get did not suffice to pay its expenses,
and Ireland was a constant charge upon the imperial exchequer.

It is astounding, however, to reflect upon the pomp, extravagance, and
inordinate pride which characterized the government and the court.

The expenses of James's household were at least five hundred thousand
crowns, or about one quarter of the whole revenue of the empire. Henry
IV., with all his extravagance, did not spend more than one-tenth of the
public income of France upon himself and his court.

Certainly if England were destined to grow great it would be in despite
of its new monarch. Hating the People, most intolerant in religion,
believing intensely in royal prerogative, thoroughly convinced of his
regal as well as his personal infallibility, loathing that inductive
method of thought which was already leading the English nation so proudly
on the road of intellectual advancement, shrinking from the love of free
inquiry, of free action, of daring adventure, which was to be the real
informing spirit of the great British nation; abhorring the
Puritans--that is to say, one-third of his subjects--in whose harsh, but
lofty nature he felt instinctively that popular freedom was
enfolded--even as the overshadowing tree in the rigid husk--and sending
them forth into the far distant wilderness to wrestle with wild beasts
and with savages more ferocious than beasts; fearing and hating the
Catholics as the sworn enemies of his realm; his race, and himself,
trampling on them as much as he dared, forcing them into hypocrisy to
save themselves from persecution or at least pecuniary ruin--if they
would worship God according to their conscience; at deadly feud,
therefore, on religious grounds, with much more than half his
subjects--Puritans or Papists--and yet himself a Puritan in dogma and a
Papist in Church government, if only the king could be pope; not knowing,
indeed, whether a Puritan, or a Jesuit whom he called a Papist-Puritan,
should be deemed the more disgusting or dangerous animal; already
preparing for his unfortunate successor a path to the scaffold by
employing all the pedantry, both theological and philosophical at his
command to bring parliaments into contempt, and to place the royal
prerogative on a level with Divinity; at the head of a most martial,
dauntless, and practical nation, trembling, with unfortunate physical
timidity, at the sight of a drawn sword; ever scribbling or haranguing in
Latin, French,