d I do not think that all the
inconveniences this will produce are yet observed; for as they sell the
cattle dear, so if they are consumed faster than the breeding countries
from which they are brought can afford them, then the stock must
decrease, and this must needs end in great scarcity; and by these means
this your island, which seemed as to this particular the happiest in the
world, will suffer much by the cursed avarice of a few persons; besides
this, the rising of corn makes all people lessen their families as much
as they can; and what can those who are dismissed by them do, but
either beg or rob? And to this last, a man of a great mind is much
sooner drawn than to the former. Luxury likewise breaks in apace upon
you, to set forward your poverty and misery; there is an excessive
vanity in apparel, and great cost in diet; and that not only in
noblemen's families, but even among tradesmen, among the farmers
themselves, and among all ranks of persons. You have also many infamous
houses, and besides those that are known, the taverns and alehouses are
no better; add to these, dice, cards, tables, foot-ball, tennis, and
quoits, in which money runs fast away; and those that are initiated into
them, must in the conclusion betake themselves to robbing for a supply.
Banish these plagues, and give orders that those who have dispeopled so
much soil, may either rebuild the villages they have pulled down, or let
out their grounds to such as will do it: restrain those engrossings of
the rich, that are as bad almost as monopolies; leave fewer occasions to
idleness; let agriculture be set up again, and the manufacture of the
wool be regulated, that so there may be work found for those companies
of idle people whom want forces to be thieves, or who now being idle
vagabonds, or useless servants, will certainly grow thieves at last. If
you do not find a remedy to these evils, it is a vain thing to boast of
your severity in punishing theft, which though it may have the
appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient. For
if you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be
corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to
which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded
from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?'

"While I was talking thus, the counsellor who was present had prepared
an answer, and had resolved to resume all I had s