The first point Hythloday makes in his denunciation of existing conditions is brought out in an account he gives of a meeting at the home of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, when he was visiting in England. Hythloday had challenged one of Morton's guests, a lawyer who boasted of the effectiveness of the English system of justice, which was breaking all records for hanging thieves. Hythloday took the position that the death penalty was altogether too severe a penalty for theft and suggested that it would be better to seek for remedies to eliminate the causes of thievery. Men, he maintained, were driven to stealing through desperation. There were many disabled veterans wandering about the country with no possible means of support. Furthermore, the practice of rich men maintaining large households of retainers who were, for the most part, idle, contributed to the number of thieves and beggars because often retainers found themselves cast out without support when they grew old or sick or when the head of the household fell upon hard times.
The system was fundamentally faulty, he argued, in which non-productive noblemen maintained non-productive flunkeys while forcing the common laborers to drudge in abject poverty.
A further set of circumstances was contributing to the multiplication of thieves and beggars throughout the country, according to Hythloday. In many places farmlands were being appropriated for sheep grazing, since wool growing had become very profitable. The consequence was that many farmers were being driven off their lands without any provision for their subsistence.
