are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall
under a scarcity of necessary provisions: but
it is so far from being true that this time is not
sufficient for supplying them with plenty of all things,
either necessary or convenient, that it is rather
too much; and this you will easily apprehend if you
consider how great a part of all other nations is quite
idle. First, women generally do little, who are
the half of mankind; and if some few women are diligent,
their husbands are idle: then consider the great
company of idle priests, and of those that are called
religious men; add to these all rich men, chiefly
those that have estates in land, who are called noblemen
and gentlemen, together with their families, made
up of idle persons, that are kept more for show than
use; add to these all those strong and lusty beggars
that go about pretending some disease in excuse for
their begging; and upon the whole account you will
find that the number of those by whose labours mankind
is supplied is much less than you perhaps imagined:
then consider how few of those that work are employed
in labours that are of real service, for we, who measure
all things by money, give rise to many trades that
are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support
riot and luxury: for if those who work were employed
only in such things as the conveniences of life require,
there would be such an abundance of them that the prices
of them would so sink that tradesmen could not be
maintained by their gains; if all those who labour
about useless things were set to more profitable employments,
and if all they that languish out their lives in sloth
and idleness (every one of whom consumes as much as
any two of the men that are at work) were forced to
labour, you may easily imagine that a small proportion
of time would serve for doing all that is either necessary,
profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while
pleasure is kept within its due bounds: this
appears very plainly in Utopia; for there, in a great
city, and in all the territory that lies round it,
you can scarce find five hundred, either men or women,
by their age and strength capable of labour, that
are not engaged in it. Even the Syphogrants,
though excused by the law, yet do not excuse themselves,
but work, that by their examples they may excite the
industry of the rest of the people; the like exemption
is allowed to those who, being recommended to the people
by the priests, are, by the secret suffrages of the
Syphogrants, privileged from labour, that they may
apply themselves wholly to study; and if any of these
fall short of those hopes that they seemed at first
to give, they are obliged to return to work; and sometimes
a mechanic that so employs his leisure hours as to
make a considerable advancement in learning is eased
from being a tradesman and ranked among their learned
men. Out of these they choose their ambassadors,
their priests, their Tranibors, and the Prince himself,
anciently called their Barzenes, but is called of
late their Ademus.