The pecuniary remuneration of the clergy was such as would have moved the pity of the most needy curate who thought it a privilege to drink his ale and smoke his pipe in the kitchen of an English manor house.

Even in the fertile Merse there were parishes of which the minister received only from four to eight pounds sterling in cash.

The official income of the Lord President of the Court of Session was only five hundred a year; that of the Lord Justice Clerk only four hundred a year.

The land tax of the whole kingdom was fixed some years later by the Treaty of Union at little more than half the land tax of the single county of Norfolk.

Four hundred thousand pounds probably bore as great a ratio to the wealth of Scotland then as forty millions would bear now.
The list of the members of the Darien Company deserves to be examined.
The number of shareholders was about fourteen hundred.