both
parties thought it better to try the almost hopeless experiment of
committing the bill and sending it back amended to the Commons. The
second reading was carried by seventy votes to twenty-three. It was
remarked that both Portland and Albemarle voted in the majority.

In the Committee and on the third reading several amendments were
proposed and carried. Wharton, the boldest and most active of the Whig
peers, and the Lord Privy Seal Lonsdale, one of the most moderate and
reasonable of the Tories, took the lead, and were strenuously supported
by the Lord President Pembroke, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
seems on this occasion to have a little forgotten his habitual sobriety
and caution. Two natural sons of Charles the Second, Richmond and
Southampton, who had strong personal reasons for disliking resumption
bills, were zealous on the same side. No peer, however, as far as can
now be discovered, ventured to defend the way in which William had
disposed of his Irish domains. The provisions which annulled the grants
of those domains were left untouched. But the words of which the effect
was to vest in the parliamentary trustees property which had never
been forfeited to the King, and had never been given away by him, were
altered; and the clauses by which estates and sums of money were,
in defiance of constitutional principle and of immemorial practice,
bestowed on persons who were favourites of the Commons, were so far
modified as to be, in form, somewhat less exceptionable. The bill,
improved by these changes, was sent down by two judges to the Lower
House.

The Lower House was all in a flame. There was now no difference of
opinion there. Even those members who thought that the Resumption Bill
and the Land Tax Bill ought not to have been tacked together, yet felt
that, since those bills had been tacked together, it was impossible to
agree to the amendments made by the Lords without surrendering one
of the most precious privileges of the Commons. The amendments
were rejected without one dissentient voice. It was resolved that a
conference should be demanded; and the gentlemen who were to manage the
conference were instructed to say merely that the Upper House had no
right to alter a money bill; that the point had long been settled and
was too clear for argument; that they should leave the bill with the
Lords, and that they should leave with the Lords also the responsibility
of stopping the supplies which w