Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/379

1548.] make it strange to them when they shall pray. Whoso stoppeth his ear at the crying of the poor, he shall cry and not be heard. With what glad hearts and clear consciences might noblemen go to rest, when they had bestowed the day in hearing Christ complain in his members, and in redressing their wrongs. But, alas, what lack thereof! Poor people are driven to seek their rights among the lawyers, and, as the Prophet Joel saith, what the caterpillars left, the greedy locusts the lawyers devour; they laugh with the money which maketh others to weep. The poor are robbed on every side, and that of such as have authority; the robberies, extortions, and open oppressions of these covetous cormorants the gentlemen, have no end nor limits, no banks to keep in their vileness. For turning poor men out of their holds they take it for no offence, but say the land is their own, and they turn them out of their shrouds like mice. Thousands in England, through such, beg now from door to door, who have kept honest houses. Lord, what oppressors, worse than Ahab, are in England, which sell the poor for a pair of shoes! If God should serve but three or four as He did Ahab, to make the dogs lap the blood of them, their wives, and posterity, I think it would cause a great number to beware of extortion.'

Could Gilpin and Latimer have looked three centuries onward, they would have seen the slow action of the spirit which they execrated, replacing the ancient agricultural system of England by another which extracted fourfold produce from the soil; scattering colonies over