About a fortnight after, the Commons sent up a bill for securing the freedom of Parliaments, by limiting the number of Members in that House who should be allowed to possess employments under the crown.[23] Bills to the same effect, promoted by both parties, had, after making the like progress, been rejected in former Parliaments; the court and ministry, who will ever be against such a law, having usually a greater influence in the House of Lords, and so it happened now.  Although that influence were less, I am apt to think that such a law would be too thorough a reformation in one point, while we have so many corruptions in the rest; and perhaps the regulations, already made on that article, are sufficient, by which several employments incapacitate a man from being chosen a Member, and all of them bring it to a new election.[24]

[Footnote 23:  This self-denying ordinance easily passed through the House of Commons, where probably men were ashamed of opposing it; and in such a temper were the Peers, in whose House the ministry proposed to make the stand, that it was very likely to have passed there also.  But an amendment was ingeniously thrown in, to suspend the operation of the proposed Act until after the Queen’s death; so that it was evaded for the present, and never again revived. [S.] The Bill was rejected February 29th, 171-1/2. [W.S.J.]]

[Footnote 24:  P. Fitzgerald adds, “Neither do I believe any man who truly understands and loves our constitution will imagine that the prerogative hath not been sufficiently humbled within twenty years past.” [W.S.J.]]

For my own part, when I consider the temper of particular persons, and by what maxims they have acted (almost without exception) in their private capacities, I cannot conceive how such a bill should obtain a majority, unless every man expected to be one of the fifty, which, I think, was the limitation intended.

About the same time, likewise, the House of Commons advanced one considerable step towards securing us against farther impositions from our allies, resolving that the additional forces should be continued; but with a condition, that the Dutch should make good their proportion of three-fifths to two-fifths, which those confederates had so long, and in so great degree, neglected.  The Duke of Marlborough’s deduction of two and a half per cent., from the pay of the foreign troops, was also applied for carrying on the war.[25]

[Footnote 25:  In the “Journals of the House of Commons,” vol. xvii., pp. 15-18, the Report of the Commissioners is printed, in which is included the Duke’s justification of his conduct.  See above, p. 85. [N.]]