elsewhere, where they might have more room; and there are scarce two or
three little corners in the world that have not felt the effect of such
removals. The Romans by this means erected their colonies; for,
perceiving their city to grow immeasurably populous, they eased it of the
most unnecessary people, and sent them to inhabit and cultivate the lands
conquered by them; sometimes also they purposely maintained wars with
some of their enemies, not only to keep their own men in action, for fear
lest idleness, the mother of corruption, should bring upon them some
worse inconvenience:

"Et patimur longae pacis mala; saevior armis
Luxuria incumbit."

["And we suffer the ills of a long peace; luxury is more pernicious
than war."--Juvenal, vi. 291.]

but also to serve for a blood-letting to their Republic, and a little to
evaporate the too vehement heat of their youth, to prune and clear the
branches from the stock too luxuriant in wood; and to this end it was
that they maintained so long a war with Carthage.

In the treaty of Bretigny, Edward III., king of England, would not, in
the general peace he then made with our king, comprehend the controversy
about the Duchy of Brittany, that he might have a place wherein to
discharge himself of his soldiers, and that the vast number of English he
had brought over to serve him in his expedition here might not return
back into England. And this also was one reason why our King Philip
consented to send his son John upon a foreign expedition, that he might
take along with him a great number of hot young men who were then in his
pay.

There--are many in our times who talk at this rate, wishing that
this hot emotion that is now amongst us might discharge itself in some
neighbouring war, for fear lest all the peccant humours that now reign in
this politic body of ours may diffuse themselves farther, keep the fever
still in the height, and at last cause our total ruin; and, in truth, a
foreign is much more supportable than a civil war, but I do not believe
that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel with
others for our own advantage:

"Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,
Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris."

["Rhamnusian virgin, let nothing ever so greatly please me which is
taken without justice from the unwilling owners"
--Catullus, lxviii. 77.]

And yet the we