Yet
will I now for a little set all that aside to consider thy strange
tale as of a minstrel from over sea, even as thou biddest me.
Therefore I say, that if men still abide men as I have known them, and
unless these folk of England change as, the land changeth--and
forsooth of the men, for good and for evil, I can think no other than
I think now, or behold them other than I have known them and loved
them--I say if the men be still men, what will happen except that
there should be all plenty in the land, and not one poor man therein,
unless of his own free will he choose to lack and be poor, as a man in
religion or such like; for there would then be such abundance of all
good things, that, as greedy as the lords might be, there would be
enough to satisfy their greed and yet leave good living for all who
laboured with their hands; so that these should labour far less than
now, and they would have time to learn knowledge, so that there should
be no learned or unlearned, for all should be learned; and they would
have time also to learn how to order the matters of the parish and the
hundred, and of the parliament of the realm, so that the king should
take no more than his own; and to order the rule of the realm, so that
all men, rich and unrich, should have part therein; and so by undoing
of evil laws and making of good ones, that fashion would come to an
end whereof thou speakest, that rich men make laws for their own
behoof; for they should no longer be able to do thus when all had part
in making the laws; whereby it would soon come about that there would
be no men rich and tyrannous, but all should have enough and to spare
of the increase of the earth and the work of their own hands.
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