Hythloday's A Brave New World

More tells how King Henry VIII (1491-1547) of England sends him to Flanders, Belgium, on a diplomatic mission. There he meets a friend, Peter Giles, who introduces him to a Portuguese seaman, Raphael Hythloday (his name is taken from the Greek meaning "speaker of nonsense"). Hythloday explains that he has been traveling with Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer. He has discovered an island called Utopia, where the people live in a perfectly ordered society. He begins to tell More and Giles about the many excellent aspects of Utopian life. Giles asks Hythloday why he has not offered his services as an advisor to a king, since any political leader would benefit from hearing what he has to say. Hythloday rejects this idea, at first giving the

The French make the mistake of keeping a standing army in time of peace, and these men prove a menace to society, since they are either idle or trying to overthrow the government. A third class of people who are forced into thievery in England, says Hythloday, are rural people who are victims of the growing practice of enclosure of arable land for the grazing of sheep. Wool has become profitable in England and landowners are keen to cash in. To this end, they turn out of their homes the farm tenants who previously worked the land to grow food, and fence it in for sheep pasture, often demolishing the houses to make room for more sheep. While arable farming requires many laborers, the keeping of sheep needs few. Thus large populations of unemployed and starving agricultural laborers roam the land. Another class of people who turn to thievery is gamblers, who must find a way of replenishing their lost money. Hythloday would ban gambling and bring in government legislation to regulate the production of wool. One of the root causes of thievery, Hythloday says, is poor education. If society fails to educate its people, it should not be surprised if they turn to crime. Finally, he adds that if the punishment for theft and murder is the same, then robbers will be more disposed to kill their victims and thereby get rid of the witness, as if he is caught, he will be no worse off for having killed.Hythloday describes a better method of dealing

When the dinner guests hear the Cardinal giving credence to Hythloday's notions, they agree that they are very sensible, especially the Cardinal's own suggestion about vagabonds. More repeats the recommendation that Hythloday offer his counsel to some king, reinforcing his argument with the Greek philosopher Plato's (c. 427-c. 347 BC) belief that "nations will be happy, when either philosophers become kings, or kings become philosophers." But Hythloday says that kings are too corrupt from childhood to listen to the advice of philosophers. He describes a hypothetical meeting of the French king's council, where the advisors to the king are only concerned with how to wage war on other nations or how to gain an advantage over them. He imagines himself advising the king to abandon thoughts of conquering other nations, since his own country was too large to govern well by one man. He asks More how such advice would be received, and More admits that it would not be welcome. Hythloday then imagines that he is in a meeting of the king's financial advisors. The advisors are concerned only expanding the king's treasury through various means: manipulating the value of the currency; raising taxes to pay for a pretended war that is then called off; and imposing financial penalties on certain items or activities. They are also eager to