Each of these four hundred Coaches so licensed was obliged to pay annually five pounds for the privilege, to be applied towards the keeping in repair certain parts of the streets of London and Westminster[367]; a very rational appropriation of such fund, for who ought so much to contribute to the amendment of the streets, as those who lived by their demolition? "Nex Lex æquior ulla, quam," &c. Within a few years after the Revolution (anno 5 Gul. et Mar. ch. xxii.) the number of Coaches arose to seven hundred, each of which paid to the Crown annually four pounds. This, primâ facie, one would suppose was a relief to the Coach-Masters, and that the reduction in the impost accrued from the number; but that was not the case, for every Owner, for each Coach, was constrained to pay down fifty pounds for his first Licence for twenty-one years, or forego his employment; which seeming indulgence was, in fact, paying five pounds _per annum_ for that term; whereas, probably, the Coach-Master would rather have continued at the former five pounds, and have run all risks, than have purchased an exclusive privilege, in the gross, at so high a price. [367] Anderson, II. 115. Journals of the House of Commons. Blackstone. The finances, and even the resources, of Government, must have been very low at this moment, or Ministry could never have stooped to so paltry and oppressive an expedient, to raise so small a sum as would arise from these Licences. By the increase of the number of Coaches from four hundred at five pounds _per annum_, to seven hundred at four pounds _per annum_, the gain to the Treasury was £.800 annually:--and what did the licences at fifty pounds each Coach, for the term of twenty-one years, yield to the State?--£.3,500! Whereas, had such lease of the privilege of driving a Coach been kept at the rack rent of five pounds _per annum_, it had produced in that period £.14,700.