![]() “…when I reflect on the wise and good constitution of the Utopians, among whom all things are so well governed and with so few laws, where virtue hath its due reward, and yet there is such an equality that every man lives in plenty-when I compare with them so many other nations that are still making new laws, and yet can never bring their constitution to a right regulation where, notwithstanding every one has his property, yet all the laws that they can invent have not the power either to obtain or preserve it, or even to enable men certainly to distinguish what is their own from what is another’s, of which the many lawsuits that every day break out, and are eternally depending, give too plain a demonstration-when, I say, I balance all these things in my thoughts, I grow more favourable to Plato, and do not wonder that he resolved not to make any laws for such as would not submit to a community of all things for so wise a man could not but foresee that the setting all upon a level was the only way to make a nation happy which cannot be obtained so long as there is property, for when every man draws to himself all that he can compass, by one title or another, it must needs follow that, how plentiful soever a nation may be, yet a few dividing the wealth of it among themselves, the rest must fall into indigence. He was beheaded for refusing to recognize Henry VIII’s divorce and the English church’s break with Rome. He was trained as a lawyer and served as a member of parliament and chancellor in the reign of Henry VIII. ![]() Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was an English humanist scholar and writer.
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