_Bill for triennial parliaments._--The enormous duration of seventeen years, for which Charles II. protracted his second parliament, turned the thoughts of all who desired improvements in the constitution towards some limitation on a prerogative which had not hitherto been thus abused. Not only the continuance of the same House of Commons during such a period destroyed the connection between the people and their representatives, and laid open the latter, without responsibility, to the corruption which was hardly denied to prevail; but the privilege of exemption from civil process made needy and worthless men secure against their creditors, and desirous of a seat in parliament as a complete safeguard to fraud and injustice. The term of three years appeared sufficient to establish a control of the electoral over the representative body, without recurring to the ancient but inconvenient scheme of annual parliaments, which men enamoured of a still more popular form of government than our own were eager to recommend. A bill for this purpose was brought into the House of Lords in December 1689, but lost by the prorogation.[224] It passed both houses early in 1693, the whigs generally supporting, and the tories opposing it; but on this, as on many other great questions of this reign, the two parties were not so regularly arrayed against each other as on points of a more personal nature.[225] To this bill the king refused his assent: an exercise of prerogative which no ordinary circumstances can reconcile either with prudence or with a constitutional administration of government. But the Commons, as it was easy to foresee, did not abandon so important a measure; a similar bill received the royal assent in November 1694.[226] By the triennial bill it was simply provided that every parliament should cease and determine within three years from its meeting. The clause contained in the act of Charles II. against the intermission of parliaments for more than three years is repeated; but it was not thought necessary to revive the somewhat violent and perhaps impracticable provisions by which the act of 1641 had secured their meeting; it being evident that even annual sessions might now be relied upon as indispensable to the machine of government.