However, since the breach of the last Parliament, his majesty hath, by a new book of rates, very much increased the burden upon merchandise, and now tonnage and poundage, old and new impositions, are all taken by prerogative, without any grant in Parliament, or authority of law, as we conceive; from whence divers inconveniences and mischiefs are produced. 1. The danger of the precedent, that a judgment in one court, and in one case, is made binding to all the kingdom. 2. Men’s goods are seized, their legal suits are stopped, and justice denied to those that desire to take the benefit of the law. 3. The great sums of money received upon these impositions, intended for the guard of the seas, claimed and defended upon no ground but of public trust, for protection of merchants and defence of the ports, are dispersed to other uses, and a new tax raised for the same purposes. 4. These burdens are so excessive, that trade is thereby very much hindered, the commodities of our own growth extremely abased, and those imported much enhanced; all which lies not upon the merchant alone, but upon the generality of the subject; and by this means the stock of the kingdom is much diminished, our exportation being less profitable, and our importation more changeable. And if the wars and troubles in the neighbor parts had not brought almost the whole stream of trade into this kingdom, we should have found many more prejudical effects of these impositions, long before this time, than yet we have done. Especially they have been insupportable to the poor plantations, whither many of his Majesty’s subjects have been transported, in divers parts of the continent and islands of America, in furtherance of a design tending to the honor of the kingdom, and the enlargement of his Majesty’s dominions. The adventurers in this noble work have for the most part no other support but tobacco, upon which such a heavy rate is set, that the King receives twice as much as the true value of the commodity to the owner. 5. Whereas these great burdens have caused divers merchants to apply themselves to a way of traffic abroad by transporting goods from one country to another, without bringing them home into England. But now it hath been lately endeavored to set an imposition upon this trade, so that the King will have a duty even out of those commodities which never come within his dominions, to the great discouragement of such active and industrious men.