163 TAXATION AND FINANCE. 



imply that the customs and excise had become so productive 

 that a less direct assessment was found sufficient. 



As regards the assessment and the proportion which each 

 county in England and Wales should pay, this seems to have 

 been settled in the summer of 1649, for the levy of December 

 25 in this year differs greatly from that of March, and becomes 

 the scale of all subsequent assessments during the Common- 

 wealth, and indeed for similar expedients after the Restoration. 

 It is obvious that after the king's execution, the undisputed 

 victory of the army, and the centralisation of legislative and to 

 a great extent executive powers in the residue of the Long Par- 

 liament, the novelty and unpopularity of the Government would 

 induce those in power to be as far as possible equitable in the 

 distribution of public burdens. During the time of the Com- 

 monwealth the ancient feudal liabilities were silently dropped. 



The Restoration rather confirmed and extended the 

 financial system of the Protectorate and Commonwealth. 

 The law advisers of the Crown declared that the whole 

 legislation of Parliament since the royal assent had been with- 

 held from Acts was absolutely void, the last Act to which they 

 conceded legal validity being that which excluded the bishops 

 from the House of Lords. Hence the feudal dues revived with 

 the ancient system of government. It was however felt 

 that they would be so vexatious as to be intolerable, and on 

 November 18, 1660, a proposal was made to distribute the 

 equivalent of the dues taken at 1 00,000 l a year on an 

 average. The schedule has been printed in an earlier chapter. 

 Davenant alleges that while they might have taken the assess- 

 ment of 16 Car. I. cap. 32, the House chiefly relied on the ship- 

 money assessment. Of course there were numerous assess- 

 ments which might have guided them. But Davenant wished 

 to urge that in all assessments, up to the time in which he lived 

 and wrote, the Northern and Western counties had excep- 

 tional and inequitable favour shown them in these valuations. 



1 They had been put by James the First's advisers at 200,000 a year, in the pro- 

 ject for commuting them. But this probabl/included the liabilities of copyholders. 



