From the regulations with respect to land, a coarser advantage was also derived, of a kind which at the present time will be effectively appreciated.  It is a common matter of dispute whether landed estates should be large or small; whether it is better that the land should be divided among small proprietors, cultivating their own ground, or that it should follow its present tendency, and be shared by a limited and constantly diminishing number of wealthy landlords.  The advocates for a peasant proprietary tell us truly, that a landed monopoly is dangerous; that the possession of a spot of ground, though it be but a few acres, is the best security for loyalty, giving the state a pledge for its owner, and creating in the body of the nation a free, vigorous, and manly spirit.  The advocates for the large estates tell us, that the masses are too ill-educated to be trusted with independence; that without authority over them, these small proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvident; that the free spirit becomes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to cultivate it.  Either theory is plausible.  The advocates of both can support their arguments with an appeal to experience; and the verdict of fact has not as yet been pronounced emphatically.

The problem will be resolved in the future history of this country.  It was also nobly and skilfully resolved in the past.  The knights and nobles retained the authority and power which was attached to the lordships of the fees.  They retained extensive estates in their own hands or in the occupation of their immediate tenants; but the large proportion of the lands was granted out by them to smaller owners, and the expenditure of their own incomes in the wages and maintenance of their vast retinues left but a small margin for indulgence in luxuries.  The necessities of their position obliged them to regard their property rather as a revenue to be administered in trust, than as “a fortune” to be expended in indulgence.  Before the Reformation, while the differences of social degree were enormous, the differences in habits of life were comparatively slight, and the practice of men in these things was curiously the reverse of our own.  Dress, which now scarcely suffices to distinguish the master from his servant, was then the symbol of rank, prescribed by statute to the various orders of society as strictly as the regimental uniform to officers and privates; diet also was prescribed, and with equal strictness; but the diet of the nobleman was ordered down to a level which was then within the reach of the poorest labourer.  In 1336, the following law was enacted by the Parliament of Edward III.:[10] “Whereas, heretofore through the excessive and over-many sorts of costly meats which the people of this Realm have used more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have happened to the people of this Realm—­for the great men by these excesses have been sore grieved;