DRAFT CONSTITUTION 673
House as to how this procedure of the House of Commons going into a Committee of Supply to deal with the estimates came into being. The House will remember that there was a time in English political history when the King and the House of Commons were at loggerheads. There was not such pleasant feeling of trust and confidence which exists now today between the House of Commons and the King. The King was regarded as a tyrant, as an oppressor, as a person interested in levying taxes and spending them in the way in which he wanted. It was also regarded that the Speaker of the House of Commons instead of being a person chosen by the House of Commons enjoying the confidence of the House of Commons was regarded as a spy of the King. Consequently, the members of the House of Commons always feared that if the whole House discussed the estimates, the Speaker who had a right to preside when the House as a whole met in session would in all probability, to secure the favour of the King, report the names of the members of the House to the King who criticised the King’s conduct, his wastefulness, his acts of tyranny. In order therefore to get rid of the Speaker who was, as I said in the biginning, regarded as a spy of the King carrying tales of what happened in the House of Commons to the King, they devised this procedure of going into a Committee; because when the House met in Committee the Speaker has no right to preside. That was the main object why the House of Commons met in Committee of Supply. As I said, even if the House did not meet in Committee of Supply, it would have been necessary for the House to pass an Appropriation Bill. As my Friend—at least the lawyer friends—will remember, there was a time when the House of Commons merely passed resolutions in Committee of Ways and Means to determine the taxes that may be levied, and consequently the taxes were levied for a long time—I think up to 1913 on the basis of mere resolutions passed by the House of Commons Committee of Ways and Means. In 1913 this question was taken to a Court of law whether taxes could be levied merely on the basis of resolutions passed by the House of Commons in the Committee of Ways and Means, and the High Court declared that the House of commons had no right to levy taxes on the basis of mere resolutions. Parliament must pass a law in order to enable Parliament to levy taxes. Consequently, the British Parliament passed what is called a Provincial Collection of taxes Act.