of a prosecution. Timid
juries, and judges who held their offices during pleasure, never failed
to second all the views of the crown.

The power of pressing, both for sea and land service, and obliging
any person to accept of any office, however mean or unfit for him, was
another prerogative totally incompatible with freedom. Osborne gives the
following account of Elizabeth's method of employing this prerogative:
"In case she found any likely to interrupt her occasions," says he, "she
did seasonably prevent him by a chargeable employment abroad, or putting
him upon some service at home, which she knew least grateful to the
people; contrary to a false maxim, since practised with far worse
success, by such princes as thought it better husbandry to buy off
enemies than reward friends."[*] The practice with which Osborne
reproaches the two immediate successors of Elizabeth, proceeded partly
from the extreme difficulty of their situation, partly from the greater
lenity of their disposition. The power of pressing, as may naturally be
imagined, was often abused, in other respects, by men of inferior
rank; and officers often exacted money for freeing persons from the
service.[**]

* Page 392.

* Murden, p. 181.

The government of England during that age, however different in other
particulars, bore in this respect some resemblance to that of Turkey at
present: the sovereign possessed every power, except that of imposing
taxes; and in both countries, this limitation, unsupported by other
privileges, appears rather prejudicial to the people. In Turkey, it
obliges the sultan to permit the extortion of the pashas and governors
of provinces, from whom he afterwards squeezes presents or takes
forfeitures: in England, it engaged the queen to erect monopolies, and
grant patents for exclusive trade; an invention so pernicious, that had
she gone on during a tract of years at her own rate, England, the seat
of riches, and arts, and commerce, would have contained at present as
little industry as Morocco or the coast of Barbary.

We may further observe that this valuable privilege, valuable only
because it proved afterwards the means by which the parliament extorted
all their other privileges, was very much encroached on, in an indirect
manner, during the reign of Elizabeth, as well as of her predecessors.
She often exacted loans from her people; an arbitrary and unequal kind
of imposition, and which individuals felt severe