There is so much in the religious troubles of this period to attract attention, that history takes little note of anything else. Yet there was also a complete suite of chronic evils arising from the little advancement made in the arts and economy of life. The king appropriated an exclusive right to make salt, though only to hand it over to a courtier; the salt was consequently bad and dear. In some districts--as Galloway, the west, and the Highlands--to which the native article could not be carried, salt was wholly wanting, and the people used salt-water instead, ‘by which many of them died as of a plague; others being forced to buy at intolerable rates, as sixteen shillings the boll, though they formerly had it for four.’ Another statesman, married to a niece of Lauderdale, had a control over the importation of brandy, and managed to make that liquor to some extent supersede both native ‘strong waters’ and Spanish wines. A third, Sir John Nicolson, was allowed to put a tax on tobacco. He was grandson of Sir William Dick, and it was thought by this means to repay in some measure the public debt incurred to that famous merchant in the time of the Civil War. Moralists of a loyal type tried to make out that it was well to check the use of ‘an unnecessary and expensive drug;’ but ‘custom had made tobacco as necessary as nature had made meat and drink, and consequently this imposition was as grievous as if bread or ale had been burdened.’[223] Add to these vexing imposts a coin debased for the profit of the mint-master--a brother of Lauderdale--and it will be seen that the evils of Scotland during this reign were not wholly of a sentimental nature. * * * * * [Sidenote: 1670. APR. 11.] [Sidenote: 1670.]