d after which no clipped money should pass, except in
payments to the government; and that a later time should be fixed, after
which no clipped money should pass at all. What divisions took place in
the Committee cannot be ascertained. When the resolutions were reported
there was one division. It was on the question whether the old standard
of weight should be maintained. The Noes were a hundred and fourteen;
the Ayes two hundred and twenty-five. [646]

It was ordered that a bill founded on the resolutions should be brought
in. A few days later the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained to the
Commons, in a Committee of Ways and Means, the plan by which he proposed
to meet the expense of the recoinage. It was impossible to estimate
with precision the charge of making good the deficiencies of the clipped
money. But it was certain that at least twelve hundred thousand pounds
would be required. Twelve hundred thousand pounds the Bank of England
undertook to advance on good security. It was a maxim received among
financiers that no security which the government could offer was so
good as the old hearth money had been. That tax, odious as it was to the
great majority of those who paid it, was remembered with regret at the
Treasury and in the City. It occurred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer
that it might be possible to devise an impost on houses, which might be
not less productive nor less certain than the hearth money, but which
might press less heavily on the poor, and might be collected by a
less vexatious process. The number of hearths in a house could not be
ascertained without domiciliary visits. The windows a collector
might count without passing the threshold. Montague proposed that the
inhabitants of cottages, who had been cruelly harassed by the chimney
men, should be altogether exempted from the new duty. His plan was
approved by the Committee of Ways and Means, and was sanctioned by the
House without a division. Such was the origin of the window tax, a tax
which, though doubtless a great evil, must be considered as a blessing
when compared with the curse from which it rescued the nation. [647]

Thus far things had gone smoothly. But now came a crisis which required
the most skilful steering. The news that the Parliament and the
government were determined on a reform of the currency produced an
ignorant panic among the common people. Every man wished to get rid of
his clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man liked