_Sir Thomas More_.--The real nature of the evil was misunderstood by my contemporaries, and for some generations afterward. A decrease of population was the effect complained of, whereas the greater grievance was that a different and worse population was produced. _Montesinos_.--I comprehend you. The same effect followed which has been caused in these days by the extinction of small farms. _Sir Thomas More_.--The same in kind, but greater in degree; or at least if not greater, or so general in extent, it was more directly felt. When that ruinous fashion prevailed in your age there were many resources for the class of people who were thus thrown out of their natural and proper place in the social system. Your fleets and armies at that time required as many hands as could be supplied; and women and children were consumed with proportionate rapidity by your manufactures. Moreover, there was the wholesome drain of emigration open "_Facta est immensi copia mundi_." But under the Tudors there existed no such means for disposing of the ejected population, and except the few who could obtain places as domestic servants, or employment as labourers and handicraftsmen (classes, it must be remembered, for all which the employ was diminished by the very ejectment in question), they who were turned adrift soon found themselves houseless and hopeless, and were reduced to prey upon that society which had so unwisely as well as inhumanly discarded them. _Montesinos_.--Thus it is that men collectively as well as individually create for themselves so large a part of the evils they endure. _Sir Thomas More_.--Enforce upon your contemporaries that truth which is as important in politics as in ethics, and you will not have lived in vain! Scatter that seed upon the waters, and doubt not of the harvest! Vindicate always the system of nature, in other and sounder words, the ways of God, while you point out with all faithfulness "what ills Remediable and yet unremedied Afflict man's wretched race," and the approbation of your own heart will be sufficient reward on earth. _Montesinos_.--The will has not been wanting. _Sir Thomas More_.--There are cases in which the will carries with it the power; and this is of them. No man was ever yet deeply convinced of any momentous truth without feeling in himself the power as well as the desire of communicating it. _Montesinos_.--True, Sir Thomas; but the perilous abuse of that feeling by enthusiasts and fanatics leads to an error in the opposite extreme. We sacrifice too much to prudence; and, in fear of incurring the danger or the reproach of enthusiasm, too often we stifle the holiest impulses of the understanding and the heart. "Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt." --But I pray you, resume your discourse. The monasteries were probably the chief palliatives of this great evil while they existed.