or else
continue stark thieves till the gallows do eat them up, which is a
lamentable case. Certes in some men's judgment these things are but
trifles, and not worthy the regarding. Some also do grudge at the
great increase of people in these days, thinking a necessary brood of
cattle far better than a superfluous augmentation of mankind. But I
can liken such men best of all unto the pope and the devil, who
practise the hindrance of the furniture of the number of the elect to
their uttermost, to the end the authority of the one upon the earth,
the deferring of the locking up of the other in everlasting chains,
and the great gains of the first, may continue and endure the longer.
But if it should come to pass that any foreign invasion should be
made--which the Lord God forbid for his mercies' sake!--then should
these men find that a wall of men is far better than stacks of corn
and bags of money, and complain of the want when it is too late to
seek remedy. The like occasion caused the Romans to devise their law
_Agraria_: but the rich, not liking of it, and the covetous, utterly
condemning it as rigorous and unprofitable, never ceased to practise
disturbance till it was quite abolished. But to proceed with my
purpose.

[1] At whose hands shall the blood of these men be required?--H.

Such as are idle beggars through their own default are of two sorts,
and continue their estates either by casual or mere voluntary means:
those that are such by casual means are in the beginning justly to be
referred either to the first or second sort of poor aforementioned,
but, degenerating into the thriftless sort, they do what they can to
continue their misery, and, with such impediments as they have, to
stray and wander about, as creatures abhorring all labour and every
honest exercise. Certes I call these casual means, not in the respect
of the original of all poverty, but of the continuance of the same,
from whence they will not be delivered, such is their own ungracious
lewdness and froward disposition. The voluntary means proceed from
outward causes, as by making of corrosives, and applying the same to
the more fleshy parts of their bodies, and also laying of ratsbane,
spearwort, crowfoot, and such like unto their whole members, thereby
to raise pitiful and odious sores, and move the hearts of the
goers-by such places where they lie, to yearn at their misery, and
thereupon bestow large alms upon them. How artificially the