their devotees, educate them for crime?

[Sidenote: Practical remedies suggested.]

‘Let these pernicious plagues be rooted out. Enact that those who destroy agricultural hamlets or towns should rebuild them, or give them up to those who will do so. Restrain these engrossings of the rich, and the license of exercising what is in fact a monopoly. Let fewer persons be bred up in idleness. Let tillage farming be restored. Let the woollen manufacture be introduced, so that honest employment may be found for those whom want has already made into thieves, or who, being now vagabonds or idle retainers, will become thieves ere long. Surely if you do not remedy these evils, your rigorous execution of justice in punishing thieves will be in vain, which indeed is more specious than either just or efficacious. For verily if you allow your people to be badly educated, their morals corrupted from childhood, and then, when they are men, punish them for the very crimes to which they have been trained from childhood, what is this, I ask, but first to make the thieves and then to punish them?’[612]

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

[Sidenote: More’s connection with Henry VIII.]

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

Raphael, in his reply, puts the supposition that the councillors were proposing schemes of international intrigue, with a view to the furtherance of the King’s desires for the ultimate extension of his empire:--

[Sidenote: Evident reference to English politics and More’s position.]

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

And further: what if the question of ways and means were discussed for the supply of the royal exchequer, and one were to propose tampering with the currency; a second, the pretence of imminent war to justify war taxes, and the proclamation of peace as soon as these were collected; a third, the exaction of penalties under antiquated and obsolete laws which have long been forgotten, and thus are often transgressed; a fourth, the prohibition under great penalties of such things as are against public interest, and then the granting of dispensations and licenses for large sums of money; a fifth, the securing of the judges on the side of the royal prerogative;--‘What if here again I were to rise’ [Raphael is made to say] ‘and contend that all these counsels were dishonest and pernicious, that not only the king’s honour, but also his safety, rests more upon his people’s wealth than upon his own, who (I might go on to show) choose a king for their own sake and not for his, viz. that by his care and labour they might live happily and secure from danger; ... that if a king should fall into such contempt or hatred of his people that he cannot secure their loyalty without resort to threats, exactions, and confiscations, and his people’s impoverishment, he had better abdicate his throne, rather than attempt by these means to retain the name without the glory of empire?... What if I were to advise him to put aside his sloth and his pride, ... that he should live on his own revenue, that he should accommodate his expenditure to his income, that he should restrain crime, and by good laws prevent it, rather than allow it to increase and then punish it, that he should repeal obsolete laws instead of attempting to exact their penalties?... If I were to make such suggestions as these to men strongly inclined to contrary views, would it not be telling idle tales to the deaf?’[613]

Thus was Raphael made to use words which must have been understood by Henry VIII. himself, when he read them, as intended to convey to a great extent More’s own reasons for declining to accept the offer which Wolsey had been commissioned to make to him.

The introductory story was then brought to a close by the conversation being made again to turn upon the laws and customs of the Utopians, the detailed particulars of which, at the urgent request of Giles and More, Raphael agreed to give after the three had dined together. A woodcut in the Basle edition, probably executed by Holbein, represents them sitting on a bench in the garden behind the house, under the shade of the trees, listening to Raphael’s discourse, of which the second book of the ‘Utopia’ proposed to give, as nearly as might be, a verbatim report.

[Sidenote: _Utopia_ published at Louvain.]

With this bold and honest introduction the ‘Utopia’ was published at Louvain by Thierry Martins, with a woodcut prefixed, representing the island of Utopia, and with an imaginary specimen of the Utopian language and characters. It was in the hands of the public by the beginning of the new year.[614]

Such was the remarkable political romance, which, from its literary interest and merit, has been translated into almost every modern language--a work which, viewed in its close relations to the history of the times in which it was written, and the personal circumstances of its author when he wrote it, derives still greater interest and importance, inasmuch as it not only discloses the visions of hope and progress floating before the eyes of the Oxford Reformers, but also embodies, as I think I have been able to show, perhaps one of the boldest declarations of a political creed ever uttered by an English statesman on the eve of his entry into a king’s service.[615]