Osborne gives the following account of Elizabeth's method of employing this prerogative: "In case she found any likely to interrupt her occasions," says he, "she did seasonably prevent him by a chargeable employment abroad, or putting him upon some service at home, which she knew least grateful to the people; contrary to a false maxim, since practised with far worse success, by such princes as thought it better husbandry to buy off enemies than reward friends."[*] The practice with which Osborne reproaches the two immediate successors of Elizabeth, proceeded partly from the extreme difficulty of their situation, partly from the greater lenity of their disposition.

The power of pressing, as may naturally be imagined, was often abused, in other respects, by men of inferior rank; and officers often exacted money for freeing persons from the service.[**] * Page 392.
* Murden, p.

181.
The government of England during that age, however different in other particulars, bore in this respect some resemblance to that of Turkey at present: the sovereign possessed every power, except that of imposing taxes; and in both countries, this limitation, unsupported by other privileges, appears rather prejudicial to the people.

In Turkey, it obliges the sultan to permit the extortion of the pashas and governors of provinces, from whom he afterwards squeezes presents or takes forfeitures: in England, it engaged the queen to erect monopolies, and grant patents for exclusive trade; an invention so pernicious, that had she gone on during a tract of years at her own rate, England, the seat of riches, and arts, and commerce, would have contained at present as little industry as Morocco or the coast of Barbary.
We may further observe that this valuable privilege, valuable only because it proved afterwards the means by which the parliament extorted all their other privileges, was very much encroached on, in an indirect manner, during the reign of Elizabeth, as well as of her predecessors.
She often exacted loans from her people; an arbitrary and unequal kind of imposition, and which individuals felt severely; for though the money had been regularly repaid, which was seldom the case,[*] it lay in the prince's hands without interest, which was a sensible loss to the persons from whom the money was borrowed.[**] There remains a proposal, made by Lord Burleigh, for levying a general loan on the people, equivalent to a subsidy;[***] a scheme which would have laid the burden more equally, but which was, in different words, a taxation imposed without consent of parliament.

It is remarkable, that the scheme thus proposed, without any visible necessity, by that wise minister, is the very same which Henry VIII.