The Chancellor of the Exchequer therefore had the choice of the direct attack on the purse or the increase of atmospheric pressure. For the present he chose the latter method, enhancing the duties on tea, wines, sugar, spirits, game licences, glass, tobacco, and snuff, besides raising the "Assessed Taxes" by ten per cent. The produce of some of these imposts is curious. Hair-powder yielded L197,000; the extra tea and wine duties L186,000 and L923,000, severally; those on tobacco and snuff only L40,000. Pitt's procedure in December 1796 was very cautious. He carefully watched the yield of the new taxes, in order to see whether the increase of price checked consumption. Finding that this did not happen in the case of tea and spirits, he further raised the duties on those commodities; but, on behalf of the poor, he exempted the cheaper kinds of tea. On the other hand he proposed to check the consumption of spirits by imposing an extra duty of five pence a gallon along with a surcharge on distillery licences. Further, as the duties on bricks, auction sales, sugar, bar iron, oil, wines, and coal had not lessened consumption, he again increased them. A questionable experiment was an increase in the postage of letters and parcels, and in the duties on newspapers, stage coaches, and canal tolls. A new House Duty, levied in proportion to the number of servants, is open to less objection. On the whole he expected the new taxes to yield L2,138,000. The total supply asked for was L27,640,000. The financial outlook grew darker in the year 1797. At the close of January came the news of Hoche's expedition to Bantry Bay, which revealed the possibility of revolutionizing Ireland. On 4th February Pitt heard of the triumph of Bonaparte at Rivoli. The tidings told disastrously on markets already in a nervous state. A correspondent of Pitt attributed the decline to the action of the Bank of England at the close of 1795, in reducing their discounts. Fox and his friends ascribed it to the export of specie to Vienna; while Ministers and their friends gave out that it resulted from the fears of invasion, and the desire of depositors everywhere to withdraw their money and place it in hiding. Privately, however, Pitt confessed to Auckland that the export of gold brought matters to a climax.