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 grievances that, at one of the earliest sittings of the Privy Council, he introduced the subject.