The House of Lords and taxation / by Ernest E. Williams.

  • Williams, Ernest Edwin.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The House of Lords and taxation / by Ernest E. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    even go further than the evidence at all warrants, and allow an assumption that without the assent of these popular representatives there would have been no taxation. Even so, we get not the remotest suggestion of the doctrine of the Commons’ privilege to exclude the Upper House from participation in determining the character and amount of taxation. Let us take a step forward in history—to the year 1341. There was war taxation in that year—a grant of ninths. It was made by Prelates, Earls, Barons, and Commons.1 Parliamentary institutions had by that time solidified, and the people, as distinct from the nobles and Church dignitaries, had their own official representation. But there is no trace of any claim by them of an exclusive right, as against the Lords, to determine the extent of the supplies to be granted. At times, indeed, they seem to have taxed themselves independently, just as the clergy did in their Convocation; but where the taxation had a national rather than a sectional character we soon find the two Houses joining in the grant. That there should have been any division is explained by the special taxation which always fell upon the Lords—the incidents of their knight service. When, because of national emergency, the Lords made grants over and above these services, they had a voice in the matter ; the Commons did not presume to tax them without their consent. It is true that the later history of the relations between the two Houses indicates an obscuring of the Lords’ right. I am not referring to the often- quoted dispute at the Parliament of Gloucester, in 1407, when the Commons objected to the Lords initiating certain taxation proposals, because it seems that the aids then proposed—a tenth and a half from the cities and boroughs, and a fifteenth and a half from the lay people—was an attempt by the Lords to propose taxation which was not of a universal character, but concerned the special taxation of other classes whom the Commons specifically represented. Further, the trouble in that case arose apparently from the manner, rather than the matter, of the Lords’ proceedings ; the amourpropre of the Commons was offended by the King consulting the Lords in the first instance concerning his financial requirements, and then summoning a deputation from the Commons to attend in the Lords’ Council Chamber to learn the result of the Lords’ deliberations. And in these days, be it remembered, the Commons could only tax themselves, not the Lords—an additional reason for claiming the right, as against the Lords, to initiate their own taxation. I am referring rather to later developments. Ignoring the reason why the proposals for taxation 1 Constitutional History of the House of Lords, p. 339.