The House of Lords next day continued its protest against the Parliament Act by rejecting (July 15) the Plural Voting Bill. The debate was, however, languid. The Marquess of Crewe, in moving the second reading, hoped that the inherent impropriety of plural voting would have in any case led Ministers to introduce the measure; the party advantage it gave was, in fact, only occasional, and unknown before 1884. He repeated the promise (p. 84) of a Redistribution Commission. Lord St. Audries said that such promises were idle; the general election would come as a thief in the night, and would find the Redistribution Bill in bed. In fact, most plural voters had but two votes, one for their residence and one for their place of business or their University, and agriculture, commerce, and industry should be adequately represented. Lord Newton traced indirectly to the Bill the militants' agitation, stimulated by the juggling over the Franchise Bill in 1913, and the Irish crisis, as the general election was being postponed till the plural voter was abolished. Earl Grey held that the Bill aggravated the existing inequality of representation. The Marquess of Lansdowne said that the debate was unreal. The authority of the Government in the country was waning, and they hoped the Bill would save something out of the wreck. The second reading was postponed by 119 to 49. This division, of course, meant little; and it was clear that the Government and the majority of the Commons would not accept the Lords' transformation of the Amending Bill. But the division on the guillotining of the Finance Act had left the Government weaker, and they had been compelled to strain their supporters' patience by announcing a new session "in the early winter" after a Prorogation in August, to enable the essential provisions of the Revenue Bill to be carried in time for the insertion of the grants to the local authorities in the next Estimates. Before the Prorogation they would take the Amending Bill, the Indian Budget, and the resolutions on the Reform of the House of Lords.