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.