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bigger the sore of another part: so the help of one causeth another's harm, forasmuch as nothing can be given to any man, unless that be taken from another."

"But I am of a contrary opinion" (quod I) "for methinketh that men shall never there live wealthily, where all things be common. For how can there be abundance of goods, or of anything, where every man withdraweth his hand from labour? Whom the regard of his own gains driveth not to work, and the hope that he hath in other men's travail maketh him slothful. Then when they be pricked with poverty, and yet no man can by any law or right defend that for his own, which he hath gotten with the labour of his own hands, shall not there of necessity be continual sedition and bloodshed? Specially the authority and reverence of magistrates being taken away-which what place it may have with such men, among whom is no difference, I cannot devise." "I marvel not' (quod he) "that you be of this opinion. For you conceive in your mind either none at all, or else a very false image and similitude of this thing. But if you had been with me in Utopia, and had presently seen their fashions and laws, as I did, which lived there five years and more, and would never have come thence, but only to make

that new land known here: then doubtless you would grant that you never saw people well ordered, but only there.'

"Surely" (quod Master Peter) "it shall be hard for you to make me believe that there is better order in that new land than is here in these countries that we know. For good wits be as well here as there ; and I think our commonwealths be ancienter than theirs wherein long use and experience hath found out many things commodious for man's life besides that many things here among us have been found by chance which no wit could ever have devised."

"As touching the ancientness" (quod he) "of commonwealths, then you might better judge if you had read the histories and chronicles of that land, which if we may believe, cities were there, before there were men here. Now what thing soever hitherto by wit hath been devised, or found by chance, that might be as well there as here. But I think verily, though it were so that we did pass them in wit, yet in study and laboursome endeavour they far pass us. For (as their chronicles testify) before our arrival there they never heard anything of us, whom they call the Ultra-equinoctials: saving that once, about twelve hundred years ago, a certain ship was

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lost by the Isle of Utopia which was driven thither by tempest. Certain Romans and Egyptians were cast on land, which after that never went thence. Mark now what profit they took of this one occasion, through diligence and earnest travail. There was no craft nor science within the empire of Rome, whereof any profit could rise, but they either learned it of these strangers, or else of them taking occasion to search for it, found it out. So great profit was it to them that ever any went thither from hence. But if any like chance before this hath brought any man from thence hither, that is as quite out of remembrance, as this also perchance in time to come shall be forgotten that ever I was there. And like as they quickly, almost at the first meeting, made their own whatsoever is among us wealthily devised, so I suppose it would be long before we would receive anything that among them is better instituted than among us. And this I suppose is the chief cause why their commonwealths be wisely governed, and do flourish in more wealth than ours; though we neither in wit nor in riches be their inferiors."

"Therefore, gentle Master Raphael' (quod I) 'I pray you and beseech you describe unto us the Island. And study not to be short, but declare largely in order

their grounds, their rivers, their cities, their people, their manners, their ordinances, their laws, and to be short, all things that you shall think us desirous to know. And you shall think us desirous to know whatsoever we know not yet." "There is nothing" (quod he) "that I will do gladlier. For all these things I have fresh in mind. But the matter requireth leisure.” "Let us go in, therefore" (quod I) "to dinner : afterward we will bestow the time at our pleasure.' "Content" (quod he) "be it." So we went in and dined.

When dinner was done, we came into the same place again, and sat us down upon the same bench, commanding our servants that no man should trouble us. Then I and Master Peter Giles desired Master Raphael to perform his promise. He, therefore, seeing us desirous and willing to hearken to him, when he had sat still and paused a little while, musing and bethinking himself, thus he began to speak.

THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK

THE SECOND BOOK OF THE COMMUNICATION OF RAPHAEL

HYTHLODAY

CONCERNING the best state of a Common Wealth: containing the description of Utopia, with a large declaration of the godly government, and of all the good laws and orders of the same Island.

THE

HE Island of Utopia containeth in breadth in the middle part of it (for there it is broadest) two hundred miles. Which breadth continueth through the most part of the land, saving that by little and little it cometh in and waxeth narrower towards both the ends which fetching about a circuit or compass of five hundred miles, do fashion the whole island like to the new moon. Between these two corners the sea runneth in, dividing them asunder by the distance of eleven miles or thereabouts, and there surmounteth into a large and wide ea,