Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/122

108 They immediately laid on several of those particular imposts to which the public had always shown themselves most averse, amongst them an income-tax, a poll-tax, and a tax even on servants' wages—the most grievous of all income-taxes. All persons were to pay according to the value of their real and personal estates, on their land and stock-in-trade, as well as on their income from professions, offices, and pensions. Every person not actually receiving alms was to pay a penny a week for one year. Every servant was to pay a farthing in the pound per week on their wages above four pounds per annum up to eight pounds per annum; and a halfpenny in the pound per week from eight pounds to sixteen pounds per annum. Besides these imposts, an aid of three shillings in the pound was demanded on all lands, tenements, and hereditaments. Not a person, from the highest to the lowest, was exempt who could possibly pay anything at all. The treasury was authorised to borrow a million and a half at eight per cent., and to issue exchequer bills for as much more. To cancel these debts the three-shilling aid was appropriated. They voted a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds to make good the deficiency of the hammered money and the premium of plate brought into the mint. They authorised the bank of England to raise fresh capital by a new subscription, and passed many regulations in its favour. It was to be the sole bank; it was to be exempt from all taxation; penalties were enacted against the counterfeiting or altering of its notes; and measures were taken to prevent the officers of the exchequer delaying or impeding the payments due to it. The different revenues from the tonnage and poundage on wine, vinegar, and tobacco, and an additional duty on salt for two years and three-quarters, were charged with the liquidation of the government debts, and this was called "the general mortgage." Besides the six millions for the year, there was now a debt of five millions, and the facility thus granted of borrowing money on the exchequer tallies soon raised it to such a degree as astonished the whole world.

Bolingbroke in his time expressed his opinion that this new system of borrowing on the credit of posterity would prove fatal to the liberties of the country. He observed that "the notion of attaching men to the new government by tempting them to embark their fortunes in the same bottom was a reason of state to some; the notion of creating a new, that is, a monied interest, in opposition to the landed interest, or as a balance to it, was a reason of party to others; and the opportunity of amassing immense estates by the management of funds, by trafficking in paper, and by all the arts of jobbing, was a reason of private interest to those who supported and improved this scheme, if not to those who devised it."

We in our time know to what a monstrous result this fatal facility of borrowing, thus contrived by Montague, has led; the wars it has encouraged, the debt it has left, the destruction of political and mercantile morals which it has engendered. Out of this political abyss have issued forth the periodical ruin which sweeps through the mercantile world, the direct offspring of the speculative mania thus created, the rage for the sudden acquisition of enormous wealth by artful shuffling to and fro of paper; hence the rotten condition of our governmental executive, of our commissariat departments, of bloated and men-destroying contractors, and the perpetual monster apparitions of Sadleirs, colonel Waughs, Redpaths, Sir John Dean Pauls, not even exempting from its hideous plague-spot the long unblurred names of Gurneys and Overends.

This flowing fountain once opened, it flowed unceasingly. What the commons had already done in a few short weeks was still far from all. The king, in reply to their address, reminded them that there were other deficiencies yet unprovided for, and they immediately enacted a new tax on leather to make up the eight hundred thousand pounds which had been looked for from the land-bank. He reverted to his never-failing topic, the deficiency of the civil list, and they voted five hundred and fifteen thousand pounds for that purpose, to be raised by a malt tax, and by additional duties upon mum, sweets, cider, and perry. They ordered one million four hundred thousand pounds to be raised by a lottery. The treasury was empowered to issue an additional number of exchequer bills, amounting to one million two hundred thousand pounds, to liquidate the transport debt; and they obliged hawkers and pedlars to take out licenses at certain fixed rates.

Well might James behold with wonder this astonishing liberality to his rival. Never under the Stuarts had all their strained efforts been able to extract a half of these taxes. To have endeavoured to impose one of them would have cost any of them their heads or their thrones. But the wretched refugee king might have discovered, had he had the wit, how easy it is to lead a nation to tax itself; how impossible to tax it by compulsion. Smollett justly observes, that "one cannot without astonishment reflect upon the prodigious efforts that were made on this occasion, or consider without indignation the enormous fortunes that were raised by usurers and extortioners from the distresses of their country. The nation did not seem to know its own strength until it was put to this extraordinary trial; and the experiment of mortgaging funds succeeded so well that later ministers have proceeded in the same system, imposing burthen upon burthen, as if they thought the sinews of the nation could never be overstrained." This extraordinary liberality and spirit of the commons, however, had one grand effect: it convinced Louis XIV. that the hope of ever driving William from the throne of England was gone for ever. Caillières at the Hague received instructions to assure the Dutch ministers that, whenever the treaty of peace could be entertained, he was fully prepared to acknowledge William's right to the English throne without restriction, condition, or reserve. The information was imparted to Lilienroth, the Swedish minister, whose master was employed by Louis to act as mediator betwixt himself and the allies, and Dykvelt speedily sent the news to England, where it at once diffused joy and public confidence, and the whigs, who had carried on the war with such spirit, received a fresh addition of strength from this triumph.

The great topic of the remainder of the session was the inquiry into the guilt of Sir John Fenwick. In denouncing the noblemen named in his confession, he had made them and all their adherents his mortal enemies. The whigs were deeply incensed through the accusation of Russell and Shrewsbury, and the whigs were now more influential than