21

A.—B

the same burdens as the rest of the community, and possessing no trifling proportion of general wealth, should have no other alternative than to refuse the necessary supplies of the revenue, or to have their exact proportion, with all qualifications and circumstances attending their grant, presented to them unalterahly by the other House of Parliament, was an anomaly that could hardly rest on any other ground of defence than such a series of precedents as establish a constitutional usage, while, in fact, it could not be made out that such a pretension was ever advanced by the Commons before the present Parliament. In the short Parliament of April, IG4O, the Lords having sent down a message requesting the other House to give precedency in the business they were about to a matter of Supply, it had been highly resented as an infringement of their privilege,-and Mr. Pym was appointed to represent their complaint at a Conference. Yet even the boldest advocate of popular prejudices who could have been selected was content to assert that the matter of subsidy and Supply ought to begin in the House of Commons. There seems to be still less pretext for the great extension given by the Commons to their acknowledged privilege of originating Bills of Supply. The principle was well adapted to that earlier period when security against misgovernment could only bo obtained by the vigilant jealousy and uncompromising firmness of the Commons. They came to the grant of subsidy with real or feigned reluctance as the stipulated price of redress of grievances. They considered the Lords, generally speaking, as too intimately united with the King's ordinary Council, which, indeed, sat with them, and had, perhaps, as late as Edward lll.'s time, a deliberative voice. They knew the influences or intimidating ascendency of the Peers over many of their own members. It may be doubted, in fact, whether the Lower House shook off absolutely and permanently all sense of subordination, or, at least, deference, to the Upper till about the close of the reign of Elizabeth. But I must confess that when the wise and ancient maxim —" That tho Commons alone can empower the King to levy the people's money " —was applied to a private Bill for lighting and cleansing a certain town, or cutting dikes in a fen, to local and limited assessments for local benefit (as to which the Crown had no manner of interest, nor has anything to do with the collection), there was more disposition shown to make encroachments than to guard against those of others. They began soon after the Kevolutiou to introduce a still more extraordinary construction of their privilege : not receiving from the House of Lords any Bill which imposes a pecuniary penalty, nor permitting them to alter tho application of such as had been imposed below. These restrictions upon the other House of Parliament are now become in their own estimation the standing privileges of the Commons. Several instances have occurred during the last century, though not, I believe, very lately, when Bills chiefly of a private nature have been unanimously rejected and even thrown over the table by the Speaker, because they contained some provision in which the Lords had trespassed on these alleged rights. They are, as may be supposed, very differently regarded in tho neighbouring Chamber. The Lords have never acknowledged any further privilege than that of originating Bills of Supply. But the good sense of both parties and of an enlightened nation, who must witness and judge of their disputes, as well as the natural desire of the Government to prevent in tho outset any altercation that must impede the course of its measures, have rendered this little jealousy unproductive of those animosities which it seemed so happily contrived to excite. After the Eevolution the Commons objected to the Lords providing for local and limited assessment ; then " by-and-by to the Lords meddling with or first passing Bills imposing penalties or altering the application of such as had been imposed by Lower House." Taylor, in his "Book of Eights," 1833, tells us that " Sir William Beetham says that no deliberative assembly existed until the reign of Edward I." In 34 Edward I. " No tallage or aid shall be taken by us without the goodwill and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the land." It appears that laws were placed on the Statute Book in the reign of Edward 11. without, and sometimes against, the consent of the other branches of the Legislature; which seems to have occasioned a petition of Commons as to an equal participation in drawing up statutes. (5 Richard 11., 1381.) In '.) Henry IV. we find a very important record of one of the first disputes, if not the first, about

money Bills between the King and Lords and the Commons. (Pp. 117, 118, 119.) Taylor further observes (1604), "The Commons say that their privileges and liberties are their right and inheritance no less than their very land and goods." Guizot, in his work on representative government (1861), says : " Barons (vassals of the King) had a right to levy imposts only as representatives of their own vassals. E.J." " Although they were not elected, and had received neither appointment nor mandate, we may nevertheless say that they were regarded as representing their own vassals, and that it was only in virtue of the power which was attributed to them in this fictitious representation that they exercised the right of levying imposts on all the proprietors in the kingdom." " (Note. —This is expressly indicated by two writs, one in the reign of John, 17th February, 1208; the other issued by Henry 111., 12th July, 1237.)" (P. 35.) The Convocation of County and Burgh Deputies became an actual necessity as the principle, that consent in all matters of impost was right, came to be recognized. (P. 375.) Guizot also cites, for the division of Parliament into two Houses, the following authorities : " Carte 17, Edward 111., 1344. Parliamentary History, 6 Edward 111., 1333. Hallam, 1327, or perhaps 8 Edward 11., 1315 " (organized, perhaps, between 1345-1355). (P. 418.) Ho tells, at page 514, that in 1407, Henry IV., Commons recognized these principles: Parliamentary initiative in its present form, and exclusive initiative of Commons in matters of subsidies. (P. 514.) Guizot explains fully the causes of jealousy of the Commons and reasons for their seeking to have control of money Bills. (Pp. 434, 435, 436, 447, and 462.) Arthur Mills, in a work on Colonial Constitution, 1856, says that " Upper House can originate, amend, or reject all Bills except money Bills; " "the extent of their parliamentary privileges is considerable, but hardly admits of legal definition; " and that " the election of representatives, as Lord Chief Justice Holt expresses it, is an original right vested in and inseparable from the freehold." Earl Eussell, in " English Government and Constitution," 1866, says, " It was a part of the practical wisdom of our ancestors to alter and vary the form of our institutions, as they went on, to suit the circumstances of the time, and reform them according to the dictates of experience. They never ceased to work upon our frame of Government as a sculptor fashions the model of a favourite statue. It is an art that, till of late years, had fallen into disuse, and the disuse was attended with evils of the most alarming magnitude." (Pp. 10, 11.) Bagehot, on the English Constitution, 1867, says, " The evil of two co-equal Houses of distinct nature is obvious." "In both the American and Swiss Constitutions the Upper House has as much authority as the second." "If it does not produce a deadlock it is owing, not to the goodness of the legal Constitution, but to the discreetness of the members of the Chamber." (Pp. 127,128.) At page 130 he says, " Since the Eeform Act the House of Lords has become a revising and suspending House.' It can alter Bills, and it can reject Bills on which the House of Commons is not yet thoroughly in earnest —upon which the nation is not yet deterjnined. This veto is a sort of hypothetical veto : they say, We reject your Bill for this once, or these twice, or even these thrice, but, if you keep on sending it up, at last wo will not reject it. The House has ceased to be one of the latent directors,