fled from his
lord remained a year and a day unclaimed upon the King's demesne lands,
or in any privileged town, he became free. All doubtful cases were
decided _in favorem libertatis_. Even the established maxim in law,
_partus sequitur ventrem_, was set aside in favour of liberty; the child
of a neif was free if the father were a freeman, or if it were
illegitimate, in which case it was settled that the free condition of the
father should always be presumed.

_Montesinos_.--Such a principle must surely have tended to increase the
illegitimate population.

_Sir Thomas More_.--That inference is drawn from the morals of your own
age, and the pernicious effect of your poor laws as they are now
thoroughly understood and deliberately acted upon by a race who are
thinking always of their imaginary rights, and never of their duties. You
forget the efficacy of ecclesiastical discipline; and that the old Church
was more vigilant, and therefore more efficient than that which rose upon
its ruins. And you suppose that personal liberty was more valued by
persons in a state of servitude than was actually the case. For if in
earlier ages emancipation was an act of piety and benevolence,
afterwards, when the great crisis of society came on, it proceeded more
frequently from avarice than from any worthier motive; and the slave who
was set free sometimes found himself much in the situation of a household
dog that is turned into the streets.

_Montesinos_.--Are you alluding to the progress of inclosures, which from
the accession of the Tudors to the age of the Stuarts were complained of
as the great and crying evil of the times?

_Sir Thomas More_.--That process originated as soon as rents began to be
of more importance than personal services, and money more convenient to
the landlords than payments in kind.

_Montesinos_.--And this I suppose began to be the case under Edward III.
The splendour of his court, and the foreign wars in which he was engaged,
must have made money more necessary to the knights and nobles than it had
ever been before, except during the Crusades.

_Sir Thomas More_.--The wars of York and Lancaster retarded the process;
but immediately after the termination of that fierce struggle it was
accelerated by the rapid growth of commerce, and by the great influx of
wealth from the new found world. Under a settled and strong and vigilant
government men became of less value as vassals and retainers, because the