thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the
public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of
agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches,
and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them. As if
forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy
countrymen turn the best inhabited places in solitudes; for when an
insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country, resolves to inclose
many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are
turned out of their possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or being
wearied out with ill usage, they are forced to sell them. By which means
those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old
and young, with their poor but numerous families (since country business
requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing
whither to go; and they must sell almost for nothing their household
stuff, which could not bring them much money, even though they might
stay for a buyer. When that little money is at an end, for it will be
soon spent; what is left for them to do, but either to steal and so to
be hanged (God knows how justly), or to go about and beg? And if they do
this, they are put in prison as idle vagabonds; while they would
willingly work, but can find none that will hire them; for there is no
more occasion for country labour, to which they have been bred, when
there is no arable ground left. One shepherd can look after a flock,
which will stock an extent of ground that would require many hands, if
it were to be ploughed and reaped. This likewise in many places raises
the price of corn. The price of wool is also so risen, that the poor
people who were wont to make cloth are no more able to buy it; and this
likewise makes many of them idle. For since the increase of pasture, God
has punished the avarice of the owners, by a rot among the sheep, which
has destroyed vast numbers of them; to us it might have seemed more just
had it fell on the owners themselves. But suppose the sheep should