There was naturally much irritation, more probably than is indicated by the divisions.  For the constituent bodies were generally delighted with the bill; and many members who disliked it were afraid to oppose it.  The House yielded to the pressure of public opinion, but not without a pang and a struggle.  The discussions in the committee seem to have been acrimonious.  Such sharp words passed between Seymour and one of the Whig members that it was necessary to put the Speaker in the chair and the mace on the table for the purpose of restoring order.  One amendment was made.  The respite which the Lords had granted to the existing Parliament was extended from the first of January to Lady Day, in order that there might be full time for another session.  The third reading was carried by two hundred votes to a hundred and sixty-one.  The Lords agreed to the bill as amended; and nothing was wanting but the royal assent.  Whether that assent would or would not be given was a question which remained in suspense till the last day of the session.378

One strange inconsistency in the conduct of the reformers of that generation deserves notice.  It never occurred to any one of those who were zealous for the Triennial Bill that every argument which could be urged in favour of that bill was an argument against the rules which had been framed in old times for the purpose of keeping parliamentary deliberations and divisions strictly secret.  It is quite natural that a government which withholds political privileges from the commonalty should withhold also political information.  But nothing can be more irrational than to give power, and not to give the knowledge without which there is the greatest risk that power will be abused.  What could be more absurd than to call constituent bodies frequently together that they might decide whether their representative had done his duty by them, and yet strictly to interdict them from learning, on trustworthy authority, what he had said or how he had voted?  The absurdity however appears to have passed altogether unchallenged.  It is highly probable that among the two hundred members of the House of Commons who voted for the third reading of the Triennial Bill there was not one who would have hesitated about sending to Newgate any person who had dared to publish a report of the debate on that bill, or a list of the Ayes and the Noes.  The truth is that the secrecy of parliamentary debates, a secrecy which would now be thought a grievance more intolerable than the Shipmoney or the Star Chamber, was then inseparably associated, even in the most honest and intelligent minds, with constitutional freedom.  A few old men still living could remember times when a gentleman who was known at Whitehall to have let fall a sharp word against a court favourite would have been brought before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower.  Those times were gone, never to return.  There was no longer any danger that the King would oppress the members of the legislature;