“Fifthly but it may be said, perhaps, that we are fallen from our first love, become proud and idle. It is certain, my lords, that the hand of God is not upon us for nothing. But take heed how you admit of such assaults and sallies upon men’s estates, as may slacken the nerve of labor, and give others also reason to believe that their sweat is vain; or else, whatsoever be pretended, your agrarian (which is my fifth assertion) must indeed destroy industry. For, that so it did in Lacedaemon is most apparent, as also that it could do no otherwise, where every man having his forty quarters of barley, with wine proportionable, supplied him out of his own lot by his laborer or helot; and being confined in that to the scantling above which he might not live, there was not any such thing as a trade, or other art, except that of war, in exercise. Wherefore a Spartan, if he were not in arms, must sit and play with his Angers, whence ensued perpetual war, and, the estate of the city being as little capable of increase as that of the citizens, her inevitable ruin. Now what better ends you can propose to yourselves in the like ways, I do not so well see as I perceive that there may be worse; for Lacedaemon yet was free from civil war: but if you employ your citizens no better than she did, I cannot promise you that you shall fare so well, because they are still desirous of war that hope that it may be profitable to them; and the strongest security you can give of peace, is to make it gainful. Otherwise men will rather choose that whereby they may break your laws, than that whereby your laws may break them. Which I speak not so much in relation to the nobility or such as would be holding, as to the people or them that would be getting; the passion in these being so much the stronger, as a man’s felicity is weaker in the fruition of things, than in their prosecution and increase. “Truly, my lords, it is my fear, that by taking of more hands, and the best from industry, you will farther endamage it, than can be repaired by laying on a few, and the worst; while the nobility must be forced to send their sons to the plough, and, as if this were not enough, to marry their daughters also to farmers.