TAXATION AND FINANCE. 169 



their receipts into the Exchequer at once, added to the weight 

 and waste of taxation. The greatest part of the burden 

 during the first war with Louis XIV fell on land, and the tax 

 on rents, now become a trivial quota from the proceeds, 

 was then a very serious charge. 



The complete and exhaustive account of Postlethwayt, in 

 his History of the Revenue from 1688, informs us that the total 

 supply granted between November 5> 1688, and December 31, 

 1 69 7, including more than nine years of war or of the preparation 

 for war, and a very imperfect settlement of its outstanding 

 charges, was 45,127,160 js. ij*/., 1 or about five millions a 

 year; and that the public debt on December 31, 1697, was 

 21,515,742 i$s. i\d.) not a funded debt, but the greater part 

 a floating liability. Even during the four years of peace from 

 January I, 1698, to December 31, 1701, a further debt was 

 contracted to the amount of 3,728,911 5^. 6{d. 2 



Whatever allowances may be made for William and his 

 advisers, whatever praise is due to Montague for his services 

 in founding the Bank of England in 1694 and for extending 

 its privileges and securing its position in 1697, for his firm 

 attitude at the time of the recoinage, and for the manner in 

 which at the most critical time he invented and circulated 

 Exchequer bills, and lastly whatever credit he may claim for 

 having obtained the timely advance of 2,000,000 from the 

 English East India Company, it cannot I think be contended 

 that William's government was not remiss in failing to grapple 

 with the financial situation during the years which followed 

 the Peace of Ryswick. According to Postlethwayt, the 

 ordinary expenditure, not allowing for interest on debt, over 

 a million sterling in 1701, was less than a million and a-half 

 in 1699-1700. 



1 Another account makes the grants daring the whole of William's reign amount 



* Some of this debt was in course of being paid off. In point of feet, the only 

 1 debt in our sense of the word in 1700 was the debt to the Bank, that to the 

 ast India Company, and the goldsmiths' compensation. 



