manufactures in England had not of themselves that tendency to
self-development which would encourage an enlarging population. The woollen
manufactures similarly appear, from the many statutes upon them, to have
been vigorous at a fixed level, but to have shown no tendency to rise
beyond that level. With a fixed market and a fixed demand, production
continued uniform.

A few years subsequent, indeed, to the passing of the Act which I have
quoted, a very curious complaint is entered in the statute book, from the
surface of which we should gather, that so far from increasing,
manufactures had alarmingly declined. The fact mentioned may bear another
meaning, and a meaning far more favourable to the state of the country;
although, if such a phenomenon were to occur at the present time, it could
admit of but one interpretation. In the 18th and 19th of the 32nd of Henry
VIII., all the important towns in England, from the Tweed to the Land's
End, are stated, one by one, to have fallen into serious decay. Usually
when we meet with language of this kind, we suppose it to mean nothing more
than an awakening to the consciousness of evils which had long existed, and
which had escaped notice only because no one was alive to them. In the
present instance, however, the language was too strong and too detailed to
allow of this explanation; and the great body of the English towns
undoubtedly were declining in wealth and in the number of their
inhabitants. "Divers and many beautiful houses of habitation," these
statutes say, "built in tyme past within their walls and liberties, now are
fallen down and decayed, and at this day remain unre-edified, and do lie as
desolate and vacant grounds, many of them nigh adjoining to the
High-streets, replenished with much uncleanness and filth, with pits,
sellers, and vaults lying open and uncovered, to the great perill and
danger of the inhabitants and other the King's subjects passing by the
same; and some houses be very weak and feeble, ready to fall down, and