There is no great difficulty in answering the question why the deputies of boroughs were finally and permanently ingrafted upon parliament by Edward I.[78] The government was becoming constantly more attentive to the wealth that commerce brought into the kingdom, and the towns were becoming more flourishing and more independent. But chiefly there was a much stronger spirit of general liberty and a greater discontent at violent acts of prerogative from the era of Magna Charta; after which authentic recognition of free principles many acts which had seemed before but the regular exercise of authority were looked upon as infringements of the subject's right. Among these the custom of setting tallages at discretion would naturally appear the most intolerable; and men were unwilling to remember that the burgesses who paid them were indebted for the rest of their possessions to the bounty of the crown. In Edward I.'s reign, even before the great act of Confirmation of the Charters had rendered arbitrary impositions absolutely unconstitutional, they might perhaps excite louder murmurs than a discreet administration would risk. Though the necessities of the king, therefore, and his imperious temper often led him to this course,[79] it was a more prudent counsel to try the willingness of his people before he forced their reluctance. And the success of his innovation rendered it worth repetition. Whether it were from the complacency of the commons at being thus admitted among the peers of the realm, or from a persuasion that the king would take their money if they refused it, or from inability to withstand the plausible reasons of his ministers, or from the private influence to which the leaders of every popular assembly have been accessible, much more was granted in subsidies after the representation of the towns commenced than had ever been extorted in tallages.