which it is known that we have strong objections, that bill is to
be tacked to a bill of supply. If we alter it, we are told that
we are attacking the most sacred privilege of the representatives
of the people, and that we must either take the whole or reject
the whole. If we reject the whole, public credit is shaken; the
Royal Exchange is in confusion; the Bank stops payment; the army
is disbanded; the fleet is in mutiny; the island is left, without
one regiment, without one frigate, at the mercy of every enemy.
The danger of throwing out a bill of supply is doubtless great.
Yet it may on the whole be better that we should face that
danger, once for all, than that we should consent to be, what we
are fast becoming, a body of no more importance than the
Convocation.

Animated by such feelings as these, a party in the Upper House
was eager to take the earliest opportunity of making a stand. On
the fourth of April, the second reading was moved. Near a hundred
lords were present. Somers, whose serene wisdom and persuasive
eloquence had seldom been more needed, was confined to his room
by illness; and his place on the woolsack was supplied by the
Earl of Bridgewater. Several orators, both Whig and Tory,
objected to proceeding farther. But the chiefs of 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