minister made suit to the king that the case might be argued for the pope by learned counsel in a public place, and in presence of the minister himself, who was a distinguished civilian. None was found so well qualified to be of counsel for the ambassador as More, who could report in Latin to that minister all the reasonings of the counsel on both sides. More accordingly stated all their arguments to his client, and argued so learnedly on the pope's side, that he succeeded in obtaining an order for the restitution of the vessel detained; and appears by his probity and ability to have reached the summit of his forensic reputation.* There was no case of consequence in controversy before any court of law, in which he was not of counsel for one of the parties.

It has been already intimated, that about the same time he was appointed to a judicial office in the city of London, which is described by his sonin-law as one of the under-sheriffs of the city. These officers are now annually appointed, and exercise no judicial powers. Roper, who was for many years an officer of the court of King's Bench, gives the name of the office correctly; but does not describe its nature and importance so truly as Erasmus, who tells his correspondent that More passed several years in the city of London, where he was born, as a judge in civil causes. "This office, though not laborious, for the court sits only on the forenoon of every Thursday, is accounted very honourable. No judge of that court ever went through more causes; none decided them more uprightly; often remitting the fees to which he was entitled from the suitors. His deportment in this capacity endeared him extremely to his fellow-citizens." He was judge of the sheriff's court, which, being the county court for London and Middlesex, was, at that time, a station of honour and advantage. For the county courts in general, and indeed all the ancient subordinate jurisdictions of the common law, had not yet been superseded by that concentration of authority in the hands of the superior courts at Westminister, which contributed to the purity and dignity of the judicial character, as well as to a perfect uniformity and a constant improvement of the administration of law; a great commendation, it is true, but to which we cannot add that it served in the same degree to promote a speedy and cheap redress of the wrongs suffered by those suitors to whom cost and delay are most grievous. More's office, in that state of jurisdiction, might therefore have possessed the importance which his contemporaries ascribed to it; although the denomination of it would not make such an impression on modern ears.

From communications obtained for me from the records of the city, I am enabled to ascertain some particulars of the nature of More's appointment, which have occasioned a difference of opinion. He was under-sheriff of London; for, on the 8th of May, 1514, it was agreed by the common council, "that Thomas More, gentleman, one of the under-sheriffs of London, should occupy his office and chamber by a sufficient deputy, during his absence as the king's ambassador in Flanders." It appears from several entries in the same records, from 1496 to 1502 inclusive, that the under-sheriff* was annually elected, or rather confirmed; for the practice was not to remove him without his own application or some serious fault. For six years of Henry's reign, Edward Dudley was one of the under-sheriff's; a circumstance which renders the superior importance of the office at that time probable. Thomas Marowe, the author of works on law esteemed in his time, though not published, appears in the above records as under-sheriff.

It is apparent, that either as a considerable source of his income, or as an honourable token of public confidence, this office was valued by More; since he informs Erasmus in 1516, that he had declined a handsome pension offered to him by the king on his return from Flanders: that he believed he should always decline it; because either it would oblige him to resign his office in the city, which he preferred to a better, or if he retained it, in case of a controversy of the city with the king for their privileges, he might be deemed by his fellow-citizens to be disabled by dependence on the crown from sincerely and faithfully maintaining their rights. This last reasoning is also interesting, as the first intimation of the necessity of a city law-officer being independent on the crown, and of the legal resistance of the corporation of London to a Tudor king. It paved the way for those happier times in which the great city had the honour to number the Holts and the Denmans among her legal advisers.

He is the first person in our history distinguished by the faculty of public speaking, and remarkable for the successful employment of it in parliament against a lavish grant of money to the crown. The circumstances of a fact thus doubly memorable are related by his son-in-law as follows:-"In the latter time of king Henry VII. he was made a burgess of the parliament, wherein was demanded by the king about three fifteenths for the marriage of his eldest daughter, that then should be the Scottish queen. At the last debating whereof he made such arguments and reasons there against, that the king's demands were thereby clean overthrown; so that one of the king's privy chamber, named maister Tyler, being

The Latin term for under-sheriff in the entries is subvicecomes; but the leave of absence during the Flemish mission is in English.

†Thomas Morus Erasmo. 1516. Ep. 227. Erasmi Opp. iii. 220.

present thereat, brought word to the king out of the parliament house, that a beardless boy had disappointed all his purpose. Whereupon the king, conceiving great indignation towards him, could not be satisfied until he had some way revenged it. And forasmuch as he, nothing having, could nothing lose, his grace devised a causeless quarrel against his father; keeping him in the Tower till he had made him to pay 100l. fine," (probably on a charge of having infringed some obsolete penal law). "Shortly after, it fortuned that sir T. More, coming in a suit to Dr. Fox, bishop of Winchester, one of the king's privy council, the bishop called him aside, and, pretending great favour towards him, promised that if he would be ruled by him he would not fail into the king's favour again to restore him; meaning, as it was afterwards conjectured, to cause him thereby to confess his offences against the king, whereby his highness might, with the better colour, have occasion to revenge his displeasure against him. But when he came from the bishop he fell into communication with one maister Whitforde, his familiar friend, then chaplain to that bishop, and showed him what the bishop had said, praying for his advice. Whitforde prayed him by the passion of God not to follow the counsel; for my lord, to serve the king's turn, will not stick to agree to his own father's death. So sir Thomas More returned to the bishop no more; and had not the king died soon after, he was determined to have gone over sea."* That the advice of Whitford was wise, appeared from a circumstance which occurred nearly ten years after, which exhibits a new feature in the character of the king and of his bishops. When Dudley was sacrificed to popular resentment, under Henry VIII., and when he was on his way to execution, he met sir Thomas, to whom he said,-" Oh More, More! God was your good friend, that you did not ask the king forgiveness, as manie would have had you do; for

if

you had done so, perhaps you should have been in the like case with us now."t

It was natural that the restorer of political eloquence, which had slumbered for a long series of ages, should also be the earliest of the parliamentary champions of liberty. But it is lamentable that we have so little information respecting sir Thomas More's oratory, which alone could have armed him for the noble conflict. He may be said to hold the same station among us, which is assigned by Cicero, in his dialogue on the celebrated orators, of Rome,§ to Cato the censor,

Roper, p. 7. There seems to be some forgetfulness of dates in the latter part of this passage, which has been copied by succeeding writers. Margaret, it is well known, was married in 1503. The debate was not, therefore, later than that year. But Henry VII. lived till 1509.

More's Life of More, p. 38. "Postquam pugnatum est apud Actium, magna illa ingenia cessere.-Tacitus.

§ Brutus, sive de Claris Oratoribus.

whose consulship was only about ninety years prior to the consulship of Cicero himself. That celebrated Roman had, indeed, made an animated speech in the eighty-fifth year of his age, which was the last of his life. A hundred and fifty of his speeches were extant in the time of Cicero. "But," says the latter, "what living or lately deceased orator has read them? Who knows them at all?"

Sir Thomas More's answer, as speaker of the house of commons, to Wolsey, of which more will be said presently, is admirable for its promptitude, quickness, seasonableness, and caution, combined with dignity and spirit. It unites presence of mind and adaptation to the person and circumstances, with address and management seldom surpassed. If the tone be more submissive than suits modern ears, it is yet remarkable for that ingenious refinement which for an instant shows a glimpse of the sword generally hidden under robes of state. "His eloquent tongue," says Erasmus, "so well seconds his fertile invention, that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money, that, without hesitation or delay, it gives out whatever the time and the case may require. His acuteness in dispute is unrivalled, and he often perplexes the most renowned theologians when he enters their province."* Though much of this encomium may be applicable rather to private conversation than to public debate; and though his presence of mind may refer most to promptitude of repartee, and comparatively little to that readiness of reply, of which his experience must have been limited; it is still obvious that the great critic has ascribed to his friend the higher part of those mental qualities, which, when justly balanced and perfectly trained, constitute a great

orator.

As if it had been the lot of More to open all the paths through the wilds of our old English speech, he is to be considered as our earliest prose writer, and as the first Englishman who wrote the history of his country in its present language. The historical fragment commands belief by simplicity, and by abstinence from too confident affir mation. It betrays some negligence about minute particulars, which is not displeasing as a symptom of the absence of eagerness to enforce a narrative. The composition has an ease and a rotundity, which gratify the ear without awakening the suspicion of art, of which there was no model in any preceding writer of English prose.

In comparing the prose of More with the modern style, we must distinguish the words from the composition. A very small part of his vocabulary has been superannuated. The number of terms which require any explanation is inconsiderable;

Erasm. Epist. ad Ulric. ab Hutton.

and in that respect the stability of the language is remarkable. He is, indeed, in his words, more English than the great writers of a century after him, who loaded their native tongue with expressions of Greek or Latin derivation. Cicero, speaking of old Cato, seems almost to describe More. "His style is rather antiquated; he has some words displeasing to our ears, but which were then in familiar use. Change those terms, which he could not, you will then prefer no speaker to Cato."*

But in the combination and arrangement of words, in ordinary phraseology and common habits of composition, he differs more widely from the style prevalent among us for nearly two centuries. His diction seems a continued experiment to discover the forms into which the language naturally runs. In that attempt he has frequently failed. Fortunate accident, or more varied experiment in aftertimes, led to the adoption of other combinations, which could scarcely have succeeded, if they had not been more consonant to the spirit of the language, and more agreeable to the ear and the feelings of the people. The structure of his sentences is frequently not that which the English language has finally adopted. The language of his countrymen has decided, without appeal, against the composition of the father of English prose.

The speeches contained in his fragment, like many of those in the ancient historians, were probably as real as he could render them in substance; but brightened by ornament, and improved in composition. It could, indeed, scarcely be otherwise; for the history was written in 1513†, and the death of Edward IV., with which it opens, occurred in 1483; and cardinal Morton, who became prime minister two years after that event, appears to have taken young More into his household about the year 1493. There is little scope, in so short a time, for much falsification, by tradition, of the arguments and topics really employed.

The speeches have the merit of being accommodated to the circumstances, and of disposing those to whom they were addressed to promote the object of the speaker. Strange as it may seem, this rare merit renders it probable that More had been taught, by the practice of speaking in contests where objects the most important are the prize of the victor, that eloquence is the art of persuasion; and that the end of the orator is not the display of his talents, but dominion over the minds of his hearers. The dying speech, in which Edward exhorts the two parties of his friends to harmony,

Brutus, c. 68.

Holinshed, iii. 360. Holinshed called More's work "unfinished." That it was meant to extend to the death of Richard III. seems probable from the following sentence:-" But, forasmuch as this duke's (the duke of Gloucester) demeanour ministereth in effect all the whole matter whereof this book shall entreat, it is therefore convenient to show you, as we farther go, what manner of man this was that could find in his heart such mischief to conceive."-Ib. 361.

is a grave appeal to their prudence, as well as an affecting address from a father and a king to their public feelings. The surmises thrown out by Richard against the Widvilles are short, dark, and well adapted to awaken suspicion and alarm. The insinuations against the queen, and the threats of danger to the lords themselves from leaving the person of the duke of York in the hands of that princess, in Richard's speech to the privy council, before the archbishop of York was sent to Westminster to demand the surrender of the boy, are admirable specimens of the address and art of crafty ambition. Generally speaking, the speeches have little of the vague common-place of rhetoricians and declaimers. They are calculated for the very persons to whom they were spoken, and fitted for all their peculiarities of interest and temper. Time is not wasted in parade. In the case, indeed, of the dispute between the archbishop and the queen, about taking the duke of York out of his mother's care, in sanctuary at Westminster, there is more ingenious argument than the scene allows; and the mind rejects logical refinements, of which the use, on such an occasion, is quite irreconcileable to dramatic verisimilitude. The duke of Buckingham alleged in council, that sanctuary could be claimed only against danger; and that the royal infant had neither wisdom to desire sanctuary, nor the malicious intention in his acts without which he could not require it. To this notable paradox, which amounted to an affirmation that no certainly innocent person could ever claim protection from a sanctuary, when it was carried to the queen, she answered readily, that if she could be in sanctuary, it followed that her child, who was her ward, was included in her protection, as much as her servants were, without contradiction, allowed to be.

The Latin epigrams of More, a small volume which it required two years to carry through the press at Basil, are mostly translations from the Anthologia, which were rather made known to Europe by the fame of the writer, than calculated to increase it. They contain, however, some decisive proofs that he always entertained the opi nions respecting the dependence of all government on the consent of the people, to which he professed his adherence almost in his dying moments. Latin versification was not in that early period successfully attempted in any transalpine country. The rules of prosody, or at least the laws of metrical composition, were not yet sufficiently studied for such attempts. His Latinity was of the same school with that of his friend Erasmus; which was, indeed, common to the first generation of scholars after the revival of classical study. Finding Latin a sort of general language employed by men of letters in their conversation and correspondence, they continued the use of it in the mixed and corrupted state to which such an application had necessarily reduced it: they began, indeed, to purify it from some grosser corruptions; but

they built their style upon the foundation of this colloquial dialect, with no rigorous observation of the good usage of the Roman language. Writings of business, of pleasantry, of familiar intercourse, could never have been composed in pure Latinity, which was still more inconsistent with new manners, institutions, and opinions, and with discoveries and inventions added to those which were transmitted by antiquity. Erasmus, who is the master and model of this system of composition, admirably shows how much had been gained by loosening the fetters of a dead speech, and acquiring in its stead the nature, ease, variety, and vivacity of a spoken and living tongue. The course of circumstances, however, determined that this language should not subsist, or at least flourish, for much more than a century. It was assailed on one side by the purely classical, whom Erasmus, in derision, calls "Ciceronians ;" and when it was sufficiently emasculated by dread of their censure, it was finally overwhelmed by the rise of a national literature in every European language.

More exemplified the abundance and flexibility of the Erasmian Latinity in Utopia, with which this short view of all his writings, except those of controversy, may be fitly concluded. The idea of the work was suggested by some of the dialogues of Plato, who speaks of vast territories, formerly cultivated and peopled, but afterwards, by some convulsion of nature, covered by the Atlantic Ocean. These Egyptian traditions, or legends, harmonized admirably with that discovery of a new continent by Columbus, which had roused the admiration of Europe about twenty years before the composition of Utopia. This was the name of an island feigned to have been discovered by a supposed companion of Amerigo Vespucci, who is made to tell the wondrous tale of its condition to More, at Antwerp, in 1514.

More, imitating the ancients, only as a philosopher, borrowed from Plato the conception of an imaginary commonwealth, of which he placed the seat in Utopia. All the names which he invented for men or places* were intimations of their being unreal, and were, perhaps, by treating with raillery his own notions, intended to silence gainsayers. The first book, which is preliminary, is naturally and ingeniously opened by a conversation, in

which Raphael Hythloday, the Utopian traveller, describes his visit to England; where, as much as in other countries, he found all proposals for improvement encountered by the remark, that "Such things pleased our ancestors, and it were well for us if we could but match them; as if it were a great mischief that any should be found wiser than his ancestors." "I met these proud, morose, and absurd judgments, particularly once when dining with cardinal Morton at London." After describing that portion of More's boyhood in a manner which was sure to win his heart, Raphael proceeds to say, "that there happened to be at table an English lawyer, who run out into high commendation of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who were then hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty hanging upon one gibbet ; and added, that he could not wonder enough how it came to pass that there were so many thieves left robbing in all places.'" Raphael answered, "that it was because the punishment of death was neither just in itself, nor good for the public; for as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual. You, as well as other nations, like bad schoolmasters, chastise their scholars because they have not the skill to teach them." Raphael afterwards more specially ascribed the gangs of banditti who, after the suppression of Perkin Warbeck's Cornish revolt, infested England, to two causes; of which the first was the frequent disbanding of the idle and armed retainers of the nobles, who, when from necessity let loose from their masters, were too proud for industry, and had no resource but rapine; and the second was the conversion of much corn field into pasture for sheep, because the latter had become more profitable; by which base motives many landholders were tempted to expel their tenants and destroy the food of man. Raphael suggested the substitution of hard labour for death; for which he quoted the example of the Romans, and of an imaginary community in Persia. "The lawyer answered, that it could never be so settled in England, without endangering the whole nation by it :' he shook his head, and made some grimaces, and then held his peace, and all the company seemed to be of his mind. But the cardinal said, 'It is not easy to say whether this plan would succeed or not, since no trial has been made of it; but it might be tried on thieves condemned to death, and adopted if found to answer: and vagabonds might be treated in the same way.' When the cardinal had said this, they all fell to commend the motion, though they had despised it when it came from me. They more particularly commended that concerning the vagabonds, because it had been added by him."

From some part of the above extracts it is apparent that More, instead of having anticipated the economical doctrines of Adam Smith, as some modern writers have fancied, was thoroughly im*Burnet's Trans. of Utopia, p. 13. Ibid. book i.

bued with the prejudices of his contemporaries against the inclosure of commons, and the exten. sion of pasture. It is, however, observable, that he is perfectly consistent with himself, and follows his principles through all their legitimate consequences, though they may end in doctrines of very startling sound. Considering separate property as always productive of unequal distribution of the fruits of labour, and regarding that inequality of fortune as the source of bodily suffering to those who labour, and of mental depravation to those who are not compelled to toil for subsistence, Hythloday is made to say, that "as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, he cannot expect that a nation can be governed either justly or happily."* More himself objects to Hythloday: "It seems to me that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common. How can there be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from labouring? for, as the hope of gain doth not excite him, so the confidence that he has in other men's industry may make him slothful. And if people come to be pinched with want, and yet cannot dispose of any thing as their own, what can follow but perpetual sedition and bloodshed; especially when the reverence and authority due to magistrates fall to the ground: for I cannot imagine how they can be kept up among those that are in all things equal to one another." These remarks do in reality contain the germs of unanswerable objections to all those projects of a community of goods, which suppose the moral character of the majority of mankind to continue, at the moment of their adoption, such as it has been heretofore in the most favourable instances. If, indeed, it be proposed only on the supposition, that by the influence of laws, or by the agency of any other cause, mankind in general are rendered more honest, more benevolent, more disinterested than they have hitherto been, it is evident that they will, in the same proportion, approach to a practice more near the principle of an equality and a community of all advantages. The hints of an answer to Plato, thrown out by More, are so decisive that it is not easy to see how he left this speck on his romance, unless we may be allowed to suspect that the speculation was in part suggested as a convenient cover for that biting satire on the sordid and rapacious government of Henry VII. which occupies a considerable portion of Hythloday's first discourse. It may also be supposed that More, not anxious to save visionary reformers from a few light blows in an attack aimed at corrupt and tyrannical statesmen, thinks it suitable to his imaginary personage, and conducive to the liveliness of his fiction, to represent the traveller in Utopia as touched by one of the most alluring and delusive of political chimeras.

* Utopia, 57. Happening to write where I have no access to the original, I use Burnet's Translation. There can be no doubt of Burnet's learning or fidelity.

In Utopia, farm-houses were built over the whole country, to which inhabitants were sent in rotation from the fifty-four cities. Every family had forty men and women, besides two slaves; a master and mistress preside over every family, and over thirty families a magistrate. Every year twenty of the family return to town, being two years in the country; so that all acquire some knowledge of agriculture, and the land is never left in the hands of persons quite unacquainted with country labours. When they want any thing in the country which it doth not produce, they fetch it from the city without carrying any thing in exchange. The magistrates take care to see it given to them. The people of the towns carry their commodities to the market place, where they are taken away by those who need them. The chief business of the magistrates is to take care that no man may live idle, and that every one should labour in his trade for six hours of every twenty-four: a portion of time, which, according to Hythloday, was sufficient for an abundant supply of all the necessaries and moderate accommodations of the community, and which is not inadequate where all labour, and none apply extreme labour to the production of superfluities to gratify a few, where there are no idle priests or idle rich men, and where women of all sorts perform their light allotment of labour. To women all domestic offices which did not degrade or displease were assigned. Unhappily, however, the iniquitous and unrighteous expedient was devised, of releasing the better order of females from offensive and noisome occupations, by throwing them upon slaves. Their citizens were forbidden to be butchers, "because they think that pity and good-nature, which are among the best of those affections that are born within us, are much impaired by the butchering of animals." A striking representation, indeed, of the depraving effects of cruelty to animals, but abused for the iniquitous and cruel purpose of training inferiors to barbarous habits, in order to preserve for their masters the exclusive benefit of a discipline of humanity. Slaves, too, were employed in hunting, which was deemed too frivolous and barbarous an amusement for citizens. "They look upon hunting as one of the basest parts of a butcher's business, for they account it more decent to kill beasts for the sustenance of mankind, than to take pleasure in seeing a weak, harmless, and fearful hare torn in pieces by a strong, fierce, and cruel dog." An excess population was remedied by planting colonies; a defect, by the recall of the necessary number of former colonists; irregularities of distribution, by transferring the superfluous members of one township to supply the vacancies in another. They did not enslave their prisoners, nor the children of their own slaves. They are criminals condemned to slavery as a punishment; which would be no injustice in itself, if they had not purchased persons so condemned in other countries, which was in effect a premium on unjust convictions. In those