t complaints from the independent members,
among whom Sir Charles Sedley distinguished himself by his sarcastic
pleasantry. A clever speech which he made against the placemen
stole into print and was widely circulated: it has since been often
republished; and it proves, what his poems and plays might make us
doubt, that his contemporaries were not mistaken in considering him as a
man of parts and vivacity. Unfortunately the ill humour which the sight
of the Civil List caused evaporated in jests and invectives without
producing any reform.

The ordinary revenue by which the government had been supported before
the Revolution had been partly hereditary, and had been partly drawn
from taxes granted to each sovereign for life. The hereditary revenue
had passed, with the crown, to William and Mary. It was derived from the
rents of the royal domains, from fees, from fines, from wine licenses,
from the first fruits and tenths of benefices, from the receipts of the
Post Office, and from that part of the excise which had, immediately
after the Restoration, been granted to Charles the Second and to his
successors for ever in lieu of the feudal services due to our ancient
kings. The income from all these sources was estimated at between four
and five hundred thousand pounds, [596]

Those duties of excise and customs which had been granted to James for
life had, at the close of his reign, yielded about nine hundred thousand
pounds annually. William naturally wished to have this income on the
same terms on which his uncle had enjoyed it; and his ministers did
their best to gratify his wishes. Lowther moved that the grant should
be to the King and Queen for their joint and separate lives, and
spoke repeatedly and earnestly in defence of this motion. He set forth
William's claims to public gratitude and confidence; the nation rescued
from Popery and arbitrary power; the Church delivered from persecution;
the constitution established on a firm basis. Would the Commons deal
grudgingly with a prince who had done more for England than had ever
been done for her by any of his predecessors in so short a time, with
a prince who was now about to expose himself to hostile weapons and
pestilential air in order to preserve the English colony in Ireland,
with a prince who was prayed for in every corner of the world where a
congregation of Protestants could meet for the worship of God? [597] But
on this subject Lowther harangued in vain. Whigs an