Montesinos.—­A country modelled upon Apiarian laws would be a strange Utopia! the bowstring would be used there as unmercifully as it is in the seraglio, to say nothing of the summary mode of bringing down the population to the means of subsistence.  But this is straying from the subject.  The consequences of defective order are indeed frightful, whether we regard the physical or the moral evils which are produced

Sir Thomas More.—­And not less frightful when the political evils are contemplated.  To the dangers of an oppressive and iniquitous order, such, for example, as exists where negro slavery is established, you are fully awake in England; but to those of defective order among yourselves, though they are precisely of the same nature, you are blind.  And yet you have spirits among you who are labouring day and night to stir up a bellum servile, an insurrection like that of Wat Tyler, of the Jacquerie, and of the peasants in Germany.  There is no provocation for this, as there was in all those dreadful convulsions of society:  but there are misery and ignorance and desperate wickedness to work upon, which the want of order has produced.  Think for a moment what London, nay, what the whole kingdom would be, were your Catilines to succeed in exciting as general an insurrection as that which was raised by one madman in your own childhood!  Imagine the infatuated and infuriated wretches, whom not Spitalfields, St. Giles’s, and Pimlico alone, but all the lanes and alleys and cellars of the metropolis would pour out—­a frightful population, whose multitudes, when gathered together, might almost exceed belief!  The streets of London would appear to teem with them, like the land of Egypt with its plague of frogs:  and the lava floods from a volcano would be less destructive than the hordes whom your great cities and manufacturing districts would vomit forth!

Montesinos.—­Such an insane rebellion would speedily be crushed.

Sir Thomas More.—­Perhaps so.  But three days were enough for the Fire of London.  And be assured this would not pass away without leaving in your records a memorial as durable and more dreadful.

Montesinos.—­Is such an event to be apprehended?

Sir Thomas More.—­Its possibility at least ought always to be borne in mind.  The French Revolution appeared much less possible when the Assembly of Notables was convoked; and the people of France were much less prepared for the career of horrors into which they were presently hurried.

COLLOQUY XIV.—­THE LIBRARY.

I was in my library, making room upon the shelves for some books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous station others which were of less value and in worse dress, when Sir Thomas entered.  You are employed, said he, to your heart’s content.  Why, Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant society, what have you to covet or desire?