The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗

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