This computation, however, seems much too large; especially as the sequestrations during the time of war could not be so considerable as afterwards.
* Yet the same sum precisely is assigned in another book, called Royal Treasury of England, p.

297.
But the disposal of this money was no less the object of general complaint against the parliament than the levying of it.

The sum of three hundred thousand pounds they openly took, it is affirmed,[*] and divided among their own members.

The committees, to whom the management of the different branches of revenue was intrusted, never brought in their accounts, and had unlimited power of secreting whatever sums they pleased from the public treasure.[**] These branches were needlessly multiplied, in order to render the revenue more intricate, to share the advantages among greater numbers, and to conceal the frauds of which they were universally suspected.[***] The method of keeping accounts practised in the exchequer, was confessedly the exactest, the most ancient, the best known, and the least liable to fraud.

The exchequer was for that reason abolished, and the revenue put under the management of a committee, who were subject to no control.[****] The excise was an odious tax, formerly unknown to the nation; and was now extended over provisions, and the common necessaries of life.