Yet, in conformity to those principles alone, it is that subjects can
find their perfect welfare, and States their full security. Christianity
may be long in obtaining the victory over the powers of this world, but
when that consummation shall have taken place the converse of his second
proposition will hold good, for the species having obtained its perfect
development, the condition of society must then be such that individuals
will obtain it also as a necessary consequence.
_Sir Thomas More_.--Here you and your philosopher part company. For he
asserts that man is left to deduce from his own unassisted reason
everything which relates not to his mere material nature.
_Montesinos_.--There, indeed, I must diverge from him, and what in his
language is called the hidden plan of nature, in mine will be the
revealed will of God.
_Sir Thomas More_.--The will is revealed; but the plan is hidden. Let
man dutifully obey that will, and the perfection of society and of human
nature will be the result of such obedience; but upon obedience they
depend. Blessings and curses are set before you--for nations as for
individuals--yea, for the human race.
Flatter not yourself with delusive expectations! The end may be
according to your hope--whether it will be so (which God grant!) is as
inscrutable for angels as for men. But to descry that great struggles
are yet to come is within reach of human foresight--that great
tribulations must needs accompany them--and that these may be--you know
not how near at hand!
Throughout what is called the Christian world there will be a contest
between Impiety and Religion; the former everywhere is gathering
strength, and wherever it breaks loose the foundations of human society
will be shaken. Do not suppose that you are safe from this danger
because you are blest with a pure creed, a reformed ritual, and a
tolerant Church! Even here the standard of impiety has been set up; and
the drummers who beat the march of intellect through your streets, lanes,
and market-places, are enlisted under it.
The struggle between Popery and Protestanism is renewed. And let no man
deceive himself by a vain reliance upon the increased knowledge, or
improved humanity of the times! Wickedness is ever the same; and you
never were in so much danger from moral weakness.
Co-existent with these struggles is that between the feudal system of
society as variously modified throughout Europe, and the levelling
principle of democracy. That principle is actively and indefatigably at
work in these kingdoms, allying itself as occasion may serve with Popery
or with Dissent, with atheism or with fanaticism, with profligacy or with
hypocrisy, ready confederates, each having its own sinister views, but
all acting to one straightforward end. Your rulers meantime seem to be
trying that experiment with the British Constitution which Mithridates is
said to have tried upon his own; they suffer poison to be administered in
daily doses, as if they expected that by such a course the public mind
would at length be rendered poison-proof!
The first of these struggles will affect all Christendom; the third may
once again shake the monarchies of Europe. The second will be felt
widely; but nowhere with more violence than in Ireland, that unhappy
country, wherein your government, after the most impolitic measures into
which weakness was ever deluded, or pusillanimity intimidated, seems to
have abdicated its functions, contenting itself with the semblance of an
authority which it has wanted either wisdom or courage to exert.
There is a fourth danger, the growth of your manufacturing system; and
this is peculiarly your own. You have a great and increasing population,
exposed at all times by the fluctuations of trade to suffer the severest
privations in the midst of a rich and luxurious society, under little or
no restraint from religious principle, and if not absolutely disaffected
to the institutions of the country, certainly not attached to them: a
class of men aware of their numbers and of their strength; experienced in
all the details of combination; improvident when they are in the receipt
of good wages, yet feeling themselves injured when those wages, during
some failure of demand, are so lowered as no longer to afford the means
of comfortable subsistence; and directing against the government and the
laws of the country their resentment and indignation for the evils which
have been brought upon them by competition and the spirit of rivalry in
trade. They have among them intelligent heads and daring minds; and you
have already seen how perilously they may be wrought upon by seditious
journalists and seditious orators in a time of distress.
On what do you rely for security against these dangers? On public
opinion? You might as well calculate upon the constancy of wind and
weather in this uncertain climate. On the progress of knowledge? it is
such knowledge as serves only to facilitate the course of delusion. On
the laws? the law which should be like a sword in a strong hand, is weak
as a bulrush if it be feebly administered in time of danger. On the
people? they are divided. On the Parliament? every faction will be fully
and formidably represented there. On the government? it suffers itself
to be insulted and defied at home, and abroad it has shown itself
incapable of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with its
allies, so far has it been divested of power by the usurpation of the
press. It is at peace with Spain, and it is at peace with Turkey; and
although no government was ever more desirous of acting with good faith,
its subjects are openly assisting the Greeks with men and money against
the one, and the Spanish Americans against the other. Athens, in the
most turbulent times of its democracy, was not more effectually
domineered over by its demagogues than you are by the press--a press
which is not only without restraint, but without responsibility; and in
the management of which those men will always have most power who have
least probity, and have most completely divested themselves of all sense
of honour and all regard for truth.
The root of all your evils is in the sinfulness of the nation. The
principle of duty is weakened among you; that of moral obligation is
loosened; that of religious obedience is destroyed. Look at the
worldliness of all classes--the greediness of the rich, the misery of the
poor, and the appalling depravity which is spreading among the lower
classes through town and country; a depravity which proceeds unchecked
because of the total want of discipline, and for which there is no other
corrective than what may be supplied by fanaticism, which is itself an
evil.
If there be nothing exaggerated in this representation, you must
acknowledge that though the human race, considered upon the great scale,
should be proceeding toward the perfectibility for which it may be
designed, the present aspects in these kingdoms are nevertheless rather
for evil than for good. Sum you up now upon the hopeful side.
_Montesinos_.--First, then. I rest in a humble but firm reliance upon
that Providence which sometimes in its mercy educes from the errors of
men a happier issue than could ever have been attained by their
wisdom;--that Providence which has delivered this nation from so many and
such imminent dangers heretofore.
Looking, then, to human causes, there is hope to be derived from the
humanising effects of Literature, which has now first begun to act upon
all ranks. Good principles are indeed used as the stalking-horse under
cover of which pernicious designs may be advanced; but the better seeds
are thus disseminated and fructify after the ill design has failed.
The cruelties of the old criminal law have been abrogated. Debtors are
no longer indiscriminately punished by indefinite imprisonment. The
iniquity of the slave trade has been acknowledged, and put an end to, so
far as the power of this country extends; and although slavery is still
tolerated, and must be so for awhile, measures have been taken for
alleviating it while it continues, and preparing the way for its gradual
and safe removal. These are good works of the government. And when I
look upon the conduct of that government in all its foreign relations,
though there may be some things to disapprove, and some sins of omission
to regret, it has been, on the whole, so disinterested, so magnanimous,
so just, that this reflection gives me a reasonable and a religious
ground of hope. And the reliance is strengthened when I call to mind
that missionaries from Great Britain are at this hour employed in
spreading the glad tidings of the Gospel far and wide among heathen
nations.
Descending from these wider views to the details of society, there, too,
I perceive ground, if not for confidence, at least for hope. There is a
general desire throughout the higher ranks for bettering the condition of
the poor, a subject to which the government also has directed its patient
attention: minute inquiries have been made into their existing state, and
the increase of pauperism and of crimes. In no other country have the
wounds of the commonwealth been so carefully probed. By means of
colonisation, of an improved parochial order and of a more efficient
police, the further increase of these evils may be prevented; while, by
education, by providing means of religious instruction for all by savings
banks, and perhaps by the establishment of Owenite communities among
themselves, the labouring classes will have their comforts enlarged, and
their well-being secured, if they are not wanting to themselves in
prudence and good conduct. A beginning has been made--an impulse given:
it may be hoped--almost, I will say, it may be expected--that in a few
generations this whole class will be placed within the reach of moral and
intellectual gratifications, whereby they may be rendered healthier,
happier, better in all respects, an improvement which will be not more
beneficial to them as individuals, than to the whole body of the
commonweal.
The diffusion of literature, though it has rendered the acquirement of
general knowledge impossible, and tends inevitably to diminish the number
of sound scholars, while it increases the multitude of sciolists, carries
with it a beneficial influence to the lower classes. Our booksellers
already perceive that it is their interest to provide cheap publications
for a wide public, instead of looking to the rich alone as their
customers. There is reason to expect that, in proportion as this is
done--in proportion as the common people are supplied with wholesome
entertainment (and wholesome it is, if it be only harmless) they will be
less liable to be acted upon by fanaticism and sedition.
You have not exaggerated the influence of the newspaper press, nor the
profligacy of some of those persons, by whom this unrestrained and
irresponsible power is exercised. Nevertheless it has done, and is
doing, great and essential good. The greatest evils in society proceed
from the abuse of power; and this, though abundantly manifested in the
newspapers themselves, they prevent in other quarters. No man engaged in
public life could venture now upon such transactions as no one, in their
station half a century ago, would have been ashamed of. There is an end
of that scandalous jobbing which at that time existed in every department
of the State, and in every branch of the public service; and a check is
imposed upon any scandalous and unfit promotion, civil or ecclesiastical.
By whatever persons the government may be administered, they are now well
aware that they must do nothing which will not bear daylight and strict
investigation. The magistrates also are closely observed by this self-
constituted censorship; and the inferior officers cannot escape exposure
for any perversion of justice, or undue exercise of authority. Public
nuisances are abated by the same means, and public grievances which the
Legislature might else overlook, are forced upon its attention. Thus, in
ordinary times, the utility of this branch of the press is so great that
one of the worst evils to be apprehended from the abuse of its power at
all times, and the wicked purposes to which it is directed in dangerous
ones, is the ultimate loss of a liberty, which is essential to the public
good, but which when it passes into licentiousness, and effects the
overthrow of a State, perishes in the ruin it has brought on.
In the fine arts, as well as in literature, a levelling principle is
going on, fatal, perhaps, to excellence, but favourable to mediocrity.
Such facilities are afforded to imitative talent, that whatever is
imitable will be imitated. Genius will often be suppressed by this, and
when it exerts itself, will find it far more difficult to obtain notice
than in former times. There is the evil here that ingenious persons are
seduced into a profession which is already crowded with unfortunate
adventurers; but, on the other hand, there is a great increase of
individual and domestic enjoyment. Accomplishments which were almost
exclusively professional in the last age, are now to be found in every
family within a certain rank of life. Wherever there is a disposition
for the art of design, it is cultivated, and in consequence of the
general proficiency in this most useful of the fine arts, travellers
represent to our view the manners and scenery of the countries which they
visit, as well by the pencil as the pen. By means of two fortunate
discoveries in the art of engraving, these graphic representations are
brought within the reach of whole classes who were formerly precluded by
the expense of such things from these sources of gratification and
instruction. Artists and engravers of great name are now, like authors
and booksellers, induced to employ themselves for this lower and wider
sphere of purchasers. In all this I see the cause as well as the effect
of a progressive refinement, which must be beneficial in many ways. This
very diffusion of cheap books and cheap prints may, in its natural
consequences, operate rather to diminish than to increase the number of
adventurers in literature and in the arts. For though at first it will
create employment for greater numbers, yet in another generation
imitative talent will become so common, that neither parents nor
possessors will mistake it for an indication of extraordinary genius, and
many will thus be saved from a ruinous delusion. More pictures will be
painted but fewer exhibited, more poetry written but less published, and
in both arts talents which might else have been carried to an overstocked
and unprofitable market, will be cultivated for their own sakes, and for
the gratification of private circles, becoming thus a source of sure
enjoyment and indirectly of moral good. Scientific pursuits will, in
like manner, be extended, and pursuits which partake of science, and
afford pleasures within the reach of humble life.
Here, then, is good in progress which will hold on its course, and the
growth of which will only be suspended, not destroyed, during any of
those political convulsions which may too probably be apprehended--too
probably, I say, because when you call upon me to consider the sinfulness
of this nation, my heart fails. There can be no health, no soundness in
the state, till government shall regard the moral improvement of the
people as its first great duty. The same remedy is required for the rich
and for the poor. Religion ought to be so blended with the whole course
of instruction, that its doctrines and precepts should indeed "drop as
the rain, and distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb,
and as the showers upon the grass"--the young plants would then imbibe
it, and the heart and intellect assimilate it with their growth. We are,
in a great degree, what our institutions make us. Gracious God were
those institutions adapted to Thy will and word--were we but broken in
from childhood to Thy easy yoke--were we but carefully instructed to
believe and obey--in that obedience and belief we should surely find our
temporal welfare and our eternal happiness!
Here, indeed, I tremble at the prospect! Could I look beyond the clouds
and the darkness which close upon it, I should then think that there may
come a time when that scheme for a perpetual peace among the states of
Christendom which Henri IV. formed, and which has been so ably digested
by the Abbe St. Pierre, will no longer be regarded as the speculation of
a visionary. The Holy Alliance, imperfect and unstable as it is, is in
itself a recognition of the principle. At this day it would be
practicable, if one part of Europe were as well prepared for it as the
other; but this cannot be, till good shall have triumphed over evil in
the struggles which are brooding, or shall have obtained such a
predominance as to allay the conflict of opinions before it breaks into
open war.
God in his mercy grant that it be so! If I looked to secondary causes
alone, my fears would preponderate. But I conclude as I began, in firm
reliance upon Him who is the beginning and the end. Our sins are
manifold, our danger is great, but His mercy is infinite.
_Sir Thomas More_.--Rest there in full faith. I leave you to your
dreams; draw from them what comfort you can. And now, my friend,
farewell!
The look which he fixed on me, as he disappeared, was compassionate and
thoughtful; it impressed me with a sad feeling, as if I were not to see
him again till we should meet in the world of spirits.