200 History of the English Landed Interest. 



deal to do with our wool and com duties ; but then succeeded 

 a period when the regulations with respect to exportation and 

 importation were inspired by the laudable desire of promoting 

 abundance, if not low prices. Thus, though the motives which 

 prompted the introduction of a bounty clause in the Subsidy Act 

 of Charles II, were purely self-interested, there is little doubt 

 that those which prompted AVilliam and Mary to renew this 

 system, imported a fresh phase into the State policy regarding 

 agriculture. The doctrines of Quesnai were as yet unpublished, 

 but the views of Hobbes, Asgill, Locke, and Petty were avail- 

 able. If, as Locke said, the products of the earth, combined 

 with the labour of producing them, were the sole provisions of 

 life, it followed that the agriculturist was the most, if not the 

 only, valuable individual in the community. If all taxation, 

 as Locke also said, must be obtained from the agriculturist, it 

 was to the interests of the State that he should receive marks 

 of special national favour. 



Sir "William Petty recognised this principle, and pictured an 

 imaginary case where a community of human beings make a 

 computation that two million pounds (equivalent, say, to one 

 twenty-fifth part of the proceeds out of their lands and labour) 

 are necessary to the public charges. They would, he surmises, 

 have either to cut out (" excise ") a portion of the land itself, or, 

 preferably, devote one twenty-fifth part of their rents for this 

 duty.^ While admitting the impracticability of any such 

 scheme, we cannot impugn its justice. As long as the re- 

 sources of the community were drawn entirely from native 

 soil, the authorities were perfectly reasonable in seeking to 

 derive the expenses of government from its produce. But 

 even in the seventeenth century an economist, by going to any 

 of our chief ports and examining the cargoes of homeward- 

 bound ships, might have ascertained that a portion of our 

 national wealth was being derived from foreign soils. It 

 would therefore follow that a portion of our State expenses 

 should have fallen on the foreign landlord. Otherwise the 

 same drawbacks which we pointed out in Part I. of this work ^ 



' A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions, etc., 1679. 

 '^ Coini). Part I. p. 117 and p. 2.S4. 



