hich after his usual fashion he indulges, we can still
perceive the fundamental idea, that if even the subsidies which he
required and asked were granted him, he would notwithstanding agree to
no conditions on his side, and take upon himself no distinct pledges.
He was resolved no longer to play the game of making concessions in
order to ask for something in return, as he had done some years
before; he found that far beneath his dignity. Still less could he
consent that all the grievances that might have arisen should be
heaped up and presented to him, for that would be injurious to the
honour of the government. Each one, he said, might lay before him the
grievances which he experienced in his own town or in his own county;
he would then attend to their redress one by one. In the same way he
would deal with each House separately. If he is reproached with
endeavouring to extend his prerogatives he denies the charge; but he
affirms that he cannot allow them to be abridged, but that, in
exercising them, he would behave as well as the best prince England
ever had.[373] He has no conception of a relation based on mutual
rights; he acknowledges only a relation of confidence and affection.
In return for liberal concessions he promises liberal favour.

This was a view of things resting upon a patriarchal conception of
kingly power, in favour of which analogies might no doubt have been
found in the early state of the kingdoms of the West, but which was
now becoming more and more obsolete. What had still been possible
under Elizabeth, when the sovereign and her Parliament formed one
party, was no longer so now; especially as a man who had attracted
universal hatred stood at the head of affairs. Besides this a dispute
was already going on which we cannot pass over in silence.

It arose upon the same matter which had caused such grave
embarrassment to the Earl of Salisbury, the unlimited exercise of the
right of levying tonnage and poundage entirely at the discretion of
the government. It was affirmed that the Custom-House receipts had
increased more than twentyfold since the commencement of James's
reign, and that a great part of the increased returns was enjoyed by
favoured private individuals. The Lower House demanded first of all an
examination into the right of the government, and declared that
without it they would not proceed to vote any grant.[374]

In the Lower House itself on one occasion a lively debate arose on the
s