A somewhat similar act had, as we have also seen, revived the
discussion a few years later, when the minister of the day had shown a
more temperate feeling on the subject. On neither occasion, however, had
the question of the privileges of the Lords been definitively settled;
and no occasion had since arisen for any consideration of the subject.
But the Budget of 1860 contained a clause which, in spite of the
deserved reputation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a skilful
financier, was not regarded with general favor. There was a large
deficiency in the revenue for the year; but while, among his expedients
for meeting it, Mr. Gladstone proposed an augmentation of the
income-tax, he proposed also to repeal the excise duty on paper, which
produced about a million and a quarter. It is now known that the
Prime-minister himself highly disapproved of the sacrifice at such a
time of so productive a tax.[314] And, if that had been suspected at the
time, the House of Commons would certainly not have consented to it;
even when the ministry was supposed to be unanimous in its approval of
it, it was only carried by a majority of nine; and, when the bill
embodying it came before the House of Lords, a Whig peer, who had
himself been formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne's
administration, moved its rejection, and it was rejected by a majority
of eighty-nine.
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