[29] Generally speaking, the two Houses agreed in
their support of the ministerial policy both at home and abroad; but, in
spite of this political harmony, a certain degree of bad feeling existed
between them, which on one occasion led to a somewhat singular scene in
the House of Commons. The Commons imputed its origin to the discourtesy
of the Lords, who, when members of the Commons were ordered by their
House to carry its bills up to the peers, sometimes kept them "waiting
three hours in the lobby among their lordships' footmen before they
admitted them." Burke affirmed that this had happened to himself, and
that he "spoke of it, not out of any personal pride, nor as an indignity
to himself, but as a flagrant disgrace to the House of Commons, which,
he apprehended, was not inferior in rank to any other branch of the
Legislature, but co-ordinate with them." And the irritation which such
treatment excited led the Commons, perhaps not very unnaturally, to seek
some opportunity to vindicate their dignity. They found it in an
amendment which the Lords made on a corn bill. In the middle of April,
1772, resolutions had been passed by the Commons, in a committee of the
whole House, imposing certain duties on the importation of wheat[30] and
other grain when they were at a certain price, which was fixed at 48s.
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