fth
assertion) must indeed destroy industry. For, that so it did in
Lacedaemon is most apparent, as also that it could do no otherwise,
where every man having his forty quarters of barley, with wine
proportionable, supplied him out of his own lot by his laborer or helot;
and being confined in that to the scantling above which he might not
live, there was not any such thing as a trade, or other art, except that
of war, in exercise. Wherefore a Spartan, if he were not in arms, must
sit and play with his Angers, whence ensued perpetual war, and, the
estate of the city being as little capable of increase as that of the
citizens, her inevitable ruin. Now what better ends you can propose to
yourselves in the like ways, I do not so well see as I perceive that
there may be worse; for Lacedaemon yet was free from civil war: but if
you employ your citizens no better than she did, I cannot promise you
that you shall fare so well, because they are still desirous of war that
hope that it may be profitable to them; and the strongest security you
can give of peace, is to make it gainful. Otherwise men will rather
choose that whereby they may break your laws, than that whereby your
laws may break them. Which I speak not so much in relation to the
nobility or such as would be holding, as to the people or them that
would be getting; the passion in these being so much the stronger, as
a man's felicity is weaker in the fruition of things, than in their
prosecution and increase.

"Truly, my lords, it is my fear, that by taking of more hands, and the
best from industry, you will farther endamage it, than can be repaired
by laying on a few, and the worst; while the nobility must be forced to
send their sons to the plough, and, as if this were not enough, to marry
their daughters also to farmers.

"Sixthly, but I do not see (to come to the last point) how it is
possible that this thing should be brought about, to your good I mean,
though it may to the destruction of many. For that the agrarian of
Israel, or that of Lacedaemon, might stand, is no such miracle; the
lands, without any consideration of the former proprietor, being
surveyed and cast into equal lots, which could neither be bought, nor
sold, nor multiplied: so that they knew whereabout to have a man. But in
this nation no such division can be introduced, the lands being already
in the hands of proprietors, and such whose estates lie very rarely
together, but mixed one with another