Utopia

By Sir Thomas More

“Here again, if I should rise up and boldly affirm that all these counsels be to the king dishonor and reproach, whose honor and safety is more and rather supported and upholden by the wealth and riches of his people than by his own treasures, and if I should declare that the commonality chooseth their king for their own sake and not for his sake, to the intent that through his labor and study they might all live wealthily, safe from wrongs and injuries, and that therefore the king ought to take more care for the wealth of his people than for his own wealth, even as the office and duty of a shepherd is, in that he is a shepherd, to feed his sheep rather than himself. For as touching this, that they think the defense and maintenance of peace to consist in the poverty of the people, the thing itself showeth that they be far out of the way. For where decay of shall a man find more wrangling, quarreling, brawling and realms. chiding than among beggars, who be more desirous of new mutations and alterations than they that be not content with the present state of their life? Or, finally, who be bolder stomached to bring all in a hurly-burly (thereby trusting to get some windfall) than they that have now nothing to lose? And if any king were so smally regarded and so lightly esteemed, yea, so behated of his subjects that other ways he could not keep them in awe, but only by open wrongs, by polling and shaving, and by bringing them to beggary, surely it were better for him to forsake his kingdom than to hold it by this means, whereby, though the name of the king be kept, yet the majesty is lost, for it is against the dignity of a king to have rule over beggars, but rather over rich and wealthy men.