enjoins us to avoid contention, even by the submission of those who are wronged, and charges us to defend our religion, not with passionate minds, but with the armour of patience and truth. These were the blemishes which I saw by the way, and lamented in the body of learning. The amendment which I desire rests upon two great pillars--the professors of learning, who must give intelligence of the error, and the principal magistrates--nay, even the sovereign prince--who being God’s great instruments to procure quietness for our souls and bodies, our goods and actions, must bring about redress in so important a matter as the course of learning. The prince may cut off what is in excess, make up what is deficient, reconcile diversities, expel dissensions, by his lawful authority for the general good; and everyone will submit, because everyone is benefited. This, indeed, confirms Plato’s saying that kings should be philosophers; that is, that all magistrates should be learned. It is a great corrosive to the whole body of learning, which is the procurer of peace, when those who have to direct gain their wisdom only through experience. That is much, but experience and learning together make the better equipment. It is an honourable conception, besides that it tends to the general good, for a learned and virtuous prince, assisted by wise counsel, to reduce the number of those that follow learning, by some principle of selection in every department, to decide what kinds of learning are most useful to the State, and to appoint a reasonable number of such books as have the best methods of treatment. The final authority in regard to every profession has always lain with the prince. Action has been taken before in all the directions I have spoken of, both by consent of the learned and by command of good princes. As our country is small, the thing could be the more easily done; as our livings are limited, it is the more needful; as the evil is great, we are the less able to bear it; as our sovereign is learned, we shall be the readier to give ear; as our people are of good understanding, they are the better able to inform her. But as the physician does not thrive by the prevention of disease, nor the lawyer grow rich by arresting contentions, nor a divine prosper so much in a heaven where all is good as on earth where all is evil, and as private profit will be followed, though it bring confusion to the State, redress will not stir, because it judges the world to be in some fault which it is loth to confess. However, to secure some redress and help in this matter at the hand of the ruler, is the duty of all who make a profession of learning, if they will but consider the reputation of learning in our day, whether from the contempt in which some professions are held, or from a deficiency in those who enter them.