The Anatomy of Melancholy

the richest regions are always enclosed, as Essex and Kent are with us, and Spain and Italy elsewhere. Where enclosed plots are smallest, they are cultivated best, as around Florence in Italy and Damascus in Syria, where they look more like gardens than fields.

I will not have a single barren acre in all my territories, even on the mountaintops. Where nature falls short, human skill shall make up the deficiency; lakes and rivers shall not be left unused. All public roads, bridges, embankments, water diversions, aqueducts, channels, public works, buildings, and so on shall be carefully maintained and kept in repair from a common fund;

there shall be no removal of inhabitants, consolidation of holdings, or conversion of woodland or arable land without the consent of supervisors appointed to determine what improvements each place needs, what is wrong, and how to remedy it, And what each region will produce, and what it will refuse; what land is best for woods, grain, livestock, gardens, orchards, fishponds, and so on. In every village there shall be a fair and considerate division between lords and tenants, rather than one domineering household greedily swallowing everything, as happens all too often among us.

To give tenants a stronger incentive to improve the land they hold—to cultivate it, plant trees, drain it, fence it, and so on—they shall have long leases, a fixed rent, and a fixed lease premium, freeing them from the intolerable demands of tyrannical landlords.

These supervisors shall also determine how much land in each manor is suitable for the lord’s own estate, how much for tenants’ holdings, and how it ought to be farmed: As the Magnetes are known for horses, the Minyans for oars; how it should be cultivated, tilled, and improved: here grain grows, there grapes thrive better; elsewhere trees bear fruit and grass grows green unbidden;

and what share is appropriate to each occupation. For private landholders are often ignorant, poor managers, oppressive, or covetous: they do not know how to improve their own property, or else care only for their own advantage and disregard the public good. Utopian equality is a form of government to wish for rather than put into practice. The Christianopolitan Republic, Campanella’s City of the Sun, and that New Atlantis are ingenious fictions, but mere chimeras; and Plato’s communal arrangements are in many respects impious, absurd, and ridiculous. They take away all splendour and magnificence.