The rule was found to be inconvenient and was repealed in 1888. grants But the House will not proceed upon any Petition, Motion, Money or Bill, for granting any money or for releasing or compound- must origiing any sum of money owing to the Crown, except in a Com- nate in mittee of the whole House. This means that bills upon such subjects require to be founded upon Resolutions passed in Committee; but this subject of money bills must be dealt with later. Committee. Com The second matter is the creation in the year 1882 of two Standing standing Committees, one to deal with bills relating to law, mittees for the Courts of Justice, and legal procedure; the other with law, and bills relating to trade, shipping, and manufactures, if such bills should be committed to them by order of the House. This plan is a compromise between the occasional practice of committing bills to a select Committee of 15 members, and the general practice of considering them in Committee of the whole House. The Committee consists of not less than 60 or more than 80 members, and its consideration and report of bills is to be equivalent to a consideration and report by a Committee of the whole House. It was hoped that this arrangement would diminish the length and irrelevance of discussions upon public bills, especially public bills which might contain provisions of a technical character. The Standing Order by which these Committees were appointed was revived in 1888, and the subjects of Fishing and Agriculture were added to those assigned to the Committee on Trade. § 4. A Bill in the Lords. trade. After noting these possible variations in procedure, I will now resume the history of a bill at the point at which it is sent up to the House of Lords with a message that the Commons desire their concurrence. The bill is read a first Procedure time as soon as brought up: it then remains on the table of the House of Lords, and if twelve days pass while the House in the Lords. Disagree ment be Houses. is sitting, and no notice is given of the second reading of the bill, it ceases to appear on the minutes and is dropped for the Session. But if the bill is taken up by a member of the House, the procedure is in no way different from the procedure in the House of Commons. The bill may be accepted by the Lords without amendment, and then after the third reading it is not returned to the Commons, but a message is sent that the Lords have agreed to the said bill without any amendment. If, however, the Lords amend the bill they return it after the third reading with a message that they agree to the bill with amendments to which they desire the concurrence of the Commons, and endorsed with the words, A ceste bille avesque des amendemens les seigneurs sont assentus. The Commons may agree or disagree with the Lords' tween the amendments to their bill; whether they agree or disagree the bill is returned with a message to that effect; but if they agree the bill is endorsed with the words A ces amendemens les Communes sont assentus. Should there be disagreement and neither House be willing to accept the bill in the form which is satisfactory to the other, there are two modes by which the reasons of difference may be stated so as to bring about an agreement. One of these is a Conference, the other is a statement of reasons drawn up by a Committee of the dissentient House and sent to the other with the amended bill. A Conference. A Conference is a formal meeting of members appointed by their respective Houses; these members are called Managers. The Managers on behalf of the dissentient House are entrusted with the drafting of reasons for their disagreement, and with the task of reading and delivering them to the A free con- Managers of the other House. No argument is used or comment made unless the conference be a free conference, in which case each set of Managers endeavours by persuasion to convince the others or in some way to effect an agreement between the Houses. ference. Reasons assigned The ceremony of a conference is extremely formal: the Lords sit; the Commons stand: the Commons are bare confer ence. headed; the Lords, except when speaking, are only required in lieu of to take off their hats as they approach and leave their seats. Practically conferences are not resorted to at the present time. No free conference has been held since 1836, and in 1851 the Houses by resolutions agreed to receive reasons for disagreement or for insistance on amendments in the form of messages 1, unless a conference should be specially demanded by one or other House. tion: The way in which the Houses come to terms may be illus- Illustratrated by some entries from the Journals of 1881 respecting The Irish the Irish Land Act. The Lords sent back the bill to the Commons with amendments to which the Commons could not agree. It was thereupon Ordered That a Committee be appointed to draw up reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to the amendments made by their Lordships to the Bill':-and a committee was appointed consisting of Mr. Gladstone and others: and they are to withdraw immediately.' The Committee reported very shortly after, and it was Ordered That a message be sent to the Lords to communicate the said reasons (with the Bill and amendments): and that the Clerk do carry the same.' The Lords disagreed to the amendments of the Commons, and in like manner communicated their reasons for disagreement by message; and after further communications of this nature, 'A message was sent to the House of Commons by Sir William Rose, Clerk of the Parliaments': To acquaint them, "That the Lords agree to the amendments made by the Commons to the further amendments made by the Lords, and to the consequential amendments 1 Until 1855 it was customary that messages from the Lords should be conveyed to the Commons by Masters in Chancery, or, on special occasions, by Judges. Messages from the Commons were conveyed to the Lords by the Chairman of the Committees of Ways and Means, or the member in charge of the Bill with which the message was concerned. In 1855 it was agreed that one of the clerks of either House might be the bearer of such messages. May, Parl. Pract. (ed. 10), p. 412. Land Act, 1881. Differences made by the Commons to the said Bill, and do not insist upon their amendments to the said Bill to which the Commons have disagreed." The length to which the House of Lords may carry its which opposition to measures sent up from the House of Commons cannot be is a matter to be settled by practical sagacity rather than by settled by confer- convention. Rules of law clearly do not apply. The House of Lords is, for legislative purposes, co-ordinate with the House of Commons. ence. Settlement by com Dissolution; A bill passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords may relate to a subject in which the country, that is the electorate, takes no special interest; the House of Lords may then be considered free to exercise its critical faculties without regard to the wishes of any one outside its own body. On the other hand the Commons may assert that the bill which they send to the Lords is one on which the electorate has set its heart, and the Lords may maintain either that the country does not desire such legislation at all, or at any rate does not desire it in that particular form. The difficulty can only be settled in one of three ways, by a compromise if possible, or, if each House adheres to its promise; opinion, by a dissolution of Parliament or a creation of peers. A dissolution of Parliament would ascertain, if there was room for doubt, what was the opinion of the electorate. But if there should be no room for doubt, or if the opinion of the country should be expressed with clearness, a further resistance of the House of Lords can only be met by a creation of peers sufficiently numerous to affect the balance of power in the House. Creation of peers. The last creation of peers for such a purpose is almost contemporaneous with the last occasion of the refusal of the royal assent to a bill'. The last occasion when such a The creation of peers to secure the approval of the House for the Treaty of Utrecht was in 1712: the last refusal of the royal assent to a bill was in 1707. creation was seriously contemplated was in 1832, when But though we are told sometimes that the royal prerogative in the creation of the peers is a safeguard of the constitution and a means of harmonising the action of the two Houses, it seems plain enough that to introduce a number of persons into the House of Lords for the sole object of determining a vote on a particular occasion is a use of legal powers which nothing could justify but imminent risk, in the alternative, of public danger. We do not think well of the Tudor practice of harmonising the action of the Commons and the ministers of the Crown by the creation of boroughs intended to return nominees of the Court. It is not easy to distinguish the cases, or to approve of influencing either House, by additions made to its numbers, in order to secure submission to the wishes of the Crown or the ministers of the Crown. P. 345. limits of resistance. But the Reform Bill of 1832 was passed without the crea- Convention of a precedent for 'swamping' the House of Lords. And tion as to we may note that, since that date, a convention has grown up, more salutary in its operation than the exercise of the royal prerogative. In 1831 and 1832 the Peers did not only set themselves in opposition to the Commons but to the wishes of the electorate expressed clearly and emphatically at a general election held in 1831. To appreciate the significance of their action, we must remember :-that the first Parliament of William IV was dissolved in April 1831, because after the House of Commons had passed the Reform Bill introduced by the Ministry, on its second reading, by a majority of one vote, there were evident signs that the progress of the bill would be embarrassed and its character altered in Committee: that Not recog nised in 1832. |