'It was therefore the expressed conviction of the English nation that
it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a profitless
and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the
commonwealth, to be healed by wholesale discipline if the gangrene
was not incurable; to be cut away with the knife if the milder
treatment of the cart-whip failed to be of profit.

'A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy.
The state of the country was critical; and the danger from
questionable persons traversing it, unexamined and uncontrolled, was
greater than at ordinary times. But in point of justice as well as
of prudence it harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it
answered well for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in
whose hearts lay an intense hatred of rascality, and among whom no
one could have lapsed into evil courses except by deliberate
preference for them. The moral sinew of the English must have been
strong indeed when it admitted of such stringent bracing; but, on the
whole, they were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if wisdom
can be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great
crisis of the Reformation is the best justification of their princes.
The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of
Michael Angelo, the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez,
the Germans who shook off the Pope at the call of Luther, and the
splendid chivalry of Francis I. of France, were no common men. But
they were all brought face to face with the same trials, and none met
them as the English met them. The English alone never lost their
self-possession, and if they owed something to fortune in their
escape from anarchy, they owed more to the strong hand and steady