In the _Utopia_ his ideas in regard to labour and to crime exhibit him, indeed, as in advance of the received dogmas even of the present day. As to the former he held that the labourer, as the actual basis and support of the whole social system, was justly entitled to some consideration, and to a more rational existence than usually allowed him by the policy of the ruling classes; and, in limiting the daily period of labour to nine hours, he anticipated by 350 years the tardy legislation on that important matter. In exposing the equal absurdity and iniquity of the criminal code he preached the despised doctrine of _prevention_ rather than punishment, and denounced the monstrous inequality of penalties by which thieving was placed in the same category with murder and crimes of violence:-- “For great and horrible punishments be awarded to thieves, whereas much rather provision should have been made that there were some means whereby they might get their living, so that no man should be driven to this extreme necessity--first to steal and then to die.... By suffering your youth to be wantonly and viciously brought up and to be infected, even from their tender age, by little and little with vice--then, in God’s name, to be punished when they commit the same faults after being come to man’s state, which from their youth they were ever like to do--in this point, I pray you, _what other thing do you than make thieves and then punish them_.”[105] What we are immediately concerned with here is his feeling in regard to slaughter. The Utopians condemn--