To this brief business succeeded the great debate of the session.  Let me endeavor, at the risk of being tedious, to explain the exact question before the House.  Mr. Gladstone, in his speech on the Budget, had pledged the Ministry to a considerable reduction of the taxes for the coming year.  In fulfilment of this pledge, it had been decided to remit the duty on paper, thereby abandoning about L1,500,000 of revenue.  A bill to carry this plan into effect passed to its second reading by a majority of fifty-three.  To defeat the measure the Opposition devoted all its energies, and with such success that the bill passed to its third reading by the greatly reduced majority of nine.  Emboldened by this almost victory, the Conservatives determined to give the measure its coup de grace in the House of Lords.  The Opposition leaders, Lord Derby, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Ellenborough, and others, attacked the bill, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, its acknowledged author, with as much bitterness and severity as are ever considered compatible with the dignified decorum of that aristocratic body; all the Conservative forces were rallied, and, what with the votes actually given and the proxies, the Opposition majority was immense.

Now all this was very easily and very quickly done.  The Conservatives were exultant, and even seemed sanguine enough to believe that the Ministry had received a fatal blow.  But they forgot, in the first flush of victory, that they were treading on dangerous ground,—­that they were meddling with what had been regarded for centuries as the exclusive privilege of the House of Commons.  English Parliamentary history teaches no clearer lesson than that the right to pass “Money Bills,” without interference from the House of Lords, has been claimed and exercised by the House of Commons for several generations.  The public was not slow to take the alarm.  To be sure, several causes conspired to lessen somewhat the popular indignation.  Among these were the inevitable expenses of the Chinese War, the certainty of an increased income tax, if the bill became a law, and the very small majority which the measure finally received in the House of Commons.

Nevertheless, the public mind was deeply moved.  The perils of such a precedent were evident enough to any thinking man.  Although the unwearied exertions of Bright, Roebuck, and other leading Radicals, could not arouse the people to that state of unreasoning excitement in which these demagogues delight, yet the tone of the press and the spirit of the public meetings gave proof that the importance of the crisis was not wholly underrated.  These meetings were frequent and largely attended; inflammatory speeches were made, strong resolutions passed, and many petitions numerously signed, protesting against the recent conduct of the Lords, were presented to the popular branch of Parliament.

In the House of Commons the action was prompt and decided.  A committee was immediately appointed to search for precedents, and ascertain if such a proceeding was justified by Parliamentary history.  The result of this investigation was anxiously awaited both by the Commons and the nation.  To the disappointment of everybody, the committee, after patient and protracted research, submitted a report, giving no opinion whatever on the question, but merely reciting all the precedents that bore on the subject.