The House of Lords and taxation / by Ernest E. Williams.

  • Williams, Ernest Edwin.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The House of Lords and taxation / by Ernest E. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    not be supposed that since the solemn protest to the King in 1678 the Lords have accepted the Commons’ claim, merely endeavouring from time to time to push it back at one point or another without contesting its validity. That is not the case. They may, as they did in i860, receive silently a resolution of the Commons fulminating the old claim in the seventeenth century style, and acquiesce in the following year, for the sake of peace and patriotism, in what can only be described as legislation by a trick. I refer to the rejection by the Lords of the Paper Duties Bill, and the embodiment by the Commons in the following year of its proposals in a composite Finance Bill, which (as their predecessors did in 1678) the Lords passed en bloc rather than dislocate the national finances by raising a quarrel. But more recently the Lords, while permitting the Commons to have their own way in regard to the specific matter in hand, have at the same time placed on record their refusal to regard the claim of the Commons as the law of the Constitution. The Lords inserted a new clause into the Education Bill of 1891, and the Commons rejected it, on the ground that it “ might have the effect of increasing the Parliamentary grant, at present permitted by law, to certain of the schools associated under the provisions of the clause, and thus create a further charge upon the revenue.” The Lords submitted to the rejection of the clause, substituting another in its place, but, on the motion of the late Marquess of Salisbury, resolved :—“ That this House, in making the said amendment, makes no admission with respect to any deductions that may be made from the reasons offered by the House of Commons and does not consent that the said reasons should be hereafter drawn into a precedent.”1 We may now summarise our investigations and state the position which they disclose. It is this. In the early days of our Constitution the three estates of the realm—the Lords, the Commons, and the clergy—taxed themselves independently, yet there is unmistakable evidence that on those occasions when the different estates joined in a common grant of supplies, the Lords took a leading part in proposing the taxation, but that subsequently the Commons obtained the right themselves to initiate taxation proposals when such taxation affected their order. After the destruction of feudal tenure and the separate taxation of the nobility, the reason for excluding the Lords from equal participation in financial as in other legislation vanished. Owing, however, to the peculiar circumstances of the time—the truculently assertive period of the seventeenth century—the Commons, instead of abating their