Take, e.g., the following passage relating to the international policy of the Utopians:—
‘While other nations are always entering into leagues, and breaking and renewing them, the Utopians never enter into a league with any nation. For what is the use of a league? they say. As though there were no natural tie between man and man! and as though any one who despised this natural tie would, forsooth, regard mere words! They hold this opinion all the more strongly, because in that quarter of the world the leagues and treaties of princes are not observed as faithfully as they should be. For in Europe, and especially in those parts of it where the Christian faith and religion are professed, the sanctity of leagues is held sacred and inviolate; partly owing to the justice and goodness of princes, and partly from their fear and reverence of the authority of the Popes, who, as they themselves never enter into obligations which they do not most religiously perform[!], command other princes under all circumstances to abide by their promises, and punish delinquents by pastoral censure and discipline. For indeed, with good reason, it would be thought a most scandalous thing for those whose peculiar designation is “the faithful,” to be wanting in the faithful observance of treaties. But in those distant regions ... no faith is to be placed in leagues, even though confirmed by the most solemn ceremonies. Some flaw is easily found in their wording which is intentionally made ambiguous so as to leave a loophole through which the parties may break both their league and their faith. Which craft—yes, fraud and deceit—if it were perpetrated with respect to a contract between private parties, they would indignantly denounce as sacrilege and deserving the gallows, whilst those who suggest these very things to princes, glory in being the authors of them. Whence it comes to pass that justice seems altogether a plebeian and vulgar virtue, quite below the dignity of royalty; or at least there must be two kinds of it, the one for common people and the poor, very narrow and contracted, the other, the virtue of princes, much more dignified and free, so that that only is unlawful to them which they don’t like. The morals of princes being such in that region, it is not, I think, without reason that the Utopians enter into no leagues at all. Perhaps they would alter their opinion if they lived amongst us.’[557]
Its bitter satire on the policy of princes.
Read without reference to the international history of the period, these passages appear perfectly harmless. But read in the light of that political history which, during the past few years, had become so mixed up with the personal history of the Oxford Reformers, recollecting ‘how religiously’ treaties had been made and broken by almost every sovereign in Europe—Henry VIII. and the Pope included—the words in which the justice and goodness of European princes is so mildly and modestly extolled, become almost as bitter in their tone as the cutting censure of Erasmus in the ‘Praise of Folly,’ or his more recent and open satire upon kings.
And on the warlike policy of Henry VIII.
Again, bearing in mind the wars of Henry VIII., and how evidently the love of military glory was the motive which induced him to engage in them, the following passage contains almost as direct and pointed a censure of the King’s passion for war as the sermon preached by Colet in his presence:—
‘The Utopians hate war as plainly brutal, although practised more eagerly by man than by any other animal. And contrary to the sentiment of nearly every other nation, they regard nothing more inglorious than glory derived from war.’[558]
Turning from international politics to questions of internal policy, and bearing in mind the hint of Erasmus, that More had in view chiefly the politics of his own country, it is impossible not to recognise in the ‘Utopia’ the expression, again and again, of the sense of wrong stirred up in More’s heart, as he had witnessed how every interest of the commonwealth had been sacrificed to Henry VIII.’s passion for war; and how, in sharing the burdens it entailed, and dealing with the social evils it brought to the surface, the interests of the poor had been sacrificed to spare the pockets of the rich; how, whilst the very wages of the labourer had been taxed to support the long-continued war expenditure, a selfish Parliament, under colour of the old ‘statutes of labourers,’ had attempted to cut down the amount of his wages, and to rob him of that fair rise in the price of his labour which the drain upon the labour market had produced.
Satire on recent legislation and the statutes of labourers.
Injustice to the labouring classes.
It is impossible not to recognise that the recent statutes of labourers was the target against which More’s satire was specially directed, in the following paragraph:—