relating to supplies, to ratify the
determinations of the other; to submit implicitly to their dictates,
and receive their sovereign commands, without daring either to refuse
compliance, or delay it.

If we conjoin the reasoning of the noble lord who spoke last, with
that of one who spoke before in favour of the bill, we shall be able
to discover the full extent of our power on these occasions; the first
was pleased to inform us, that though we were at liberty to examine
the paragraphs of this bill, we had no right, at least no power to
amend them; because in money bills, the commons left us no other
choice than that of passing or rejecting them.

This, my lords, might have been thought a sufficient contraction of
those privileges which your ancestors transmitted to you, and the
commons needed to have desired no farther concessions from this
assembly, since this was a publick confession of a subordinate state,
and admitted either that part of our ancient rights had been given up,
or that we were at present too much depressed to dare to assert them.

We might, however, still comfort ourselves with the peaceful and
uncontested possession of the alternative; we might still believe that
what we could not approve we might reject, without irritating the
formidable commons. But now, my lords, a new doctrine has been vented
among us; we are told not only that we must not amend a money bill,
but that it will be to no purpose to reject it; for that the other
house will send it again without altering any thing but the title, and
force it upon us, when there is no time for any other expedient.

If this, my lords, should be done, I know not how the bill might, at
its second appearance, be received by other lords; for my part, I
should vote immediately for rejecting it, without any alleviating or
mollifying expedients. I should reject it, my lords, even on the last
day of the session, without any regard to the pretended necessity of
raising supplies, and without suffering myself to be terrified into
compliance by the danger of the house of Austria; for though I think
the balance of power on the continent necessary to be preserved at the
hazard of a fleet or an army, I cannot think it of equal importance to
us with the equipoise of our own government; nor can I conceive it my
duty to enslave myself to secure the freedom of another.

The danger, therefore, of disgusting the commons, at this or any other
juncture, shall never infl