uch great
portions and parts of the lands of this Realm from the occupying of the
poor husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the
great profit that cometh of sheep which be now come into a few persons'
hands, in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects; it is hereby
enacted, that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own
inheritance more than 2000 sheep; that no person shall occupy more than two
farms; and that the 19th of the 4th of Henry VII., and those other acts
obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be re-enacted and
enforced."[39]

By these measures the money-making spirit was for a time driven back, and
the country resumed its natural course. I am not concerned to defend the
economic wisdom of such proceedings; but they prove, I think, conclusively,
that the labouring classes owed their advantages not to the condition of
the labour market, but to the care of the state; and that when the state
relaxed its supervision, or failed to enforce its regulations, the
labourers being left to the market chances, sank instantly in the unequal
struggle with capital.

The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground (except
during the discreditable interlude of the reign of Edward VI.) for the
first three quarters of the century; and until that time the working
classes of this country remained in a condition more than prosperous. They
enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to the lot of that
order in long-settled countries; incomparably beyond what the same class
were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France. The laws secured
them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct evidence of
successive acts of the legislature justifying the general policy by its
success: and we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of
the great body of the people at a time when, if they had been discontented,
they held in their own hands the means of asserting what the law
acknowledged to be their right. The government had no power to compel
submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a
"benevolence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a determination
against which the crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the
scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a
good grace from an impossible position. If the peasantry had been suffering
under any real g