e 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 mis