The reason why the court has a greater superiority among the Lords than Commons, beside the bishops, is that the court gives places to the Lords, chiefly for their interest among the Commons.
Eighteen hundred children put upon the parishes at Dublin in five years, of which, upon inquiry, there remained only twenty-eight.
Ninety-five thousand seamen computed to be in France; only sixty thousand in England.
Ships formerly lasted twenty-seven years in the English navy; now only thirteen.
Within the last two thousand years, almost all the despotic governments of the world have been improving, and the free ones degenerating; so that now they are pretty near a par.
There must be a balance in all governments; and the inconvenience of allowing a single person to have any share is, that what may be too little for a balance in one hand will be too much in another.
The fiars of wheat, in 1400, were fixed at Edinburgh, 6 sh. 7 p. Scots money.
Banks first invented in Sweden on account of their copper money.
There is not a word of trade in all Machiavel, which is strange, considering that Florence rose only by trade.
About twenty thousand tun of wine imported into England about the time of the first Dutch war.—Sir Josiah Child.