UTOPIA by SIR THOMAS MORE

BOOK II: OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES

THEY do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that are
taken in battle; nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those of
other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are
condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime,
or, which is more common, such as their merchants find condemned
to die in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes
redeem at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing.
They are kept at perpetual labor, and are always chained, but with
this difference, that their own natives are treated much worse
than others; they are considered as more profligate than the rest,
and since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so
excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another
sort of slaves are the poor of the neighboring countries, who
offer of their own accord to come and serve them; they treat these
better, and use them in all other respects as well as their own
countrymen, except their imposing more labor upon them, which is
no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and if any
of these have a mind to go back to their own country, which indeed
falls out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay, so they
do not send them away empty-handed.

I have already told you with what care they look after their sick,
so that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their
ease or health: and for those who are taken with fixed and
incurable diseases, they use all possible ways to cherish them,
and to make their lives as comfortable as possible. They visit
them often, and take great pains to make their time pass off
easily: but when any is taken with a torturing and lingering pain,
so that there is no hope, either of recovery or ease, the priests
and magistrates come and exhort them, that since they are now
unable to go on with the business of life, are become a burden to
themselves and to all about them, and they have really outlived
themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper,
but choose rather to die, since they cannot live but in much
misery: being assured, that if they thus deliver themselves from
torture, or are willing that others should do it, they shall be
happy after death. Since by their acting thus, they lose none of
the pleasures but only the troubles of life, they think they
behave not only reasonably, but in a manner consistent with
religion and piety; because they follow the advice given them by
their priests, who are the expounders of the will of God. Such as
are wrought on by these persuasions, either starve themselves of
their own accord, or take opium, and by that means die without
pain. But no man is forced on this way of ending his life; and if
they cannot be persuaded to it, this does not induce them to fail
in their attendance and care of them; but as they believe that a
voluntary death, when it is chosen upon such an authority, is very
honorable, so if any man takes away his own life without the
approbation of the priests and the Senate, they give him none of
the honors of a decent funeral, but throw his body into a ditch.

Their women are not married before eighteen, nor their men before
two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces
before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of
marriage is denied them, unless they can obtain a special warrant
from the Prince. Such disorders cast a great reproach upon the
master and mistress of the family in which they happen, for it is
supposed that they have failed in their duty. The reason of
punishing this so severely is, because they think that if they
were not strictly restrained from all vagrant appetites, very few
would engage in a state in which they venture the quiet of their
whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are obliged to
endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied.

In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us
very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among
them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before
marriage some grave matron presents the bride naked, whether she
is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom; and after that some
grave man presents the bridegroom naked to the bride. We indeed
both laughed at this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they,
on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other
nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are
so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off
both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no
secret ulcer hid under any of them; and that yet in the choice of
a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest
of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a
hand's-breadth of the face, all the rest of the body being
covered, under which there may lie hid what may be contagious as
well as loathsome. All men are not so wise as to choose a woman
only for her good qualities; and even wise men consider the body
as that which adds not a little to the mind: and it is certain
there may be some such deformity covered with the clothes as may
totally alienate a man from his wife when it is too late to part
from her. If such a thing is discovered after marriage, a man has
no remedy but patience. They therefore think it is reasonable that
there should be good provision made against such mischievous
frauds.

There was so much the more reason for them to make a regulation in
this matter, because they are the only people of those parts that
neither allow of polygamy nor of divorces, except in the case of
adultery or insufferable perverseness; for in these cases the
Senate dissolves the marriage, and grants the injured person leave
to marry again; but the guilty are made infamous, and are never
allowed the privilege of a second marriage. None are suffered to
put away their wives against their wills, from any great calamity
that may have fallen on their persons; for they look on it as the
height of cruelty and treachery to abandon either of the married
persons when they need most the tender care of their comfort, and
that chiefly in the case of old age, which as it carries many
diseases along with it, so it is a disease of itself. But it
frequently falls out that when a married couple do not well agree,
they by mutual consent separate, and find out other persons with
whom they hope they may live more happily. Yet this is not done
without obtaining leave of the Senate, which never admits of a
divorce but upon a strict inquiry made, both by the Senators and
their wives, into the grounds upon which it is desired; and even
when they are satisfied concerning the reasons of it, they go on
but slowly, for they imagine that too great easiness in granting
leave for new marriages would very much shake the kindness of
married people. They punish severely those that defile the
marriage-bed. If both parties are married they are divorced, and
the injured persons may marry one another, or whom they please;
but the adulterer and the adulteress are condemned to slavery. Yet
if either of the injured persons cannot shake off the love of the
married person, they may live with them still in that state, but
they must follow them to that labor to which the slaves are
condemned; and sometimes the repentance of the condemned, together
with the unshaken kindness of the innocent and injured person, has
prevailed so far with the Prince that he has taken off the
sentence; but those that relapse after they are once pardoned are
punished with death.

Their law does not determine the punishment for other crimes; but
that is left to the Senate, to temper it according to the
circumstances of the fact. Husbands have power to correct their
wives, and parents to chastise their children, unless the fault is
so great that a public punishment is thought necessary for
striking terror into others. For the most part, slavery is the
punishment even of the greatest crimes; for as that is no less
terrible to the criminals themselves than death, so they think the
preserving them in a state of servitude is more for the interest
of the commonwealth than killing them; since as their labor is a
greater benefit to the public than their death could be, so the
sight of their misery is a more lasting terror to other men than
that which would be given by their death. If their slaves rebel,
and will not bear their yoke and submit to the labor that is
enjoined them, they are treated as wild beasts that cannot be kept
in order, neither by a prison nor by their chains, and are at last
put to death. But those who bear their punishment patiently, and
are so much wrought on by that pressure that lies so hard on them
that it appears they are really more troubled for the crimes they
have committed than for the miseries they suffer, are not out of
hope but that at last either the Prince will, by his prerogative,
or the people by their intercession, restore them again to their
liberty, or at least very much mitigate their slavery. He that
tempts a married woman to adultery is no less severely punished
than he that commits it; for they believe that a deliberate design
to commit a crime is equal to the fact itself: since its not
taking effect does not make the person that miscarried in his
attempt at all the less guilty.

They take great pleasure in fools, and as it is thought a base and
unbecoming thing to use them ill, so they do not think it amiss
for people to divert themselves with their folly: and, in their
opinion, this is a great advantage to the fools themselves: for if
men were so sullen and severe as not at all to please themselves
with their ridiculous behavior and foolish sayings, which is all
that they can do to recommend themselves to others, it could not
be expected that they would be so well provided for, nor so
tenderly used as they must otherwise be. If any man should
reproach another for his being misshaped or imperfect in any part
of his body, it would not at all be thought a reflection on the
person so treated, but it would be accounted scandalous in him
that had upbraided another with what he could not help. It is
thought a sign of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve
carefully one's natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among
them to use paint. They all see that no beauty recommends a wife
so much to her husband as the probity of her life, and her
obedience: for as some few are caught and held only by beauty, so
all are attracted by the other excellences which charm all the
world.

As they fright men from committing crimes by punishments, so they
invite them to the love of virtue by public honors: therefore they
erect statues to the memories of such worthy men as have deserved
well of their country, and set these in their market-places, both
to perpetuate the remembrance of their actions, and to be an
incitement to their posterity to follow their example.

If any man aspires to any office, he is sure never to compass it:
they all live easily together, for none of the magistrates are
either insolent or cruel to the people: they affect rather to be
called fathers, and by being really so, they well deserve the
name; and the people pay them all the marks of honor the more
freely, because none are exacted from them. The Prince himself has
no distinction, either of garments or of a crown; but is only
distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the high-
priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a
wax light.

They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they
need not many. They 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 as
not to be read and 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 and to wrest
the laws; and therefore they think it is much better that every
man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in
other places the client trusts 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 the cause,
without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the
judge 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 labor 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 plainest 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 ought to be put upon them; since a more
refined exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would only
serve to make the laws become useless to the greater part of
mankind, and especially to those who need most the direction of
them: for it is all one, not to make a law at all, or to couch it
in such terms that without a quick apprehension, and much study, a
man cannot find out the true meaning of it; since the generality
of mankind are both so dull and so much employed in their several
trades that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity
requisite for such an inquiry.

Some of their neighbors, who are masters of their own liberties,
having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the
yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which
they observe among them, have come to desire that they would send
magistrates to govern them; some changing them every year, and
others every five years. At the end of their government they bring
them back to Utopia, with great expressions of honor 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 bias;
for wealth is of no use to them, since they must so soon go 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 public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice or
partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice,
the chief sinew of society.

The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from
them, neighbors; but those to whom they have been of more
particular service, friends. And as all other nations are
perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never
enter into an alliance with any State. They think leagues are
useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do
not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great
effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what 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 the reverence 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 distinguished by the
title of the "faithful" should not religiously keep the faith of
their treaties. But in that newfound world, which is not more
distant from us in situation than the people are in their manners
and course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though
they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on
the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some
slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which
are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never
be so strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to
escape at; and thus they break both their leagues and their faith.
And this is done with such impudence, that those very men who
value themselves on having suggested these expedients to their
princes, would 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.

By this means it is, that all sorts of justice passes in the world
for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of
royal greatness. Or at least, there are set up two sorts of
justice; the one is mean, and creeps on the ground, and therefore
becomes none but the lower part of mankind, 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 virtue of
princes, which as it is more majestic than that which becomes the
rabble, so takes a freer compass; and thus lawful and unlawful are
only measured by pleasure and interest. These practices of the
princes that lie about Utopia, 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 though 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 tie
of nature uniting one nation to another, only separated perhaps by
a mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of
hostility, and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their
neighbors against which there is no provision made by treaties;
and that when treaties are made, they do not cut off the enmity,
or restrain the license of preying upon each other, if by the
unskilfulness of wording them there are not effectual provisos
made against them. They, on the other hand, judge that no man is
to be esteemed our enemy that has never injured us; and that the
partnership of the human nature is instead of a league. And that
kindness and good-nature unite men more effectually and with
greater strength than any agreements whatsoever; since thereby the
engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and
obligation of words.


1901. New York: Ideal Commonwealths. P.F. Collier & Son. The
Colonial Press. This book is in the public domain, released
July 1993 by the Internet Wiretap. Prepared by Kirk Crady
(kcrady@polaris.cv.nrao.edu) from scanner output provided by
Internet Wiretap.

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