benign humor or light
fancy, than of reason or judgment. The objects of it were such as could
render themselves agreeable to him in his loose hours; not such as were
endowed with great merit, or who possessed talents or popularity which
could strengthen his interest with the public.

The same advantage, we may remark, over the people, which the crown
formerly reaped from that interval between the fall of the peers and
rise of the commons, was now possessed by the people against the crown,
during the continuance of a like interval. The sovereign had already
lost that independent revenue by which he could subsist without regular
supplies from parliament; and he had not yet acquired the means of
influencing those assemblies. The effects of this situation, which
commenced with the accession of the house of Stuart, soon rose to a
great height, and were more of less propagated throughout all the reigns
of that unhappy family.

Subsidies and fifteenths are frequently mentioned by historians; but
neither the amount of these taxes, nor the method of levying them,
have been well explained. It appears, that the fifteenths formerly
corresponded to the name, and were that proportionable part of the
movables.[*] But a valuation having been made in the reign of Edward
III., that valuation was always adhered to, and each town paid
unalterably a particular sum, which the inhabitants themselves assessed
upon their fellow-citizens. The same tax in corporate towns was called
a tenth; because there it was, at first, a tenth of the movables. The
whole amount of a tenth and a fifteenth throughout the kingdom, or a
fifteenth, as it is often more concisely called, was about twenty-nine
thousand pounds.[**] The amount of a subsidy was not invariable, like
that of a fifteenth. In the eighth of Elizabeth, a subsidy amounted
to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds: in the fortieth, it was
not above seventy-eight thousand.[***] It afterwards fell to seventy
thousand, and was continually decreasing.[****] The reason is easily
collected from the method of levying it. We may learn from the subsidy
bills,[v] that one subsidy was given for four shillings in the pound
on land, and two shillings and eightpence on movables throughout the
counties; a considerable tax, had it been strictly levied. But this was
only the ancient state of a subsidy. During the reign of James,
there was not paid the twentieth part of that sum. The tax was so far
personal, tha