boldest barons no longer dared contemplate the possibility of trying
their strength against the crown, or attempting to disturb the
succession. Four-legged animals therefore were wanted for slaughter more
than two-legged ones; and moreover, sheep could be shorn, whereas the art
of fleecing the tenantry was in its infancy, and could not always be
practised with the same certain success. A trading spirit thus gradually
superseded the rude but kindlier principle of the feudal system: profit
and loss became the rule of conduct; in came calculation, and out went
feeling.

_Montesinos_.--I remember your description (for indeed who can forget
it?) how sheep, more destructive than the Dragon of Wantley in those
days, began to devour men and fields and houses. The same process is at
this day going on in the Highlands, though under different circumstances;
some which palliate the evil, and some which aggravate the injustice.

_Sir Thomas More_.--The real nature of the evil was misunderstood by my
contemporaries, and for some generations afterward. A decrease of
population was the effect complained of, whereas the greater grievance
was that a different and worse population was produced.

_Montesinos_.--I comprehend you. The same effect followed which has been
caused in these days by the extinction of small farms.

_Sir Thomas More_.--The same in kind, but greater in degree; or at least
if not greater, or so general in extent, it was more directly felt. When
that ruinous fashion prevailed in your age there were many resources for
the class of people who were thus thrown out of their natural and proper
place in the social system. Your fleets and armies at that time required
as many hands as could be supplied; and women and children were consumed
with proportionate rapidity by your manufactures.

Moreover, there was the wholesome drain of emigration open

"_Facta est immensi copia mundi_."

But under the Tudors there existed no such means for disposing of the
ejected population, and except the few who could obtain places as
domestic servants, or employment as labourers and handicraftsmen
(classes, it must be remembered, for all which the employ was diminished
by the very ejectment in question), they who were turned adrift soon
found themselves houseless and hopeless, and were reduced to prey upon
that society which had so unwisely as well as inhumanly discarded them.

_Montesinos_.--Thus it is that men collectively