he suffered death as a felon. So the law of England
remained for sixty years. First drawn by Henry, it continued unrepealed
through the reigns of Edward and of Mary, subsisting, therefore, with the
deliberate approval of both the great parties between whom the country was
divided. Reconsidered under Elizabeth, the same law was again formally
passed; and it was, therefore, the expressed conviction of the English
nation, that it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a
profitless and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the
commonwealth, to be healed by wholesome discipline if the gangrene was not
incurable; to be cut away with the knife if the milder treatment of the
cart-whip failed to be of profit.[81]

A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. The
state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable persons
traversing it unexamined and uncontrolled was greater than at ordinary
times. But in point of justice, as well as of prudence, it harmonised with
the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the government of a
fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an intense hatred of
rascality, and among whom no one need have lapsed into evil courses except
by deliberate preference for them. The moral substance of the English must
have been strong indeed when it admitted of such hardy treatment; but on
the whole, the people were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if
wisdom may be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great
crisis of the Reformation is the best justification of their princes.

The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of Michael
Angelo; the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez; the Germans
who shook off the pope at the call of Luther; and the splendid chivalry of
Francis I. of France, were no common men. But they were all brought face to
face with the same trials, and none met them as the English met them. The
English alone never lost their self-possession; and if they owed something
to fortune in their escape from anarchy, they owed more to the strong hand
and steady purpose of their rulers.

To conclude this chapter then.

In the brief review of the system under which England was governed, we have
seen a state of things in which the principles of political economy were,
consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an attempt, more or less
successful, was made to bring