San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1885-01-08
UTOPIA.
ny REV. GEORGE A. THAYRR.
Christian Register.

Christian Register.
It is a little less than four hundred
years since Thomas More.-the friend
Of Erasmus, and like him a pioneer
Of the Protestant Reformation, which
meant an improvement in other
human concerns besides religion
wrote that political romance, UTopIA,
no place, which has given a name to
tho manifold dreams of later vision
aries concerning the near future OF
the habitable earth. His happy
commonwealth beyond the Atlantic,
whose laws were to be conformed to
Justice and humanity, was so strikingly
in contrast with the ordering Of
things anywhere in Christendom that
More could only venture to wish that
such republic might be rather than
hope for its possibility. Yetmost of his
extravagant dreams have become
realities, not alone in these United
States, but even in some of the Old
World kingdoms. In Utopia, every
child should have a fair education ;
and Germany and Scotland long since
set the standard for the diffusion of
popular knowledge which we have
only imperfectly initiated. In that
ideal land, the main object of penal
law should be to restore the criminal
to usefulness instead of getting him
out of the world as violently as posi-
BILE; and most of the offenses which
stocked the gibbets Of Henry VIII. g
time with decaying corpses-a greater
terror to the innocent than to the
wicked-have disappeared from mod
ern society with the advent of that
other reform, of which More SO pleas
antly dreamed, which has given the
laboring man, even in a large part Of
Great Britain, chance to earn good
wages and to live in fair cottage
with windows to let in sunshine and
a chimney to let out smoke, and be-
hind it garden for flowers and
vegetables. And there are scores OF
manufacturing cities on both sides OF
the sea, in which the Utopian plan OF
mingling, In wholesome proportion,
the earning of the daily bread with
the cultivation of taste for things
beautiful and an acquaintance with
the worlds best knowledge is easily
realizable by the common factory
Operative through che generosity Of
the mill.owners.
When, therefore, any modern seer
of socialism, whose suggestions Of
discomfort with the things that are,
in government or in faith, are apt to
be branded as revolutionary and un-
christian,-as were More's hints at
the badness of the social order in the
sixteenth century,-tells us in not
wholly smooth words that we must
improve our laws and customs, even
of the most venerable sort, or the
social fabric will 60 to pieces, we may
be helped to keep heart over the
prospect of o long life to civilization
by remembering what improbable
prophecies Of human progress have
already been fulfilled.
The modern Utopians are many
and active, not the least prominent
of whom just now is that Henry
George, with his device for abolishing
poverty and discomfort by making all
land national property,whose eloquent
books have stirred up hope among
a large number of intelligent people
in Great Britain that the clew has
been found to lead the nation out of
the maze OF social distress in which
it is getting sore bewildered, and
whose notions of the laws Of wages,
rent, and p opulation, have set the
other teachers of political economy
to scolding and calling names, like 80
many theologians.
Whatever sharp criticisms may be
made of Georges economic theories
or OF those of other able agitators
who are more properly to be classed
as socialists, they help to set thought
full people to studying more earnestly,
than ever the great diseases OF
society poverty, drunkenness, and
crime,-and to dreaming with eyes
wide open OF certain respects in which
the kingdom Of God--that reign OF
righteousness and love which Jesus
and his immediate disciples main.
tanned would come upon earth, and
not alone in some remote skies-may
be set well upon the road TO fulfill
ment at very near day.
First among the visions Of the
modern Utopia is that which it is
plain to be seen must be made sub
stantial, il the world is not togo back
into semi-barbarism namely, that
every welLdisposed man must have
adequate means Of bodily health and
comfort. 1t does not seem quite clear
that, as things are now managed, the
human race il getting swiftly toward
that end Europe is becoming
enormously overcrowded, as is shown
by the great quantities flood which
IT has TO import and there is a not
very remote limit 10 the relief afforded
by emigration TO America and the few
other parts Of the world which are
open 10 colonization. A hundred
! years hence, according TO the calcula-
tons Of the President Of the London
Statistical Society, At the present rate
Of increase. the United States viii
have . POPuistiOn Of eight hundred