<SPAN name="c10"></SPAN>
<h3>OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES</h3>
<p>“They do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those
that are taken in battle, nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those
of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned
to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which is
more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die in those
parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem at low rates,
and in other places have them for nothing. They are kept at perpetual
labour, and are always chained, but with this difference, that their
own natives are treated much worse than others: they are considered
as more profligate than the rest, and since they could not be restrained
by the advantages of so excellent an education, are judged worthy of
harder usage. Another sort of slaves are the poor of the neighbouring
countries, who offer of their own accord to come and serve them: they
treat these better, and use them in all other respects as well as their
own countrymen, except their imposing more labour upon them, which is
no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and if any of
these have a mind to go back to their own country, which, indeed, falls
out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay, so they do not send
them away empty-handed.</p>
<p>“I have already told you with what care they look after their
sick, so that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their
case or health; and for those who are taken with fixed and incurable
diseases, they use all possible ways to cherish them and to make their
lives as comfortable as possible. They visit them often and take
great pains to make their time pass off easily; but when any is taken
with a torturing and lingering pain, so that there is no hope either
of recovery or ease, the priests and magistrates come and exhort them,
that, since they are now unable to go on with the business of life,
are become a burden to themselves and to all about them, and they have
really out-lived themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted
distemper, but choose rather to die since they cannot live but in much
misery; being assured that if they thus deliver themselves from torture,
or are willing that others should do it, they shall be happy after death:
since, by their acting thus, they lose none of the pleasures, but only
the troubles of life, they think they behave not only reasonably but
in a manner consistent with religion and piety; because they follow
the advice given them by their priests, who are the expounders of the
will of God. Such as are wrought on by these persuasions either
starve themselves of their own accord, or take opium, and by that means
die without pain. But no man is forced on this way of ending his
life; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, this does not induce them
to fail in their attendance and care of them: but as they believe that
a voluntary death, when it is chosen upon such an authority, is very
honourable, so if any man takes away his own life without the approbation
of the priests and the senate, they give him none of the honours of
a decent funeral, but throw his body into a ditch.</p>
<p>“Their women are not married before eighteen nor their men
before two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces
before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of marriage
is denied them unless they can obtain a special warrant from the Prince.
Such disorders cast a great reproach upon the master and mistress of
the family in which they happen, for it is supposed that they have failed
in their duty. The reason of punishing this so severely is, because
they think that if they were not strictly restrained from all vagrant
appetites, very few would engage in a state in which they venture the
quiet of their whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are
obliged to endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied.
In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very
absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and
is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage
some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin
or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents
the bridegroom, naked, to the bride. We, indeed, both laughed
at this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they, on the other
hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if
they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they
will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his
other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them,
and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness
or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust,
and only see about a handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body
being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well
as loathsome. All men are not so wise as to choose a woman only
for her good qualities, and even wise men consider the body as that
which adds not a little to the mind, and it is certain there may be
some such deformity covered with clothes as may totally alienate a man
from his wife, when it is too late to part with her; if such a thing
is discovered after marriage a man has no remedy but patience; they,
therefore, think it is reasonable that there should be good provision
made against such mischievous frauds.</p>
<p>“There was so much the more reason for them to make a regulation
in this matter, because they are the only people of those parts that
neither allow of polygamy nor of divorces, except in the case of adultery
or insufferable perverseness, for in these cases the Senate dissolves
the marriage and grants the injured person leave to marry again; but
the guilty are made infamous and are never allowed the privilege of
a second marriage. None are suffered to put away their wives against
their wills, from any great calamity that may have fallen on their persons,
for they look on it as the height of cruelty and treachery to abandon
either of the married persons when they need most the tender care of
their consort, and that chiefly in the case of old age, which, as it
carries many diseases along with it, so it is a disease of itself.
But it frequently falls out that when a married couple do not well agree,
they, by mutual consent, separate, and find out other persons with whom
they hope they may live more happily; yet this is not done without obtaining
leave of the Senate, which never admits of a divorce but upon a strict
inquiry made, both by the senators and their wives, into the grounds
upon which it is desired, and even when they are satisfied concerning
the reasons of it they go on but slowly, for they imagine that too great
easiness in granting leave for new marriages would very much shake the
kindness of married people. They punish severely those that defile
the marriage bed; if both parties are married they are divorced, and
the injured persons may marry one another, or whom they please, but
the adulterer and the adulteress are condemned to slavery, yet if either
of the injured persons cannot shake off the love of the married person
they may live with them still in that state, but they must follow them
to that labour to which the slaves are condemned, and sometimes the
repentance of the condemned, together with the unshaken kindness of
the innocent and injured person, has prevailed so far with the Prince
that he has taken off the sentence; but those that relapse after they
are once pardoned are punished with death.</p>
<p>“Their law does not determine the punishment for other crimes,
but that is left to the Senate, to temper it according to the circumstances
of the fact. Husbands have power to correct their wives and parents
to chastise their children, unless the fault is so great that a public
punishment is thought necessary for striking terror into others.
For the most part slavery is the punishment even of the greatest crimes,
for as that is no less terrible to the criminals themselves than death,
so they think the preserving them in a state of servitude is more for
the interest of the commonwealth than killing them, since, as their
labour is a greater benefit to the public than their death could be,
so the sight of their misery is a more lasting terror to other men than
that which would be given by their death. If their slaves rebel,
and will not bear their yoke and submit to the labour that is enjoined
them, they are treated as wild beasts that cannot be kept in order,
neither by a prison nor by their chains, and are at last put to death.
But those who bear their punishment patiently, and are so much wrought
on by that pressure that lies so hard on them, that it appears they
are really more troubled for the crimes they have committed than for
the miseries they suffer, are not out of hope, but that, at last, either
the Prince will, by his prerogative, or the people, by their intercession,
restore them again to their liberty, or, at least, very much mitigate
their slavery. He that tempts a married woman to adultery is no
less severely punished than he that commits it, for they believe that
a deliberate design to commit a crime is equal to the fact itself, since
its not taking effect does not make the person that miscarried in his
attempt at all the less guilty.</p>
<p>“They take great pleasure in fools, and as it is thought a
base and unbecoming thing to use them ill, so they do not think it amiss
for people to divert themselves with their folly; and, in their opinion,
this is a great advantage to the fools themselves; for if men were so
sullen and severe as not at all to please themselves with their ridiculous
behaviour and foolish sayings, which is all that they can do to recommend
themselves to others, it could not be expected that they would be so
well provided for nor so tenderly used as they must otherwise be.
If any man should reproach another for his being misshaped or imperfect
in any part of his body, it would not at all be thought a reflection
on the person so treated, but it would be accounted scandalous in him
that had upbraided another with what he could not help. It is
thought a sign of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully
one’s natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to
use paint. They all see that no beauty recommends a wife so much
to her husband as the probity of her life and her obedience; for as
some few are caught and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by
the other excellences which charm all the world.</p>
<p>“As they fright men from committing crimes by punishments,
so they invite them to the love of virtue by public honours; therefore
they erect statues to the memories of such worthy men as have deserved
well of their country, and set these in their market-places, both to
perpetuate the remembrance of their actions and to be an incitement
to their posterity to follow their example.</p>
<p>“If any man aspires to any office he is sure never to compass
it. They all live easily together, for none of the magistrates
are either insolent or cruel to the people; they affect rather to be
called fathers, and, by being really so, they well deserve the name;
and the people pay them all the marks of honour the more freely because
none are exacted from them. The Prince himself has no distinction,
either of garments or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf
of corn carried before him; as the High Priest is also known by his
being preceded by a person carrying a wax light.</p>
<p>“They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that
they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose
laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes;
for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body
of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read
and understood by every one of the subjects.</p>
<p>“They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as
a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest
the laws, and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man
should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places
the client trusts it to a counsellor; by this means they both cut off
many delays and find out truth more certainly; for after the parties
have laid open the merits of the cause, without those artifices which
lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and
supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise
crafty men would be sure to run down; and thus they avoid those evils
which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labour under
a vast load of laws. Every one of them is skilled in their law;
for, as it is a very short study, so the plainest meaning of which words
are capable is always the sense of their laws; and they argue thus:
all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may know his duty;
and, therefore, the plainest and most obvious sense of the words is
that which ought to be put upon them, since a more refined exposition
cannot be easily comprehended, and would only serve to make the laws
become useless to the greater part of mankind, and especially to those
who need most the direction of them; for it is all one not to make a
law at all or to couch it in such terms that, without a quick apprehension
and much study, a man cannot find out the true meaning of it, since
the generality of mankind are both so dull, and so much employed in
their several trades, that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity
requisite for such an inquiry.</p>
<p>“Some of their neighbours, who are masters of their own liberties
(having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the
yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which they
observe among them), have come to desire that they would send magistrates
to govern them, some changing them every year, and others every five
years; at the end of their government they bring them back to Utopia,
with great expressions of honour and esteem, and carry away others to
govern in their stead. In this they seem to have fallen upon a
very good expedient for their own happiness and safety; for since the
good or ill condition of a nation depends so much upon their magistrates,
they could not have made a better choice than by pitching on men whom
no advantages can bias; for wealth is of no use to them, since they
must so soon go back to their own country, and they, being strangers
among them, are not engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and
it is certain that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice
or partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice, the
chief sinew of society.</p>
<p>“The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates
from them Neighbours; but those to whom they have been of more particular
service, Friends; and as all other nations are perpetually either making
leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any
state. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that
if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of
promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed
in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are
no strict observers of leagues and treaties. We know how religiously
they are observed in Europe, more particularly where the Christian doctrine
is received, among whom they are sacred and inviolable! which is partly
owing to the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly
to the reverence they pay to the popes, who, as they are the most religious
observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes to
perform theirs, and, when fainter methods do not prevail, they compel
them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that it
would be the most indecent thing possible if men who are particularly
distinguished by the title of ‘The Faithful’ should not
religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in that new-found
world, which is not more distant from us in situation than the people
are in their manners and course of life, there is no trusting to leagues,
even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies;
on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight
pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely
couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound
but they will always find some loophole to escape at, and thus they
break both their leagues and their faith; and this is done with such
impudence, that those very men who value themselves on having suggested
these expedients to their princes would, with a haughty scorn, declaim
against such craft; or, to speak plainer, such fraud and deceit, if
they found private men make use of it in their bargains, and would readily
say that they deserved to be hanged.</p>
<p>“By this means it is that all sort of justice passes in the
world for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of
royal greatness—or at least there are set up two sorts of justice;
the one is mean and creeps on the ground, and, therefore, becomes none
but the lower part of mankind, and so must be kept in severely by many
restraints, that it may not break out beyond the bounds that are set
to it; the other is the peculiar virtue of princes, which, as it is
more majestic than that which becomes the rabble, so takes a freer compass,
and thus lawful and unlawful are only measured by pleasure and interest.
These practices of the princes that lie about Utopia, who make so little
account of their faith, seem to be the reasons that determine them to
engage in no confederacy. Perhaps they would change their mind
if they lived among us; but yet, though treaties were more religiously
observed, they would still dislike the custom of making them, since
the world has taken up a false maxim upon it, as if there were no tie
of nature uniting one nation to another, only separated perhaps by a
mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of hostility,
and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their neighbours against
which there is no provision made by treaties; and that when treaties
are made they do not cut off the enmity or restrain the licence of preying
upon each other, if, by the unskilfulness of wording them, there are
not effectual provisoes made against them; they, on the other hand,
judge that no man is to be esteemed our enemy that has never injured
us, and that the partnership of human nature is instead of a league;
and that kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with
greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements
of men’s hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of
words.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.