public expenditure and income. In the meantime, liberal provision
was made for the immediate exigencies of the state. An
extraordinary aid, to be raised by direct monthly assessment, was
voted to the King. An Act was passed indemnifying all who had,
since his landing, collected by his authority the duties settled
on James; and those duties which had expired were continued for
some months.

Along William's whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he
had been importuned by the common people to relieve them from the
intolerable burden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems
to have united all the worst evils which can be imputed to any
tax. It was unequal, and unequal in the most pernicious way: for
it pressed heavily on the poor, and lightly on the rich. A
peasant, all whose property was not worth twenty pounds, was
charged ten shillings. The Duke of Ormond, or the Duke of
Newcastle, whose estates were worth half a million, paid only
four or five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine the
interior of every house in the realm, to disturb families at
meals, to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if the sum demanded
were not punctually paid, to sell the trencher on which the
barley loaf was divided among the poor children, and the pillow
from under the head of the lying-in woman. Nor could the Treasury
effectually restrain the chimneyman from using his powers with
harshness: for the tax was farmed; and the government was
consequently forced to connive at outrages and exactions such as
have, in every age made the name of publican a proverb for all
that is most hateful.

William had been so much moved by what he had heard of these