The success of the report was complete.  The nation and its representatives hated taxes, hated foreign favourites, and hated Irish Papists; and here was a document which held out the hope that England might, at the expense of foreign courtiers and of popish Celts, be relieved from a great load of taxes.  Many, both within and without the walls of Parliament, gave entire faith to the estimate which the commissioners had formed by a wild guess, in the absence of trustworthy information.  They gave entire faith also to the prediction that a strict inquiry would detect many traitors who had hitherto been permitted to escape with impunity, and that a large addition would thus be made to the extensive territory which had already been confiscated.  It was popularly said that, if vigorous measures were taken, the gain to the kingdom would be not less than three hundred thousand pounds a year; and almost the whole of this sum, a sum more than sufficient to defray the whole charge of such an army as the Commons were disposed to keep up in time of peace, would be raised by simply taking away what had been unjustifiably given to Dutchmen, who would still retain immense wealth taken out of English pockets, or unjustifiably left to Irishmen, who thought it at once the most pleasant and the most pious of all employments to cut English throats.  The Lower House went to work with the double eagerness of rapacity and of animosity.  As soon as the report of the four and the protest of the three had been laid on the table and read by the clerk, it was resolved that a Resumption Bill should be brought in.  It was then resolved, in opposition to the plainest principles of justice, that no petition from any person who might think himself aggrieved by this bill should ever be received.  It was necessary to consider how the commissioners should be remunerated for their services; and this question was decided with impudent injustice.  It was determined that the commissioners who had signed the report should receive a thousand pounds each.  But a large party thought that the dissentient three deserved no recompense; and two of them were merely allowed what was thought sufficient to cover the expense of their journey to Ireland.  This was nothing less than to give notice to every man who should ever be employed in any similar inquiry that, if he wished to be paid, he must report what would please the assembly which held the purse of the state.  In truth the House was despotic, and was fast contracting the vices of a despot.  It was proud of its antipathy to courtiers; and it was calling into existence a new set of courtiers who would study all its humours, who would flatter all its weaknesses, who would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would assuredly be, in no respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less abject than the sycophants who bow in the antechambers of kings.