1.  It was with visible reluctance that they voted the monthly tax of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the support of the military and naval establishments.  They were, indeed, careful not to complain of the amount; their objections were pointed against the nature of the tax, and the inequality of the assessments;[1] but this pretext could not hide their real object from the jealousy of their adversaries, and their leaders were openly charged with seeking to reduce the number of the army, that they might lessen the influence of the general.

2.  From the collection of the taxes they proceeded to the administration of the law.  In almost every petition presented of late years to the supreme authority of the nation, complaints had been made of the court of Chancery, of its dilatory proceedings, of the enormous expense which it entailed on its suitors, and of the suspicious nature of its decisions, so liable to be influenced by the personal partialities and interests of

[Footnote 1:  In some places men paid but two; in others, ten or twelve shillings in the pound.—­Exact Relation, 10.  The assessments fell on the owners, not on the tenants.—­Thurloe, i. 755.]

the judge.[1] The long parliament had not ventured to grapple with the subject; but this, the little parliament, went at once to the root of the evil, and voted that the whole system should be abolished.  But then, came the appalling difficulty, how to dispose of the causes actually pending in the court, and how to substitute in its place a less objectionable tribunal.  Three bills introduced for that purpose were rejected as inapplicable or insufficient:  the committee prepared a fourth; it was read twice in one day, and committed, and would probably have passed, had not the subsequent proceedings been cut short by the dissolution of the parliament.[2]

3.  But the reformers were not content with the abolition of a single court; they resolved to cleanse the whole of the Augean stable.  What, they asked, made up the law?  A voluminous collection of statutes, many of them almost unknown, and many inapplicable to existing circumstances; the dicta of judges, perhaps ignorant, frequently partial and interested; the reports of cases, but so contradictory that they were

[Footnote 1:  “It was confidently reported by knowing gentlemen of worth, that there were depending in that court 23,000 (2 or 3,000?) causes; that some of them had been there depending five, some ten, some twenty, some thirty years; and that there had been spent in causes many hundreds, nay, thousands of pounds, to the utter undoing of many families.”—­Exact Relation, 12.]