A great part has been redeemed; and at present little more than a fiftieth of the ordinary revenue required in time of peace is raised by that impost which was once regarded as the most productive of all the resources of the State.
[365] The land tax was fixed, for the year 1693, at four shillings in the pound, and consequently brought about two millions into the Treasury.
That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which has expended a hundred and twenty millions in twelve months, was such as had never before been raised here in one year by direct taxation.

It seemed immense both to Englishmen and to foreigners.

Lewis, who found it almost impossible to wring by cruel exactions from the beggared peasantry of France the means of supporting the greatest army and the most gorgeous court that had existed in Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire, broke out, it is said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when he learned that the Commons of England had, from dread and hatred of his power, unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year of scarcity and of commercial embarrassment, a burden such as neither they nor their fathers had ever before borne.

"My little cousin of Orange," he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle." He afterwards added: "No matter, the last piece of gold will win." This however was a consideration from which, if he had been well informed touching the resources of England, he would not have derived much comfort.

Kensington was certainly a mere hovel when compared to his superb Versailles.