Just as today, people complain that the laws are not strict enough or that they are not enforced; and everyone stubbornly refuses to look at the matter through Raphael Hythloday’s eyes and to see that the robbery and violence which are abroad are not a cause of bad times but a result of them. What can a man of intelligence do in such a world? More’s friend, Peter Giles, who is represented as the sponsor for Raphael, wonders why a man of Raphael’s talent does not enter into the service of the king--in short, go in for politics. Raphael answers that he does not wish to be enslaved; and he cannot try to fetch happiness on terms so abhorrent to his disposition, for “most princes apply themselves more to the affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace, and are more set on acquiring new kingdoms right or wrong than on governing those they possess.” There is no use trying to tell them about the wiser institutions of the Utopians: if they could not refute your arguments they would say that the old ways were good enough for their ancestors and are good enough for them, even though they have willingly let go of all the genuinely good things that might have been inherited from the past. So much for the help an intelligent man might give on domestic problems. As for international affairs, it is a mess of chicane and intrigue and brigandage. While so many people of influence are advising preparedness and “how to carry on the war,” what chance would a poor intellectual like Hythloday have if he stood up and said that the government should withdraw their armies from foreign parts and try to improve conditions at home, instead of oppressing the people with taxes and spilling their blood without bringing them a single blessed advantage, whilst their manners are being corrupted by a long war, and their laws fall into contempt, with robbery and murder on every hand. More, through the tongue of Raphael Hythloday, is painting a picture of the life he sees about him; but in it we seem to see every feature of our own national countenance. This unhonored and disoriented intellectual is the very emblem of some of our best spirits today. Rack and ruin have gone too far to admit of any sort of repair except that which proceeds from the bottom up; and so Hythloday freely admits that “as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily; not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the worst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few (and even these are not in all respects happy), the rest being left to be absolutely miserable.” In short, says Hythloday, there is no salvation except through following the practices of the Utopians.