scrutinised with extreme jealousy, and was thought by many, with very little reason, to have been framed for the purpose of extending the privileges, already invidiously great, of the nobility.  It appears, from the scanty and obscure fragments of the debates which have come down to us, that bitter reflections were thrown on the general conduct, both political and judicial, of the Peers.  Old Titus, though zealous for triennial parliaments, owned that he was not surprised at the ill humour which many gentlemen showed.  “It is true,” he said, “that we ought to be dissolved; but it is rather hard, I must own, that the Lords are to prescribe the time of our dissolution.  The Apostle Paul wished to be dissolved; but, I doubt, if his friends had set him a day, he would not have taken it kindly of them.”  The bill was rejected by a hundred and ninety-seven votes to a hundred and twenty-seven.501

The Place Bill, differing very little from the Place Bill which had been brought in twelve months before, passed easily through the Commons.  Most of the Tories supported it warmly; and the Whigs did not venture to oppose it.  It went up to the Lords, and soon came back completely changed.  As it had been originally drawn, it provided that no member of the House of Commons, elected after the first of January, 1694, should accept any place of profit under the Crown, on pain of forfeiting his seat, and of being incapable of sitting again in the same Parliament.  The Lords had added the words, “unless he be afterwards again chosen to serve in the same Parliament.”  These words, few as they were, sufficed to deprive the bill of nine tenths of its efficacy, both for good and for evil.  It was most desirable that the crowd of subordinate public functionaries should be kept out of the House of Commons.  It was most undesirable that the heads of the great executive departments should be kept out of that House.  The bill, as altered, left that House open both to those who ought and to those who ought not to have been admitted.  It very properly let in the Secretaries of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but it let in with them Commissioners of Wine Licenses and Commissioners of the Navy, Receivers, Surveyors, Storekeepers, Clerks of the Acts and Clerks of the Cheque, Clerks of the Green Cloth and Clerks of the Great Wardrobe.  So little did the Commons understand what they were about that, after framing a law, in one view most mischievous, and in another view most beneficial, they were perfectly willing that it should be transformed into a law quite harmless and almost useless.  They agreed to the amendment; and nothing was now wanting but the royal sanction.