ABSTRACT
Although on June 10, 1654, the French ambassador wrote home 1 : ‘il passe pour constant que les marchands ont tout créditen Angleterre/ashort surveyof the composition of the governmental and commercial classes in England has shown that the merchants were not at this time in a position to exercise a strong direct influence on policy and that the commercial interest itself was not homogeneous. Differing interests approached questions of economic policy from various points of view, and the actual policy pursued by the Government of the Protectorate was the result of a conscious effort to harmonize them. It had to give weight to two almost incompatible factors in arranging its fiscal programme. These were the necessity of maintaining efficient taxes, that is to say taxes which would produce a high yield for the exchequer, be easy to collect, and involve a low administrative cost, and the obligation to use any opportunity that arose to lower the scale of taxation so as to make the Government popular enough to avoid unrest. A high level of taxation was demanded by the cost of the army and navy, alike the guarantees of Protectoral power and the instruments of successful foreign policy; but the need to avoid irritating the tax-paying public by any oppressive form of levy was forced upon the governmental mind by the fate of Charles I.
