§ A message from the lords announced their lordships concurrence to the malt and pension duty bills, with an amendment to the latter. The house forthwith resolved itself into a committee to take the said amendment into consideration.
§ The Speakersaid, it was his duty to explain to the house the nature of the amendment made by the lords, which was merely the insertion of the word "tax" after the word "land," in one of the paragraphs. It had always, he said, been the usage of that house to regard with extreme vigilance any amendments made by the house of lords in any act in the nature of a money bill, and to reject, with the most scrupulous rigour, any amendment which tended to trench upon the exclusive privilege of that house, even in the slighest degree, by altering any part of the substance of 288 such bills. Trivial as an alteration might sometimes appear, yet it was of high importance to attend even to the most trifling; for if any one instance should be admitted to pass, it might grow into a precedent, the consequences of which none could tell. In cases, however, where the alteration went merely to the correction of a clerical error, the house had not usually thought it necessary to reject the amendment. Of this description strictly was the present amendment
§ Sir W. Youngthought even the present instance of too much importance to be allowed to pass. Had the insertion been of almost any other word than tax, the amendment might have passed as unobjectionable.
§ The Speakersaid, it was his duty to explain to the hon. baronet that it had not been the usage of the house to reject amendments, not altering the substance of a money bill, but merely correcting a clerical error, which the present amendment only went to do, and that in a paragraph reciting a former act of parliament. Even in his own short experience, many instances had occurred wherein similar amendments had passed without objection. In the case, for instance, of annum per centum, when the word per became a necessary amendment. The present bill coo stood, as now amended, in the original copy, and the error was merely an omission by the ingrossing clerk. —The amendment was agreed to, and a message sent to the lords to acquaint their lordships thereof.