_Bill for restoring corporations._--I scarcely venture, at this distance from the scene, to pronounce an opinion as to the clause introduced by the whigs into a bill for restoring corporations, which excluded for the space of seven years all who had acted or even concurred in surrendering charters from municipal offices of trust. This was no doubt intended to maintain their own superiority by keeping the church or tory faction out of corporations. It evidently was not calculated to assuage the prevailing animosities. But, on the other hand, the cowardly submissiveness of the others to the quo warrantos seemed at least to deserve this censure; and the measure could by no means be put on a level in point of rigour with the corporation act of Charles II. As the dissenters, unquestioned friends of the revolution, had been universally excluded by that statute, and the tories had lately been strong enough to prevent their re-admission, it was not unfair for the opposite party, or rather for the government, to provide some security against men, who, in spite of their oaths of allegiance, were not likely to have thoroughly abjured their former principles. This clause, which modern historians generally condemn as oppressive, had the strong support of Mr. Somers, then solicitor-general. It was, however, lost through the court's conjunction with the tories in the lower house, and the bill itself fell to the ground in the upper; so that those who had come into corporations by very ill means retained their power, to the great disadvantage of the revolution party; as the next elections made appear.[166] But if the whigs behaved in these instances with too much of that passion, which, though offensive and mischievous in its excess, is yet almost inseparable from patriotism and incorrupt sentiments in so numerous an assembly as the House of Commons, they amply redeemed their glory by what cost them the new king's favour, their wise and admirable settlement of the revenue. _Settlement of the revenue._--The first parliament of Charles II. had fixed on £1,200,000 as the ordinary revenue of the Crown, sufficient in times of no peculiar exigency for the support of its dignity and for the public defence. For this they provided various resources; the hereditary excise on liquors granted in lieu of the king's feudal rights, other excise and custom duties granted for his life, the post-office, the crown lands, the tax called hearth money, or two shillings for every house, and some of smaller consequence. These in the beginning of that reign fell short of the estimate; but before its termination, by the improvement of trade and stricter management of the customs, they certainly exceeded that sum. For the revenue of James from these sources, on an average of the four years of his reign, amounted to £1,500,964; to which something more than £400,000 is to be added for the produce of duties imposed for eight years by his parliament of 1685.[167]