hey would willingly
work but can find none that will hire them; for there is no more occasion
for country labour, to which they have been bred, when there is no arable
ground left. One shepherd can look after a flock, which will stock an
extent of ground that would require many hands if it were to be ploughed
and reaped. This, likewise, in many places raises the price of corn. The
price of wool is also so risen that the poor people, who were wont to
make cloth, are no more able to buy it; and this, likewise, makes many of
them idle: for since the increase of pasture God has punished the avarice
of the owners by a rot among the sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers
of them--to us it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners
themselves. But, suppose the sheep should increase ever so much, their
price is not likely to fall; since, though they cannot be called a
monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person, yet they are in
so few hands, and these are so rich, that, as they are not pressed to
sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till
they have raised the price as high as possible. And on the same account
it is that the other kinds of cattle are so dear, because many villages
being pulled down, and all country labour being much neglected, there are
none who make it their business to breed them. The rich do not breed
cattle as they do sheep, but buy them lean and at low prices; and, after
they have fattened them on their grounds, sell them again at high rates.
And I do not think that all the inconveniences this will produce are yet
observed; for, as they sell the cattle dear, so, if they are consumed
faster than the breeding countries from which they are brought can afford
them, then the stock must decrease, and this must needs end in great
scarcity; and by these means, this your island, which seemed as to this
particular the happiest in the world, will suffer much by the cursed
avarice of a few persons: besides this, the rising of corn makes all
people lessen their families as much as they can; and what can those who
are dismissed by them do but either beg or rob? And to this last a man
of a great mind is much sooner drawn than to the former. Luxury likewise
breaks in apace upon you to set forward your poverty and misery; there is
an excessive vanity in apparel, and great cost in diet, and that not only
in noblemen's families, but even among tradesmen, among the farmer