< Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu
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OF GREATNESS OF KINGDOMS AND ESTATES

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hath been (nevertheless) an over-match; in regard[1] the middle people of England make good soldiers, which the peasants of France do not. And herein the device of king Henry the Seventh (whereof I have spoken largely in the history of his life) was profound and admirable; in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them, as may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty and no servile condition; and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings.[2] And thus indeed you shall attain to Virgil's character which he gives to ancient Italy:

Terra potens armis atque ubere glebæ:[3]

Neither is that state (which, for any thing I know, is almost peculiar to England, and hardly to be found anywhere else, except it be perhaps in Poland) to be passed over; I mean the state[4] of free servants and attendants upon noblemen and gentlemen;

  1. ↑ In regard. Since; because.

    "Charles, and the rest, it is enacted thus:
    That, in regard King Henry gives consent,

    ·····
    You shall become true liegemen to his crown."

    Shakspere. I. King Henry VI. v. 4.

    "I cannot say I ever saw an adder, in regard there are none in these parts." Scott. The Pirate. XXVIII.
  2. ↑ The importance to a state of maintaining a free and contented agricultural class was a subject much considered by Bacon. Besides the discussion of it in his History of Henry VII, the Journal of the House of Commons records that Bacon's first speech in the ninth Parliament of Elizabeth, which met October 24, 1597, was on a motion he had himself made, "against depopulation of towns and houses of husbandry, and for the maintenance of husbandry and tillage."
  3. ↑ Land powerful in arms and in fertility of soil. Vergil. Aeneidos Liber I. 531.
  4. ↑ State. Class or order.
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