moved the order of the day for the farther consideration of the report of the committee on the amendments of the lords in the volunteer consolidation bill, and stated it as the opinion of the committee, that the amendments made by the lords had a tendency rather to carry into execution the measure that had been proposed by the house, than to introduce any thing new into the bill.

rose, and observed, that if he understood properly the forms of the house, the further consideration of this bill ought to be put off altogether. By some accident or oversight, the committee to whose consideration it had been submitted, had not taken notice of one clause, which he thought of material consequence, as having been altered in the House of Lords. The act, as it originally passed the House of Commons, contained the exemptions to certain persons from various taxes, such as turnpikes, hair-powder, &c. down to the 5th of May, which date the Lords had thought proper to alter to the 1st of June. This, he thought, was an improper alteration, and could not be acquiesced in by the Commons, by its containing an exemption in a money clause, beyond the day originally appointed in the bill. He proposed to reject this amendment entirely, and to leave the original date, the 5th of May, in order to act up to the old established rules and practice of parliament. He conceived, that there could be no doubt as to this point, as there were numerous precedents of such amendments made by the Lords upon bills, which were uniformly rejected by the House of Commons. Some people might imagine, that because he was no great friend to the volunteer system in general, that he wished, by stating his sentiments upon this point, to throw obstacles in the way of the further progress of the bill. He, however, had no such object in view, though it was, indeed, probable, that some of the clauses which had been objected to by a minority, might, upon re-consideration, be now disapproved of by a majority. The bill ought, in the present instance, to be viewed as a money bill, and therefore ought to be thrown out. Whatever might be the plan pursued by the house on this occasion, he begged that its well-known privileges might not be viewed as a matter of indifference.

said, that the question now before the house was what was really consistent with their privileges; and what was, in the present case, most expedient or convenient to be done. He apprehended that there was nothing in the amendment alluded to, which was inconsistent with the privileges of the house. The House of Commons had not been in the habit of rejecting any amendment made by the Lords, which had a tendency to carry into effect the avowed object of any clause. A return was intended to take place as soon as possible after the passing of the law, but the execution of the act had been rendered impracticable upon so early a day as the 5th of May. The lords, therefore, seeing, that for obvious reasons, the object in view by the Commons could not be obtained at such a period, had only proposed to substitute another. If it was judged necessary, in order to attend particularly to the privileges of the house, the amendment of the Lords might be still further amended, and the 1st of July inserted instead of the 1st of June. To throw out the bill was unnecessary, as the opinions of the house were already generally fixed on this subject, and any delay must be attended with inconvenience, as some of the provisions made by the bill become every day more necessary. The amendments would be considered, and if any deficiency still existed, a supplementary bill might be afterwards introduced.

said, he did not find himself disposed to agree to the plan of passing a supplementary bill, upon the present occasion. It was not a mere matter of convenience that the house were discussing; the question before them was, whether that amendment was or was not of a nature which immediately and materially entrenched upon their privileges? The clause amended by the lords, called upon the house for an assertion and indication of their established and important privileges, which on similar occasions, they had been in the habit of recurring to; he meant the mode so usually resorted to, of deferring the consideration of such amendments to any time they might think fit; not that such a plan had been found to be the most practicable or convenient, but because the House of Commons had found it so essential to maintain their privileges untouched, that they looked alone to their preservation, and he trusted that they would always be justly tenacious of them. It was a manifest encroachment, to say, that persons shall be exempted from certain taxes up to the 1st of June, instead of the 5th of May only; and the idea of prolonging that time still further, by substituting the 5th of July, would have a similar effect, and a supplementary bill would not cure the evil complained of. He could not help thinking, that any delay occasioned by adopting a different plan, and rejecting the clause, would not be a matter much to be lamented. He had all along wished to have a great proportion of the persons composing volunteer corps trained as a regular force, capable of acting with our regular army.

said, that as a member of the committee, to whom the bill before the house had been referred, he could not help stating the reasons which had induced them to overlook, in their report, the clause in question. The committee had considered the nature of the amendment thereby made, and they had not thought it requisite to propose any alteration. He apprehended that the point had not been very accurately stated by the two hon. gentlemen who had objected to the amendment. The question was not about the exemption, but about the time of making the return. The bill, after repealing the former laws, proceeds to state, that persons entitled to the exemptions therein contained, shall enjoy them till the house had fixed some particular day on which returns were to be made by commanding officers. The 5th of May becoming impracticable, the house must of necessity have adopted another day; and the next day mentioned was the 1st of June, when it became possible to make a return by the present bill. Various precedents might be stated in support of such amendments. In tax bills, when the day which the Commons had fixed for the commencement of exaction had absolutely elapsed during the passing of such bills, the House of Lords have always mentioned another day, which has been uniformly acquiesced in. The principle, therefore, as far as privilege was concerned, was precisely the same in those as in the present instance. Such were the motives which induced the committee above stairs not to object to such an amendment by the Lords, and he hoped that the similar views of the question would prevail on the house not to look upon that amendment as any encroachment on their privileges.

said, that the hon. gent. who spoke last, seemed to him to carry the principle a great deal further than what the house were bound to admit. It might happen that bona fide a tax granted by the Commons from a certain time, might be altered, as to the dates by the Lords so as to prove a furtherance of the original design; but it was different in the present case. It was quite inconsistent with the privileges of the house to trust the furtherance of their objects to any other house than their own.

said, he thought it his duty to state the information he had collected on the subject from the journals of the house. In some cases, the house had rejected the bill altogether; but in others, which were more numerous, they had altered the clause. The Speaker, here went into the detail of a variety of cases illustrative of both sides of the argument, which he had collected from the records of the house, in order that members might make what use of them they pleased in discussing the present question.

was of opinion, that no precise principle was laid down by the house, but that every man was left at liberty to reason according to his feelings. Had the house of lords fixed no day, he admitted that the day fixed by the Commons would have been impossible as the bill now stood. But, at the same time, there was some danger that they might go on from relaxation to relaxation, till that privilege of which they had been always so jealous should be lost. He admitted it to be a matter of form rather than of substance, but forms, he contended, were necessary; and, as the whole was a matter of form, a few days later would be of very little consequence.

was surprized at some observations that had fallen from a right hon. gent. opposite (Mr. Bragge Bathurst.) If there were any instances in which alterations had been made in the dates of tax bills, the house must have been taken by surprize, and he did not think the committee would wish to be vindicated on this principle. Suppose the Lords had made no alteration in the date, then the 1st of August would have been the period, as the returns in May have already been made. The admission of a right on the part of the Lords, he contended, was an encroachment on the privileges of the house.

explained, by observing, that in the sentiments he had expressed, he was borne out by the precedents given from the chair.

saw no cause whatever for rejecting the clause or the amendment made in it by the Lords, as in his judgment the amendment did in no degree whatever trench on the privileges of that house, but was obviously adopted by the Lords in furtherance of that which was the undoubted intention of the House of Commons, namely, to prevent any fraudulent exemptions from being pleaded under the volunteer bill, to which, without this amendment, a wide door would have been left open until the 1st of Aug. next. The house would at all times have the right and the opportunity of vindicating and asserting its privileges, without unnecessarily at this moment seizing the opportunity of a weak and trivial question, and thereby materially to embarrass the public service.

differed with the noble lord's opinion, that the House of Commons would at all times have the power of asserting and vindicating its own privileges. In order that it might best maintain them, it would not be right to establish a precedent against those privileges, by giving way, even in the most trivial instance, to any authority, however lightly assumed by another house of parliament, to interfere with that which this house had ever considered and maintained to be its sole and exclusive right. The noble lord had endeavoured in this case to defend the amendment, by stating, it was made by the Lords in furtherance of the intentions of this house. Such language and such an argument he held to be most dangerous and deceptions; for, if once such a pretence was admitted, be should be glad to know in what bill it was, that the Lords might not plead a similar privilege, to overturn every right of that house, under the assumed pretence of furthering its intentions. They might thus amend every money bill sent up by this house, and overturn every privilege of the purse, which this house had hitherto maintained with the most scrupulous jealousy. He could see no inconvenience whatever likely to arise from the rejection of the amendment, and letting the clause stand as it originally did, the 5th of May; more especially as the right hon. gent. (Mr. Pitt) had proposed to introduce speedily a short supplementary act, in which this, amongst other defects of the bill, might be remedied; and as such a remedy was so near, he saw no reason why it should not be adopted.

said a few words in support of the privileges of the house.—The question was put, that the amendments be read a second time, and agreed to.—When the clerk came to read the clause just now debated,

expressed his hope, that, from what had passed, the house would feel the necessity of rejecting the amendment he had mentioned. The whole of the cases, so ably stated from the chair, were, in his mind, decidedly in favour of the rejection; and more especially the case of the militia bill, in the year 1757, when the House of Lords thought proper to diminish, by amendment, the number of the militia voted by the Commons, and also the sum of money voted as the supply for the original number. The House of Commons, in that case, did not act merely by rejecting the amendment made by the Lords, but they maintained their own dignity, and vindicated their privileges with becoming spirit, by rejecting the bill altogether, and then introducing a new bill. But, as had been fairly and ably argued by his hon. friend near him (Mr. Grey), the most dangerous of all arguments upon which a justification could be attempted for such an amendment, on the part of the Lords, was that urged by the noble Lord (Castlereagh), that it was done in furtherance of the intensions of this house. For once only admit that, and the business of exclusive control on the public purse would be at an end, and the privilege of taxation completely transposed to the House of Lords, who would then be perfectly at liberty to make what alterations they pleased in the date of commencing, or the period of terminating a tax. Gentlemen had quoted precedents, to shew that similar things had been done; but those precedents were of very modern date, all within the last nine or ten years. But why not act by ancient precedents in those times when the house had shewn a most scrupulous and dignified jealousy and vigilance towards its privileges? In the course of this debate, a right hon. gent. (Mr. B. Bathurst), an experienced member of parliament, and one who had himself for a considerable time presided in the chair of the committees of ways and means in that house, had asserted, as a precedent, that the Lords actually had altered the date of commencement in a tax bill, and that the amendment had been adopted by this house, without any objection. If there was any such precedent that could by possibility have escaped the vigilance of this house, he wished it now to be read, as the house could not be taught to reflect too strongly upon a circumstance so truly reproachful, to a negligence and inadvertency of which it ought to be so much ashamed. But if such precedents were once admitted to have any authority, this house might as well give up the business of taxation at once, and abandon its claims of privilege as idle matter of form, and take its remedy in a mere rejection of amendments in money bills, as well as in all possible cases in which it has the same power of disagreement from the amendments of the Lords.

felt it unnecessary again to go over the ground he had already argued. He must be widely misunderstood by any gent. who supposed him to argue generally that a view of acting in furtherance to the wishes of that house would, in all cases, justify the alterations made by the other house of parliament in bills sent up by this house, money bills as well as others. He used the argument specifically, and in relation only to the precise case before the house and cases of a similar kind, and by no means in relation to money bills, or any other, wherein an amendment could be even for a moment supposed to compromise a title of the privileges of this house. But the principle did not hold fastidiously to every possible alteration that might be made even in a money bill, but applied only to such cases as those where the obvious intentions of the house of commons were contravened. But, conceiving the amendment in the present case to have been made purely with the intention of furthering the objects of this house, and not of contravening any of its objects or privileges, he felt no necessity whatever of rejecting the amendment, so far as leaving out the words "5th of May," with a view, however, to amend the date adopted by the Lords, to the 1st of July, which he moved, and which was agreed to.

rose, and alluded to certain clauses in the bill respecting masters and servants, inserted originally at his instance, but omitted by the Lords. He wished, however, to know, if it was the intention of his Majesty's ministers to revive any clause upon this subject, because if not, be should feel it his duty to make a specific motion for enquiry in that house, respecting the conduct of the Lord Advocate of Scotland, which, if he were correctly informed, had been extremely oppressive, unjust, and illegal.

requested the hon. member to state the circumstance to which he allauded.

said, that he had a letter in his pocket from the shire of Bamff, in Scotland, stating, that a respectable man there, named Morrison, had a servant, who, without his permission, or at all consulting him, had catered into a volunteer corps. Mr. Morrison had in consequence discharged the man from his service. The man applied to the Lord Advocate, to know what legal redress he had against his master; and though the Lord Advocate gave it as his answer, that the servant had no legal redress, yet he wrote to the deputy sheriff of Bamff, stating that Mr. Morrison's conduct proceeded from disloyal and disaffected principles; enjoined him, as far as lay in his power, to prevent the people of Bamff from holding any intercourse with Mr. Morrison; instructing him, that if an enemy should land in that part of the country, to make Morrison a close prisoner, and adding, that if, in the event of an enemy landing, any part of Morrison's property should be destroyed, either by the enemy or the King's troops, to keep it out of the enemy's hand, he would take care Morrison should have no compensation. This was, he apprehended, illegal, and deserved the animadversion of the house.—No reply was made to this statement.

The remaining amendments were received, and some rejected; after which a committee of inquiry was appointed to explain to a committee of the Lords, the reasons for rejecting certain amendments.