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The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century was, as compared with other military and naval charges, much smaller than at present. At most of the gar risons there were gunners, and here and there, at an important post, an engineer was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery, no brigade of sappers and miners, no college in which young soldiers could learn the scientific part of war. The difficulty of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a few years later, William marched from Devonshire to London, the apparatus which he brought with him, though such as had long been in constant use on the Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as rude and cumbrous, excited in our ancestors an admiration resembling that which the Indians of America felt for the Castilian harquebusses. The stock of gunpowder kept in the English forts and arsenals was boastfully mentioned by patriotic writers as something which might well impress neighboring nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought necessary to have always in store. The expenditure under the head of Ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a year.

*

The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The non-effective charge, which is now a heavy part of our public burdens, can hardly be said to have existed. A very small number of naval officers, who were not employed in the public service, drew half pay. No lieutenant was on the list, nor any captain who had not commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As the country then possessed only seventeen ships of the first and second rate that had ever been at seu, and as a large proportion of the persons who had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the expenditure under this head must have been small indeed. In the army, half pay

use of them. See also Sheffield's Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March 1 and March 20, 1688.

* Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. Commons' Journals, March 1 and March 20, 1688. In 1833 it was determined, after full inquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder should constantly be kept in store; and this rule is still observed.

+ It appears, from the records of the Admiralty, that flag officers were allowed half pay in 1668, captains of first and second rates not till 1674

was given merely as a special and temporary allowance to a small number of officers belonging to two regiments, which were peculiarly situated.* Greenwich Hospital had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost of that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription. The king promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds for architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for the maintenance of the invalids. It was no part of the plan that there should be outpensioners. The whole non-effective charge, military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand pounds a day.

Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the functionaries whose business was to administer justice and preserve order either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or were remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the revenue of the state. The sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of the towns, the country gentlemen who were in the commission of the peace, the headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the king nothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly supported by fees.

Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the title of ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly supported by the Turkey Company. Even at the court of Versailles England had only an envoy; and she had not even an envoy at the Spanish, Swedish, and Danish courts. The whole expense under this head cannot, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, have much exceeded twenty thousand pounds.‡

In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the wrong place. The public service was starved that courtiers might be pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions to needy old officers, of missions to foreign

* Warrant in the War Office Records, dated March 26, 1678. + Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal, dated May 17, 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony.

James the Second sent envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark, yet in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more than 30,000l. a year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, 1688. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1686.

courts, must seem small indeed to the present generation. But the personal favorites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the creatures of those ministers, were gorged with public money. Their salaries and pensions, when compared with the incomes of the nobility, the gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will appear enormous. The greatest estates in the kingdom then very little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond had twentytwo thousand a year.* The Duke of Buckingham, before his extravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen thousand six hundred 'a year.t George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had been rewarded for his eminent services with immense grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both for covetousness and for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of real estate, and sixty thousand pounds in money which probably yielded seven per cent. These three dukes were supposed to be three of the very richest subjects in England. The Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five thousand a year. The average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best informed persons, at about three thousand a year, the average income of a baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of a member of parliament at less than eight hundred a year. A thousand a year was thought a large revenue for a barrister. Two thousand a year was hardly to be made in the Court of King's Bench, except by the crown lawyers. It is evident, therefore, that an official man would have been well paid if he had received a fourth or fifth part of what would now be

*Carte's Life of Ormond.

† Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, 1668.

See the report of the Bath and Montague case, which was decided by Lord Keeper Somers, in December, 1693.

§ During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas, 1689 the revenues of the see of Canterbury were received by an officer appointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British Museum. (Lansdowne MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the three quarters was not quite four thousand pounds; and the difference between the gross and the net revenue was evidently something considerable.

King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The revenues of a House of Commons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs, Third Part.

Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672.

an adequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of the higher class of official men were as large as at present, and not seldom larger. The lord treasurer, for example, had eight thousand a year, and, when the Treasury was in commission, the junior lords had sixteen hundred a year each. The paymaster of the forces had a poundage, amounting to about five thousand a year, on all the money which passed through his hands. The groom of the stole had five thousand a year, the commissioners of the customs twelve hundred a year each, the lords of the bedchamber a thousand a year each.* The regular salary, however, was the smallest part of the gains of an official man of that age. From the noblemen who held the white staff and the great seal, down to the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what would now be called gross corruption was practised without disguise and without reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily sold in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and every clerk in every department imitated, to the best of his power, the evil example.

During the last century no prime minister, however powerful, has become rich in office, and several prime ministers have impaired their private fortune in sustaining their public character. In the seventeenth century a statesman who was at the head of affairs might easily, and without giving scandal, accumulate in no long time an estate amply sufficient to support a dukedom. It is probable that the income of the prime minister, during his tenure of power, far exceeded that of any other subject. The place of lord lieutenant of Ireland was supposed to be worth forty thousand pounds a year. The gains of the Chancellor Clarendon, of Arlington, of Lauderdale, and of Danby, were enormous. The sumptuous palace to which the populace of London gave the name of Dunkirk house, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxury of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the many signs which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless wealth. This is the true explanation of the unscrupulous violence with which the statesmen of that day struggled for office, of the tenacity with which, in spite of vexations, humiliations, and dangers, they clung to

*Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.

+ See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. VOL. I.

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it, and of the scandalous, compliances to which they stooped in order to retain it. Even in our own age, great as is the power of opinion, and high as is the standard of integrity, there would be great risk of a lamentable change in the character of our public men, if the place of first lord of the Treasury or secretary of state were worth a hundred thousand pounds a year. Happily for our country the emoluments of the highest class of functionaries have not only not grown in proportion to the general growth of our opulence, but have positively diminished.

The fact that the sum raised in England by taxation has, in a time not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied thirtyfold, is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those who are alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase of the public resources. In the year 1685 the value of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other fruits of human industry. Yet agriculture was in what would now be considered as a very rude and imperfect state. The arable land and pasture land were not supposed by the best political arithmeticians of that age to amount to much more than half the area of the kingdom.* The remainder was believed to consist of moor, forest, and fen. These computations are strongly confirmed by the road books and maps of the seventeenth century. From those books and maps it is clear that many routes which now pass through an endless succession of orchards, hay-fields, and bean-fields, then ran through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren. In the drawings of English landscapes made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is to be seen, and numerous tracts, now rich with cultivation, appear as bare as Salisbury Plain. At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five and twenty miles

King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade.

+ See the Itinerarum Angliæ, 1675, by John Ogilby, Cosmographer Royal. In some of his maps the roads through enclosed country are marked by lines, and the roads through unenclosed country by dots. The proportion of unenclosed country seems to have been very great. From Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, and scarcely one -enclosure between Biggleswade and Lincoln.

Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum.

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