The committee had enumerated a large number of precedents (above thirty) in which, since that conference, the Lords had rejected such bills; but the cases were not in general exactly similar to that now under consideration, since the bills which they had rejected had commonly, if not in every case, been for the imposition and not for the repeal of a tax; and in most cases some question of national policy had been involved which had influenced their vote. But the view which Lord Palmerston pressed on the House was that the present was "a case in which party feelings ought to be cast aside. It was one in which higher and larger interests than those of party were concerned, and in which the course that the House now took would be a precedent to guide future Parliaments." He pointed out, moreover, that the smallness of the majority in the House of Commons had been to the Lords "some encouragement to take this particular step," and that "he was himself led to think that they had taken it, not from any intention to step out of their province, and to depart from the line of constitutional right which the history of the country has assigned them, but from motives of policy dependent on the circumstances of the moment; and therefore he thought it would be wise if the Commons forbore to enter into a conflict with the Lords on a ground which might really not exist, but satisfied themselves with a declaration of what were their own constitutional powers and privileges. It was of the utmost importance in a constitution like ours, where there are different branches, independent of each other, each with powers of its own, and where cordial and harmonious action is necessary, that care should be taken to avoid the commencement of an unnecessary quarrel, and the party that acted otherwise would incur a grave responsibility."
Mr. Gladstone, however, though he ended by expressing his concurrence in the resolution proposed by his chief, used very different language respecting the vote of the House of Lords, characterizing it as "a gigantic innovation, the most gigantic and the most dangerous that had been attempted in our time," since "the origination of a bill for the imposition of a tax, or the amendment of a money-bill, was a slight thing compared with the claim to prevent the repeal of a tax;" and, dealing with assertions which he had heard, that in this instance "the House of Commons had been very foolish and the House of Lords very wise," he asked whether that really described the constitution under which we live. The House of Commons could not be infallible in matters of finance more than in other matters. It might make errors, but he demanded to know whether those errors in finance were or were not liable to correction by the House of Lords. If they were, "what became of the privileges of the Commons?" On the other hand, Mr. Disraeli, as leader of the Opposition or Conservative party, supported the resolutions, and applauded the speech of the Prime-minister, as "a wise, calm, and ample declaration of a cabinet that had carefully and deliberately considered this important subject. It had acknowledged that the conduct of the Lords was justified by law and precedent, and sanctioned by policy," and he maintained that it showed that "the charge made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was utterly untenable, and had no foundation." And Mr. Horsman, taking a large general view of the legitimate working of the parliamentary constitution, argued that, while it was an undoubted rule that "all taxes should originate with the Commons, as that elective and more immediately responsible assembly that is constantly referred back to the constituencies, the reviewing power of a permanent and independent chamber was no less essential;" and that, considering that "the Reform Bill of 1832 had given a preponderance of powers to the Commons, and that the tendency of any farther Reform Act must be in the same direction, so far from narrowing the field of action for the peers, the wiser alternative might be to adopt a generous construction of their powers, with a view to preserving the equilibrium that is held to be essential to the safety and well-working of the constitution. The House of Commons," he concluded, "is perpetually assuming fresh powers and establishing new precedents. Virtually all bills now originate with the Commons; but this is not the consequence of any aggressive spirit in them, but is the necessary and inevitable result of the historic working of the constitution; and so this act of the Lords was but the natural working of the constitution to meet a definite emergency." The resolutions were passed, the first and third without a division; the second, to which an amendment had been proposed, designed to limit the force of the precedents alleged as justifying the act of the Lords, by a majority of nearly four hundred.[315] In their form and language the resolutions cannot be said to have greatly affected the power claimed by the Lords, and exercised by them in this instance. The first two were simply declaratory of acknowledged principles or facts, and the third intimated no desire to guard against anything but an undue exertion by the Lords of the right which they were admitted to possess. But it can hardly be doubted that the intention even of Lord Palmerston, dictated by the strong feeling which he perceived to prevail in the House of Commons on the subject, was to deter the Lords from any future exercise of their powers of review and rejection of measures relating to taxation, when, perhaps, the Commons might be under less prudent guidance; nor that the effect of the resolutions will correspond with the design rather than with the language of the mover, and will prevent the Lords, unless under the pressure of some overpowering necessity, from again interfering to control the Commons in such matters. At the same time it seems superfluous to point out that one claim advanced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was apparently carried beyond his usual discretion by his parental fondness for the rejected bill, is utterly unreconcileable with the maintenance of any constitution at all that can deserve the name. When there are three bodies so concerned in the legislation that the united consent of all is indispensable to give validity to any act, to claim for any one of them so paramount an authority that, even if it should adopt a manifestly mischievous course, neither of the others should have the right to control or check or correct the error, would be to make that body the irresponsible master of the whole government and nation; to invest it with that "overruling power" which Lord Palmerston with such force of reasoning had deprecated; and to substitute for that harmonious concert of all to which, in his view, the perfection of our liberties was owing, a submission to one, and that the one most liable to be acted upon by the violence or caprice of the populace. He was a wise man who said that he looked on the tyranny of one man as an evil, but on the tyranny of a thousand as a thousand times worse. And for this reason also the resolutions which were now adopted seem to have been conceived in a spirit of judicious moderation, since, while rendering it highly improbable that the Lords would again reject a measure relating to taxation, it avoided absolutely to extinguish their power to do so. Lord Palmerston, it may be thought, foresaw the possibility of an occasion arising when the notoriety that such a power still existed might serve as a check to prevent its exercise from being required. In the very case which had given rise to this discussion he regarded it as certain that the feeling of the majority of the nation approved of the action of the peers; and, as what had occurred once might occur again, it was certainly within the region of possibility that another such emergency might arise, when the Lords might interfere with salutary effect to save the country from the evil result of ill-considered legislation; finance being, above all others, the subject on which a rash or unscrupulous minister may find the greatest facility for exciting the people by plausible delusions. There is, moreover, another reason why it would not only be impolitic, but absolutely unfair, to deprive the Lords altogether of their power of rejection even in cases of taxation; namely, that the Commons, when imposing taxes, are taxing the Lords themselves, as well as the other classes of the community; while the Lords alone of the whole nation are absolutely unrepresented in the House of Commons. There is a frequent cry for a graduated income-tax; and surely if an unscrupulous demagogue in office were to contrive such a graduation as would subject a peer to three times the income-tax borne by a commoner, it would be a monstrous iniquity if the peers were to have no power of protecting themselves in their own House.