Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More: or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of
Society, 1829
(The debate between Robert Southey (1774-1843), the poet laureate, and the Liberal
historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) is still often cited in the literature on
the industrial revolution. In a two-volume work, Montesinos encounters Thomas More,
the author of the famous 16th C. essay Utopia, while walking in the Lake District.
Through a series of conversations between Montesinos and Thomas More, Southey
argued that the material, moral, and cultural conditions of the peoples of Britain were
better in the time of Sir Thomas More--not just better in More's Utopia--than in
contemporary Britain and that the prospects for Britain's future were darkened by
industrial progress. Southey’s work has been seen as the classic pessimistic judgement on
the impact of industrialzation on society while Macaulay’s essay of 1830, "Southey's
Colloquies," became the classical liberal defense of the coming of industrial society and
the utilitarian ideology that accompanied it. Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More: or
Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, London: John Murray, 1829, vol. I,
pp. 39-51, 108-115; vol. II, pp. 242-65.)
Vol. I
COLLOQUY III.
THE DRUIDICAL STONES. - VISITATIONS OF PESTILENCE.
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 any thing 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.
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 upon 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.
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,
On the green turf and under the blue sky,
Their beads in reverence bare, and bare of foot.
The site also precisely accords with the description which Edward
Williams and William Owen give of the situation required for such meeting
places:
-------------------------------a high hill top,
Nor bowered with trees, nor broken by the plough:
Remote from human dwellings and the stir
Of human life, and open to the breath
And to the eye of Heaven.
The high hill is now inclosed 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 inclosure 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.
The spot itself is the most commanding which could be chosen in this part of the
country, without climbing a mountain. Derwent-water and the Vale of Keswick are not
seen from it, only the mountains which inclose them on the south and west. Lattrigg and,
the huge side of Skiddaw are on the north; to the east is the open country toward Penrith,
expanding from the Vale of St. John's, and extending for many miles, with Mell-fell 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 Helvellin, from its
termination at Wanthwaite Crags to its loftiest summits, and to Dunmailrais. The lower
range of Nathdale-fells lies nearer, in a parallel line with Helvellin; and the dale itself,
with its little, streamlet immediately below. The heights above Leatheswater, with the
Borrowdale mountains complete the panorama.
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. I am come, said he, 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.
My ghostly friend, I replied, 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.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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 civilization, others have
been retrograde; and that even where improvement appears the greatest, it s 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 Caesar set foot upon the island?
MONTESINOS.
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 every thing 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.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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,. -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 uninclosed, 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!
MONTESINOS.
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. Toward any person it
is injudicious and offensive; toward 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 visitation-, of war, pestilence, and
famine, by which these kingdoms were so frequently afflicted of old.
The countenance of my companion changed upon this, to an expression of judicial
severity which struck me with awe. Exempted from these visitations! he exclaimed;
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?
I was silent.
My friend, he resumed, in a milder tone, but with a melancholy manner, 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'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's General
might have been in great part realized, 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,... if your soil is every
where sown with the dragon's teeth, and the fatal crop be at this hour ready to spring
up,..the impending evil will be an hundred fold 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!
May God avert this also! I exclaimed.
As for famine, he pursued, that curse will always follow 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 every where. 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?
MONTESINOS.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
I denounce no judgements. 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 intreats
God to deliver you from all 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.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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 civilization 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 civilization. Old Thomas Tusser's coarse
remedy is the only one which legislators have yet thought of applying!
MONTESINOS
What remedy is that?
SIR THOMAS MORE.
'T was the husbandman's practice in his days and mine:
Where plots full of nettles annoyeth the eye,
Sow hempseed among them, and nettles will die.
MONTESINOS
The use of hemp instead 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.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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.
MONTESINOS.
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.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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 cast-aways 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.
MONTESINOS.
The practicability of forming such a system of prevention may easily be allowed,
where, as in Paraguay, institutions are foreplanned, and not, as everywhere in Europe, the
slow and varying growth: of circumstance. But to introduce it into an old society, hic
labor, hoc opus est! 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!
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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 slightest 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!
MONTESINOS.
Some shocking examples occurred to me. The one of a poor Savoyard boy with
his monkey starved to death in St. James's Park. The other, which is, if that be possible, a
still more disgraceful case, is recorded incidentally in Rees's Cyclopaedia under the word
Monster. It is only in a huge overgrown city that such cases could possibly occur.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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.
MONTESINOS.
That is because bees and ants act under the guidance of unerring instinct.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
As if instinct were a superior faculty to reason! But the statesman, as well as the
sluggard, may be told to "go to the ant and the bee, consider their ways and be wise!" It is
for reason to observe and profit by the examples which instinct affords it.
MONTESINOS
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.
SIR TROMAS MORE.
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 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 bellum servile, 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's, and Pimlico alone, but all the lanes and alleys and cellars of
the metropolis would pour out; ....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!
MONTESINOS.
Such an insane rebellion would speedily be crushed.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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!
MONTESINOS.
Is such an event to be apprehended?
SIR THOMAS MORE.
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.
Vol. II
SIR THOMAS MORE.
And which, Montesinos, would, in your eyes, be the more melancholy object of
contemplation,….the manufactory, or the convent?
MONTESINOS.
There are times and places in which each may be regarded with complacency, as
contributing, to the progress of the community, and to the welfare of the human race.
There are times and places also in which they may each tend to retard that progress and
counteract that welfare. The spirit of trade has raised this nation to its present point of
power, and made it what it is, the riches which have thus been created being as it were
the dung and dross with which the garden of civilization is manured, and without which
the finest flowers and fruits of cultivated society could not be produced. Had it not been
for the spirit of trade, and the impulse which the steam-engine had just then given to the
manufacturing system, Great Britain could neither have found means nor men for the
recent war, in which not only her vital interests, but those of the whole of Europe, were at
stake. This good is paramount to all other considerations. Men act as they deem best for
their own interest, with more or less selfishness, but always, upon the great scale, having,
that object in view; and national wealth is produced by the enterprize and cupidity of
individuals. Governments also pursue their systems, more or less erroneously, (not
without grievous errors, Heaven knows, even in those which act and which mean the
best!) and the Providence which is over all, directs all to its own beneficent purposes.
SIR THOMAS MORE
You have remarked that wars may probably be rendered less frequent by the
increased means of destruction with which modern science is arming the destroyer man.
May not the manufacturing system be, in like manner, tending to work out, by means of
the very excess to which it is carried, a remedy for the evils which it has brought with it?
MONTESINOS.
The steam-engine alone, without war, and without that increased taxation which
war has rendered necessary, would have produced all the distress which our
manufacturing population has experienced, and is likely again and again to experience.
Johnson once said he wondered how a man should see far to the right who saw but a little
way to the left;.. reverse the terms, and there will then appear no cause for wonder. Men
see far to the left, and to the left only, when they have been trained to look only in that
direction, .. never to the right, and never straight forward. This moral and intellectual
obliquity of vision is but too easily produced. But in more direct reply to your question,..
that remedial process may be, and I would fain hope is, going on,
Whereby disease grows cure unto diseases...
A wisdom proper to humanity. -Lord Brooke.
There are two ways in which it may work. Other nations may compete with us, and our
foreign trade in consequence may gradually decline. Something, of this is already
perceptible. The French are said to manufacture* (So it was stated in a newspaper of
1827) about as much cotton now, as was manufactured in this country fourteen years
ago. We now send abroad the thread, where we used at that time to export the
manufactured article. The Americans also are endeavouring to supply their own
consumption; they have this at heart, and there are no people who pursue what they think
their advantage with more sagacity, nor with more determined eagerness and
perseverance. An American, when he speaks colloquially of power means nothing but a
steam-engine. We can neither keep our machinery nor our workmen to ourselves.:.to
attempt it is, indeed, in the one case impolitic; in the other oppressive; in both unavailing.
And wherever they go, and opportunity invites, enough of British capital to set them in
activity will follow. No sense of patriotism will check this; no laws can prevent it; the
facility of transferring capital being such, that Mammon in these days, like the Cupid of
the poem,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
This would be the euthanasy of the system, a gradual and easy decay without a shock;
and, perhaps,.. were time allowed,.. we might then hope for a palingenesia, a restoration
of national sanity and strength, a second birth perhaps, I Say,…and were time allowed,..
for I say this doubtfully, and that ghostly shake of the head with which it is received does
not lessen the melancholy distrust wherewith it is expressed.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
O Montesinos! the Mammon of unrighteousness hath made "the heart of this people fat,
and hath made their cars heavy, and hath shut their eyes!" (Isaiah, vi. 10, 11) Pray you to
the All-Merciful that this spirit continue not to possess the nation, until "the cities be
wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly
desolate:”.. or worse than desolate! That part of the Prophet's commination is come to
pass among you which denounces that “the child shall behave himself proudly against the
ancient, and the base against the honourable;" (Isaiah, iv, 10) and that also which saith
that "the people shall be oppressed,".. not by their rulers, . . but "every one by another,
and every one by his neighbour." Was there ever a people among whom age was treated
with so little reverence,..by whom honour was so little rendered where honour is due,..
and among whom (which is more immediately to our present topic) the desire of gain had
so eaten into the core of the nation? Too truly must it be said that every man oppresses
his neighbour, or is struggling to oppress him. The landlord racks his tenant; the farmer
grinds the labourer. Throughout the trading part of the community every one endeavours
to purchase at the lowest price, and sell at the highest regardless of equity in either case.
Bad as the feudal times were, they were less injurious than these commercial ones to the
kindly and generous feelings of human nature, and far, far more favourable to the
principles of honour and integrity.
MONTESINOS.
There, Sir Thomas, you touch upon the second cause which is likely, in a less
degree perhaps, but in a worse manner, to affect the commercial prosperity of Great
Britain. In the competition of trade one ill principle sometimes counteracts another, and
yet both being ill, work for ill, though an incidental good may be occasioned. The
tradesman is not more desirous to obtain a high price from what in your days were called
his chapmen, than he is to undersell his fellow dealers. The point of emulation between
rival manufacturers, is not so much who shall send forth the best goods, but who the
cheapest : flimsy articles are thus manufactured for rapid sale, and for the foreign market.
Formerly their aim was to produce substantial goods, which should wear well, and with
which the purchaser should have reason to be satisfied; now it is how to make the largest
quantity with the smallest expenditure of materials.
SIR THOMAS MORE
But this is no new thing under the sun. Honesty, "the (Charron) health of the soul," was
in just as sickly a state among the same class of men in my days, when clothmakers
became poticaries, and thickened with flock-powder the web which they had stretched
till its sinews cracked. This was done by the professors of godliness!
MONTESINOS.
Dum vivo, thrivo, was the motto for Ignoramus's arms, when Ignoramus was
caricatured as a commonwealth's-man and a puritan. In those ages, no doubt, as in this,
such professors might read that covetousness is the root of all evil, and assent to what
they read, knowing at the same time that it was the root also of (Hobbes’ Behemoth)
their estate, and acting upon that knowledge. The sin as it related to the offending
individuals was the same then as now, and falls under the same denunciation,..(Jeremiah,
xxiii, 13) "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers
by wrong!" but it was at that time confined to a narrow scale and within a narrow sphere,
and neither affected the national interests, nor the national character, as both are in
danger of being affected now. The goods of other,..alas! that I must add honester,..
countries are obtaining a preference in foreign markets, because they can be trusted: it is
no longer A sufficient warrantry for ours to say that they are English. Ought I to repeat
what has publicly been stated, . . or should I seek rather in shame to conceal the shameful
fact, that the class of men who have thus injured the credit and disparaged the name of
their country, have committed the further villainy of setting upon their goods a forged
foreign mark, and procuring, under this false pretence, a sale for them in markets where
they would otherwise have been unsaleable, because of their known inferiority! It is not
very long since one of the petty African kings said, he would send his son to England,
that he might learn " to read book and be rogue." This negro had formed no incorrect
opinion of the civilization which he had seen, and of the education which is given in the
school of trade.
Johnson has remarked, that he had found men worse in commercial dealings,
more disposed to take a dishonourable and dishonest advantage of each other, than he
had any notion of, before he learnt from observation the melancholy fact; but he adds,
that he had also found them more disposed to do one another good than he had expected.
And this, I believe, is true; men are benevolent when they are not selfish: but while gain
is the great object of pursuit, selfishness must ever be the uppermost feeling. I cannot
dissemble from myself that it is the principle of our social system, and that it is awfully
opposed to the spirit of Christianity.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
Have you never been led to apprehend that freedom of trade, like freedom of the
press, may require restrictions ; and that the evils occasioned by its abuse, may sooner or
later render necessary a degree of wholesome restraint, which may well exist without
vexatious interference ?
MONTESINOS
The evil of vexatious interference is so great, that I have been afraid to pursue that
thought when it has risen in my mind. Certainly, I have suspected, that in this as in some
other things of equal, or indeed greater importance, our ancestors were wiser in their
generation then the men of these days; and that when trade is conducted by corporate
bodies, the check upon fraud may more than compensate for any inconveniences arising
from want of competition. There is too much competition in this country. Cheap shops
ruin the fair trader. Goods are bought at the sale of a bankrupt's stock, the bankruptcy
having, perhaps, been fraudulent, or at least occasioned by an improvidence differing
from dishonesty, rather in name than in nature. These goods for which the manufacturer
receives a few shillings, or more probably a few pence, in the pound from the bankrupt's
estate, are purchased at so low a rate that they can be retailed far below the cost price, and
yet leave a large profit to the speculator; and at that low rate he sells them, in order to
tempt customers, and undersell the upright dealer who has paid the just price for his
wares. The saving which is thus afforded to the consumer, is but a paltry advantage
compared to the injury with which what was formerly the settled system of fair trade is
hereby affected. In this process which is continually going on, the manufacturers are, in
the first instance, the injured party. But they also are chargeable with having interloped to
the detriment of the shopkeeper. Lest their mills should stand still, and partly, it may be
believed, from an unwillingness to turn out of employ hands which can find no other
employment (for this redeeming motive acts to a considerable extent) they manufacture
more than there is any demand for, or than can find vent through the usual channel: these
surplus goods, for the sake of ready money, are hawked* about the country by their
agents, at low prices; the low price which is all that can be looked for from persons who
buy, not because they want the article, but because they are tempted by the undervalue at
which it is offered, leads in its consequence to a deterioration of the goods: they have
been sold below their proper price, because too much had been manufactured, and then
they must be deteriorated in quality, because they are to be sold cheap; and the consumer
finds at last that he has purchased dearly. There is evil in every step of this transaction,
and the worst is the great injury which is done to the frugal fair-dealing shopkeeper. And
now too, tradesmen who carry on business in large towns upon a great scale, follow the
example of the manufacturers, and employ travellers in like manner to solicit orders from
private families. "Live and let live," is no longer the maxim in this greedy nation. Under
this system the little shopkeepers are disappearing, as the small farmers disappeared
when the devouring principle of trade was applied to agriculture upon the great scale; . .
and yet what class of persons can so ill be spared as that wherein the habit of well
regulated and hopeful frugality is most surely to be found; that where there is comfort
and contentment enough to render persons happy in their station, and yet a prospect
withal of improving it for their own old age, and for their children after them?
* A certain John Egleton, in a letter to an M. P. written in 1702, advises that hawkers,
pedlars, and petty chapmen," should be prohibited from travelling and trading up and
down the nation; because they impoverished most of the corporations and market towns
in England by depriving them of their trade; they encouraged the debasing of our
manufactures by readily buying all sorts of ware, defective in length breadth and
goodness; and they were the great vendors of smuggled goods-, and they neither pay
taxes, scot or lot, in any settled place." -Scott's Somer's Tracts, xi. 617.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
If in the progress of your cultivation these feeders are cut off, be sure the stream of
national prosperity will fall! There are evil states of society in which the very nature of
the evil is to prolong, or as you would say, to perpetuate itself,. . and under this curse, the
awful but the righteous and predicted punishment of their sins, whole nations are existing
at this hour. But that cannot be a durable state of things, in which the increase of riches in
a few, occasions an increase of poverty in the many. National wealth is wholesome only
when It Is equitably diffused.
MONTESINOSThe more the children of Mammon possess
the more they are desirous of possessing,
Leur convoitise magnifique
Jamais ne se peut assouvir’.
Jan Antoine de Baif
nor is the epithet, which the old poet applies to such covetousness, too dignified, for the
passion seems in these days to have borrowed something of the grandeur of ambition.
And yet John Bunyan, whom, methinks, with a truer aptitude of discrepant terms,.I may
call the noble tinker, suggests a better illustration; the larger the heap which his poor
muckworm. has scraped together, the more eagefly he continues to rake.
Wealth is the Conjurer's devil,
Whom when he thinks he hath, the Devil hath him.
Herbert.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
It is not to the mere spirit of trade that this must be imputed. When my munificent old
friend John Colet endowed his school at St. Paul's, he left it in perpetual trust not to the
bishops, nor the chapter, nor the great men of the state, but to married citizens of the
Mercers' Company; …to married men, because they, he thought, as fathers of families,
would feel a proper interest in what was designed for the benefit of children; and to
tradesmen because, he said,* he had found less corruption among men of that station than
in any other class. Do not, then, look upon this evil as arising from the very nature of
commerce, for there is no profession which more truly may deserve to be called liberal,
when carried on by a just and honourable man. If it be now characterized by more of
speculation and less of probity than in former times, it is because it is affected by what is
now an epidemic malady in this land. There is at this time a diseased activity in the
middle and higher classes; a feverish excitement, increased by the pressure of taxation,
but far more by the prevailing fashion of an ostentatious and emulous expenditure,.. a
symptom which hath ever preceded the decay of states. As the greedy spirit of trade has
destroyed the small farmers, and is in like manner destroying the small tradesmen, so has
the class of inferior. gentry almost disappeared under the operation of, the distempered.
activity generated and fomented by these causes. I remember some homely, lines in the
Shepherd's Kalendar of my days,..
And in especial, God to please;
Desire thou. never none other man’s thing;
Remember.that many fingers are well at ease
That never wear no gold ring.
------------------*Reditibus totique ncgotio praefecit non sacerdotes, non episcopum aut capitulum ut
vacant, non magnates, sed cives aliquot conjugatos, probatae famae. Roganti causam ait,
nihil quident esse certi in rebus humanis, sed tamen in his se minimum invenire
carruptelae--Erasm. Ep. L. 15. Ep. 14. Jod. Jonae.
MONTESINOS
So I once told a lady whose white hand would have been more pleasing in my eyes
without such trinketry, when her fingers, being swoln with cold on a sharp winter's day,
tightened round the rings with which.they were studded, and made her understand
feelingly the sort of pain produced by a thumb-screw.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
The rude verses of that old moralizer are hardly more obsolete than the morality which
they inculcate. Few, indeed, of those who possess the means of happiness, know how
to use the means with which they are entrusted, because they know not in what the
true happiness of an intellectual and immortal creature, made in the image of his
Creator, consists. They involve themselves in the pursuits of the world, which are its
serious follies, when they have outgrown its lighter and more venial ones; and ceasing
to be the slaves of frivolity, they .become the slaves of business, instead of living to
themselves, and their families, and, their neighbours, and their God.
MONTESINOS.
But. they call this living to their country; and think that in so doing they make no little
sacrifice to their duty, and to the service of the state.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
I am not speaking of what is called political life, though the remark bears upon it
more forcibly than upon any other calling, because all who enter upon that course must
be supposed to be influenced by choice, not by necessity, . . being possessed of wealth,
either hereditary or acquired, in ample sufficiency for the comforts and refinement of the
society wherein they are placed. My words had a wider meaning. How few among you
are those who know how to use or to appreciate the blessings of competence and leisure!
MONTESINOS.
Leisure, indeed, there are not many who know how to enjoy; time seems hardly to pass at
a wearier pace with the miserable, than: with the listless and the idle; and with regard to
competence,.. Fortuna multis nimium dat, satis nulli:. …competence has been well
defined as meaning, in every one's acceptation, a little more than he himself happens to
possess.
Nul n’est content de sa fortune,
Ni me’content de son esprit.
Me. Des Houlieres.
But political events have, even within reach of my remembrance, made so great a change
in the circumstances and constitution of our little world, that what in this respect was
prudence and true wisdom half a century ago, might now justly be condemned as
improvidence. More cases than one have occurred, within my own knowledge, of persons
who wound up their commercial concerns, and retired from business with what appeared
to their modest views a fortune equal to their wishes, and far above their wants; it was so
at the time; but in the, course of twenty years the value of money was so greatly
diminished, and the whole expenditure of every household unavoidably and
proportionately so increased, that they found themselves straitened in their old age, and
had the grief of knowing that the children, for whom they thought a fair competence had
been provided, must be left with a poor viaticum for the remainder of their melancholy
pilgrimage. There is no floating at ease upon the agitated waters of our society; they who
cannot struggle and swim, and buffet the waves that buffet them, must sink. Never was
there so stirring an age as the present! From yonder little town, which with its dependant
hamlets contains not more than four thousand inhabitants, adventurers go not only to the
all-devouring metropolis, and to the great commercial and manufacturing towns of
Lancashire and Yorkshire, but to Canada and the United States, to the East and West
Indies, to South America, and to Australia. I could name to you one of its natives who is
settled at Moscow, and another whose home is among the mountains of Caucasus. In
these days there is not perhaps one man in a thousand (except among the higher families)
who, if he lives to manhood, is buried with his fathers.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
This is no happy stage of society,. no wholesome state of things for the human heart.
There is evil, great evil, in this disruption of natural ties,..this weakening of the domestic
affections, . . this premature dissolution of them. Those circumstances are as little
favourable to happiness as they are conformable in their consequences to the order of
nature, which compel or tempt rational and reflective beings to dispose of their children,
as animals who are regulated in their affections by mere instinct act toward their
offspring, when the course of instinct is fulfilled.
MONTESINOS.
But it is an evil of necessity in our system. Even with all these outlets, every walk of life
is crowded in this country. There are more labourers than can find employ, more
artificers in every craft than can earn a livelihood. Where there is business enough for one
trades man, three or four compete for it. No common interest will suffice at this time for
getting a boy placed as midshipman in the navy, or obtaining him a commission when
that severe apprenticeship has been served. And if the price of commissions in the army
were to be doubled, even then mere money would not avail to purchase them, so
numerous would be the applicants. The courts of law are attended by swarms of briefless
barristers upon every circuit : and were the plague to visit us for our offences, it would
hardly afford employment for the young men who are trained, and training to the medical
profession. The church alone is not greatly over-supplied with members, because the
numbers who may be ordained are under some limitation.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
You spoke of the Plague; and according to the picture you have drawn, there must be
some among you ready, like the Mahommedans, to look upon the Plague itself as a
blessing, sent by the Almighty to clear off a superfluous population.
MONTESINOS.
We have indeed metapoliticians, whose theories upon this subject tend quite as much to
derogate from the goodness of God, and in a greater degree to harden the heart of man.
Their attention has been directed to the increase of the poorer orders.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
A fearful threat, indeed, was denounced through the Prophet against a land where the
commandments of the Lord were despised, (Jeremiah, chap. li. v. 14) . . " I will fill thee
with men as with caterpillars, they shall lift up a shout against thee!"
MONTESINOS.
You must not suppose that our political economists seek in the Bible for instruction
Moral consideration are allowed no place in their philosophy, ..how much less then
should religion be found there I Everything is gross and material in that philosophy;..It is
of the earth, earthy; and not of earth, as it came from the hands of that beneficent and
all-wise Creator who saw that it was good; but as it has been rendered by man, where the
filth and refuse of a crowded and ill-ordered society have accumulated, and the waters of
its broken conduits, and the contents of its sewers have met and stagnated, and all
together has become rank, noxious, putrescent and pestilential. Their philosophy is the
growth of such a compost! They discover tile cause of all our difficulties and evils, not in
the constitution of society, but of human nature; and there, also, they look for it, not
where it is to be found, in its sinfulness and fallen state, but in its essence, and the primal
law which was its primal benediction! Take the brains of the whole school, and distil
them in vacuo, (which is the nearest approximation to the natural process in this case,)
and you could not extract so much essential thought as may be found in any one page of
our old divines... Although of England itself, which is so much the most improved of the
united kingdoms, more than a sixth part is at this time uncultivated, and a far larger
proportion of Wales and Scotland and the sister island; .. though we have in our colonies
tracts of habitable land equal in extent to the whole surface of habitable Europe, . . they
will not perceive that there is room either at home, or abroad, for what they call our
surplus population; and instead of enlarging the hive, or sending out swarms, as nature
indicates, and the plainest policy enjoins, they advise us to starve the bees, that so they
may be prevented from breeding! They have made themselves so incapable of seeing the
immediate and ready remedy which earth and ocean offer us, that this is the alternative
they choose, this the remedy they prescribe! “Eyes have they, and yet see not."
SIR THOMAS MORE.
This blindness is not of the eyes alone,
But of the mind, a dimness and a mist.
Higgins. Mirror of Magistrates, vol. i. p. 308
MONTESINOS.
The difficulty, when we seriously contemplate the subject, is not in disposing of
that part of the population who come upon the poor rates for assistance or support: the
great majority of these poor people being willing to emigrate, willing to work, to go
anywhere where they may be able to provide for themselves, to do anything whereby
they may earn their bread. Whatever means may be devised for their benefit, they are
ready to co-operate, and perform their part. They can dig,.. and though hard necessity and
hardening example have made too many of them not ashamed to beg, they would rather
live by labour than by mendicity. But how they should be set to work,.. how the
beginning should be made,.. is what we must not expect to learn from any professor of
political economy;.. as Lord Cottington said of old, “it is not under his cap."
SIR THOMAS MORE.
The wisdom of the heart is wanting there. Statesmen seem hitherto as little to
have dreamt of the good which it is in their power to effect, as sailors of the American
and Australian regions before the age of maritime discovery. They have not yet had faith
enough in goodness to believe in the moral miracles which benevolence and zeal are able
to perform! if at any time they have entertained a serious wish for bettering the condition
of their fellow creatures, the difficulties which they see before them have appeared like
mountains, in the way; and yet, had they faith but as a grain of' mustard seed, those
mountains might be removed. There is abundant room in this country, and its colonies,
for any possible increase of population, incolumi Jove, till the end of time! Only let the
poor and indigent be placed where they may “labour for that which satisfieth," and "the
earth will give seed to the sower and bread to the eater:" " they shall build houses and
inhabit them; and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice."
MONTESINOS.
The lower classes may be more easily disposed of, and are both more willing and more
able to aid in disposing of themselves, than the overflow of educated persons. No small
part of the danger, with which our institutions are threatened, arises from the number of
adventurers in the middle rank of life, who, being unsuccessful, are therefore
discontented. These become more numerous in every generation. " The world is not their
friend, nor the world's law:" and in disturbed times they must always be dangerous
subjects, to whom all change might seem to offer hope, and who have nothing to risk but
lives of which they are weary. Loyal obedience, wherein the safety of a state consists, can
only rest either in the principle of duty, or the contented sense of well-being: the first can
scarcely be said to exist in this corrupted nation; the second is not to be found among the
labouring poor, nor in the great body of disappointed adventurers.