The same conclusion may be gathered also, indirectly, from other acts,
interfering imperiously with the rights of property where a disposition
showed itself to exercise them selfishly. The city merchants, as I have
said, were becoming landowners; and some of them attempted to apply the
rules of trade to the management of landed estates. While wages were ruled
so high, it answered better as a speculation to convert arable land into
pasture; but the law immediately stepped in to prevent a proceeding which
it regarded as petty treason to the commonwealth. Self-protection is the
first law of life; and the country relying for its defence on an
able-bodied population, evenly distributed, ready at any moment to be
called into action, either against foreign invasion or civil disturbance,
it could not permit the owners of land to pursue for their own benefit a
course of action which threatened to weaken its garrisons. It is not often
that we are able to test the wisdom of legislation by specific results so
clearly as in the present instance. The first attempts of the kind which I
have described were made in the Isle of Wight, early in the reign of Henry
VII. Lying so directly exposed to attacks from France, the Isle of Wight
was a place which it was peculiarly important to keep in a state of
defence, and the following act was therefore the consequence:--

"Forasmuch as it is to the surety of the Realm of England that the Isle of
Wight, in the county of Southampton, be well inhabited with English people,
for the defence as well of our antient enemies of the Realm of France as of
other parties; the which Isle is late decayed of people by reason that many
towns and villages have been let down, and the fields dyked and made
pasture for beasts and cattle, and also many dwelling-places, farms, and
farmholds have of late time been used to be taken into one man's hold and
hands, that of old time were wont to be in many several persons' holds and
hands, and many several households kept in them; and thereby much people
multiplied, and the same Isle thereby well inhabited, which now, by the