_Sir Thomas More_.--That inference is drawn from the morals of your own age, and the pernicious effect of your poor laws as they are now thoroughly understood and deliberately acted upon by a race who are thinking always of their imaginary rights, and never of their duties. You forget the efficacy of ecclesiastical discipline; and that the old Church was more vigilant, and therefore more efficient than that which rose upon its ruins. And you suppose that personal liberty was more valued by persons in a state of servitude than was actually the case. For if in earlier ages emancipation was an act of piety and benevolence, afterwards, when the great crisis of society came on, it proceeded more frequently from avarice than from any worthier motive; and the slave who was set free sometimes found himself much in the situation of a household dog that is turned into the streets. _Montesinos_.--Are you alluding to the progress of inclosures, which from the accession of the Tudors to the age of the Stuarts were complained of as the great and crying evil of the times? _Sir Thomas More_.--That process originated as soon as rents began to be of more importance than personal services, and money more convenient to the landlords than payments in kind. _Montesinos_.--And this I suppose began to be the case under Edward III. The splendour of his court, and the foreign wars in which he was engaged, must have made money more necessary to the knights and nobles than it had ever been before, except during the Crusades. _Sir Thomas More_.--The wars of York and Lancaster retarded the process; but immediately after the termination of that fierce struggle it was accelerated by the rapid growth of commerce, and by the great influx of wealth from the new found world. Under a settled and strong and vigilant government men became of less value as vassals and retainers, because the boldest barons no longer dared contemplate the possibility of trying their strength against the crown, or attempting to disturb the succession. Four-legged animals therefore were wanted for slaughter more than two-legged ones; and moreover, sheep could be shorn, whereas the art of fleecing the tenantry was in its infancy, and could not always be practised with the same certain success. A trading spirit thus gradually superseded the rude but kindlier principle of the feudal system: profit and loss became the rule of conduct; in came calculation, and out went feeling. _Montesinos_.--I remember your description (for indeed who can forget it?) how sheep, more destructive than the Dragon of Wantley in those days, began to devour men and fields and houses. The same process is at this day going on in the Highlands, though under different circumstances; some which palliate the evil, and some which aggravate the injustice.