Bills from the Lords to which XXII. creation of conservancy districts, with boards and rating Chapter see p. 575. When the Irish Land Law Bill, 1887, was introduced in the Lords, as, under the Act of 1885 and the National Debt and Local Loans Act, 1887, advances to tenants are made out of moneys in the hands of the National Debt commis- Local loans, sioners-funds with which the Lords cannot deal-they inserted a subsection in the bill, providing that those advances should be made out of the Irish Church Fund surplus, a fund which, by Act, had been placed at the disposal of Parliament, with a footnote stating that the subsection was inserted by the Lords to avoid a question of privilege, and suggesting the omission of the subsection. This was done by the Commons; and the advances consequently came out of funds provided by the National Debt commissioners, as desired by the Lords. Money bills outside the Commons' privileges.-The claim property and revenues of the Church or the Queen Anne's to make way for the substitution of 1 Church Endowment Bill, 1843; Manchester Bill, 1847. It was ruled, 2 Waste Lands (Australia) Bill. XXII. Chapter have been received from the Lords by the Commons, or amended by the Lords, without objection on the score of Part II. privilege.1 Rejection by the Lords of bills and provisions creating charges upon the people.-As the functions of the House of Lords in the grant or imposition of supply and taxation are reduced to a simple assent or negative, it becomes necessary to examine how far the power of dissent may be exercised without invading the privileges of the Commons. The legal right of the Lords, as a co-ordinate branch of the legislature, to withhold their assent from any bill whatever, to which their concurrence is desired, is unquestionable; and, in former times, their power of rejecting a money bill had been expressly acknowledged by the Commons: 2 but, until the year 1860, though the Lords had rejected numerous bills concerning questions of public policy, in which taxation was incidentally involved, they had respected bills exclusively relating to matters of supply, and ways and means. In 1860, the Commons Paper determined to balance the year's ways and means by an 1860. increase of the property tax and stamp duties, and the repeal of the duties on paper. The increased taxation had already received the assent of Parliament, when the Lords rejected the Paper Duties Repeal Bill, and thus overruled the financial arrangements voted by the Commons. That house was naturally sensitive to this encroachment upon privileges but the Lords had exercised a legal right, and their vote was irrevocable during that session. The Commons, therefore, to maintain their privileges, recorded upon their journal, 6th July, resolutions affirming that the right of granting aids and supplies to the Crown is in the Commons alone; that the power of the Lords to reject bills relating to taxation "was justly regarded by this house with peculiar jealousy, as affecting the right of the : 1 Intermediate Education (Ireland) Bill (Lords) 1878, 133 C. J. 338; Arrears of Rent (Ireland) Bill 1882, 137 ib. 451. 2 3 Hatsell, 110-157; 2 May, Const. Hist. (7th ed.), 105; Report on Tax Bills, Parl. Paper No. 414, 1860. Duties Bill, XXII. Commons to grant the supplies, and to provide the ways and Chapter In accordance with these resolutions, during the next session, the financial scheme of the year was presented to the Lords for acceptance or rejection, as a whole. The Commons again resolved that the paper duties should be repealed but, instead of seeking the concurrence of the Lords to a separate bill for that purpose, they included. in one bill the repeal of those duties with the property tax, the tea and sugar duties, and other ways and means, for the service of the year; and this bill the Lords were Composite constrained to accept.2 The budget of each year has since that occasion been comprised in a general or composite Act-a proceeding supported by precedent. In 1787, Mr. Pitt's entire budget was comprised in a single bill; and during many subsequent years great varieties of taxes were imposed and continued in the same Acts.3 tax Acts. Rejection by the Lords of provisions creating a charge.— The right of the Lords to reject a money bill has been held to include a right to omit provisions creating charges upon the people, when such provisions form a separate subject in a bill which the Lords are otherwise entitled to amend. The claim of privilege cannot, therefore, be raised by the Commons regarding amendments to such bills, whereby a whole clause, or series of clauses, has been omitted by the Lords, which, though relating to a charge, and not admitting of amendment, yet concerned a subject separable from the general objects of the bill.* 1115 C. J. 360; 159 H. D. 3 S. 1383. 2 162 ib. 594; 163 ib. 69, &c; 24 & 25 Vict. c. 20. 327, 35, Geo. III. c. 13. c. 1, &c. Coroners Bill, 1844; District Lunatic Asylums (Ireland) Bill, 1846; Courts of Common Law Bill, Chapter On the 30th July, 1867, it was very clearly put, by Earl Grey and Viscount Eversley, that the right of the Lords Part II. to omit a clause, which they were unable to amend, relating to a separate subject, was equivalent to their right to reject a bill which they could not amend without an infraction of the privileges of the Commons.1 Tacks to bills of supply.—In former times, the Commons abused their right to grant supplies without interference from the Lords, by tacking to supply bills provisions which, in a bill that the Lords had no right to amend, must either have been accepted by them unconsidered, or have caused the rejection of a measure necessary for the public service. This is an invasion of the privileges of the Lords, no less than their interference in matters of supply infringes the privileges of the Commons; and has been met by the Lords by standing order No. 59, and by their resolution of the 9th December, 1702 "That the annexing any clause or clauses to a bill of aid or supply, the matter of which is foreign to, and different from, the matter of the said bills of aid or supply, is unparliamentary, and tends to the destruction of the constitution of the government." On no recent occasion have clauses been irregularly tacked to bills of supply: but, in 1807, acting on the above resolution, the Lords rejected a bill for abolishing fees in 1853 (stamp duty in schedule); views of the Lords. Metropolis Local Management Act Amendment Bill, 1862 (clause altering qualification of vestrymen); Corrupt Practices at Elections Bill, 1863 (clause 11, charging costs of commissions upon local rates); Drainage (Ireland) Bill 1863, Part I., omitted, which comprised many provisions which the Lords could not have amended; Inclosure (No. 2) Bill, 1867, in which the Lords omitted Elsdon, Rochester, Northumberland. 1 Parliamentary Representation Bill (clause 7), 189 H. D. 3 s. 411. 417. 217 L. J. 185. Origin of parliamentary taxation. Growth of the Com the Irish customs, and also the Malt Duties Bill, "on Chapter account of its containing multifarious matter." 1 XXII. THE MONS. IN ENGLAND, as in many other countries of Europe, the PartIII.— origin of taxation may be referred to the feudal aids and HOUSE services, due from the tenants of the Crown to their feudal OF COMsuperior. The greater portion of the soil of England was held by military service, and the councils of William, being composed of the tenants-in-chief of the Crown (see p. 16), granted and confirmed, as a Parliament, the aids and services to which the king, as their feudal superior, was entitled. After the property in land had undergone many changes mons' right and subdivisions, and the commonalty had grown in numbers of supply and wealth, the taxation became less feudal in its character; and the Commons assumed their place as an estate of the 146 L. J. 342; 62 C. J. 61; 8 H. D. 1 s. 427. * Regarding the origin of Convocations, and of their time of meeting, see the Parliamentary Original and Rights of the Lower House of Convocation, by Bishop Atterbury, p. 7, 4to, 1702. They are still sum moned to meet at the same time as |