Nevertheless, taxes being now wholly taken off,
the excise, of no great burden (and many specious advantages not
vainly proposed in the heightening of the public revenue), was
very cheerfully established by the Senate and the people, for the
term of ten years longer, and the same course being taken, the
public revenue was found in the one-and-twentieth year of the
commonwealth to be worth ?1,000,000 in good land. Whereupon the
excise was so abolished for the present, as withal resolved to be
the best, the most fruitful and easy way of raising taxes,
according to future exigencies.
But the revenue being now such as was able to be a yearly
purchaser, gave a jealousy that by this means the balance of the
commonwealth, consisting in private fortunes, might be eaten out,
whence this year is famous for that law whereby the Senate and
the people, forbidding any further purchase of lands to the
public within the dominions of Oceana and the adjacent provinces,
put the agrarian upon the commonwealth herself. These increases
are things which men addicted to monarchy deride as impossible,
whereby they unwarily urge a strong argument against that which
they would defend. For having their eyes fixed upon the pomp and
expense, by which not only every child of a king, being a prince,
exhausts his father's coffers, but favorites and servile spirits,
devoted to the flattery of those princes, grow insolent and
profuse, returning a fit gratitude to their masters, whom, while
they hold it honorable to deceive, they suck and keep eternally
poor: it follows that they do not see how it should be possible
for a commonwealth to clothe herself in purple, and thrive so
strangely upon that which would make a prince's hair grow through
his hood, and not afford him bread.
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