The fight was protracted by the obstinacy and dexterity of the Old Company and its friends from the first week of May to the last week in June.  It seems that many even of Montague’s followers doubted whether the promised two millions would be forthcoming.  His enemies confidently predicted that the General Society would be as complete a failure as the Land Bank had been in the year before the last, and that he would in the autumn find himself in charge of an empty exchequer.  His activity and eloquence, however, prevailed.  On the twenty-sixth of June, after many laborious sittings, the question was put that this Bill do pass, and was carried by one hundred and fifteen votes to seventy-eight.  In the upper House, the conflict was short and sharp.  Some peers declared that, in their opinion, the subscription to the proposed loan, far from amounting to the two millions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected, would fall far short of one million.  Others, with much reason, complained that a law of such grave importance should have been sent up to them in such a shape that they must either take the whole or throw out the whole.  The privilege of the Commons with respect to money bills had of late been grossly abused.  The Bank had been created by one money bill; this General Society was to be created by another money bill.  Such a bill the Lords could not amend; they might indeed reject it; but to reject it was to shake the foundations of public credit and to leave the kingdom defenceless.  Thus one branch of the legislature was systematically put under duress by the other, and seemed likely to be reduced to utter insignificance.  It was better that the government should be once pinched for money than that the House of Peers should cease to be part of the Constitution.  So strong was this feeling that the Bill was carried only by sixty-five to forty-eight.  It received the royal sanction on the fifth of July.  The King then spoke from the throne.  This was the first occasion on which a King of England had spoken to a Parliament of which the existence was about to be terminated, not by his own act, but by the act of the law.  He could not, he said, take leave of the Lords and Gentlemen before him without publicly acknowledging the great things which they had done for his dignity and for the welfare of the nation.  He recounted the chief services which they had, during three eventful sessions, rendered to the country.  “These things will,” he said, “give a lasting reputation to this Parliament, and will be a subject of emulation to Parliaments which shall come after.”  The Houses were then prorogued.