in oil or amber, for by this means more light cometh in and the wind is better kept out." In More's days the window of the English cottage was literally a wind-hole in the wall.
In England the petty thief received the same punishment as the murderer—death for almost every crime. In Utopia the object of legal punishment was as much to reform the criminal as to protect society. In fact, More, in Utopia, anticipates all those reforms in the treatment of criminals which distinguish the nineteenth from the brutal and savage sixteenth century.
In Utopia was that complete religious toleration which was looked for in vain in Europe until the middle of the eighteenth century. In Utopia there was political liberty, a complete democracy, while England, under the Tudor tyrants, was fast losing the little political liberty she ever had. Under the cover of Utopia, More penned a scathing denunciation of the tyranny of Henry and his servile judges. And this, too, within the very court of the king and under the eye of his ministers. No wonder that the author of Utopia paid for his devotion to liberty and humanity with his head, on Tower Hill.
