without amendment. In like manner, the financial propositions of government in each year from 1862 to the present time have all been included in one Bill.o And in 1869 ministers persisted in the same course of procedure, notwithstanding urgent representations by Opposition members that it would greatly facilitate the course of public business in the House of Commons if the financial resolutions of that year were embodied in two separate Bills.P Bills. We will now proceed to consider the subject of Money Money Bills, which are of three kinds, viz. Tax Bills, Bills of Supply, and Bills of Appropriation. All these Bills have a peculiar form of preamble, which intimates that the revenue or grant of money is the peculiar gift of the House of Commons, and such Bills are invariably presented for the royal assent by the Speaker of the House of Commons. Tax Bills, for raising revenues to be applied towards the services of the current year, are founded upon resolutions of the Committee of Ways and Means. In like manner, Bills of Supply, or rather of Ways and Means, authorising an advance out of the Consolidated Fund, or the issue of exchequer bills, towards making good supplies which have been voted by the House of Commons for the service of the year, emanate from the Committee of Ways and Means, in the way which has been already described." When the Committees of Supply and Ways and Means have finished their sittings, a Bill is introduced, which enumerates every grant that has been made Appropriduring the session, appropriates the several sums, as voted by the Committee of Supply, which shall be • Hans. D. v. 170, p. 851; v. 183, p. 1128; May, Parl. Prac. ed. 1883, p. 650. On May 17, 1866, Mr. Disraeli took occasion to reiterate his conviction that this course was attended with considerable inconveniences. * Hans. D. v. 189, p. 1310. ation Bill. Duty of the Speaker of supply. issued and applied to each separate service, and directs that the said supplies shall not be used for any other than the purposes mentioned in the said Act. This is known as the Consolidated Fund Bill, or, more generally, as the Appropriation Bill. By this Act, which completes the financial proceedings of the session, the supply votes, originally passed by the Commons only, receive full legislative sanction. The appropriation is always reserved for the end of the session, and it is irregular to introduce any clause of appropriation into a revenue or other Bill passing through Parliament at an earlier period; for the questions of ways and means and of appropriation should be kept perfectly distinct.* By constitutional practice, the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the guardian of its privileges, is required in matters to take oversight of the financial proceedings of the House during the session, and it is his duty to ascertain that every Bill for giving ways and means to the Treasury is kept within the amount of the votes in supply already granted. At the close of the session he checks the final balance between the full amount of the votes in supply and the ways and means previously authorised, and limits the final grant of ways and means in the Appropriation Act to that amount." ation Bills of Supply. Appropri- The constitutional rule, now so well understood and clauses in acknowledged, That the sums granted and appropriated by the Commons for any special service should be applied by the executive power only to defray the expense of that service,' although not wholly unrecognised in earlier times," was first distinctly enunciated and partially enforced soon after the Restoration. But it was not until the Revolution of 1688 that this great prin The Speaker, in Mir. of Parl. 1841, p. 931; and see Hans. D. v. 170, pp. 1897, 1914; and Earl Grey's Colonial Policy, v. 1, p. 421. But this was not formerly the case: see Parl. D. v. 9, p. 632. u Report on Pub. Moneys, Com. See Hargrave's Judicial Arguments, v. 1, pp. 397-402. ciple was finally established and incorporated into the system of parliamentary government. At this epoch Solicitor-General (afterwards Lord) Somers and Mr. Sacheverel, by special direction of the House of Commons, framed some appropriation clauses with great care, which were included in the statute 1 Wm. & Mary, s. 2, c. 1, and are given in full in Hatsell, vol. iii. Appendix, No. 15. These clauses were not for 6 mally repeated in subsequent Bills of Supply, but they the appro The modern form of the appropriation clause, after Form of enumerating the grants of the session, and applying priation them to their respective services, is as follows: That clause. the said aids and supplies shall not be issued or applied to any use, intent, or purpose, other than those before mentioned, or for the other payments, &c. directed to be satisfied by any Acts of Parliament, &c., of this session.' A clause of this description was invariably inserted in the annual Appropriation Acts up to the year 1869. 1869. On two occasions, in 1857 and in 1859, where two sessions were held in one year, it was 3 Hats. 202. y Ib. 206. Cases cited in Lord Monteagle's Report, Com. Pap. 1857, VOL. I. Sess. 2, v. 9, p. 567; and see Hans. 3 G Authority given to use sur pluses of army and navy grants to make good de ficiencies therein. omitted in the acts of the second session on technical grounds, arising from the fact of two parliaments being convened in each of those years. But, in point of fact, it has been authoritatively stated, that though, as a declaration of constitutional principle, the said clause might reasonably be inserted in any Appropriation Bill, yet that it was in point of law mere surplusage, because the government had no authority to appropriate those moneys to any other purposes than those for which Parliament had appropriated them." Accordingly, since 1870, the clause has been omitted; and the Act itself materially simplified and abbreviated. The Appropriation Act also contains a provision, that the expenditure for navy and army services shall be confined to those services respectively, but that 'if a necessity shall arise for incurring expenditure not provided for in the sums appropriated' for the said services, and which it may be detrimental to the public service to postpone until provision can be made for it by Parliament in the usual course,' application shall be made to the Treasury, who are empowered to authorise such additional expenditure to be temporarily defrayed out of any surpluses which may have accrued Subject to by the saving of expenditure upon any votes within the same departments; provided that the House of Commons shall be duly informed thereof, in order to make provision for such deficient expenditure as may be determined; and provided also, that the aggregate grants for the navy and army services shall not be exceeded.'a approval of the House of Commons. The manner in which the observance of the Appropriation Act is secured, and the circumstances under which any deviation from the strict rule of parliament z Mr. Gladstone, in Hans. D. v. 164, P. 1745. But the Treasury the expenditure. Ib. v. 204, p. 1669. a 37 & 38 Vict. c. 56, § 4; see further, post, vol. 2. Hans. D. v. 143, p. 563. to oppose the wishes of the sovereign and of the other House. The control of the public finances by the House of Commons is a constitutional right, and they are presumed to be the best judges of the financial condition of the state, its obligations and requirements. Nevertheless, every Bill to impose or repeal a tax involves other considerations besides those which are purely questions of revenue; it necessarily includes principles of public policy, or of commercial regulation, and on points of this kind the Lords, as a co-ordinate branch. of the legislature, are constitutionally free to act and advise as they may judge best for the public interests. It is true that the peculiar privileges of the Commons in regard to supply and taxation should ordinarily restrain the Lords from intermeddling with the details of financial schemes propounded by the government and agreed to by the popular branch, but circumstances may occur when the exercise by the House of Lords of their right to accept or reject any measure affecting the finances of the nation may be most beneficial to the interests of the community at large; and it would be unwarrantable to deny them the possession of this right because it might be expedient that it should be resorted to upon extraordinary occasions. case. duties case. The relations between the two Houses in matters of supply and Paper taxation will be further illustrated by a narrative of the paper duties We have already seen b that in the year 1858 the House of Commons, by the adoption of an abstract resolution, condemned the continuance of the paper duty as a permanent source of revenue. Accordingly, in 1860, a measure for the repeal of this impost was submitted by the chancellor of the exchequer in his budget, and in due course was sent up to the House of Lords in a separate Bill. The paper duty yielded a revenue of 1,300,000l. per annum, to make up for the loss of which it was proposed to add a penny in the pound to the income tax. This recommendation was agreed to by both Houses; but the Lords refused to concur in the remission of the paper duties, on the ground that the state of the public finances, and the condition of the country, then on the eve of war with China, b See ante, p. 716. |