species of Whig." And the union of the two bodies proved irresistible; the bill was carried by a majority of sixty-two, and the government did not venture to carry on their resistance to it in the House of Lords, any interference by which would, indeed, have been resented by the Commons, as a violation of their privileges. At first the duration of the bill was limited to seven years; but in 1774 it was made perpetual by a still larger majority, the experience of its working having converted many who had at first opposed it, but who now bore willing testimony to its efficacy. Unhappily, though the House could make the bill perpetual, at least till formally repealed, it could not invest its good effects with equal durability. After a time, the same complaints were advanced against the decision of election committees that had formerly been employed to discredit the judgments of the whole House. The success or failure of a petition again became a party question; and as in a committee of an odd number the ministerialists or the Opposition must inevitably have a majority of at least one member, before the end of the reign it had become as easy to foretell the result of a petition from the composition of the committee as it had been in the time of Walpole. And it was with the approval of almost all parties--an approval extorted only by the absolute necessity of the case--that, after one or two modifications of Mr. Grenville's act had been tried, Mr. Disraeli induced the House to surrender altogether its privilege of judging of elections, and to submit the investigations of petitions on such subjects to the only tribunal sufficiently above suspicion to command and retain the confidence of the nation, the judges of the high courts of law.