The rising excitement of the Opposition was partly accounted for by the increasing difficulties of the Government. The Finance Bill was taken in Committee on July 1 and 2; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer had already found that the course of his plans must be cleared and their burden lightened by dropping its second part and putting the additional grants to local authorities into the Revenue Bill. This was announced in the House on June 29. On July 1 the President of the Local Government Board moved an instruction empowering the Committee to provide for amending the law relating to income tax (including supertax), death duties, and the National Debt. This was intended mainly to enable members to discuss grievances relating to the taxes in question, but Mr. Cassel (U.) moved to extend it so as to empower the Committee to deal with grievances affecting general taxation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a bitter speech, opposed this as an obstructive manoeuvre; Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who described him as "a bad loser," said that the amendment was designed to revert to the old procedure of discussing grievances before imposing fresh taxation--a procedure imperilled by the practice adopted in 1913 of dividing the Finance Bill; for the second part of that Bill might be dropped, or delayed too late for adequate discussion. Eventually, however, the amendment was rejected by 271 to 185; another amendment moved by Sir F. Banbury, excluding the National Debt from the purview of the Committee--in order, he said, to prevent the reduction of the Sinking Fund--was defeated also by 276 to 182. In Committee, amendments (1) to graduate the tea duty _ad valorem_, and (2) to give a preference of 1_d._ per lb. to tea grown in the British Empire, were rejected, after discussion, by 241 to 130 and 258 to 165 respectively. On the first, Mr. Snowden (Lab., _Blackburn_), speaking for the Labour party, said that _ad valorem_ duties on tea were barred by insuperable difficulties, and that, while his party disapproved of indirect taxation, they would support the Bill as intended, broadly, to increase direct taxation. On the second, the Attorney-General pointed out that 270,000,000 lb. of tea came from British India and Ceylon, 11,000,000 lb. from China and 31,000,000 lb. from other countries.