The midday meal is dispatched unceremoniously; but at the end of the day music always accompanies the meals, perfumes are burnt or sprinkled around, and they “want nothing that may cheer up their spirits.” Bond Street and Fifth Avenue may weep about the absence of conspicuous waste in Utopia; but at supper time, at any rate, William Penn would be uncomfortable. There is the odor of an uncommonly good club in the description of the final meal of the day: the smell of the barracks or the poorhouse, which we should find later in Robert Owen’s common halls, does not intrude for an instant. More, when you examine him closely, does not altogether forget the mean sensual man who dwells occasionally in all of us! 8 Now that we have laid the foundations of the material life, we must observe the limitations that are laid upon the daily activities of the Utopians. This brings us to the government. The basis of the Utopian political state, as in the economic province, is the family. Every year thirty families choose a magistrate, known as a Philarch; and over every ten Philarchs, with the families subject to them, there is an Archphilarch. All the Philarchs, who are in number 200, choose the Prince out of a list of four, who are named by the people of the four divisions of the city. The Prince is elected for life, unless he be removed on suspicion of attempting to enslave the people. The Philarchs are chosen for a single year; but they are frequently re-elected. In order to keep their rulers from conspiring to upset the government, no matter of great importance can be set on foot without being sent to the Philarchs, “who, after they have communicated it to the families that belong to their divisions, and have considered it among themselves, make report to the senate; and upon great occasions the matter is referred to the council of the whole island.” Recollect that each household is an industrial as well as a domestic unit, as was usual in the Middle Age, and you will perceive that this is an astute combination of industrial and political democracy on a genuine basis of common interest. The greater part of the business of the government relates to the economic life of the people. There are certain other matters, however, which remain over for them; and these affairs constitute a blot on More’s conception of the ideal commonwealth. One of them is the regulation of travel; another is the treatment of crime; and a third is war. It is interesting to note that on two subjects which More is mightily concerned to rectify in his own country--crime and war--he establishes conditions which are pretty far from being ideal or humane in his Utopia. A. E. has well said that a man becomes the image of the thing he hates. Everything that Raphael brings up against the government of England in the Introduction to Utopia could be brought with almost equal force, I believe, against the very country which is to serve as a standard.