er--Simon de
Montfort, Earl of Leicester--who called the House of Commons into
being in 1265; and it was the Lords as leaders who inaugurated the
Revolution of 1688, and established constitutional sovereignty under
William and Mary in the place of the despotic self-will of James II.
Again, it was Lord Derby, the Prime Minister, and Mr. Disraeli, later
known as Lord Beaconsfield, who, as leaders of the Tory, or
Conservative, Party, felt obliged to carry the Reform Bill of 1867, by
which the right to vote was greatly extended among the people (S600).

Seven hundred years ago the House of Lords was the only legislative
and executive body in the country; now, nearly all the most important
business of Parliament is done in the House of Commons (consisting of
some six hundred and seventy members), and the Lords cannot vote a
penny of money for any purpose whatever unless Commons first passes a
bill to that effect (S281). Thus taxation, which is generally
regarded as the most important of all measures, has passedf from the
Lords to the direct representatives of the people.

At one time certain impatient Radicals in the House of Commons
denounced the Peers as "titled obstructionists." In fact, late in the
nineteenth century (1894) a resolution to put an end to their
obstructive power was carried in the Commons (when half the members
were absent) by a majority of two. But the vote was not taken
seriously, and the Lords were not called upon to go out of business.
The upper House has continued, on occasion, to exercise its
constitutional righ of vetoing bills sent up to it by the House of
Commons, though since 1860 it has rejected but one "Money Bill"
(1909), and that only temporarily (SS629, 631).[1] Since then the
Liberal Party has demanded more strenuously than ever that the veto
power of the Lords should be either greatly limited or abolished
altogether (SS629, 632).

[1] As far back as 1671, the House of Commons resolved "that in all
aids given to the King by the Commons, the rate or tax ought not to be
altered by the Lords." In 1678 they emphatically repeated this
resolution. In 1860 when the Lords rejected a "Money Bill" (for the
repeal of paper duties) the Commons vigorously protested, declaring
that they regarded the exercise of that power by the upper House with
"particular jealousy." From that time the Commons were careful to
include all the financial measures of the year in one bill, which the
Lords "were forced