The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Standing armies would seem to be a subject that would interest statesmen mainly in the present time. It would rather be expected that we had evolved the arguments we now use against them in comparatively recent years. Some of Sir Thomas More's remarks then are extremely interesting because they show the problem as we have it fairly stated and the reasons for and against armies set forth very simply, but very emphatically. Four hundred years has made no difference in the situation, though we are prone to think of evolution as having made great changes in that length of time. Only the evils have been emphasized. More said at the beginning almost of his "Utopia":

"In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of nation can be called a peace); and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers upon noblemen: this being a maxim of those pretended statesmen, that it is necessary for public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men [{548}] are not to be depended on, and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats, or, as Sallust observed, 'for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by too long an intermission.' But France has learned to its cost how dangerous it is to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians and Syrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and quite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser."

And still we can find no better reason for large armies than what Thucydides called [Greek text], "the balanced fear," which we have come to designate by the courtlier term, the balance of power.

The passage in "Utopia" in which More discusses the wearing of fine clothes and of precious stones and jewels has often been quoted. After 400 years it will still come home with great force to all those who think seriously on the subject. Of course it is literal common sense, but then what has common sense ever availed against fashion? The mid-African wears brass rings and fancy calico because they are hard to get and expensive and therefore give distinction to their wearer. His cultured European brother--and sister--wears what is equally childish and barbaric because costly and distinctive and will doubtless continue to do so. Sir Thomas More's ideas on the subject are interesting, but will fall on quite as deaf ears in our generation as in all the others since his time.

"I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that different customs make on people than I observed in the ambassadors of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from several towns met together to wait for their coming. The ambassadors of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs and that fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised, and gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed; but the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having had little commerce with them, understanding that they were coarsely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it for granted that they had none of these fine things among them of which they made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they should look like gods and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their splendor. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with a hundred attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, and the greater part in silk; the ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility of their country, were in cloth of gold, and adorned with massy chains, earrings, and rings of gold; their caps were covered with bracelets set full of pearls and other gems--in a word, they were set out with all those things that among the Utopians were either the badges of slavery, the marks of infamy, or the playthings of children. It was not unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked big, when they compared their rich habits with the plain clothes of the [{549}] Utopians, who were come out in great numbers to see them make their entry; and, on the other, to observe how much they were mistaken in the impression which they hoped this pomp would have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that they never stirred out of their country, and had not seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors, yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves so full of gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves and forbore to treat them with reverence. You might have seen the children who were grown big enough to despise their playthings, and who had thrown away their jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently, and cry out, 'See that great fool, that wears pearls and gems as if he were yet a child!' while their mothers very innocently replied, 'Hold your peace! this, I believe, is one of the ambassadors' fools.' Others censured the fashion of their chains, and observed, 'that they were of no use, for they were too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and, besides, hung so loose about them that they thought it easy to throw them away, and so get from them.' But after the ambassadors had stayed a day among them, and saw so vast a quantity of gold in their houses (which was as much despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations), and beheld more gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave than all their ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all that glory for which they had formerly valued themselves, and accordingly laid it aside--a resolution that they immediately took when, on their engaging in some free discourse with the Utopians, they discovered their sense of such things and their other customs. The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread; for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still, for all its wearing it." (John G. Saxe told the last generation how great a difference it made whether one wore the product of an India plant or an India worm.)

Immediately following this there is almost a more striking passage with regard to wealth and the changes that it makes in the attitude of the minds of men towards one another that would seem surely to have been written by a modern socialist.

"They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed that even man, for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal; that a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal; and that if it should happen that by some accident or trick of law (which sometimes reduces as great changes as chance itself) all this wealth should pass from the master to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would very soon become one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth, and so were bound to follow [{550}] its fortune! But they much more admire and detest the folly of those who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe him anything, nor are in any sort dependent on his bounty, yet, merely because he is rich, give him little less than divine honors, even though they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that, notwithstanding all his wealth, he will not part with one farthing of it to them as long as he lives!"

Perhaps his greatest contribution to social ethics and the solution of social problems is to be found in his emphatic assertion of the right of the laborer to a living wage in the best sense of that much abused term and his insistent deprecation of the fact that laborers must not be exploited so as to enable men to accumulate great wealth that is sure to be abused. More believed in profit-sharing very heartily and had no hesitation in expressing himself. Above all, he deprecates the injustice worked by predatory wealth. It was the judicial mind of the greatest Lord Chancellor England has ever had, who, after speaking of the Utopian state as "that which alone of good right may claim and take upon it the name of commonwealth," continues:

"Here now would I see, if any man dare be so bold as to compare with this equity, the justice of other nations; among whom, I forsake God, if I can find any sign or token of equity and justice. For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith, or an usurer, or to be short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or else that which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living, either by idleness or unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen, by so great and continual toil, as drawing and bearing beasts be scant able to sustain, and again so necessary toil, that without it no commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year, should get so hard and poor a living, and live so wretched and miserable a life, that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seem much better and healthier? . . . And yet besides this the rich men, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living. . . . They invent and devise all means and manner of crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed under color of the commonalty, that is to say, also of the poor people, then they be made laws. . . . Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of commonwealth."

Everywhere one finds supreme common sense. For instance, Sir Thomas More points out that while the Utopians "knew astronomy and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the [{551}] heavenly bodies; and of many instruments, well contrived and divided, by which they very accurately compute the course and positions of the sun, moon and stars; but for the cheat of divining by the stars, by their oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so much as entered into their thoughts." This sentence was written about the time that Copernicus was working out his conclusions with regard to the Universe as we now know it. Most people might presume that astrology had by this time lost all its weight. More than a century later, however, Galileo and Kepler were drawing up horoscopes, and astrology was very commonly accepted during the seventeenth century. Even in the eighteenth century, Mesmer wrote a thesis for his doctorate at the University of Vienna on the influence of the stars on human constitutions. The really great thinkers in humanity had all of them refused to accept astrology, but it is a tribute to the genius of this man of thirty-seven who had been trained at the law to have reached so true a conclusion.