"it seems to me that
men cannot live conveniently where all things are common. How can there
be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from labour? for as the
hope of gain doth not excite him, so the confidence that he has in other
men's industry may make him slothful. If people come to be pinched with
want, and yet cannot dispose of anything as their own, what can follow
upon this but perpetual sedition and bloodshed, especially when the
reverence and authority due to magistrates falls to the ground? for I
cannot imagine how that can be kept up among those that are in all things
equal to one another." "I do not wonder," said he, "that it appears so
to you, since you have no notion, or at least no right one, of such a
constitution; but if you had been in Utopia with me, and had seen their
laws and rules, as I did, for the space of five years, in which I lived
among them, and during which time I was so delighted with them that
indeed I should never have left them if it had not been to make the
discovery of that new world to the Europeans, you would then confess that
you had never seen a people so well constituted as they." "You will not
easily persuade me," said Peter, "that any nation in that new world is
better governed than those among us; for as our understandings are not
worse than theirs, so our government (if I mistake not) being more
ancient, a long practice has helped us to find out many conveniences of
life, and some happy chances have discovered other things to us which no
man's understanding could ever have invented." "As for the antiquity
either of their government or of ours," said he, "you cannot pass a true
judgment of it unless you had read their histories; for, if they are to
be believed, they had towns among them before these parts were so much as
inhabited; and as for those discoveries that have been either hit on by
chance or made by ingenious men, these might have happened there as well
as here. I do not deny but we are more ingenious than they are, but they
exceed us much in industry and application. They knew little concerning
us before our arrival among them. They call us all by a general name of
'The nations that lie beyond the equinoctial line;' for their chronicle
mentions a shipwreck that was made on their coast twelve hundred years
ago, and that some Romans and Egyptians that were in the ship, getting
safe ashore, spent the rest of their days amongst them; and such was
their i