o dispute the
irrefragable statement.

COLLOQUY IV.--FEUDAL SLAVERY.--GROWTH OF PAUPERISM.

The last conversation had left a weight upon me, which was not lessened
when I contemplated the question in solitude. I called to mind the
melancholy view which Young has taken of the world in his unhappy poem:

"A part how small of the terraqueous globe
Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,
Rocks, deserts, frozen seas and burning sands,
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death.
Such is earth's melancholy map! But, far
More sad, this earth is a true map of man."

Sad as this representation is, I could not but acknowledge that the moral
and intellectual view is not more consolatory than the poet felt it to
be; and it was a less sorrowful consideration to think how large a
portion of the habitable earth is possessed by savages, or by nations
whom inhuman despotisms and monstrous superstitions have degraded in some
respects below the savage state, than to observe how small a part of what
is called the civilised world is truly civilised; and in the most
civilised parts to how small a portion of the inhabitants the real
blessings of civilisation are confined. In this mood how heartily should
I have accorded with Owen of Lanark if I could have agreed with that
happiest and most beneficent and most practical of all enthusiasts as
well concerning the remedy as the disease!

"Well, Montesinos," said the spirit, when he visited me next, "have you
recollected or found any solid arguments for maintaining that the
labouring classes, who form the great bulk of the population, are in a
happier condition, physical, moral, or intellectual, in these times, than
they were in mine?"

_Montesinos_.--Perhaps, Sir Thomas, their condition was better precisely
during your age than it ever has been either before or since. The feudal
system had well-nigh lost all its inhuman parts, and the worse inhumanity
of the commercial system had not yet shown itself.

_Sir Thomas More_.--It was, indeed, a most important age in English
history, and, till the Reformation so fearfully disturbed it, in many
respects a happy and an enviable one. But the process was then beginning
which is not yet completed. As the feudal system relaxed and tended to
dissolution the condition of the multitude was changed. Let us trace it
from earlier times! In what state do you suppose the people of this
island to have been when they we