425-476).
[W.S.J.]] In that perplexed condition of the public debts, which I have already described, this minister was brought into the treasury and exchequer, and had the chief direction of affairs.

His first regulation was that of exchequer bills, which, to the great discouragement of public credit, and scandal to the crown, were three _per cent._ less in value than the sums specified in them.

The present treasurer, being then chancellor of the exchequer, procured an Act of Parliament, by which the Bank of England should be obliged, in consideration of forty-five thousand pounds, to accept and circulate those bills without any discount.

He then proceeded to stop the depredations of those who dealt in remittances of money to the army, who, by unheard of exactions in that kind of traffic, had amassed prodigious wealth at the public cost, to which the Earl of Godolphin had given too much way,[14] _possibly by neglect; for I think he cannot be accused of corruption_.
[Footnote 14: Added in the author's own handwriting.

[ORIGINAL NOTE.] P.
Fitzgerald gives the addition as "either through ignorance, connivance, or neglect." [W.S.J.]] But the new treasurer's chief concern was to restore the credit of the nation, by finding some settlement for unprovided debts, amounting in the whole to ten millions, which hung on the public as a load equally heavy and disgraceful, without any prospect of being removed, and which former ministers never had the care or courage to inspect.