inos_.--Wild, indeed! The old chroniclers give a dreadful picture
of their numbers and of their wickedness, which called forth and deserved
the utmost severity of the law. They lived like savages in the woods and
wastes, committing the most atrocious actions, stealing children, and
burning, breaking, or otherwise disfiguring their limbs for the purpose
of exciting compassion, and obtaining alms by this most flagitious of all
imaginable crimes. Surely we have nothing so bad as this.

_Sir Thomas More_.--The crime of stealing children for such purposes is
rendered exceedingly difficult by the ease and rapidity with which a hue
and cry can now be raised throughout the land, and the eagerness and
detestation with which the criminal would be pursued; still, however, it
is sometimes practised. In other respects the professional beggars of
the nineteenth century are not a whit better than their predecessors of
the sixteenth; and your gipsies and travelling potters, who, gipsy-like,
pitch their tents upon the common, or by the wayside, retain with as much
fidelity the manners and morals of the old vagabonds as they do the
_cant_, or pedlar's French, which this class of people are said to have
invented in the age whereof we are now speaking.

_Montesinos_.--But the number of our vagabonds has greatly diminished. In
your Henry's reign it is affirmed that no fewer than 72,000 criminals
were hanged; you have yourself described them as strung up by scores upon
a gibbet all over the country. Even in the golden days of good Queen
Bess the executions were from three to four hundred annually. A large
allowance must be made for the increased humanity of the nation, and the
humaner temper with which the laws are administered: but the new crimes
which increased wealth and a system of credit on one hand, and increased
ingenuity, and new means of mischief on the part of the depredators have
produced, must also be taken into the account. And the result will show
a diminution in the number of those who prey upon society either by open
war or secret wiles.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Add your paupers to the list, and you will then have
added to it not less than an eighth of your whole population. But
looking at the depredators alone, perhaps it will be found that the evil
is at this time more widely extended, more intimately connected with the
constitution of society, like a chronic and organic disease, and
therefore more difficult of cure.