Amaurot lies on the side of a hill; it is almost a square, two miles on each side; and it faces the river Anider which takes its rise eighty miles above the town, and gets lost in the ocean sixty miles below. The town is compassed by a high, thick wall; the streets are convenient for carriages and sheltered from the winds; and the houses are built in rows so that a whole side of the street looks like a single unit. (It was so that the great people built their houses in eighteenth century London and Edinburgh, as Belgrave Square, Portland Square, and the great Adelphi Mansion designed by the Brothers Adam show us.) The streets are twenty feet broad; and in back of the houses are gardens, which everyone has a hand in keeping up; and the people of the various blocks vie with each other in ordering their gardens, so that there is “nothing belonging to the whole town that is more useful and more pleasant.”
In every street there are great halls, distinguished by particular names, and lying at an equal distance from each other. In each hall dwells the magistrates of a district, who rules over thirty families, fifteen living on one side and fifteen on another; and since a family consists of not more than sixteen and not less than ten people, this magistrate—or Philarch as he is called—is the “community leader” of some four hundred people.
In these halls everyone meets and takes his principal meal. The stewards go to the market place at a particular hour, and, according to the number of people in their halls, carry home provisions. The people who are in hospitals—which are built outside the walls and are so large they might pass for little towns—get the pick of the day’s food. At the hours of dinner and supper the whole block is called together by a trumpet, and everybody joins company, except such as are sick or in hospital, just as the students and fellows to this day eat their principal meal in an Oxford college. The dressing of meat and the ordering of the tables belongs to the women; all those of every family taking their place by turns. In the same building there is a common nursery and chapel; and so the women who have children to care for labor under no inconvenience.
The midday meal is dispatched unceremoniously; but at the end of the day music always accompanies the meals, perfumes are burnt or sprinkled around, and they “want nothing that may cheer up their spirits.” Bond Street and Fifth Avenue may weep about the absence of conspicuous waste in Utopia; but at supper time, at any rate, William Penn would be uncomfortable. There is the odor of an uncommonly good club in the description of the final meal of the day: the smell of the barracks or the poorhouse, which we should find later in Robert Owen’s common halls, does not intrude for an instant. More, when you examine him closely, does not altogether forget the mean sensual man who dwells occasionally in all of us!
VIII
Now that we have laid the foundations of the material life, we must observe the limitations that are laid upon the daily activities of the Utopians. This brings us to the government.
The basis of the Utopian political state, as in the economic province, is the family. Every year thirty families choose a magistrate, known as a Philarch; and over every ten Philarchs, with the families subject to them, there is an Archphilarch. All the Philarchs, who are in number 200, choose the Prince out of a list of four, who are named by the people of the four divisions of the city. The Prince is elected for life, unless he be removed on suspicion of attempting to enslave the people. The Philarchs are chosen for a single year; but they are frequently reelected. In order to keep their rulers from conspiring to upset the government, no matter of great importance can be set on foot without being sent to the Philarchs, “who, after they have communicated it to the families that belong to their divisions, and have considered it among themselves, make report to the senate; and upon great occasions the matter is referred to the council of the whole island.”
Recollect that each household is an industrial as well as a domestic unit, as was usual in the Middle Age, and you will perceive that this is an astute combination of industrial and political democracy on a genuine basis of common interest.
The greater part of the business of the government relates to the economic life of the people. There are certain other matters, however, which remain over for them; and these affairs constitute a blot on More’s conception of the ideal commonwealth. One of them is the regulation of travel; another is the treatment of crime; and a third is war.
It is interesting to note that on two subjects which More is mightily concerned to rectify in his own country—crime and war—he establishes conditions which are pretty far from being ideal or humane in his Utopia. Æ has well said that a man becomes the image of the thing he hates. Everything that Raphael brings up against the government of England in the Introduction to Utopia could be brought with almost equal force, I believe, against the very country which is to serve as a standard.
While any man may travel if there is no particular occasion for him at home—whether he wishes to visit friends or see the rest of the country—it is necessary for him to carry a passport from the Prince. If he stay in any place longer than a night he must follow his proper occupation; and if anyone goes out of the city without leave or is found wandering around without a passport,
