TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LORDS AND THE MONEY BILLS.
Tun report presented to the House of Commons on the practice with regard to bills imposing or repealing taxes convicts the House of Commons generally of confusion of ideas with regard to the contest, while it shows most distinctly that the question which has risen between the two Houses constitutes a new case, demand- ing new consideration and new rules. The report is interesting, and not the less because it does not arrive at the absolute and positive conclusion which many who have joined in the debates both within the House and out of doors anticipated. As a gene- ral rule, it may be said that rights can only exist in union with correlative powers. Rights may be dormant for want of the power, but they can never have been called into existence without the power. In our own country rights have in all times been nothing more than the recognized existence and exercise of a previously established power. There is, indeed, this distinction between England and most other European states—not all—that whereas, civil conflicts elsewhere have most frequently arisen from revolutionary attempts to subvert the existing law, in this country all the inovemets improperly called revolutions have consisted of an appeal against unwarranted and lawless ag- gression to the actual law of the land. There is, we believe, no instance to the contrary. But the law itself acquired its strength —indeed, acquired its very expression—through the previously existing powers of the persons who claimed to vindicate it. It was the power of the Barons which established their tenure as against the Crown, it was the power of the villeins as acquired through their courage in the service of the Lords, their frugality in the accumulation of means, their energy in striking out new enter- prises which converted the villein into the freeholder. It was the power of the same race dwelling in towns which rendered its sons respectable in the eyes of King, Lords, and Commons, and gradu- ally secured those municipal privileges. In brief, it was the power of the Crown that gathered round it the strength for victories which have marked the steps of our military progress amongst nations—it was the power of the Lords which constituted them judges in the last resort—and it was the power of the Commons which enabled them to become the actual holders of the purse-strings. In the earliest years, according to the report new presented, that power of the purse-strings was variously and
usedly held by the Crown, Peers, and Commons—the Clergy having a separate hand in the matter. The arrangement her the Indemnity Ordinance in 1407 secured the Commons exclusively the privilege of reporting on money bills to the Crown Aiy the Speaker, and restrained any such report until the Commons 'had granted, and the Lords assented ; and this was but the re- cord of the points attained after previous conflicts. It was an adjustment partly founded on tradition, partly on practice, and partly on a sense of whit is reasonable ; and surely we are not &tiler or more inconsiderate of reasonableness in 1860 than we tv're in 1407.
-The wilted between the Leads in 1671, with the subsequent d.seussions upon it, and again that in 1689 established this fact : --the Commons considered that in all aids given to the King, le rate or tax, ought not in any way to be altered'by the Lords ; he Commons claiming the "undoubted right!' to be thus unal- tered, while the Lords claimed a "fundamental, inherent, and undoubted right" to make amendments, and abatements of rates in Bills of Supply. This saying that the right is "undoubted," instead of proving the assertion implied in the adjective particle, proves that there has been a need for making the assertion ; or, in
r words, that there have been doubts' but the factthat this, and sink' ifferences on the same point between the Peers and Cetinons ways ended in evasion is itself instructive. The 1,0171, „Lte,c1, their fight, the Commons denied it; the Lords on their own plan, the Commons dropped the bill, intro- ducea another embodying the Lords' amendments, and then the Lords agreed. This is what we in England habitually call, with some praise for our love of it, the "practical." Now the prac- ' —which usually means the empirical,—has this inconvenience, it only settles the special case, leaving the principles of the tion unsettled, so that the same question has to be reopened on every case.
The last section of the report comes to the particular point at i-sue in the present year—" the right of the Lords to reject bills repealing- or altering any laws relating to supply, taxes, or charges of the -pcople ; " and it will be observed that from 1714, the earliest example of the kind, to 1858, we have several instances of a rejection by the Lords effected in one form or other. The practice of the Peers, therefore, has been thoroughly consistent with the abstract rationale. Yet the subject has been discussed in that fasbien which can never lead us out of the confusion. The members who have so warmly asserted the rights of the Commons lately have argued upon the ground of what ought to be, accord- :A:1g to thcir own general interpretation of "the British constitution," waich makes the Commons the guardians of the purse, and has in these later eenthries withheld from the Lords the right of initia- ti g, a tax of the people. These politicians have put their own erpretation on things as they are, and, without any reference
history have assumed the state of things as they have been— the steps by which we have aiTived at the present practice. In doing this they have actually weakened their own position, for, on the real facts of the case that position is far stronger than we have ever yet seen it stated to be. It amounts to this : from a very early period the common sense of the Englishman saw that the representative chamber which spoke for the great body of the people' the actual producers and owners of the efficient cashi wealth of the country, constituted in sound reason the custodians' of the public moneys. In early days they were not recognized in that capacity, because their powers had not been developed ; but what was the event? As publics opinion grew more clear about the power residing in the great body of the Commons and upon the common sense of the subject, so the actual practice of Parliament was altered in deference to what was seen to be the principle of the constitution and the abstract reasoning of the subject. In other words, at each juncture like the present, the Commons have proposed a change in the practice of Parliament, by and with the consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and of the Crown. They have established that change.
To put the case with a slight difference. After the confident assertions as to what is the right of the British people, they have gone back to study what has been the right. They have dis- covered circumstances which led to any present understanding with regard to privileges ; they have seen that the circumstances of their own day differed from the circumstances of anterior days, and on these data they have in one form or other virtually legui- lated. But in describing previous junctures we are only pointing out the characteristics of the present juncture.
What are the circumstance of the present day ? What are the elements of the present question ? Nobody denies that the Com- mons are for the most part originators and controllers of taxation; they have the undoubted right to hold in their hands the sole origination of any tax proposed within the year. Being a very busy people we are not the less prone to be also, where direct stimulus fails, rather an indolent people, and we have found it a convenience and an ease to make arrangements of tax- ation for a long period together. Hence the origin and deve- lopment of the Consolidated Funds—hence the gradual exten- sion of the lease granted to permanent taxes. We did not foresee distinctly that a time might arrive when the Commons would want suddenly to repeal a permanent tax in order to a more complete adjustment of the taxes of the year ; but obviously from the whole context of the constitution, the Lords had a right to withhold their assent to any statute which may be presented by the Commons. By the practice of embodying the taxes in permanent statutes, therefore, the House of Commons has actually parted with a fraction of its control over the money to the Lords and Crown. It is a violation—not a very important one—but still a violation, of the principle which had reserved the control ex- clusively in the Commons ; and the question now is how far this practical violation of a theoretical right is injurious' and if inju- rious by what method the error can be corrected ? In these few words we have expressed what ought to have been the substance of the resolution and propositions laid before Parliament by the Ministers of the Crown.
The immediate effect of the power discovered to lie in the Lords seems to have been very greatly exaggerated ; but we can scarcely exaggerate the possible consequences of this aliena- tion of power by the Commons. Although we have seen no great mischief accruing in 1860, no one could define the limits of the possible mischief which might arise at other public junctures ; and therefore we hold that the Commons should grapple with the question now, and recover the right which has been so far alien- ated.
By what method ? Maay others may occur besides the twt which immediately present themselves to us. One is that in future the Commons should pass no tax whatever for a longer period than one year. Should the Lords recalcitrate' measures of coercing that august but by no means omnipotent body might easily be struck out. But the other method is the more promis- ing; it would be to cooperate with the Lords in laying down more distinctly a rule, that in the case of a permr,-;nt tax the Lords should hold it a matter of constitutional etib-ette always to defer to the Commons on notification from the representative chamber that it desired the permanent tax to cease. Indeed, a declaratory act to that effect would completely meet the present case.
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