178 History of the English Landed Interest. 



the state of the public mind on the subject of the imposts, as 

 evidenced by the earlier pamphlets and writings just discussed, 

 we may well believe that the Treasury did not dare to resort 

 to any large increase of existent taxation. To extort more 

 revenues from the lauded gentry would have been, even if 

 possible, imprudent. Their estates had been exhausted of 

 funds in the furtherance of the king's cause. So miserable 

 had been the case of the distressed cavaliers that in 1661 

 Parliament had voted them an aid of £60,000.^ It is not 

 surprising, therefore, to learn that the land tax had begun to 

 be regarded as oppressive, an impression which had not been 

 entirely obliterated by the introduction of the bounty system. 

 There may have been plenty of idle capital belonging to the 

 commercial interests, but from Pepys' description ^ a general 

 want of money seems to have prevailed in rural circles. Good 

 land, with excellent titles, fetched only sixteen years' purchase 

 in the property market. Farms were lying idle up and down 

 the country, and one landlord, the Duke of Buckingham, had 

 to take in hand an area of soil representing a rental of £6,000. 

 If such is a true description of the squire's finances in 1667, he 

 could not have been so very flush of ready money a quarter 

 of a century later, even though the agricultural crisis had by 

 then passed away. At any rate, in 1692, in order to procure 

 the necessary supplies, our national financiers adopted the fol- 

 k)wiiig system, which had been in use on the Continent for 

 several decades. 



All the difficulties of the times discussed in this and pre- 

 ceding chapters had been unconsciously but surely leading up 

 to a recourse by the State to some such method as now came 

 into use. We have shown in a former chapter how, in their 

 anxiety for safe investments, the capitalists of the age had 

 been advocating a public registration of titles. We shall now 

 see that, failing this, men turned elsewhere and anywhere for 

 interest on their idle capital. Company after company sprang 

 into existence. Besides the solid and respectable East India Com- 

 pany, Macaulay enumerates an absurd list of bogus undertakings, 



^ Lorda^ Debates, vol. i. p. 45. 



" Pepys' Diary, Jan. 31 aucl April 9, 1G67. 



