appreciation of the vast importance of measures of national defence by the vigor with which he carried out the recommendations of a royal commission which had been appointed by the preceding ministry to investigate the condition of our national defences. Its report had pointed out the absolute necessity of an improved system of protection for our great dockyards and arsenals, which, from their position on the coast, were more liable to attack than inland fortresses would have been, had we had such. And, in accordance with that warning, in the summer of 1860, Lord Palmerston proposed the grant of a large sum of money for the fortification of our chief dockyards. It was opposed on a strange variety of grounds; some arguing that the proposed fortifications were superfluous, because our navy was the defence to which the nation was wont deservedly to trust; some that they were needless, because no other nation was in a condition to attack us; others that they were disgraceful, because it was un-English and mean to skulk behind stone walls, and because Lycurgus had refused to trust to stone walls for the safety of Sparta; and one member, the chief spokesman of a new and small party, commonly known as the 'peace-at-any-price party,' boldly denounced the members of the commission as a set of 'lunatics' for framing such a report, and the ministers as guilty of 'contemptible cowardice' for suggesting to the nation that there was any danger in being undefended. But the ministry prevailed by a large majority;[310] the money was voted, and the nation in general warmly approved of the measure. As Lord Palmerston subsequently expressed it, 'the government, the Parliament, and the nation acted in harmonious concert'[311] on the subject.
One of the arguments against it which the objectors had brought forward was, that the ministry was not unanimous in the conviction of the necessity; and we learn from the 'Life of the Prince Consort'[312] that Mr. Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was vehement in his resistance to it, threatening even to carry his opposition so far as to resign his office, if it were persevered in. And, as has been intimated on a previous page, this was not the only question on which in the course of this year the Prime-minister did in his heart differ from his Chancellor of the Exchequer, though he did not think it expedient to refuse his sanction to his proposals on a matter belonging to his own department, the Exchequer. The subject on which he secretly doubted his colleague's judgment was one of the proposals made in the Budget of the year. As has already been mentioned, the transaction throws a rather curious light on the occasional working of our ministerial system; and the fate of the measure in the two Houses of Parliament is also deserving of remark and recollection, as re-opening the question, which had not been agitated for nearly a century, as to the extent of the power of the House of Lords with respect to votes of money. In a former chapter[313] we have had occasion to mention the angry feeling on the part of the House of Commons which, in the year 1772, had been evoked by the act of the House of Lords, in making some amendments on a bill relating to the exportation of corn which had come up to them from the Commons. A somewhat similar act had, as we have also seen, revived the discussion a few years later, when the minister of the day had shown a more temperate feeling on the subject. On neither occasion, however, had the question of the privileges of the Lords been definitively settled; and no occasion had since arisen for any consideration of the subject. But the Budget of 1860 contained a clause which, in spite of the deserved reputation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a skilful financier, was not regarded with general favor. There was a large deficiency in the revenue for the year; but while, among his expedients for meeting it, Mr. Gladstone proposed an augmentation of the income-tax, he proposed also to repeal the excise duty on paper, which produced about a million and a quarter. It is now known that the Prime-minister himself highly disapproved of the sacrifice at such a time of so productive a tax.[314] And, if that had been suspected at the time, the House of Commons would certainly not have consented to it; even when the ministry was supposed to be unanimous in its approval of it, it was only carried by a majority of nine; and, when the bill embodying it came before the House of Lords, a Whig peer, who had himself been formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne's administration, moved its rejection, and it was rejected by a majority of eighty- nine.
The rejection of a measure relating to taxation caused great excitement among a large party in the House of Commons-so violent, indeed, that the only expedient that presented itself to the Prime-minister, if he would prevent the proposal of some step of an extreme and mischievous character, was to take the matter into his own hands. Had he been able to act entirely on his own judgment, it may, perhaps, be thought that, with his sentiments on the inexpediency of the measure which had been rejected, he would have preferred a silent acquiescence in the vote of the Lords; but he would have been quite unable to induce the majority of his own supporters, and even some of his own colleagues, to adopt so moderate a course; and accordingly he moved the appointment of a committee to examine and report on the practice of Parliament in regard to bills for imposing or repealing taxes. And when it had made its report, which was purely of an historical character, setting forth the precedents bearing on the subject, he proposed three resolutions, asserting 'that the right of granting aids and supplies to the crown is in the Commons alone, as an essential part of their constitution, etc.; that, although the Lords had exercised the power of rejecting bills of several descriptions relating to taxation by negativing the whole, yet the exercise of that power by them had not been frequent, and was justly regarded by the Commons with peculiar jealousy, as affecting their rights, etc.; and that, to guard for the future against an undue exercise of that power by the Lords, and to secure to the Commons their rightful control over taxation and supply, the Commons had it in their power so to impose and remit taxes, and to frame bills of supply, that their right, etc., might be maintained inviolate.'
In the debate which ensued his chief opponents came from his own party, and even his own colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, displayed a fundamental difference of feeling from his on the subject, a difference which was expressed by one of the most eloquent supporters of the resolutions, Mr. Horsman, M.P. for Stroud, saying that 'Lord Palmerston wished to make the independence of the House of Lords a reality, while Mr. Gladstone seemed to desire that it should be a fiction.' Lord Palmerston, indeed, showed the feeling thus attributed to him in a statesman-like declaration that, if 'this nation had enjoyed a greater amount of civil, political, social, and religious liberty than, as he believed, any other people in the world, that result had been accomplished, not by vesting in either of the three estates, the Crown, the Lords, or the Commons, exclusive or overruling power over the others, but by maintaining for each its own separate and independent authority, and also by the three powers combining together to bear and forbear, endeavoring by harmonious concert with each other to avoid those conflicts and clashings which must have arisen if independent authority and independent action had been exerted by each or by all.' He entered into the history of the question, explaining that, though 'each branch of the Legislature retained its respective power of rejecting any measure, the Commons had claimed from time immemorial particular privileges in regard to particular measures, and especially the exclusive right of determining matters connected with the taxation of the people. They claimed for themselves, and denied to the Lords, the right of originating, altering, or amending such measures; but, as long ago as 1671, the Attorney-general, in a memorable conference between the two Houses, had admitted that the Lords, though they could not originate or amend, had, nevertheless, power to reject money-bills;' and this admission he regarded as consistent with common-sense, for 'it was well known that, though the Commons contended for the right of originating measures for the grant of supply, and of framing bills with that object, according to their belief of what was best for the public interest, yet such bills could not pass into law without the assent of the Lords; and it was clear that an authority whose assent was necessary to give a proposal the force of law, must, by the very nature of things, be at liberty to dissent and refuse its sanction.'
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,
