red.

_Sir Thomas More_.--You deduce a large inference from scanty premises. As
if it were not easy to know without any super-human intuition that you
would wish for the arrival of one whose company you like, at a time when
you were expecting it.

_Montesinos_.--And is this all?

_Sir Thomas More_.--All that the words necessarily imply. For the rest,
_crede quod habeas et habes_, according to the scurvy tale which makes my
friend Erasmus a horse-stealer, and fathers Latin rhymes upon him. But
let us take up the thread of our discourse, or, as we used to say in old
times, "begin it again and mend it, for it is neither mass nor matins."

_Montesinos_.--You were saying that the evil of a vagrant and brutalised
population began in your days, and is approaching to its consummation at
this time.

_Sir Thomas More_.--The decay of the feudal system produced it. When
armies were no longer raised upon that system soldiers were disbanded at
the end of a war, as they are now: that is to say, they were turned
adrift to fare as they could--to work if they could find employment;
otherwise to beg, starve, live upon the alms of their neighbours, or prey
upon a wider community in a manner more congenial to the habits and
temper of their old vocation. In consequence of the gains which were to
be obtained by inclosures and sheep-farming, families were unhoused and
driven loose upon the country. These persons, and they who were
emancipated from villenage, or who had in a more summary manner
emancipated themselves, multiplied in poverty and wretchedness. Lastly,
owing to the fashion for large households of retainers, great numbers of
men were trained up in an idle and dissolute way of life, liable at any
time to be cast off when age or accident invalided them, or when the
master of the family died; and then if not ashamed to beg, too lewd to
work, and ready for any kind of mischief. Owing to these co-operating
causes, a huge population of outcasts was produced, numerous enough
seriously to infest society, yet not so large as to threaten its
subversion.

_Montesinos_.--A derangement of the existing system produced them then;
they are a constituent part of the system now. With you they were, as
you have called them, outcasts: with us, to borrow an illustration from
foreign institutions, they have become a caste. But during two centuries
the evil appears to have decreased. Why was this?

_Sir Thomas More_.--Because it was per