Montesinos.—Those hundred years were the happiest which England has ever known.
Sir Thomas More.—Perhaps so: καρπος μέyιστος αταραξία.
Montesinos.—With the exception of the efforts which were made for restoring the exiled family of the Stuarts they were years of quiet uniform prosperity and advancement. The morals of the country recovered from the contagion which Charles II. imported from France, and for which Puritanism had prepared the people. Visitations of pestilence were suspended. Sectarians enjoyed full toleration, and were contented. The Church proved itself worthy of the victory which it had obtained. The Constitution, after one great but short struggle, was well balanced and defined; and if the progress of art, science, and literature was not brilliant, it was steady, and the way for a brighter career was prepared.
Sir Thomas More.—The way was prepared meantime for evil as well as for good. You were retrograde in sound policy, sound philosophy and sound learning. Our business at present is wholly with the first. Because your policy, defective as it was at the best, had been retrograde, discoveries in physics, and advances in mechanical science which would have produced nothing but good in Utopia, became as injurious to the weal of the nation as they were instrumental to its wealth. But such had your system imperceptibly become, and such were your statesmen, that the wealth of nations was considered as the sole measure of their prosperity.
Montesinos.—In feudal ages the object of those monarchs who had any determinate object in view was either to extend their dominions by conquest from their neighbours, or to increase their authority at home by breaking the power of a turbulent nobility. In commercial ages the great and sole object of government, when not engaged in war, was to augment its revenues, for the purpose of supporting the charges which former wars had induced, or which the apprehension of fresh ones rendered necessary. And thus it has been, that of the two main ends of government, which are the security of the subjects and the improvement of the nation, the latter has never been seriously attempted, scarcely indeed taken into consideration; and the former imperfectly attained.
Sir Thomas More.—Fail not, however, I entreat you, to bear in mind that this has not been the fault of your rulers at any time. It has been their misfortune—an original sin in the constitution of the society wherein they were born. Circumstances which they did not make and could not control have impelled them onward in ways which neither for themselves nor the nation were ways of pleasantness and peace.
Montesinos.—There is one beautiful exception—Edward VI.
“That blessed Prince whose saintly name might move
The understanding heart to tears of reverent love.”
He would have struck into the right course.
Sir Thomas More.—You have a Catholic feeling concerning saints, Montesinos, though you look for them in the Protestant calendar. Edward deserves to be remembered with that feeling. But had his life been prolonged to the full age of man it would not have been in his power to remedy the evil which had been done in his father’s reign and during his own minority. To have effected that would have required a strength and obduracy of character incompatible with his meek and innocent nature. In intellect and attainments he kept pace with his age, a more stirring and intellectual one than any which had gone before it: but in the wisdom of the heart he was far beyond that age, or indeed any that has succeeded it. It cannot be said of him as of Henry of Windsor, that he was fitter for a cloister than a throne, but he was fitter for a heavenly crown than a terrestrial one. This country was not worthy of him!—scarcely this earth!