“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 labour, 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 neighbouring
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 labour 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
out-lived 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 honourable, so if any man takes away his own life
without the approbation of the priests and the senate, they give him
none of the honours 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 handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body
being covered, under which 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 clothes as may totally alienate a man from his
wife, when it is too late to part with 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 consort, 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 labour
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
labour 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 labour 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 behaviour 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 honours; 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 honour 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
labour under a vast load of laws. Every one of them is skilled in their
law; for, as it is a very short study, so the 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 neighbours, 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 honour and esteem, and carry away
others to govern in their stead. In this they seem to have fallen upon
a very good expedient for their own happiness and safety; for since the
good or ill condition of a nation depends so much upon their
magistrates, they could not have made a better choice than by pitching
on men whom no advantages can 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 Neighbours; 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 the 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 new-found
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 sort 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 confederacy. 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
neighbours 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 licence of preying upon each other, if, by the unskilfulness of
wording them, there are not effectual provisoes 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 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.