se 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. As if it were a miracle that a careless and prodigal
man should bring L10,000 a year to nothing, or that an industrious and
frugal man brings a little to L10,000 a year. But the fruit of one man's
industry and frugality can never be like that of a commonwealth; first,
because the greatness of the increase follows the greatness of the stock
or principal; and, secondly, because a frugal father is for the most
part succeeded by a lavish son; whereas a commonwealth is her own heir.

This year a part was proposed by the Right Honorable Aureus de Woolsack
in the tribe of Pecus, first commissioner of the Treasury, to the
Council of State, which soon after passed the ballot of the Senate
and the people, by which the lands of the public revenue, amounting
to L1,000,000, were equally divided into L5,000 lots, entered by their
names and parcels into a lot-book preserved in the Exchequer. And if
any orphan, being a maid, should cast her estate into the Exchequer for
L1,400, the Treasury was bound by the law to pay her quarterly L200 a
year, free from taxes, for her life, and to assign her a lot for her
security; if she married, her husband was neither to take out the
principal without her consent (acknowledged by herself to one of the
commissioners of the Treasury, who, according as he found it to be free,
or forced, was to allow or disallow of it), nor any other way engage
it than to her proper use. But if the principal were taken out, the
Treasury was not bound to repay any more of it than L1,000, nor might
that be repaid at any time, save within the first year of her marriage:
the like was to be done by a half or quarter lot respectively.

This was found to be a great charity to the weake