The procedure in the case of financial measures differs in important respects from that followed in passing other bills. It will be remembered that, with some exceptions already described, all the national revenues are first paid into the Consolidated Fund, and then drawn out of it to meet the expenditures of the government. The financial work of Parliament, like that of the administration, turns, therefore, upon the processes of getting money into and out of that fund. The second process comes first in the order of parliamentary business, and its nature is fixed by two standing orders, which date from the early years of the eighteenth century. One of them, adopted in 1707, provides that the House will not proceed upon any petition or motion for granting money but in Committee of the Whole House;[279:1] the other, that it will not receive any petition, or proceed upon any motion, for a grant or charge upon the public revenue unless recommended from the Crown.[279:2] [Sidenote: The Rule that Appropriations Require Consent of the Crown.] This last rule, first adopted by a resolution in 1706, and made a standing order in 1713,[279:3] was designed to prevent improvident expenditure on private initiative. It has proved not only an invaluable protection to the Treasury, but a bulwark for the authority of the ministry.[280:1] Its importance has been so well recognised that it has been embodied in the fundamental laws of the self-governing colonies;[280:2] while some foreign countries, like France and Italy, that have copied the forms of parliamentary government, without always perceiving the foundation on which they rest, have suffered not a little from its absence.[280:3] Even in England the rule has been at times evaded. About the middle of the last century, it was the habit to bring in bills involving the expenditure of public funds, and avoid a violation of the rule by inserting a clause that the expenses incurred should be "defrayed out of moneys to be hereafter voted by Parliament." But a vote in favour of such a bill was clearly an expression of opinion that well-nigh compelled the ministers to include the expense in their next estimates. This practice was stopped in 1866 by changing the standing order so as to provide that the House will not "proceed upon any motion for a grant or charge upon the public revenue, whether payable out of the consolidated fund, or out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, unless recommended from the Crown."[280:4] The change, however, does not absolutely prevent the House from forcing the hands of the government. A resolution can be passed in abstract and general terms in favour of a certain kind of expenditure, the construction of harbours of refuge, for example; or an address to the Crown can be adopted asking for an expenditure, and promising "that this House will make good the same," a procedure followed in erecting statues on the death of great leaders of the House.[281:1]