748 ON THE PROFITS OF AGRICULTURE. 



fact is to be accounted for by the difficulty which corporations 

 would have in inducing their tenants to accept an innovation 

 which was intended to have the effect of raising their rents in 

 an indirect way. 



'You came,' says Fortescue (chap. 29), 'very young out of 

 England, so that the distribution and character of that country 

 is unknown to you \ If you knew them and compared them 

 with the advantages and characteristics of other countries, 

 you would not wonder at these matters which you question. 

 England is so fruitful in comparison with them, that it sur- 

 passes all other countries in fertility. There are fields and 

 pastures, enclosed by hedges and ditches, planted with trees, 

 so as to be a defence to herds of sheep and cattle against the 

 storm and the heat. The pastures are generally watered, so that 

 the animals which are enclosed in them need no keeper day 

 or night. There are no beasts of prey, and sheep can lie by 

 night unwatched in their folds, and so enrich the soil. Hence 

 the people of that country are not weighted by heavy labour, 

 but breathe freely like those patriarchs who chose rather to 

 feed cattle than oppress themselves with the anxieties of 

 husbandry. Moreover, the same country is so dotted and filled 

 with landowners, that hardly a hamlet in it is without knight, 

 esquire, or franklin, who is not enriched with good property. 

 There are freeholders also and yeomen, many of the latter of 

 whom could spend a hundred pounds, and knights and esquires 

 whose income does not fall short of five hundred marks.' I 

 suspect that Fortescue is exaggerating matters, when he is 

 encouraging the young prince to study the laws and constitu- 

 tion of the people over whom he hopes that he may reign, 

 after a campaign and counter-revolution, and is contrasting 

 it with the beggarly condition of France, where the civil law 

 is supreme, and the kingdom is not 'political,' as he calls a 

 constitutional monarchy, borrowing his term from Aristotle, 

 but one which is absolute in theory and arbitrary in practice. 



1 He is addressing the unlucky Edward of Lancaster who was either slain at, or 

 executed after, Tewkesbury fight. 



