and punishing the Commons had never, that he knew of, thought of denying to the Lords.  It was something more than a century ago that the Commons had voted the Lords a useless body.  They had now voted themselves so.”  And it would seem that the Lords themselves, to a certain extent, retracted this, their self-denying vote, when, before the end of the same session, they discussed Burke’s Bill for Economical Reform, and passed it, though it was a money-bill, “containing extraneous enactments,” and as such contravened one of their own standing orders which had been passed in the beginning of Queen Anne’s reign, when the system of “tacking,” as it was called, had excited great discontent, which was not confined to themselves.  The propriety of rejecting the bill on that ground was vigorously urged by the only two lawyers who took part in the debate, the Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, and Lord Loughborough, whose object was avowedly thus to give a practical proof that the Lords “had not voted themselves useless.”  But even those who disregarded their advice fully asserted the right of the peers “to exercise their discretion as legislators.”  We have noticed this matter on a previous occasion.  The privilege claimed by the Commons, both as to its origin and its principle, has been carefully examined by Hallam, who has pointed out that in its full exclusiveness it is not older than Charles II., since the Convention Parliament of 1660 “made several alterations in undoubted money-bills, to which the Commons did not object."[69] And, though his attachment to Whig principles might have inclined him to take their part in any dispute on the subject, he nevertheless thinks that they have strained both “precedent and constitutional analogy” in their assertion of this privilege, which is “an anomaly that can hardly rest on any other ground of defence than such a series of precedents as establish a constitutional usage.”  The usage which for two centuries was established in this case by the good-sense of both parties clearly was, that the Lords could never originate a money-bill, nor insert any clause in one increasing or even altering the burden laid by one on the people, but that they were within their right in absolutely rejecting one.  But such a right has a tendency to lapse through defect of exercise; and we shall hereafter see that “the disposition to make encroachments,” which in this matter Hallam imputes to the Commons, has led them in the present reign to carry their pretensions to a height which at a former period had been practically ignored by the one House, and formally disclaimed by the other.