He uses the irony in this letter as a camouflage for his own ideals that he places in Hythloday's mouth. Thus, in Hythloday's fiction, More is protecting himself from his reforming thoughts. He is inviting his readers to either laugh his ideas off or to take him seriously.
More starts his reforming efforts out with the question on whether or not a wise and virtuous man should serve the king. Giles begins the discussion by suggesting that Hythloday put his knowledge to use in the service of a ruler. Hythloday smugly reputes that he has no desire to become a counselor of the king. At this the persona More suggests that Hythloday has a moral obligation to influence the king for the public good. He is calling for honestas in a wise person's actions in society. He suggests that Hythloday is not only rejecting the fruitless labor of advising a king, but God's ultimate design. In response, Hythloday enters into a long explanation that illustrates how counselors just fawns before authority instead of giving pertinent advice. He reasons that counselors, no matter how wise, just "endorse and flatter the most absurd statements of the princes [ ] to stand well with the prince" (Utopia, 14). His story is not just to prove his point on counseling, but it has a story within a story. In his exemplum of the mindlessness of counseling, he launches into an attack on the political and social ills of sixteenth-century England. He describes an encounter that he had at the house of the cardinal Morton. There he meets a lawyer who praises the English laws for hanging many thieves. He explains that he believes that "this way of punishing thieves [by execution] goes beyond the call of justice, and is not in any case for the public good" (Utopia, 16). He stresses that theft, in most cases, is not a matter of choice or immorality, but of necessity due to poverty and degradation. To sentence thieves to death, he argues, is not only wrong but impractical and unethical.
