ef title to their
favour was a pocketbook full of bank notes. But a great nobleman, who
had an estate of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds a year, and who
commanded two or three boroughs, would no longer be able to put his
younger son, his younger brother, his man of business, into Parliament,
or to earn a garter or a step in the peerage by finding a seat for a
Lord of the Treasury or an Attorney General. On this occasion therefore
the interest of the chiefs of the aristocracy, Norfolk and Somerset,
Newcastle and Bedford, Pembroke and Dorset, coincided with that of the
wealthy traders of the City and of the clever young aspirants of the
Temple, and was diametrically opposed to the interest of a squire of
a thousand or twelve hundred a year. On the day fixed for the second
reading the attendance of lords was great. Several petitions from
constituent bodies, which thought it hard that a new restriction should
be imposed on the exercise of the elective franchise, were presented and
read. After a debate of some hours the bill was rejected by sixty-two
votes to thirty-seven. [785] Only three days later, a strong party in
the Commons, burning with resentment, proposed to tack the bill which
the Peers had just rejected to the Land Tax Bill. This motion would
probably have been carried, had not Foley gone somewhat beyond the
duties of his place, and, under pretence of speaking to order, shown
that such a tack would be without a precedent in parliamentary history.
When the question was put, the Ayes raised so loud a cry that it was
believed that they were the majority; but on a division they proved
to be only a hundred and thirty-five. The Noes were a hundred and
sixty-three. [786]

Other parliamentary proceedings of this session deserve mention. While
the Commons were busily engaged in the great work of restoring the
finances, an incident took place which seemed, during a short time,
likely to be fatal to the infant liberty of the press, but which
eventually proved the means of confirming that liberty. Among the
many newspapers which had been established since the expiration of the
censorship, was one called the Flying Post. The editor, John Salisbury,
was the tool of a band of stockjobbers in the City, whose interest it
happened to be to cry down the public securities. He one day published a
false and malicious paragraph, evidently intended to throw suspicion on
the Exchequer Bills. On the credit of the Exchequer Bills depende