ho had been imprisoned.
The courts decided against them, and they were sentenced to long
imprisonment and to heavy fines. The king now determined to do without
Parliaments entirely; and, of course, he had to raise money by his
royal prerogative altogether, as he had done, in fact, before, a great
deal, during the intervals between the successive Parliaments. It will
not be very entertaining, but it will be very useful to the reader to
peruse carefully some account of the principal methods resorted to by
the king. In order, however, to diminish the necessity for money as
much as possible, the king prepared to make peace with France and
Spain; and as they, as well as England, were exhausted with the wars,
this was readily effected.

One of the resorts adopted by the king was to a system of _loans_, as
they were called, though these loans differed from those made by
governments at the present day, in being apportioned upon the whole
community according to their liability to taxation, and in being made,
in some respects, compulsory. The loan was not to be absolutely
collected by force, but all were expected to lend, and if any refused,
they were to be required to make oath that they would not tell any
body else that they had refused, in order that the influence of their
example might not operate upon others. Those who did refuse were to be
reported to the government. The officers appointed to collect these
loans were charged not to make unnecessary difficulty, but to do all
in their power to induce the people to contribute freely and
willingly. This plan had been before adopted, in the time of
Buckingham, but it met with little success.

Another plan which was resorted to was the granting of what was called
monopolies: that is, the government would select some important and
necessary articles in general use, and give the exclusive right of
manufacturing them to certain persons, on their paying a part of the
profits to the government. Soap was one of the articles thus chosen.
The exclusive right to manufacture it was given to a company, on their
paying for it. So with leather, salt, and various other things. These
persons, when they once possessed the exclusive right to manufacture
an article which the people must use, would abuse their power by
deteriorating the article, or charging enormous prices. Nothing
prevented their doing this, as they had no competition. The effect
was, that the people were injured much more than