Montesinos. — We should have little reason, then, to boast of our improvements in the science of medicine; for our practitioners at Gibraltar found themselves as unable to stop its progress, or mitigate its symptoms, as the most ignorant empirics in the peninsula.
Sir Thomas More. — You were at one time near enough that pestilence to feel as if you were within its reach?
Montesinos. — It was in 1800, the year when it first appeared in Andalusia. That summer I fell in at Cintra with a young German, on the way from his own country to his brothers at Cadiz, where they were established as merchants. Many days had not elapsed after his arrival in that city when a ship which was consigned to their firm brought with it the infection; and the first news which reached us of our poor acquaintance was that the yellow fever had broken out in his brother’s house, and that he, they, and the greater part of the household, were dead. There was every reason to fear that the pestilence would extend into Portugal, both governments being, as usual, slow in providing any measures of precaution, and those measures being nugatory when taken. I was at Faro in the ensuing spring, at the house of Mr. Lempriere, the British Consul. Inquiring of him upon the subject, the old man lifted up his hands, and replied in a passionate manner, which I shall never forget, “Oh, sir, we escaped by the mercy of God; only by the mercy of God!” The governor of Algarve, even when the danger was known and acknowledged, would not venture to prohibit the communication with Spain till he received orders from Lisbon; and then the prohibition was so enforced as to be useless. The crew of a boat from the infected province were seized and marched through the country to Tavira: they were then sent to perform quarantine upon a little insulated ground, and the guards who were set over them, lived with them, and were regularly relieved. When such were the precautionary measures, well indeed might it be said, that Portugal escaped only by the mercy of God! I have often reflected upon the little effect which this imminent danger appeared to produce upon those persons with whom I associated. The young, with that hilarity which belongs to thoughtless youth, used to converse about the places whither they should retire, and the course of life and expedients to which they should be driven in case it were necessary for them to fly from Lisbon. A few elder and more considerate persons said little upon the subject, but that little denoted a deep sense of the danger, and more anxiety than they thought proper to express. The great majority seemed to be altogether unconcerned; neither their business nor their amusements were interrupted; they feasted, they danced, they met at the card-table as usual; and the plague (for so it was called at that time, before its nature was clearly understood) was as regular a topic of conversation as the news brought by the last packet.
Sir Thomas More. — And what was your own state of mind?
Montesinos. — Very much what it has long been with regard to the moral pestilence of this unhappy age, and the condition of this country more especially. I saw the danger in its whole extent and relied on the mercy of God.
Sir Thomas More. — In all cases that is the surest reliance: but when human means are available, it becomes a Mahommedan rather than a Christian to rely upon Providence or fate alone, and make no effort for its own preservation. Individuals never fall into this error among you, drink as deeply as they may of fatalism; that narcotic will sometimes paralyse the moral sense, but it leaves the faculty of worldly prudence unimpaired. Far otherwise is it with your government: for such are the notions of liberty in England, that evils of every kind — physical, moral, and political, are allowed their free range. As relates to infectious diseases, for example, this kingdom is now in a less civilised state than it was in my days, three centuries ago, when the leper was separated from general society; and when, although the science of medicine was at once barbarous and fantastical, the existence of pesthouses showed at least some approaches towards a medical police.
Montesinos. — They order these things better in Utopia.
Sir Thomas More. — In this, as well as in some other points upon which we shall touch hereafter, the difference between you and the Utopians is as great as between the existing generation and the race by whom yonder circle was set up. With regard to diseases and remedies in general, the real state of the case may be consolatory, but it is not comfortable. Great and certain progress has been made in chirurgery; and if the improvements in the other branch of medical science have not been so certain and so great, it is because the physician works in the dark, and has to deal with what is hidden and mysterious. But the evils for which these sciences are the palliatives have increased in a proportion that heavily overweighs the benefit of improved therapeutics. For as the intercourse between nations has become greater, the evils of one have been communicated to another. Pigs, Spanish dollars, and Norway rats, are not the only commodities and incommodities which have performed the circumnavigation, and are to be found wherever European ships have touched. Diseases also find their way from one part of the inhabited globe to another, wherever it is possible for them to exist. The most formidable endemic or contagious maladies in your nosology are not indigenous; and as far as regards health therefore, the ancient Britons, with no other remedies than their fields and woods afforded them, and no other medical practitioners than their deceitful priests, were in a better condition than their descendants, with all the instruction which is derived from Sydenham and Heberden, and Hunter, and with all the powers which chemistry has put into their hands.
Montesinos. — You have well said that there is nothing comfortable in this view of the case: but what is there consolatory in it?
Sir Thomas More. — The consolation is upon your principle of expectant hope. Whenever improved morals, wiser habits, more practical religion, and more efficient institutions shall have diminished the moral and material causes of disease, a thoroughly scientific practice, the result of long experience and accumulated observations, will then exist, to remedy all that is within the power of human art, and to alleviate what is irremediable. To existing individuals this consolation is something like the satisfaction you might feel in learning that a fine estate was entailed upon your family at the expiration of a lease of ninety-nine years from the present time. But I had forgotten to whom I am talking. A poet always looks onward to some such distant inheritance. His hopes are usually in nubibus, and his expectations in the paulo post futurum tense.
Montesinos. — His state is the more gracious then because his enjoyment is always to come. It is however a real satisfaction to me that there is some sunshine in your prospect.
Sir Thomas More. — More in mine than in yours, because I command a wider horizon: but I see also the storms which are blackening, and may close over the sky. Our discourse began concerning that portion of the community who form the base of the pyramid; we have unawares taken a more general view, but it has not led us out of the way. Returning to the most numerous class of society, it is apparent that in the particular point of which we have been conversing, their condition is greatly worsened: they remain liable to the same indigenous diseases as their forefathers, and are exposed moreover to all which have been imported. Nor will the estimate of their condition be improved upon farther inquiry. They are worse fed than when they were hunters, fishers, and herdsmen; their clothing and habitations are little better, and, in comparison with those of the higher classes, immeasurably worse. Except in the immediate vicinity of the collieries, they suffer more from cold than when the woods and turbaries were open. They are less religious than in the days of the Romish faith; and if we consider them in relation to their immediate superiors, we shall find reason to confess that the independence which has been gained since the total decay of the feudal system, has been dearly purchased by the loss of kindly feelings and ennobling attachments. They are less contented, and in no respect more happy — that look implies hesitation of judgment, and an unwillingness to be convinced. Consider the point; go to your books and your thoughts; and when next we meet, you will feel little inclination to dispute the irrefragable statement.
COLLOQUY IV. — FEUDAL SLAVERY. — GROWTH OF PAUPERISM.
The last conversation had left a weight upon me, which was not lessened when I contemplated the question in solitude. I called to mind the melancholy view which Young has taken of the world in his unhappy poem:
“A part how small of the terraqueous globe
Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,
Rocks, deserts, frozen seas and burning sands,
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death.
Such is earth’s melancholy map! But, far
More sad, this earth is a true map of man.”
Sad as this representation is, I could not but acknowledge that the moral and intellectual view is not more consolatory than the poet felt it to be; and it was a less sorrowful consideration to think how large a portion of the habitable earth is possessed by savages, or by nations whom inhuman despotisms and monstrous superstitions have degraded in some respects below the savage state, than to observe how small a part of what is called the civilised world is truly civilised; and in the most civilised parts to how small a portion of the inhabitants the real blessings of civilisation are confined. In this mood how heartily should I have accorded with Owen of Lanark if I could have agreed with that happiest and most beneficent and most practical of all enthusiasts as well concerning the remedy as the disease!
“Well, Montesinos,” said the spirit, when he visited me next, “have you recollected or found any solid arguments for maintaining that the labouring classes, who form the great bulk of the population, are in a happier condition, physical, moral, or intellectual, in these times, than they were in mine?”
Montesinos. — Perhaps, Sir Thomas, their condition was better precisely during your age than it ever has been either before or since. The feudal system had well-nigh lost all its inhuman parts, and the worse inhumanity of the commercial system had not yet shown itself.
Sir Thomas More. — It was, indeed, a most important age in English history, and, till the Reformation so fearfully disturbed it, in many respects a happy and an enviable one. But the process was then beginning which is not yet completed. As the feudal system relaxed and tended to dissolution the condition of the multitude was changed. Let us trace it from earlier times! In what state do you suppose the people of this island to have been when they were invaded by the Romans?
Montesinos. — Something worse than the Greeks of the Homeric age: something better than the Sandwich or Tonga islanders when they were visited by Captain Cook. Inferior to the former in arts, in polity, and, above all, in their domestic institutions; superior to the latter as having the use of cattle and being under a superstition in which, amid many abominations, some patriarchal truths were preserved. Less fortunate in physical circumstances than either, because of the climate.
Sir Thomas More. — A viler state of morals than their polyandrian system must have produced can scarcely be imagined; and the ferocity of their manners, little as is otherwise known of them, is sufficiently shown by their scythed war-chariots, and the fact that in the open country the path from one town to another was by a covered way. But in what condition were the labouring classes?
Montesinos. — In slavery, I suppose. When the Romans first attacked the island it was believed at Rome that slaves were the only booty which Britain could afford; and slaves, no doubt, must have been the staple commodity for which its ports were visited. Different tribes had at different times established themselves here by conquest, and wherever settlements are thus made slavery is the natural consequence. It was a part of the Roman economy; and when the Saxons carved out their kingdoms with the sword, the slaves, and their masters too, if any survived, became the property of the new lords of the land, like the cattle who pastured upon it. It is not likely even that the Saxons should have brought artificers of any kind with them, smiths perhaps alone excepted. Trades of every description must have been practised by the slaves whom they found. The same sort of transfer ensued upon the Norman conquest. After that event there could have been no fresh supply of domestic slaves, unless they were imported from Ireland, as well as carried thither for sale. That trade did not continue long. Emancipation was promoted by the clergy, and slavery was exchanged for vassalage, which in like manner gradually disappeared as the condition of the people improved.
Sir Thomas More. — You are hurrying too fast to that conclusion. Hitherto more has been lost than gained in morals by the transition; and you will not maintain that anything which is morally injurious can be politically advantageous. Vassalage I know is a word which bears no favourable acceptation in this liberal age; and slavery is in worse repute. But we must remember that slavery implies a very different state in different ages of the world, and in different stages of society.
Montesinos. — In many parts of the East, and of the Mohammedan world, as in the patriarchal times, it is scarcely an evil. Among savages it is as little so. In a luxurious state more vices are called into action, the condition of the slave depends more upon the temper of the owner, and the evil then predominates. But slavery is nowhere so bad as in commercial colonies, where the desire of gain hardens the heart — the basest appetites have free scope there; and the worst passions are under little restraint from law, less from religion, and none from public opinion.
Sir Thomas More. — You have omitted in this enumeration that kind of slavery which existed in England.
Montesinos. — The slavery of the feudal ages may perhaps be classed midway between the best description of that state and the worst. I suppose it to have been less humane than it generally is in Turkey, less severe than it generally was in Rome and Greece. In too many respects the slaves were at the mercy of their lords. They might be put in irons and punished with stripes; they were sometimes branded; and there is proof that it has been the custom to yoke them in teams like cattle.
Sir Thomas More. — Are you, then, Montesinos, so much the dupe of words as to account among their grievances a mere practice of convenience?
Montesinos. — The reproof was merited. But I was about to say that there is no reason to think their treatment was generally rigorous. We do not hear of any such office among them as that of the Roman Lorarii, whose office appears by the dramatists to have been no sinecure. And it is certain that they possessed in the laws, in the religion, and probably in the manners of the country, a greater degree of protection than existed to alleviate the lot of the Grecian and Roman slaves.
Sir Thomas More. — The practical difference between the condition of the feudal slave, and of the labouring husbandman who succeeded to the business of his station, was mainly this, that the former had neither the feeling nor the insecurity of independence. He served one master as long as he lived; and being at all times sure of the same sufficient subsistence, if he belonged to the estate like the cattle, and was accounted with them as part of the live stock, he resembled them also in the exemption which he enjoyed from all cares concerning his own maintenance and that of his family. The feudal slaves, indeed, were subject to none of those vicissitudes which brought so many of the proudest and most powerful barons to a disastrous end. They had nothing to lose, and they had liberty to hope for; frequently as the reward of their own faithful services, and not seldom from the piety or kindness of their lords. This was a steady hope depending so little upon contingency that it excited no disquietude or restlessness. They were therefore in general satisfied with the lot to which they were born, as the Greenlander is with his climate, the Bedouin with his deserts, and the Hottentot and the Calmuck with their filthy and odious customs; and going on in their regular and unvaried course of duty generation after generation, they were content.
Montesinos.—”Fish, fish, are you in your duty?” said the young lady in the Arabian tales, who came out of the kitchen wall clad in flowered satin, and with a rod in her hand. The fish lifted up their heads and replied, “Yes, yes; if you reckon, we reckon; if you pay your debts we pay ours; if you fly we overcome, and are content.” The fish wh
o were thus content, and in their duty, had been gutted, and were in the frying-pan. I do not seek, however, to escape from the force of your argument by catching at the words. On the other hand, I am sure it is not your intention to represent slavery otherwise than as an evil, under any modification.
Sir Thomas More. — That which is a great evil in itself become relatively a good when it prevents or removes a greater evil; for instance, loss of a limb when life is preserved by the sacrifice, or the acute pain of a remedy by which a chronic disease is cured. Such was slavery in its origin: a commutation for death, gladly accepted as mercy under the arm of a conqueror in battle, or as the mitigation of a judicial sentence. But it led immediately to nefarious abuses; and the earliest records which tell us of its existence show us also that men were kidnapped for sale. With the principles of Christianity, the principles of religious philosophy — the only true policy, to which mankind must come at last, by which alone all the remediable ills of humanity are to be remedied, and for which you are taught to pray when you entreat that your Father’s kingdom may come — with those principles slavery is inconsistent, and therefore not to be tolerated, even in speculation.
Montesinos. — Yet its fitness, as a commutation for other punishments, is admitted by Michaelis (though he decides against it) to be one of the most difficult questions connected with the existing state of society. And in the age of the Revolution, one of the sturdiest Scotch republicans proposed the reestablishment of slavery, as the best or only means for correcting the vices and removing the miseries of the poor.
Sir Thomas More. — The proposal of such a remedy must be admitted as full proof of the malignity of the disease. And in further excuse of Andrew Fletcher, it should be remembered that he belonged to a country where many of the feudal virtues (as well as most of the feudal vices) were at that time in full vigour. But let us return to our historical view of the subject. In feudal servitude there was no motive for cruelty, scarcely any for oppression. There were no needy slave-owners, as there are in commercial colonies; and though slaves might sometimes suffer from a wicked, or even a passionate master, there is no reason to believe that they were habitually over-tasked, or subjected to systematic ill-treatment; for that, indeed, can only arise from avarice, and avarice is not the vice of feudal times. Still, however, slavery is intolerable upon Christian principles; and to the influence of those principles it yielded here in England. It had ceased, so as even to be forgotten in my youth; and villenage was advancing fast towards its natural extinction. The courts decided that a tenant having a lease could not be a villein during its term, for if his labour were at the command of another how could he undertake to pay rent? Landholders had thus to choose between rent and villenage, and scarcely wanted the Field of the Cloth of Gold at Ardres to show them which they stood most in need of. And as villenage disappeared, free labourers of various descriptions multiplied; of whom the more industrious and fortunate rose in society, and became tradesmen and merchants; the unlucky and the reprobate became vagabonds.
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