Sir Thomas More.—­Make the most of your vantage ground!  My position is, that this improvement is not general; that while some parts of the earth are progressive in civilisation, others have been retrograde; and that even where improvement appears the greatest, it is partial.  For example; with all the meliorations which have taken place in England since these stones were set up (and you will not suppose that I who laid down my life for a religious principle, would undervalue the most important of all advantages), do you believe that they have extended to all classes?  Look at the question well.  Consider your fellow-countrymen, both in their physical and intellectual relations, and tell me whether a large portion of the community are in a happier or more hopeful condition at this time, than their forefathers were when Caesar set foot upon the island?

Montesinos.—­If it be your aim to prove that the savage state is preferable to the social, I am perhaps the very last person upon whom any arguments to that end could produce the slightest effect.  That notion never for a moment deluded me:  not even in the ignorance and presumptuousness of youth, when first I perused Rousseau, and was unwilling to feel that a writer whose passionate eloquence I felt and admired so truly could be erroneous in any of his opinions.  But now, in the evening of life, when I know upon what foundation my principles rest, and when the direction of one peculiar course of study has made it necessary for me to learn everything which books could teach concerning savage life, the proposition appears to me one of the most untenable that ever was advanced by a perverse or a paradoxical intellect.

Sir Thomas More.—­I advanced no such paradox, and you have answered me too hastily.  The Britons were not savages when the Romans invaded and improved them.  They were already far advanced in the barbarous stage of society, having the use of metals, domestic cattle, wheeled carriages, and money, a settled government, and a regular priesthood, who were connected with their fellow-Druids on the Continent, and who were not ignorant of letters.  Understand me!  I admit that improvements of the utmost value have been made, in the most important concerns:  but I deny that the melioration has been general; and insist, on the contrary, that a considerable portion of the people are in a state, which, as relates to their physical condition, is greatly worsened, and, as touching their intellectual nature, is assuredly not improved.  Look, for example, at the great mass of your populace in town and country—­a tremendous proportion of the whole community!  Are their bodily wants better, or more easily supplied?  Are they subject to fewer calamities?  Are they happier in childhood, youth, and manhood, and more comfortably or carefully provided for in old age, than when the land was unenclosed, and half covered with woods?  With regard to their moral and intellectual capacity, you well know how little of the light of knowledge and of revelation has reached them.  They are still in darkness, and in the shadow of death!