I am ashamed to hear this objected by strangers, and know not how to answer it. Amongst our towns, there is only [565]London that bears the face of a city, [566]Epitome Britanniae, a famous emporium, second to none beyond seas, a noble mart: but sola crescit, decrescentibus aliis; and yet, in my slender judgment, defective in many things. The rest ([567]some few excepted) are in mean estate, ruinous most part, poor, and full of beggars, by reason of their decayed trades, neglected or bad policy, idleness of their inhabitants, riot, which had rather beg or loiter, and be ready to starve, than work. I cannot deny but that something may be said in defence of our cities, [568]that they are not so fair built, (for the sole magnificence of this kingdom (concerning buildings) hath been of old in those Norman castles and religious houses,) so rich, thick sited, populous, as in some other countries; besides the reasons Cardan gives, Subtil. Lib. 11. we want wine and oil, their two harvests, we dwell in a colder air, and for that cause must a little more liberally [569]feed of flesh, as all northern countries do: our provisions will not therefore extend to the maintenance of so many; yet notwithstanding we have matter of all sorts, an open sea for traffic, as well as the rest, goodly havens. And how can we excuse our negligence, our riot, drunkenness, &c., and such enormities that follow it? We have excellent laws enacted, you will say, severe statutes, houses of correction, &c., to small purpose it seems; it is not houses will serve, but cities of correction; [570]our trades generally ought to be reformed, wants supplied. In other countries they have the same grievances, I confess, but that doth not excuse us, [571]wants, defects, enormities, idle drones, tumults, discords, contention, lawsuits, many laws made against them to repress those innumerable brawls and lawsuits, excess in apparel, diet, decay of tillage, depopulations, [572]especially against rogues, beggars, Egyptian vagabonds (so termed at least) which have [573] swarmed all over Germany, France, Italy, Poland, as you may read in [574] Munster, Cranzius, and Aventinus; as those Tartars and Arabians at this day do in the eastern countries: yet such has been the iniquity of all ages, as it seems to small purpose. Nemo in nostra civitate mendicus esto, [575] saith Plato: he will have them purged from a [576]commonwealth, [577]as a bad humour from the body, that are like so many ulcers and boils, and must be cured before the melancholy body can be eased. What Carolus Magnus, the Chinese, the Spaniards, the duke of Saxony and many other states have decreed in this case, read Arniseus, cap. 19; Boterus, libro 8, cap. 2; Osorius de Rubus gest. Eman. lib. 11. When a country is overstocked with people, as a pasture is oft overlaid with cattle, they had wont in former times to disburden themselves, by sending out colonies, or by wars, as those old Romans; or by employing them at home about some public buildings, as bridges, roadways, for which those Romans were famous in this island; as Augustus Caesar did in Rome, the Spaniards in their Indian mines, as at Potosi in Peru, where some 30,000 men are still at work, 6000 furnaces ever boiling, &c. [578]aqueducts, bridges, havens, those stupend works of Trajan, Claudius, at [579]Ostium, Dioclesiani Therma, Fucinus Lacus, that Piraeum in Athens, made by Themistocles, ampitheatrums of curious marble, as at Verona, Civitas Philippi, and Heraclea in Thrace, those Appian and Flaminian ways, prodigious works all may witness; and rather than they should be [580]idle, as those [581] Egyptian Pharaohs, Maris, and Sesostris did, to task their subjects to build unnecessary pyramids, obelisks, labyrinths, channels, lakes, gigantic works all, to divert them from rebellion, riot, drunkenness, [582]Quo scilicet alantur et ne vagando laborare desuescant. Another eyesore is that want of conduct and navigable rivers, a great blemish as [583]Boterus, [584]Hippolitus a Collibus, and other politicians hold, if it be neglected in a commonwealth. Admirable cost and charge is bestowed in the Low Countries on this behalf, in the duchy of Milan, territory of Padua, in [585]France, Italy, China, and so likewise about corrivations of water to moisten and refresh barren grounds, to drain fens, bogs, and moors. Massinissa made many inward parts of Barbary and Numidia in Africa, before his time incult and horrid, fruitful and bartable by this means.