Reform and Politics / Part 2 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII

by John Greenleaf Whittier

This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists, reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good old-fashioned order of things in church and state? The idea of making the world better and happier is to them an absurdity. He who entertains it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical wisdom. His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, Utopian.

The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,—the writer's ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella solaced himself in his long imprisonment.

The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who could

"Forerun his age and race, and let
His feet millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."

Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of European governments, and the political truths of his imaginary state are now practically recognized in our own democratic system. As might be expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want of proportion and symmetry in the structure. Many of his theories are no doubt impracticable and unsound. But, as a whole, the work is an admirable one, striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a government of religious toleration and political freedom. The following extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:—

"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike him as true."

Passing by the "Telemachus" of Fenelon, we come to the political romance of Harrington, written in the time of Cromwell. "Oceana" is the name by which the author represents England; and the republican plan of government which he describes with much minuteness is such as he would have recommended for adoption in case a free commonwealth had been established. It deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who, after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole, with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be scribbled out of."

Notwithstanding the liberality and freedom of his speculations upon government and religion in his Utopia, it must be confessed that Sir Thomas More, in after life, fell into the very practices of intolerance and bigotry which he condemned. When in the possession of the great seal under that scandal of kingship, Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to the persecution of heretics. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical opinions. In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith, "if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past life, he must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more learned, honest, and conscientious than the mass of men has ever been, could in the course of one short life fall into such glaring and frightful rebellion against his own doctrines."

Harrington, on the other hand, as became the friend of Milton and Marvel, held fast, through good and evil report, his republican faith. He published his work after the Restoration, and defended it boldly and ably from the numerous attacks made upon it. Regarded as too dangerous an enthusiast to be left at liberty, he was imprisoned at the instance of Lord Chancellor Hyde, first in the Tower, and afterwards on the Island of St. Nicholas, where disease and imprudent remedies brought on a partial derangement, from which he never recovered.

Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment, entitled "Arcadia," attempted to depict an ideal republic, without priest, noble, or slave, where all are so religious that each man is the pontiff of his family, where each man is prepared to defend his country, and where all are in such a state of equality that there are no such persons as servants. The plan of it was suggested by his friend Rousseau during their pleasant walking excursions about the environs of Paris, in which the two enthusiastic philosophers, baffled by the evil passions and intractable materials of human nature as manifested in existing society, comforted themselves by appealing from the actual to the possible, from the real to the imaginary. Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors,—gladly escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and happiness,—at once misanthropes and philanthropists,—amused and solaced themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught; where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves. They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try, and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity. Religion was to speak to all hearts in the eternal language of Nature. Death was no longer to be feared; perspectives of holy consolation were to open through the cypress shadows of the tomb; to live or to die was to be equally an object of desire.