“The Committee has prepared these votes.  All persons shall pay one shilling per poll, all aliens two, all Nonconformists and papists two, all servants one shilling in the pound of their wages, all personal estates shall pay for so much as is not already taxed by the land-tax, after twenty shillings in the hundred.  Cattle, corn, and household furniture shall be excepted, and all such stock-in-trade as is already taxed by the land-tax, but the rest to be liable.”

Stringent work!  Later on we read:—­

   “Three shillings in the pound for all offices and public employments,
   except military; lawyers and physicians proportionate to their
   practice.”

Here is the income-tax long before Mr. Pitt.

The House of Lords, trembling on the verge of a breach of privilege, altered this Poll Bill.  Marvell writes in January 1667:—­

“We have not advanced much this week; the alterations of the Lords upon the Poll Bill have kept us busy.  We have disagreed in most.  Aliens we adhere to pay double.  Nonconformists we agree with them not to pay double (126 to 91), to allow no exemptions from patents to free from paying, we adhere; and we also rejected a long clause whereby they as well as the Commoners pretend distinctly to give to the King, and to-day we send up our reasons.”

The Lords agreed, and the Bill passed.

Ireland supplied a very stormy measure.  I am afraid Marvell was on the wrong side, but owing to his reserve I am not sure.  An Irish Cattle Bill was a measure very popular in the House of Commons, its object being to prevent Ireland from sending over live beasts to be fattened, killed, and consumed in England.  You can read all about it in Clarendon’s Life (vol. iii. pp. 704-720, 739), and think you are reading about Canadian cattle to-day.  The breeders (in a majority) were on one side, and the owners of pasture-land on the other.  The breeders said the Irish cattle were bred in Ireland for nothing and transported for little, that they undersold the English-bred cattle, and consequently “the breed of Cattle in the Kingdom was totally given over,” and rents fell.  Other members contended in their places “that their countries had no land bad enough to breed, and that their traffic consisted in buying lean cattle and making them fat, and upon this they paid their rent.”  Nobody, except the king, gave a thought to Ireland.  He, in this not unworthy of his great Tudor predecessor, Henry the Eighth, declared he was King of Ireland no less than of England, and would do nothing to injure one portion of his dominions for the benefit of another.  But as usual he gave way, being in great straits for money.  The House of Lords was better disposed towards Ireland than the House of Commons, but they too yielded to selfish clamour, and the Bill, which had excited great fury, became law, and proved ineffective, owing (as was alleged) to that corruption which restrictions on trade seem to have the trick of breeding.[123:1]