waged, no attendance
at court expected, no bribery or profusion required at elections.[**]
Could human nature ever reach happiness, the condition of the English
gentry, under so mild and benign a prince, might merit that appellation.

The amount of the king's revenue, as it stood in 1617, is thus
stated.[***]

* Cabala, p. 224, 1st edit.

** Men seem then to have been ambitious of representing the
counties, but careless on the boroughs. A seat in the house
was, in itself, of small importance: but the former became a
point of honor among the gentlemen. Journ. 10th Feb. 1620.
Towns which had formerly neglected their right of sending
members, now began to claim it. Journ. 26th Feb. 1623.

*** An Abstract, or brief Declaration of his Majesty's
Revenue, with the Assignations and Defalcations upon the
same.

Of crown lands, eighty thousand pounds a year; by customs and new
impositions, near one hundred and ninety thousand; by wards and other
various branches of revenue, besides purveyance, one hundred and eighty
thousand: the whole amounting to four hundred and fifty thousand. The
king's ordinary disbursements, by the same account, are said to exceed
this sum thirty-six thousand pounds.[*] All the extraordinary sums which
James had raised by subsidies, loans, sale of lands, sale of the
title of baronet, money paid by the states and by the king of France,
benevolences, etc., were, in the whole, about two millions two hundred
thousand pounds; of which the sale of lands afforded seven hundred and
seventy-five thousand pounds. The extraordinary disbursements of the
king amounted to two millions; besides above four hundred thousand
pounds given in presents. Upon the whole, a sufficient reason appears,
partly from necessary expenses, partly for want of a rigid economy,
why the king, even early in his reign, was deeply involved in debt, and
found great difficulty to support the government.

Farmers, not commissioners, levied the customs. It seems, indeed,
requisite, that the former method should always be tried before the
latter, though a preferable one. When men's own interest is concerned,
they fall upon a hundred expedients to prevent frauds in the merchants;
and these the public may afterwards imitate, in establishing proper
rules for its officers.

The customs were supposed to amount to five per cent. of the value, and
were levied upon exports, as well as imports. Nay,