June 10, 2006
over the hedge
Your sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up, and swaIlow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen and gentlemen.. . leave no ground for tillage, they enclose all into pastures; they throw down houses ; they pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing, but onIy the church to be made a sheep-house. . . .Therefore that one covetous and insatiable cormorant and very plague of his native country may compass about and enclose many thousand acres of ground together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own.
— Thomas More
Posted by jane at June 10, 2006 09:09 AM | TrackBack