tions, seditions, murders,
treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are indeed rather punished than
restrained by the severities of law, would all fall off, if money were
not any more valued by the world? Men's fears, solicitudes, cares,
labours, and watchings, would all perish in the same moment with the
value of money: even poverty itself, for the relief of which money seems
most necessary, would fall. But, in order to the apprehending this
aright, take one instance.

Consider any year that has been so unfruitful that many thousands have
died of hunger; and yet if at the end of that year a survey was made of
the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn, it
would be found that there was enough among them to have prevented all
that consumption of men that perished in misery; and that if it had been
distributed among them, none would have felt the terrible effects of
that scarcity; so easy a thing would it be to supply all the necessities
of life, if that blessed thing called money, which is pretended to be
invented for procuring them, was not really the only thing that
obstructed their being procured!

I do not doubt but rich men are sensible of this, and that they well
know how much a greater happiness it is to want nothing necessary than
to abound in many superfluities, and to be rescued out of so much misery
than to abound with so much wealth; and I cannot think but the sense of
every man's interest, added to the authority of Christ's commands, who
as He was infinitely wise, knew what was best, and was not less good in
discovering it to us, would have drawn all the world over to the laws of
the Utopians, if pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so
much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness
so much by its own conveniences as by the miseries of others; and would
not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that
were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own
happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of
other persons; that by displaying its own wealth, they may feel their
poverty the more sensibly. This is that infernal serpent that creeps
into the breasts of mortals, and possesses them too much to be easily
drawn out; and therefore I am glad that the Utopians have fallen upon
this form of government, in which I wish that all the world could be so
wise as to imitate them; for they have indeed laid down