UTOPIA by SIR THOMAS
MORE
BOOK
II (7) : OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES
The origin of their slaves |
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.
Institutionalized euthanasia |
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.
How they choose their spouses |
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.
Possibility of voluntary divorce and remarriage |
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.
Harsh punishment for adultery |
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.
Utopians have no use for the death penalty |
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.
The legal system and lawyers |
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.
International relations and treaties with neighboring lands; comments
on the European diplomatic situation |
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. .