Next day (July 2) the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved an amendment reducing the income tax from 1_s._ 4_d._ to 1_s._ 3_d._ (p. 130). He explained that the alternative lay between taking off this additional penny and reducing the older taxation. But the amount saved by postponing the grants to local, authorities would not suffice to relieve the death duties, or to take off the sugar duty, and the income taxpayer, especially in the lower rates of income, deserved relief more than the payer of supertax. The inconvenience of the change to bankers had been greatly exaggerated, and, as soon as they had been officially told to deduct 1_s._ 4_d._ on dividends till the House otherwise ordered, the position became simple. The reduction was passed after a long debate by 251 to 56. The Committee was resumed on July 13 after the introduction of the guillotine (_post_, p. 146). Meanwhile the debate on the second reading of the Amending Bill had begun in the House of Lords on July 1. After a preliminary objection by Lord Willoughby de Broke, that it proposed to amend a non-existent Act, had been overruled by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Morley of Blackburn moved the second reading. The Bill, he said, afforded a better solution than Earl Grey's proposed Convention; had it not been introduced, Home Rule would have been wrecked by the sectarian prejudice which hampered the Union at its outset. The Government believed there could be no better opportunity for discovering the common ground existing in Parliament for attaining an effective peace in Ireland. The situation in Ireland had a historic base for which neither party could escape responsibility. As to exclusion, no part of Ulster was homogeneous. The National Volunteers had dispelled the illusion that the masses in the South and West of Ireland had lost their care for Home Rule. The danger was that the constitutional agitation for self-government might give place to the older methods of violence and disloyalty. He hoped the House would have no hand in promoting the change.