The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the Houses.  The Commons appointed commissioners to make the assessment.  These commissioners were the principal gentlemen of every county, and were named in the bill.  The Lords thought this arrangement inconsistent with the dignity of the peerage.  They therefore inserted a clause providing that their estates should be valued by twenty of their own order.  The Lower House indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant conference.  After some delay, which increased the ill humour of the Commons, the conference took place.  The bill was returned to the Peers with a very concise and haughty intimation that they must not presume to alter laws relating to money.  A strong party among the Lords was obstinate.  Mulgrave spoke at great length against the pretensions of the plebeians.  He told his brethren that, if they gave way, they would abdicate that authority which had belonged to the baronage of England ever since the foundation of the monarchy, and that they would have nothing left of their old greatness except their coronets and ermines.  Burnet says that this speech was the finest that he ever heard in Parliament; and Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and was neither partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the aristocracy.  The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers, did not succeed in convincing them.  Most of them shrank from a conflict in which they would have had against them the Commons united as one man, and the King, who, in case of necessity, would undoubtedly have created fifty peers rather than have suffered the land tax bill to be lost.  Two strong protests, however, signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second by twenty-one dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were prepared to contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste.  Another conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for the sake of the public interest, waived what they must nevertheless assert to be their clear right, and would not insist on their amendment.366 The bill passed, and was followed by bills for laying additional duties on imports, and for taxing the dividends of joint stock companies.

Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the estimated expenditure.  The year 1692 had bequeathed a large deficit to the year 1693; and it seemed probable that the charge for 1693 would exceed by about five hundred thousand pounds the charge for 1692.  More than two millions had been voted for the army and ordnance, near two millions for the navy.367 Only eight years before fourteen hundred thousand pounds had defrayed the whole annual charge of government.  More than four times that sum was now required.  Taxation, both direct and indirect, had been carried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state still fell short of the outlay by about a million.  It was necessary to devise something.  Something was devised, something of which the effects are felt to this day in every part of the globe.