ny (p. 107)
legislative proposal embodied in a public bill and imposing a charge
on the people, whether by taxes, rates, or otherwise, or regulating
the administration or application of money raised by such a charge,
and (2) the Lords ought not to amend any such legislative proposal by
altering the amount of a charge, or its incidence, duration, mode of
assessment, levy or collection, or the administration or application
of money raised by such a charge.[152] These rules, although not
embodied in any law or standing order, were through centuries so
generally observed in the usage of the two houses that they became for
all practical purposes, a part of the constitutional system--conventional,
it is true, but none the less binding. From their observance it
resulted (1) that the upper chamber was never consulted about the
annual estimates, about the amounts of money to be raised, or about
the purposes to which those amounts should be appropriated; (2) that
proposals of taxation came before it only in matured form and under
circumstances which discouraged criticism; and (3) that, since the
policy of the executive is controlled largely through the medium of
the power of the purse, the upper house lost entirely the means of
exercising such control. In 1860 the Lords, as has been mentioned,
made bold to reject a bill for the repeal of the duties on paper; but
the occasion was seized by the Commons to pass a resolution
reaffirming vigorously the subordination of the second chamber in
finance, and the next year the repeal of the paper duties was
incorporated in the annual budget and forced through. Thereafter it
became the invariable practice to give place to all proposals of
taxation in the one grand Finance Bill of the year, with the effect,
of course, of depriving the Lords of the opportunity to defeat a
proposal of the kind save by rejecting the whole of the measure of
which it formed a part.[153]

[Footnote 152: Ilbert, Parliament, 205.]

[Footnote 153: It was in pursuance of this policy
that Sir William Vernon-Harcourt incorporated in
the Finance Bill of 1894, extensive changes in the
death duties and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in 1899,
included proposals for altering the permanent
provisions made for the reduction of the national
debt.]

*112. The Finance Bill of 190