much soil, may either rebuild the villages they have pulled down, or let
out their grounds to such as will do it: restrain those engrossings of
the rich, that are as bad almost as monopolies; leave fewer occasions to
idleness; let agriculture be set up again, and the manufacture of the
wool be regulated, that so there may be work found for those companies
of idle people whom want forces to be thieves, or who now being idle
vagabonds, or useless servants, will certainly grow thieves at last. If
you do not find a remedy to these evils, it is a vain thing to boast of
your severity in punishing theft, which though it may have the
appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient. For
if you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be
corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to
which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded
from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?'

"While I was talking thus, the counsellor who was present had prepared
an answer, and had resolved to resume all I had said, according to the
formality of a debate, in which things are generally repeated more
faithfully than they are answered; as if the chief trial to be made
were of men's memories. 'You have talked prettily for a stranger,' said
he, 'having heard of many things among us which you have not been able
to consider well; but I will make the whole matter plain to you, and
will first repeat in order all that you have said, then I will show how
much your ignorance of our affairs has misled you, and will in the last
place answer all your arguments. And that I may begin where I promised,
there were four things----' 'Hold your peace,' said the Cardinal, 'this
will take up too much time; therefore we will at present ease you of the
trouble of answering, and reserve it to our next meeting, which shall be
to-morrow, if Raphael's affairs and yours can admit of it. But,
Raphael,' said he to me, 'I would gladly know upon what reason it is