. The popular history of England : an illustrated history of society and government from the earliest period to our own times . the towns plucked down, were the wretchedhovels,— the houses made of sticks and dirt,—of which the Spaniard tookQote in the time of que-^n Mary.* But it was not the wretchedness of thebuildings that caused them to be removed, but the absence of those means oflife which were more abundantly found half a century later, when the sameSpaniard said, These English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, butthey fare commonly so well as the king. In the time in which Henr
. The popular history of England : an illustrated history of society and government from the earliest period to our own times . the towns plucked down, were the wretchedhovels,— the houses made of sticks and dirt,—of which the Spaniard tookQote in the time of que-^n Mary.* But it was not the wretchedness of thebuildings that caused them to be removed, but the absence of those means oflife which were more abundantly found half a century later, when the sameSpaniard said, These English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, butthey fare commonly so well as the king. In the time in which Henry , and INIore declaimed against the decay of population tliroughpasturage, the tillage of the land was so that it aflbrded noreturn for the employment of capital. It yielded only a miserable subsistenceto those who worked it, with imperfect instruments ; vrith no knowledge ofthe rotation of crops; with no turnip husbandry to fatten sheep lesswastefully than in the pastures; with no suiEcient knowledge of the value ofmanures. The very process by which, upon a true application of commercial. intercourse to agriculture, the laud might bo improved, was reprobated bythe author of the Utopia, in the enforcement of his mistaken rich men, he says, buy great cattle abroad very cheap, and afterwardswhen they be fatted in their pastures, they sell them again exceeding difference between cheapness and dearness was a clear addition to thenational weaUh. The employment of capital in the feeding of sheep, beingthe more profitable mode of its use, speedily produced a greater demand forthe labour of the whole country, than the ancient mode of cultivating smallpatches of land by the cottier-tenantry, who had succeeded tlie serfs of theearlier times. The pastures were furnishing employment to the manufacturers,the retailers, the merchants, of the great towns ; and the profit of the pastureswould, in course of time, bring about that larger
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