As to the levying of taxes, I will limit my opinion to this expression: that in no wise should the power be granted to kings save in cases of clear necessity. Further it belongs not to the king nor to his privy council to declare the emergence of any sudden necessity but only to the three estates.... I am aware that Aristotle in his second book of the _Politics_ says wisely that laws are not to be changed; yet, in the judgment of the wise, they may be modified in accordance with the demands of equity. Major remarks on the difficulty of collecting taxes in Scotland and on the folly of the kings in alienating confiscated estates, "since there is no regular taxation of the people." His remedy is, as we have seen, the regulation of taxation by Parliament. He was a scholar and a traveller, and it matters not how he came to think as he did; but it is clear that he advocated a change. Nor did James regard the Estates as possessing "powers of peace and war." Pedro de Ayala[106] tells us of a conversation which he held with the king which gives us the royal views: "He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just and unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes, and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger." Boece, in his biography of Elphinstone,[107] tells us of councils which preceded Flodden: but they are meetings of the king's private advisers. It is instructive to note that one parliament was held with reference to the English war. About a fortnight before the battle, what is termed "Parliament" was held at Twiselhaugh. It was composed of "all his lords being there for the time in his host," and it secured that the heirs of all who were slain should be exempted by the king from certain feudal dues. The exemption can only have been the king's own act. It is an additional testimony to the purpose for which the Scots Parliament normally existed--to ratify what somebody else had done. If there are vestiges of constitutional claims at the opening of the reign, there are none at the end of it. But though the Parliament had not been free, neither had it been idle. It was a time of unusual prosperity and of great expansion of trade. The pages of the statute-books are full of useful acts, especially for the encouragement of shipping, in which the king was greatly interested.