The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 7, 1860.-

was about unanimously to make should be reversed, because
that would have been in accordance with the speech of the

right hon. gentleman, and *ith the sentiments which many
hon. members opposite had most vociierotisiY cheered.

There were fifty gentlemen on the other side of the house,
who were, in the early stages of the budget, more enthu-
siastic supporters of it than a great many members on that
side of the house, and he (Mr. Bright) did not know what
those fifty members thought of the remarks of the right
hon. gentleman upon what he called the headlong, precipi-
tate, and reckless budget of the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer. Now, he would not attempt to follow the right
hon. gentleman, either to support or to controvert his
theories of the extreme value of the House of Lords as a part
of the constitution of this country, for that was not the

question before the house ; but he would endeavour to state
the grounds on which he (Mr. Bright) was not very well

satisfied with the course the house was invited to take. Ho
would not attack the resolutions of the noble lord, nor
would he defend them ; he was not responsible for them.

They appeared to him not worthy of the occasion. (Hear.)
Ho thought they bore marks of having been composed by
more than one hand, and if they expressed all the house had
to say on this occasion, he thought posterity would say they

were the resolutions of a degenerate House of Commons,

(Hear.) The first one was a very good resolution, but it
was very old. (A laugh.) It was net the worse for that,
and he was glad the noble viscornt bad not thought it ne-
cessary to try and improve it. The other two resolutions
were somewhat ambiguous and feeble. Theywerenot, either
in their expression of what he believed to be constitutional

usage, or as examples English composition, to be com-
pared with the first end oldest. Last night, after long
silence, two speeches 'sere made from the other side of the
house—speeches which he heard with some surprise and
some pain. Tkey appeared to him marked by great reck-
lessness and great levity. Whatever might be the opinion
of members with regard to the question before the house, it

was not one to be treated in that manner. It was a serious
question whether the powers of this house had been in-
fringed or not, and whether another house should hereafter
exercise powers which it had not hitherto exercised ; and we
might learn from hist:2.y that there was no greater sign of
the decadence of a potpie than to find leaders of party and
eminent statesmen treating great questions as if they were
not great, and solemn realities as if they were no realities
at all. He thought he could observe in those speeches
rather the triumph a men who fanoictl that where they
had expected an opponent in the Prime Minister they had
got an advocate, and who were delighted that, acting with
their confederates in the other house of Parliament,
they were likely to obtain a signal party advantage. But
would anybody deny that the House of Lords had violated,
he would not say the privileges of the House of Commons,
but broken in upon an usage many centuries old, which the
predecessors of the present House of Commons believed to
be of the utmost importance to the powers of the House of
Commons, and to the liberties which they represented ? If
there had been nothing wrong, why have a committee? The
right hon. member for Buckinghamshire now, three weeks
after the committee had been appointed, said it would have
been much better if there had not been any committee, but
he did not oppose it at the time; and every member of the
house thought it was but reasonable when the noble lord
proposed that committee. But why should they ransack the
journals and search for precedents unless something had
happened which jarred upon every man's sense with regard
to the rights of that house and the common usage of the
House of Lords ? And why, after that research, should they
now have these resolutions, moved not by a young and in-
experienced member, but by the noble lord, one of the oldest
members of the house, one of the most eminent statesmen in
the country, and the chief minister of the Crown ? Every-
body must admit that the circumstances were such as to
justify this course, and the hon. gentlemen opposite, not-
withstanding their spasmodic cheering, must see that these
resolutions themselves were a proof of the general opinion
that the course the Lords had taken was unusual, if not
absolutely wrong. For those resolutions did, by implica-
tion, condemn what the Lords had done; although they
did not revoke the act, or pledge the Commons to any
course with regard to it; but they expressed an unanimous
opinion that it was contrary to usage, and calculated to
excite jealousy and alarm. Now he (Mr. Bright) was one
of the committee, but he must confess ho thought the com-
mittee had fallen wonderfully below its duty. The course it
had pursued was poor and spiritless ; and when contrasted
with that pursued by other committees in former times, it
would show a really melancholy declension. The committee
appeared—at least half of them—to be quite as much ad-
vocates of the Lords as of the Commons. He found that
some members of that house were very much of the seine
character. Their speeches were speeches which very few
members ;of the House of Lords would make upon this
question, and very few members of the House of Lords
would dare to make such a speech as had been made by the
' right hon. gentleman the member for Stroud. (Loud cheers.)
He (Mr. Bright) went into the committee, and he would
tell the house with the utmost frankness that his object was
not altogether that he might ascertain what the Lords had
asserted with regard to their privileges, but what their pre-
decessors in the House of Commons had asserted with re-
gard to theirs. They had no right to let go one single arti-
ro,vor wh;01-1 thn douse of Com-
mons had gained in past times—(hear, hear)—and he took
it for granted that if he pursued for some centuries back the
course they hal taken and observed the result of the discus-
sions between the two houses, read their resolutions, ob-
served acts which they had passed, he should be right if he
concluded that it was their duty to maintain that which
their predecessors had contended for. (Hear.) The hon.
member for Southampton (Mr. D. Seymour), following the
example of some other hon. members, and following that of
the report of the committee, had taken the house back for a
lengthened period of time. He (Mr. Bright) should not go
into any of those precedents to explain whether they did or
did not refer to this particular case, but he should ask the
house to permit him to read two or three paragraphs stating
the facts which he took from the journals of the house, and
which convinced him that they (the Commons) were not
taking a sufficiently bold and decided course in agreeing
merely to the resolution which the noble lord at the head of
the Government had proposed. (Cheers.) Now that very
course which the right hon. gentleman the member
for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole),
as chairman of the committee, together with myself,
fixed upon as somewhat of a starting point in
this great controversy was the tcase of the year
1407. He should not go into it, for he trusted every mem-
ber of the house had read it either in the translation or in
the old Norman preamble. (A. laugh.) Both, he assured
the house, were worth reading, but that was a curious case,
and he believed from 1407 down to this time there had been
no other case so like the present case as that of that year-
-453 years ago. In that year the !Lords proposed to con-
tinue a tax to which the House of Commons had not as-
sented, and it was out of that occurrence the whole of that
transaction sprung; and they knew from the record that
the Commons were greatly disturbed at the fact that the
Lords had proposed to prolong a tax to which the Commons
had not given their assent. (Hear, hear.) From that year
they took a great leap, from 1407 down to 1628, and on that
occasioi they found the Commons insisting merely upon the
initiation of bills of supply. They would not permit the
Lords either to put the name of the Lords either in the'pre-
amble, nor would they allow that compromise which the
Lords proposed, namely, that neither Lords nor ConTmons
should bo mentioned in it, but that the High Court of Par-
liament should be mentioned. They refused both, and that
had been the practice up to the present hour. In 1640, the
Lords were much more modest than the right hen, gentle-
man (Mr. Horsman) said they ought to be. (A laugh.) He
said they ought to check, they ought to control, they ought
to review, they ought to alter, and that, in fact, they ought
fundamentally, if it be necessary, to overthrow all the fin-
ancial arrangements of the year which the House of Com-
mons may have agreed to. But in 1640 the Lords declared
that they would not meddle with matters of supply, which
belonged properly and ,naturally to the Commons.- Lid
the Lords in 16 10 know nothing of their constitutional
rights ? Mr. Pym told them they had meddled both
with the matter of supply and the mode of it, and that
he was commanded ;by the Commons to ask reparation
from their lordships. And their lordships gave the
Commons reparation, and said they did not know they were
breaking in upon the means of raising supply, but were
merely recommending to the King that supply should
have precedence over questions of grievance. He was not
sure that the Lords ever admitted by resolution that it had
not the power to reject bills of supply. They knew they
had not the power to carry that, because in this house it
would fall dead at once unless that unhappy time should
come which the right hon. gentleman the member for Stroud
wished to see realised. (Hear.) When the Commons main-
tained the right of money votes then came the question of
management. In 16;r1 they proposed that the duty then
leviable on white sugar should be reduced from lid. per lb.
to iths of a penny pea lb., and the Commons then came to
that resolution which had been already read to the house,
" That in all aid given to the Xing by the Commons the rate or
tax ought not to be altered by the Lords,' and the Commons
then declared that acre was a fundamental right in the
house, both as to the matter and the manner, and the time.
What followed in the House of Lords ? The Lords replied
to the Commons by a similar resolution, a resolution passed
in their favour, that i; was a fundamental right of the Lords
to do all those things which the right hon. gentleman the
member for Stroud had said they ought now to be permitted
to do, and that resolution in their favour was just as strong,
and in the very same words, as the resolution which had
been passed in a contrary sense by the House of Commons.
The right hon. gentleman the member for the University
of Dublin (Mr. Whiteside) made an unhappy allusion last
night when he turned the attention of the house to the con-
dition of the United States. In that ho proved himself to
be, not perhaps understanding what he was saying—(laugh-
ter)—strongly in favour of Americanising, the institutions
of this country. Ho asserted that the Senate had the power
not only of rejecting but amending bills, which was quite
true. When the fathers of the American republic were
binding together these 13 sovereign states in one great
confederation they naturally leaked back to the country
from which they were separating to learn something of the
parliamentary practice of England. They found the Lords
could not alter or amend, but theoretically they had the
power to reject ; but they said the same as the Lords said in
1771, they could not alter or amend and yet be able to re
ject, and that, though theoretically right, inEugland it was
never enforced, and they came to the conclusion that if they