The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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the northern than in the
southern shires. In truth a large part of the country beyond
Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state of
barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to prevent
civilisation from spreading to that region. The air was
inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful and
industrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or
industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war, and
which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly
desolated by bands of Scottish marauders. Before the union of the
two British crowns, and long after that union, there was as great
a difference between Middlesex and Northumberland as there now is
between Massachusetts and the settlements of those squatters who,
far to the west of the Mississippi, administer a rude justice
with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of Charles the
Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter and pillage were
distinctly perceptible, many miles south of the Tweed, in the
face of the country and in the lawless manners of the people.
There was still a large class of mosstroopers, whose calling was
to plunder dwellings and to drive away whole herds of cattle. It
was found necessary, soon after the Restoration, to enact laws of
great severity for the prevention of these outrages. The
magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland were authorised to
raise bands of armed men for the defence of property and order;
and provision was made for meeting the expense of these levies by
local taxation.33 The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds
for the purpose of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were
living in the middle of the eighteenth century could well
remember the time when those ferocious dogs were common.34 Yet,
even with such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible to
track the robbers to their retreats among the hills and morasses.
For the geography of that wild country was very imperfectly
known. Even after the accession of George the Third, the path
over the fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas was still a secret
carefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in
their youth escaped from the pursuit of justice by that road.35
The seats of the gentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified.
Oxen were penned at night beneath the overhanging battlements of
the residence, which was known by the name of the Peel. The
inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and boiling
water were in readiness to crush and scald the plunderer who
might venture to assail the little garrison. No traveller
ventured into that country without making his will. The Judges on
circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys, clerks,
and serving men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle,
armed and escorted by a strong guard under the command of the
Sheriffs. It was necessary to carry provisions; for the country
was a wilderness which afforded no supplies. The spot where the
cavalcade halted to dine, under an immense oak, is not yet
forgotten. The irregular vigour with which criminal justice was
administered shocked observers whose lives had been passed in
more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by a
sense of common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle
stealers with the promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny; and
the convicts were hurried by scores to the gallows.36 Within the
memory of some whom this generation has seen, the sportsman who
wandered in pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne found the
heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled by a race scarcely less
savage than the Indians of California, and heard with surprise
the half naked women chaunting a wild measure, while the men with
brandished dirks danced a war dance.37
Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the border.
In the train of peace came industry and all the arts of life.
Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions north of the Trent
possessed in their coal beds a source of wealth far more precious
than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that, in the
neighbourhood of these beds, almost every manufacture might be
most profitably carried on. A constant stream of emigrants began
to roll northward. It appeared by the returns of 1841 that the
ancient archiepiscopal province of York contained two-sevenths of
the population of England. At the time of the Revolution that
province was believed to contain only one seventh of the
population.38 In Lancashire the number of inhabitants appear to
have increased ninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Northamptonshire it has hardly doubled.39
Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision
than of the population. The revenue of England, when Charles the
Second died, was small, when compared with the resources which
she even then possessed, or with the sums which were raised by
the governments of the neighbouring countries. It had, from the
time of the Restoration, been almost constantly increasing. yet
it was little more than three fourths of the revenue of the
United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of the revenue of
France.
The most important head of receipt was the excise, which, in the
last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred and
eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net
proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to five hundred
and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy
on the nation. The tax on chimneys, though less productive, call
forth far louder murmurs. The discontent excited by direct
imposts is, indeed, almost always out of proportion to the
quantity of money which they bring into the Exchequer; and the
tax on chimneys was, even among direct imposts, peculiarly
odious: for it could be levied only by means of domiciliary
visits; and of such visits the English have always been impatient
to a degree which the people of other countries can but faintly
conceive. The poorer householders were frequently unable to pay
their hearth money to the day. When this happened, their
furniture was distrained without mercy: for the tax was farmed;
and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, proverbially the most
rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused of performing their
unpopular duty with harshness and insolence. It was said that, as
soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children
began to wail, and the old women ran to hide their earthenware.
Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes been carried
away and sold. The net annual receipt from this tax was two
hundred thousand pounds.40
When to the three great sources of income which have been
mentioned we add the royal domains, then far more extensive than
at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet been
surrendered to the Church, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster,
the forfeitures, and the fines, we shall find that the whole
annual revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at about
fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue part was
hereditary; the rest had been granted to Charles for life; and he
was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as he thought fit.
Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expenditure of the
public departments was an addition to his privy purse. Of the
Post Office more will hereafter be said. The profits of that
establishment had been appropriated by Parliament to the Duke of
York.
The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been, charged
with the payment of about eighty thousand pounds a year, the
interest of the sum fraudulently destined in the Exchequer by the
Cabal. While Danby was at the head of the finances, the creditors
had received dividends, though not with the strict punctuality of
modern times: but those who had succeeded him at the treasury had
been less expert, or less solicitous to maintain public faith.
Since the victory won by the court over the Whigs, not a farthing
had been paid; and no redress was granted to the sufferers, till
a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. There can be no
greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the
exigencies of the state by loans was imported into our island by
William the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the
system of borrowing, but the system of funding. From a period of
immemorable antiquity it had been the practice of every English
government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was
the practice of honestly paying them.41
By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an
income of about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with some
occasional help from Versailles, support the necessary charges of
the government and the wasteful expenditure of the court. For
that load which pressed most heavily on the finances of the great
continental states was here scarcely felt. In France, Germany,
and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry the Fourth and Philip
the Second had never employed in time of war, were kept up in the
midst of peace. Bastions and raveling were everywhere rising,
constructed on principles unknown to Parma and Spinola. Stores of
artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such as even
Richelieu, whom the preceding generation had regarded as a worker
of prodigies, would have pronounced fabulous. No man could
journey many leagues in those countries without hearing the drums
of a regiment on march, or being challenged by the sentinels on
the drawbridge of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it
was possible to live long and to travel far without being once
reminded, by any martial sight or sound, that the defence of
nations had become a science and a calling. The majority of
Englishmen who were under twenty-five years of age had probably
never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which, in
the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies, scarcely
one was now capable of sustaining a siege The gates stood open
night and day. The ditches were dry. The ramparts had been
suffered to fall into decay, or were repaired only that the
townsfolk might have a pleasant walk on summer evenings. Of the
old baronial keeps many had been shattered by the cannon of
Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of ruin, overgrown with
ivy. Those which remained had lost their martial character, and
were now rural palaces of the aristocracy. The moats were turned
into preserves of carp and pike. The mounds were planted with
fragrant shrubs, through which spiral walks ran up to summer
houses adorned with mirrors and paintings.42 On the capes of the
sea coast, and on many inland hills, were still seen tall posts,
surmounted by barrels. Once those barrels had been filled with
pitch. Watchmen had been set
southern shires. In truth a large part of the country beyond
Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state of
barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to prevent
civilisation from spreading to that region. The air was
inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful and
industrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or
industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war, and
which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly
desolated by bands of Scottish marauders. Before the union of the
two British crowns, and long after that union, there was as great
a difference between Middlesex and Northumberland as there now is
between Massachusetts and the settlements of those squatters who,
far to the west of the Mississippi, administer a rude justice
with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of Charles the
Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter and pillage were
distinctly perceptible, many miles south of the Tweed, in the
face of the country and in the lawless manners of the people.
There was still a large class of mosstroopers, whose calling was
to plunder dwellings and to drive away whole herds of cattle. It
was found necessary, soon after the Restoration, to enact laws of
great severity for the prevention of these outrages. The
magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland were authorised to
raise bands of armed men for the defence of property and order;
and provision was made for meeting the expense of these levies by
local taxation.33 The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds
for the purpose of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were
living in the middle of the eighteenth century could well
remember the time when those ferocious dogs were common.34 Yet,
even with such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible to
track the robbers to their retreats among the hills and morasses.
For the geography of that wild country was very imperfectly
known. Even after the accession of George the Third, the path
over the fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas was still a secret
carefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in
their youth escaped from the pursuit of justice by that road.35
The seats of the gentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified.
Oxen were penned at night beneath the overhanging battlements of
the residence, which was known by the name of the Peel. The
inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and boiling
water were in readiness to crush and scald the plunderer who
might venture to assail the little garrison. No traveller
ventured into that country without making his will. The Judges on
circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys, clerks,
and serving men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle,
armed and escorted by a strong guard under the command of the
Sheriffs. It was necessary to carry provisions; for the country
was a wilderness which afforded no supplies. The spot where the
cavalcade halted to dine, under an immense oak, is not yet
forgotten. The irregular vigour with which criminal justice was
administered shocked observers whose lives had been passed in
more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by a
sense of common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle
stealers with the promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny; and
the convicts were hurried by scores to the gallows.36 Within the
memory of some whom this generation has seen, the sportsman who
wandered in pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne found the
heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled by a race scarcely less
savage than the Indians of California, and heard with surprise
the half naked women chaunting a wild measure, while the men with
brandished dirks danced a war dance.37
Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the border.
In the train of peace came industry and all the arts of life.
Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions north of the Trent
possessed in their coal beds a source of wealth far more precious
than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that, in the
neighbourhood of these beds, almost every manufacture might be
most profitably carried on. A constant stream of emigrants began
to roll northward. It appeared by the returns of 1841 that the
ancient archiepiscopal province of York contained two-sevenths of
the population of England. At the time of the Revolution that
province was believed to contain only one seventh of the
population.38 In Lancashire the number of inhabitants appear to
have increased ninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Northamptonshire it has hardly doubled.39
Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision
than of the population. The revenue of England, when Charles the
Second died, was small, when compared with the resources which
she even then possessed, or with the sums which were raised by
the governments of the neighbouring countries. It had, from the
time of the Restoration, been almost constantly increasing. yet
it was little more than three fourths of the revenue of the
United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of the revenue of
France.
The most important head of receipt was the excise, which, in the
last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred and
eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net
proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to five hundred
and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy
on the nation. The tax on chimneys, though less productive, call
forth far louder murmurs. The discontent excited by direct
imposts is, indeed, almost always out of proportion to the
quantity of money which they bring into the Exchequer; and the
tax on chimneys was, even among direct imposts, peculiarly
odious: for it could be levied only by means of domiciliary
visits; and of such visits the English have always been impatient
to a degree which the people of other countries can but faintly
conceive. The poorer householders were frequently unable to pay
their hearth money to the day. When this happened, their
furniture was distrained without mercy: for the tax was farmed;
and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, proverbially the most
rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused of performing their
unpopular duty with harshness and insolence. It was said that, as
soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children
began to wail, and the old women ran to hide their earthenware.
Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes been carried
away and sold. The net annual receipt from this tax was two
hundred thousand pounds.40
When to the three great sources of income which have been
mentioned we add the royal domains, then far more extensive than
at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet been
surrendered to the Church, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster,
the forfeitures, and the fines, we shall find that the whole
annual revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at about
fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue part was
hereditary; the rest had been granted to Charles for life; and he
was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as he thought fit.
Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expenditure of the
public departments was an addition to his privy purse. Of the
Post Office more will hereafter be said. The profits of that
establishment had been appropriated by Parliament to the Duke of
York.
The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been, charged
with the payment of about eighty thousand pounds a year, the
interest of the sum fraudulently destined in the Exchequer by the
Cabal. While Danby was at the head of the finances, the creditors
had received dividends, though not with the strict punctuality of
modern times: but those who had succeeded him at the treasury had
been less expert, or less solicitous to maintain public faith.
Since the victory won by the court over the Whigs, not a farthing
had been paid; and no redress was granted to the sufferers, till
a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. There can be no
greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the
exigencies of the state by loans was imported into our island by
William the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the
system of borrowing, but the system of funding. From a period of
immemorable antiquity it had been the practice of every English
government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was
the practice of honestly paying them.41
By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an
income of about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with some
occasional help from Versailles, support the necessary charges of
the government and the wasteful expenditure of the court. For
that load which pressed most heavily on the finances of the great
continental states was here scarcely felt. In France, Germany,
and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry the Fourth and Philip
the Second had never employed in time of war, were kept up in the
midst of peace. Bastions and raveling were everywhere rising,
constructed on principles unknown to Parma and Spinola. Stores of
artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such as even
Richelieu, whom the preceding generation had regarded as a worker
of prodigies, would have pronounced fabulous. No man could
journey many leagues in those countries without hearing the drums
of a regiment on march, or being challenged by the sentinels on
the drawbridge of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it
was possible to live long and to travel far without being once
reminded, by any martial sight or sound, that the defence of
nations had become a science and a calling. The majority of
Englishmen who were under twenty-five years of age had probably
never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which, in
the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies, scarcely
one was now capable of sustaining a siege The gates stood open
night and day. The ditches were dry. The ramparts had been
suffered to fall into decay, or were repaired only that the
townsfolk might have a pleasant walk on summer evenings. Of the
old baronial keeps many had been shattered by the cannon of
Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of ruin, overgrown with
ivy. Those which remained had lost their martial character, and
were now rural palaces of the aristocracy. The moats were turned
into preserves of carp and pike. The mounds were planted with
fragrant shrubs, through which spiral walks ran up to summer
houses adorned with mirrors and paintings.42 On the capes of the
sea coast, and on many inland hills, were still seen tall posts,
surmounted by barrels. Once those barrels had been filled with
pitch. Watchmen had been set
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