Sir William further bound his favorites to him by granting them great tracts of the best land. "Some take up 2,000 acres, some 3,000, and others 10,000, and many more have taken up 30,000." They cultivated only a fraction or perhaps not any of these great tracts, merely putting up "a hog house to save the lapse." So when newcomers looked around for land, they were faced with the alternative of becoming tenants or of taking up "remote barren lands" on the frontiers. The poor planters complained bitterly of the great sums voted by the Assembly for their own salaries, those of certain officers, and for various other expenses. In 1675 the Speaker of the House received 15,000 pounds of tobacco, the clerk 15,000. The total cost of this session was 539,390 pounds of tobacco, that of the session of February, 1676, 616,652 pounds. When the salary of collectors was added the total was 1,601,046 pounds, or perhaps an average of 150 pounds for every family. The people were convinced that the heavy taxes served no other purpose than to enrich Berkeley's favorites. "Consider their sudden advancement," said Bacon. "See what sponges have sucked up the public wealth, and whether it hath not been privately contrived away by unworthy favorites, by vile juggling parasites, whose tottering fortunes have been repaired and supported." And it was obvious that Berkeley himself had taken care to get the largest share of the plunder. At the outbreak of Bacon's Rebellion he owned the plantation at Green Spring, five houses in Jamestown, four hundred cattle, several hundred sheep, sixty horses, "near L1,000 worth of wheat, barley, oates, and corn," and some valuable plate. Part of this fortune came to him through a monopoly of the beaver trade with the Indians. He seems to have cashed in on this by licensing the traders on the frontier and taking a large part of their profits. Though he had trouble in collecting his dues, he received each year several hundred pounds of beaver fur. His obedient Assembly added to his wealth by voting him money from time to time. This they excused to the indigent tax payers as due him for what he had laid out in "beneficial designs." But the poor planter, in his rags, leaning on his hoe in his little tobacco patch, secretly cursed as Lady Berkeley drove past in her coach. The people complained bitterly that they had been cheated of the right to govern themselves. That no power whatsoever should tax them without their own consent was the basic principle of English liberty. Yet it was but a mockery to contend that men who had sold themselves to the governor and whom they were given no opportunity to oust from office, were their true representatives in voting away their money.