Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/380

360 the wide earth, which were expanding into new empires; covering the ocean with vessels thick as the sea-fowl; converting hamlets into huge towns, and into workshops of industry peopled with unimagined millions of men! Being but human, however, like others round them, they could see only what was passing under their eyes. They beheld the organization of centuries collapse, the tillers of the earth adrift without employment, villages and towns running to waste, landlords careless of all but themselves, turning their tenants out upon the world when there were no colonies for them to fly to, no expanding manufactures offering other openings to labour. A change in the relations between the peasantry and the owners of the soil, which three hundred years have but just effected, with the assistance of an unlimited field for emigration, was attempted harshly and unmercifully with no such assistance in a single generation. Luxury increased on one side, with squalor and wretchedness on the other, as its hideous shadow. The value of the produce of the land was greater than before, but it was no longer distributed. It fell into the hands of the few, and was spent in the purchase of luxuries from abroad; the Spartan severity of the old manners was exchanged for a fantastic and mischievous extravagance.