The practice of depopulating the country by abandoning tillage, and throwing the lands into pasturage, still continued;[****] as appears by the new laws which were from time to time enacted against that practice. The king was entitled to half the rents of the land, where any farm houses were allowed to fall to decay.[v] The unskilful husbandry was probably the cause why the proprietors found no profit in tillage. The number of sheep allowed to be kept in one flock, was restrained to two thousand.[v*] Sometimes, says the statute, one proprietor or farmer would keep a flock of twenty-four thousand. It is remarkable, that the parliament ascribes the increasing price of mutton to this increase of sheep: because, say they, the commodity being gotten into few hands, the price of it is raised at pleasure.[v**] It is more probable, that the effect proceeded from the daily increase of money; for it seems almost impossible that such a commodity could be engrossed. In the year 1544, it appears that an acre of good land in Cambridgeshire was let at a shilling, or about fifteen pence of our present money.[v***] This is ten times cheaper than the usual rent at present. But commodities were not above four times cheaper; a presumption of the bad husbandry in that age. Some laws were made with regard to beggars and vagrants;[v****] one of the circumstances in government, which humanity would most powerfully recommend to a benevolent legislator; which seems, at first sight, the most easily adjusted; and which is yet the most difficult to settle in such a manner as to attain the end without destroying industry. The convents formerly were a support to the poor; but at the same time tended to encourage idleness and beggary. * 25 Henry VIII. c. 2. ** 24 Henry VIII. c. 3. *** 33 Henry VIII. c. 11. **** Strype, vol. i. p. 392. v 6 Henry VIII. c. 5. 7 Henry VIII. c. 1. v* 25 Henry VIII. c. 13. v** 25 Henry VIII. c. 13. v*** Anderson, vol. i. p. 374. v**** 22 Henry VIII. c. 12. 22 Henry VIII. c. 5. In 1546, a law was made for fixing the interest of money at ten per cent.; the first legal interest known in England. Formerly all loans of that nature were regarded as usurious. The preamble of this very law treats the interest of money as illegal and criminal; and the prejudices still remained so strong, that the law permitting interest was repealed in the following reign. This reign, as well as many of the foregoing and even subsequent reigns, abounds with monopolizing laws, confining particular manufactures to particular towns, or excluding the open country in general.[*] There remain still too many traces of similar absurdities. In the subsequent reign, the corporations which had been opened by a former law, and obliged to admit tradesmen of different kinds, were again shut up by act of parliament; and every one was prohibited from exercising any trade who was not of the corporation.[**]