general feeling was so clearly against them that they did not venture to divide.  It is probable, however, that the reasons urged by Caermarthen were not the reasons which chiefly swayed his hearers.  The Peers were fully determined that the bill should not pass without a clause altering the constitution of the Court of the Lord High Steward:  they knew that the Lower House was as fully determined not to pass such a clause; and they thought it better that what must happen at last should happen speedily, and without a quarrel.499

The fate of the Triennial Bill confounded all the calculations of the best informed politicians of that time, and may therefore well seem extraordinary to us.  During the recess, that bill had been described in numerous pamphlets, written for the most part by persons zealous for the Revolution and for popular principles of government, as the one thing needful, as the universal cure for the distempers of the State.  On the first, second and third readings in the House of Commons no division took place.  The Whigs were enthusiastic.  The Tories seemed to be acquiescent.  It was understood that the King, though he had used his Veto for the purpose of giving the Houses an opportunity of reconsidering the subject, had no intention of offering a pertinacious opposition to their wishes.  But Seymour, with a cunning which long experience had matured, after deferring the conflict to the last moment, snatched the victory from his adversaries, when they were most secure.  When the Speaker held up the bill in his hands, and put the question whether it should pass, the Noes were a hundred and forty-six, the Ayes only a hundred and thirty-six.500 Some eager Whigs flattered themselves that their defeat was the effect of a surprise, and might be retrieved.  Within three days, therefore, Monmouth, the most ardent and restless man in the whole party, brought into the Upper House a bill substantially the same with that which had so strangely miscarried in the Lower.  The Peers passed this bill very expeditiously, and sent it down to the Commons.  But in the Commons it found no favour.  Many members, who professed to wish that the duration of parliaments should be limited, resented the interference of the hereditary branch of the legislature in a matter which peculiarly concerned the elective branch.  The subject, they said, is one which especially belongs to us; we have considered it; we have come to a decision; and it is scarcely parliamentary, it is certainly most indelicate, in their Lordships, to call upon us to reverse that decision.  The question now is, not whether the duration of parliaments ought to be limited, but whether we ought to submit our judgment to the authority of the Peers, and to rescind, at their bidding, what we did only a fortnight ago.  The animosity with which the patrician order was regarded was inflamed by the arts and the eloquence of Seymour.  The bill contained a definition of the words, “to hold a Parliament.”  This definition was