Rustic Manners and Ctistoins. 71 



diminish by means of a " Sinking Fund." ^ This and a stand- 

 ing army were the baneful rehcs of that costly struggle which 

 had convulsed the land during the greater part of the Stuart 

 period ; and which was shortly to involve the financiers of the 

 National Exchequer in those inevitable difficulties occasioned 

 by an unpopular fiscal tariff. The heavy taxation caused by a 

 large standing army, principally engaged at this peaceful 

 period, as Dr. Chamberlaine asserts,^ " in bridling the proud 

 disloyal humour of certain sons of Belial," induces him to sug- 

 gest a general revival of the visus Franci PlegiL " The great 

 excess in the inferior sort of English" prompts him to demand 

 a re-enactment of the mediseval dress restrictions ; while the 

 importance attached to the native cloth industry urges him 

 to uphold a still more unwarrantable interference with the 

 freedom of the subject, by suggesting that the State should 

 extend the compulsory clothing in wool of the dead to the 

 living, at any rate during the winter.^ Without the heavy 

 pressure of taxation the old dangers, which accompanied the 

 institution of a standing army in the times of the Common- 

 wealth, might have recurred in those of the monarchy. The 

 difficulty and expense, however, of maintaining such costly 

 machinery as a host of armed and trained men renders the 

 sovereign more or less dependent on his subjects, and affords the 

 latter some slight controlling influence over the soldiers. Apart 

 therefore from the increased taxation, the Mutiny Bill did not 

 materially damage agricultural interests. It no doubt drained 

 the rural labour market of its raw material ; but, as Adam 

 Smith points out, under the older system good ploughmen 

 were converted into bad soldiers, whenever the exigencies of 

 the moment required a temporary army. There is no doubt 

 that one result of the new military system was to prompt 

 statesmen to maintain the legislation dealing with the promo- 



^ Pitt is said to have taken this idea from a treatise termed An Appeal 

 of the Public on the Subject of the National Debt, written by Eichard 

 Price in 1774. 



" England's Wants and Several Proposals very Advantageous for 

 England, humbly offered, etc. Dr. Chamberlaine, 1689. 



^ Burial in woollen clothes was rendered compulsory' hy a statute iu 

 1678, which remained in force till 1815. 



