Compelling words written four hundred odd years ago, from an Elizabethan Era drama, ringing true anew, so SO TRUE, right now, in these United States and indeed, on every continent on Earth,

The full text of “The Strangers’ Case” speech, delivered by Sir Thomas More in Act II, Scene 4 of Sir Thomas More, likely written by William Shakespeare,

“

MORE: Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise Hath chid down all the majesty of England; Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage, Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation, 

And that you sit as kings in your desires, Authority quite silent by your brawl, And you in ruff of your opinions clothed; What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught How insolence and strong hand should prevail, How order should be quelled; and by this pattern Not one of you should live an agèd man, For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, With selfsame hand, self reasons, and self right, Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes Would feed on one another.

You’ll put down strangers, Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses, And lead the majesty of law in leash, To slip him like a hound.

Say now the king— As he is clement, if the offender mourn— Should so much come too short of your great trespass As but to banish you, whither would you go? What country, by the nature of your error, Should give you harbor? 

Go you to France or Flanders, To any German province, to Spain or Portugal, Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,— Why, you must needs be strangers.

Would you be pleased To find a nation of such barbarous temper, That, breaking out in hideous violence, Would not afford you an abode on earth, Whet their detested knives against your throats, Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements Were not all appropriate to your comforts, But chartered unto them?

What would you think To be used thus? This is the strangers’ case; And this your mountainish inhumanity.

“

Compelling indeed.