Macdonough, he said, had quoted precedents, but he could not quote a precedent in which the House of Lords ever before rejected a Supply Bill on purely financial grounds; and if they were acting within their right, still they were exercising it in a manner unprecedented in our constitutional history. Maintaining that opinion, Sir James held the Government to be right in the course they had now adopted. The House of Lords had adopted a novel course. The time had arrived for the Commons not to adopt a new course but to refer to an ancient practice, a practice which had obtained from the revolution downwards. In 1757, Mr. Pitt produced and carried a Bill both enacting and repealing taxation. In 1800, again by the authority of Mr. Pitt, to the Act of Union were tacked two schedules of countervailing duties. In 1808, there was not a double but a triple enactment all in one Bill. It was passed for one year, and passed annually until 1822, when an important change took place, and the malt duty was made permanent. The House should remark that by making perpetual large branches of revenue, it lost its constitutional hold over the House of Lords; and the experience of last year showed that the Commons should retrieve their position. Sir James traced in detail the adoption of the practice of making duties perpetual, and ascribed to it the weakened position of the Commons and the unprecedented step of the Lords last year. He did not wish to attack the House of Lords; he would not support the Government if he believed the practical effect of their conduct would be to bring

on a collision; but he believed that conduct to be wise and just, and he showed that it was in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Precedents last year, and with the resolutions unanimously adopted by the House. He showed that the Commons had a right to grant and the Lords the right to assent, quoting the forms of Bills of Supply to illustrate his position. "It is open to the Lords to reject the whole, or, if they think fit, they may alter a part of it; but, according to the well-known principle, altering a portion is equal to the rejection of the whole. The House of Lords cannot take out a certain portion. They cannot refuse to remit, or refuse to reduce. The time, the manner, and the measure being in our hands, it is sent up for assent or rejection. We do not fetter the power of assenting or rejecting, but we do say they must not partly alter. I do not wish to enter on the invidious subject of the party character of the question; but I must say, if hon. gentlemen opposite-strong in this House, stronger in the other House-think the time has arrived when confidence should. be withdrawn from the Administration, I can conceive no more fair or legitimate opportunity for expressing that opinion than by a rejection of the Budget, either by throwing out this Bill or altering it, which will have the same effect. But if that great party be not prepared to incur the responsibility of a course so decided, then I say, as good subjects, it behoves them to allow the executive Government to deal with the finances of the year on their responsibility, in the manner which shall seem to them most just and

expedient. I have heard a sort of hustings'cry, 'Down with the paper duty and up with the tea duty.' Now, I do not wish to raise an invidious hustings' cry; but if we are to have a hustings' cry-if that fatal issue should be joined, Up with the House of Lords, and down with the House of Commons'-if that issue be taken, I do not think that gentlemen on this side need be afraid of going to their constituents on that cry; and I am very much mistaken if the power and authority of the House of Commons would not be confirmed by a large majority."

Lord J. Manners said Sir J. Graham had not answered the call made by Mr. Macdonough, for any instance in which, the House of Lords having rejected a Bill, the Commons had sent it back to them tacked to a Supply Bill. He had admitted there was no such precedent, but said the time had come when the House should make one. Considering the Budget simply in its financial aspect, and granting all the postulates of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the result was, that in order to repeal the duty upon paper, which was not felt by the people, our toiling millions were to continue to pay war duties upon their tea and sugar. Taking into view political considerations, he asked whether the House was justified in sacrificing permanently a great and increasing source of revenue, the consequence of which would be the odious infliction of an increased income-tax. Every fresh duty repealed would have the effect of riveting the taxes retained, and the duty on paper, he insisted, had not, in the opinion of the country, an equal claim

to remission compared with other taxes.

Sir F. Goldsmid contended that the precedents and authorities cited by Mr. Macdonough did not bear out his constitutional objection to the present Bill, and that the including the several resolutions of the Committee of Ways and Means in one Bill was conformable to usage and agreeable to reason, while it was a course recommended by what had taken place last year. To send up to the House of Lords a separate Bill for the repeal of the paper duty would be to act in the teeth of the resolutions then adopted by the House of Commons.

Mr. Rolt said the first reason alleged in support of the Bill was, that it was usual, or not unusual, to send up such a measure. But he ventured to say that, though the House had the power to adopt such a course, it was a novel measure. The second reason assigned was, that it was necessary and convenient to send up the financial scheme of the Government as a whole. But the scheme might be as conveniently submitted to the House of Lords by separate Bills as by a single Bill. It had been admitted that that House had exercised last year an undoubted right; if so, it would not be a wise or just exercise of power on the part of the House of Commons to send up the measure which the Lords had rejected in a new form that would bar them of their right.

Mr. Collier insisted that the Bill was the only course open to the House, if they were determined to maintain, as they were bound to maintain, their own privileges, and at the same time

to avoid a collision with the House of Lords. The resolutions adopted unanimously by the House of Commons last year were a protest against a proceeding of the other House which was deemed an interference with their privileges, and the constitutional argument was thereby concluded. He cited a precedent in 1695, which had not been referred to by Mr. Macdonough, where five resolutions for remitting and imposing taxes were included in one Bill, which was passed by the Lords without objection. The House of Commons had always dealt with the Budget in the manner most convenient to itself, and he contended that the inserting of all the main parts of the Budget in one Bill was legal, constitutional, conformable to precedents, and a carrying out of the resolutions of last year.

Mr. Whiteside, after observing that Mr. Collier's denial of the authority of the House of Lords to do what they had done was at variance with the argument left on record by the Nestor of that House, replied to Sir J. Graham, who, he said, had argued that what the House of Commons could not do directly they might attempt to do indirectly. The object of this Bill was to invite the House of Peers to consider most respect fully the opinion of the House of Commons. It was the privilege of the Commons to originate taxation, but it was the privilege of the Lords to consider the condition of the country and the state of affairs throughout the world. Was it then just, or constitutional, or reasonable to send them a Bill which made it impossible for them to bestow that consideration, and coerced them

to pass or reject the Bill? He considered such a proceeding an insult to the Lords.

Lord J. Russell remarked that all Mr. Whiteside's ingenuity could not argue away the best privileges of that House. The questions were, whether the House was justified by the law of Parliament in embodying the several resolutions in one Bill; and if so, whether it was right to exercise that power. He insisted that the House had in effect, last year, asserted the power, which he showed rested upon precedents as well as principle. As to the expediency of the present measure, admitting that, last year, the Lords might think themselves justified in taking an extreme course, for which there was no precedent,-by allowing that extraordinary act to stand the House of Commons would, in effect, admit the other House to equal functions in imposing taxes upon the people. On the subject of the Budget, he argued that the abolition of duties had the effect of improving the general revenue, and there was every reason to expect that the same result would follow a remission of the paper duty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had applied his great talents to the benefit of the people of this country, and he believed their gratitude for his efforts would stifle all 'the accusations of party.

Lord R. Cecil condemned the course of proceeding of that House towards the Peers, upon whom, he said, they were now making a most unjust attack. All the main questions of the day were now becoming financial measures, and if the Commons interposed its privileges in all

these measures the functions of the House of Lords would be so cramped and limited, that it would be excluded from the arena of legislative deliberation.

Sir W. Heathcote observed that most of the objections to the second reading of the Bill involved the relations of that House and the House of Lords, and he was of opinion-in which Mr. Walpole (who was unavoidably absent) coincided that there was nothing unconstitutional in the form of the Bill, and that it did not interfere with the privileges of the Lords. The Chancellor of the Exchequer furnished the desired explanations, and, passing by matters of personal controversy, proceeded to discuss the constitutional question and the subject of 66 tacking," replying to the argument of Mr. Macdonough, who, he said, had been misled by an old case in 1576, overlooking modern cases establishing the practice of Parliament. He referred to a great variety of precedents, showing the power of combination of different provisions in the same financial measure exercised by the House of Commons to a wider extent than in the present Bill. The practice, he observed, was not only justified by precedent, but by reason and convenience, the several matters in the Bill, essentially homogeneous, being items of one and the same account. That to originate matters of finance was the exclusive right, and duty, and burden of the House of Commons was the doctrine of the Constitution, and to divide this function between two distinct and independent bodies would lead to utter confusion. Did that House claim the right to adjust

income and expenditure? If it did, the course taken by the Government was, he insisted, the most advantageous and the most respectful course.

Mr. Horsman said he was not prepared to blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the course he had adopted; but in his argument he had narrowed the issue to one of precedent. It was not, however, so much a question of precedent as of principle and policy. There was a motive in the proceeding, a predetermined necessity to limit the pretensions of the other House; the form adopted was chosen in order to correct something that was amiss. But, while correcting the past and providing for the future, they were indirectly reversing the judgment of the House of Peers, and in reality passing a censure upon its proceedings. Mr. Horsman dwelt upon the dangers attending an inordinate growth of power in the House of Commons, arguing that it tended to the concentration of authority in a single Chamber, which would become a tyranny; that the poorest beggar in the land had as great an interest in maintaining a second Chamber as in upholding the House of Commons, because, without a second Chamber, there must be either a despotism or a republic. The speeches in support of the Bill, he remarked, had attempted to connect it with the resolutions of last year; but, to prove that this was an afterthought, he appealed to the speech of Lord Palmerston, in supporting the resolutions, which afforded a key to their meaning, and which recommended the House to rest contented with the

resolutions, as adequate to the occasion, and take no further action. It was upon the faith of this emphatic declaration, regarded as a pledge, that the House had accepted the resolutions, and if nothing more was now meant than to repeal the paper duty, it would be mere courtesy to send up to the Lords a separate Bill for that purpose. Mr. Puller dissented from Mr. Horsman's views as to the privileges of the House of Lords, and approved of the plan of including the whole financial scheme in one Bill. Mr. Newdegate, on the contrary, thought that the adoption of this Bill would unduly increase the power of the Crown in the House of Commons. Mr. Mellor controverted Mr. Horsman's constitutional doctrines. He observed that the main argument on the other side turned upon this Bill being a "tacking" Bill. But as this could not be maintained to be a case of tacking, the whole objection fell to the ground.

Mr. Malins admitted that this was not a "tacking" Bill in the strict sense of the word; but he said, if clauses were deliberately introduced into a Bill, on which the Lords had no opportunity of voting, this came within the principle of tacking. He did not, however, oppose the second reading of the Bill.

Sir S. Northcote, restricting his observations to the form of the Bill, said a question of great importance arose, which had almost escaped attention-namely, that the House was about to make a large amount of the taxation, 20 000,000, annual, depending upon the vote of the House from year to year; and VOL. CIII.

he suggested the danger that was to be apprehended if the financial views of Mr. Bright were adopted. The renewal of the income-tax from year to year would give rise to class dissensions and to proposals to alter the rates under particular schedules.

Lord Palmerston congratulated the House upon the success which had attended discussion of the different questions raised in this debate. There was no dispute now as to the existence of a surplus; the House had acquiesced in the expediency of abolishing the paper duty, and also in the arrangement of the matters to be sent up to the House of Lords. Some new questions had been started by Sir S. Northcote and Mr. Horsman, and upon these questions he bestowed a few jocular remarks.

He

Mr. Disraeli arraigned the financial policy of the Government, who, he said, had created an artificial surplus in order that they might perpetrate a financial caprice. By a bare majority of 18, who so voted because they shrunk from the responsibility of disturbing the Government, they had succeeded in passing a esolution which was not to be submitted to the revision of the other House of Parliament. complained of the occult influences which were, he said, straining the Constitution. If the repeal of the paper duty was sent up last year as a separate Bill, why should it not be done now? It was for this object or nothing -to deprive the House of Lords of a power admitted to be legal and constitutional, and which had been exercised in a manner the nation had ratified as sound [F]