ever in readiness. They think raw men are not to be depended on, and
they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train up
their soldiers in the art of cutting throats, or, as Sallust observed,
"for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by too long
an intermission." But France has learned to its cost how dangerous it is
to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians, and Syrians,
and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and quite
ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser; and the folly
of this maxim of the French appears plainly even from this, that their
trained soldiers often find your raw men prove too hard for them, of
which I will not say much, lest you may think I flatter the English.
Every day's experience shows that the mechanics in the towns or the
clowns in the country are not afraid of fighting with those idle
gentlemen, if they are not disabled by some misfortune in their body or
dispirited by extreme want; so that you need not fear that those well-
shaped and strong men (for it is only such that noblemen love to keep
about them till they spoil them), who now grow feeble with ease and are
softened with their effeminate manner of life, would be less fit for
action if they were well bred and well employed. And it seems very
unreasonable that, for the prospect of a war, which you need never have
but when you please, you should maintain so many idle men, as will always
disturb you in time of peace, which is ever to be more considered than
war. But I do not think that this necessity of stealing arises only from
hence; there is another cause of it, more peculiar to England.' 'What is
that?' said the Cardinal: 'The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which
your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be
said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for
wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer
wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy
men, the dobots! not contented with the old rents which their farms