overnment made another change of a different kind, and for which
there was better political justification. They passed a measure altering
the period of the duration of parliaments. At this time the limit of the
existence of a parliament was three years. An Act was passed in 1641
directing that Parliament should meet once at least in every three years.
This Act was repealed in 1664. Another, and a different kind of
Triennial Parliament Bill, passed in 1694. This Act declared that no
parliament should last for a longer period than three years. But the
system of short parliaments had not apparently been found to work with
much satisfaction. The impression that a House of Commons with so
limited a period of life before it would be more anxious to conciliate
the confidence and respect of the constituencies had not been justified
in practice. Indeed, the constituencies themselves at that time were not
sufficiently awake to the meaning and the value of Parliamentary
representation to think of keeping any effective control over those whom
they sent to speak for them in Parliament. Bribery and corruption were
as rife and as extravagant under the triennial system as ever they had
been before, or as they ever were since. But no doubt the immediate
object of repealing the Triennial Bill was to obtain a better chance for
the new condition of things by giving it a certain time to work in
security. If the new dynasty was to have any chance of success at all,
it was necessary that ministers should not have to come almost
immediately before the country again.

Shippen in the Commons and Atterbury in the Lords {146} were among the
most strenuous opponents of the new measure. Both staunch Jacobites,
they had everything to gain just then by frequent appeals to the country.
Shippen urged that it was unconstitutional in a Parliament elected for
three years to elect itself for seven years without an appeal to the
constituencies. Steele defended the Bill on the ground that all the
mischiefs which could be brought under the Septennial Act could be
perpetrated under the Triennial, but that the good which might be
compassed under the Septennial could not be hoped for under the
Triennial. Not a few persons in both Houses seemed to be of one mind
with the bewildered Bishop of London, who declared that he did not know
which way to vote, for "he was confounded between dangers and
inconveniences on one side and destruction on the other."