omes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources
of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to
cultivate it. Either theory is plausible. The advocates of both can support
their arguments with an appeal to experience; and the verdict of fact has
not as yet been pronounced emphatically.

The problem will be resolved in the future history of this country. It was
also nobly and skilfully resolved in the past. The knights and nobles
retained the authority and power which was attached to the lordships of the
fees. They retained extensive estates in their own hands or in the
occupation of their immediate tenants; but the large proportion of the
lands was granted out by them to smaller owners, and the expenditure of
their own incomes in the wages and maintenance of their vast retinues left
but a small margin for indulgence in luxuries. The necessities of their
position obliged them to regard their property rather as a revenue to be
administered in trust, than as "a fortune" to be expended in indulgence.
Before the Reformation, while the differences of social degree were
enormous, the differences in habits of life were comparatively slight, and
the practice of men in these things was curiously the reverse of our own.
Dress, which now scarcely suffices to distinguish the master from his
servant, was then the symbol of rank, prescribed by statute to the various
orders of society as strictly as the regimental uniform to officers and
privates; diet also was prescribed, and with equal strictness; but the diet
of the nobleman was ordered down to a level which was then within the reach
of the poorest labourer. In 1336, the following law was enacted by the
Parliament of Edward III.:[10] "Whereas, heretofore through the excessive
and over-many sorts of costly meats which the people of this Realm have
used more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have happened to the people of
this Realm--for the great men by these excesses have been sore grieved; and
the lesser people, who only endeavour to imitate the great ones in such
sort of meats, are much impoverished, whereby they are not able to aid
themselves, nor their liege lord, in time of need, as they ought; and many
other evils have happened, as well to their souls as their bodies--our Lord
the King, desiring the common profit as well of the great men as the common
people of his Realm, and considering the evils, grievances, and mischiefs
aforesaid, by