to the desperate “Order in Council” to pull down all new houses within ten miles of the metropolis—­and further, to direct the Attorney-General to indict all those sojourners in town who had country houses, and mulct them in ruinous fines.  The rural gentry were “to abide in their own counties, and by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and relieve the meaner people according to the ancient usage of the English nation.”  The Attorney-General, like all great lawyers, looking through the spectacles of his books, was short-sighted to reach to the new causes and the new effects which were passing around.  The wisest laws are but foolish when Time, though not the lawyers, has annulled them.  The popular sympathy was, however, with the Attorney-General, for it was imagined that the country was utterly ruined and depopulated by the town.

And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists chorused! for in the country the ancient hospitality was not kept up; the crowd of retainers had vanished, the rusty chimneys of the mansion-house hardly smoked through a Christmas week, while in London all was exorbitantly prosperous; masses of treasure were melted down into every object of magnificence.  “And is not this wealth drawn from our acres?” was the outcry of the rural censor.  Yet it was clear that the country in no way was impoverished, for the land rose in price; and if manors sometimes changed their lords, they suffered no depreciation.  A sudden wealth was diffused in the nation; the arts of commerce were first advancing; the first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, was then named the “Trade’s Increase.”  The town, with its multiplied demands, opened a perpetual market for the country.  The money-traders were breeding their hoards as the graziers their flocks; and while the goldsmiths’ shops blazed in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double harvests cover the soil.  The innumerable books on agriculture published during these twenty years of peace is an evidence of the improvement of the country—­sustained by the growing capitals of the men in trade.  In this progress of domestic conveniency to metropolitan luxury, there was a transition of manners; new objects and new interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient state.

The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick growth; and, as fast as they sprung, the Father of his people encountered them by his proclamations, which, during long intervals of parliamentary recess, were to be enforced as laws:  but they passed away as morning dreams over a happy, but a thoughtless and wanton people.

* * * * *

JAMES THE FIRST DISCOVERS THE DISORDERS AND DISCONTENTS OF A PEACE OF MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS.

The king was himself amazed at the disorders and discontents he at length discovered; and, in one of his later speeches, has expressed a mournful disappointment: