country--mainly, of course, in other words, to the prosecution of the impending war in Ireland. At the first sitting of Parliament, after the prorogation, which took place some months afterwards, the Royal Speech from the Throne contained an announcement to the Commons that in order that they might be satisfied how the money had been laid out which they had already given, his Majesty had directed the accounts to be laid before them whenever they should think fit to call for them. The privilege thus practically acknowledged may no doubt be, as some constitutional lawyers have contended, coeval with the constitution; but it had been so intermittently respected that its unvarying recognition from this time forward is justly reckoned as one of the chief gains which accrued to our parliamentary system from the Revolution. It seems, however, to have been only in the Stat., 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 44, that there appears an appropriation clause of the modern type apportioning all the supplies of the session to the services for which they were provided. But while these delicate matters of royal rights and official income were being disposed of, the King was commendably anxious to show himself at once in some other light than that of an applicant for parliamentary aids. As early as the 1st of March he sent a special message to the Commons calling their attention to the "grievous burden" of the unpopular hearth-tax, and signifying that assent either "to the regulation of it, or to the taking of it wholly away," not doubting but the Commons would take care of his revenue in some other way. This judicious proposal gave great satisfaction. The Commons replied in terms of warm acknowledgment, and the city of London presented to him an address of thanks. He interposed, however, with less success and perhaps with less judgment in the religious disputes by which the country was divided. The traditions, alike of his nation and his house, may well have encouraged him to aspire to the great office of moderator and mediator between contending sects; but it is doubtful whether such a post could under any circumstances have been within the reach of a Dutch Calvinist. For the imperfect and illogically-regulated relief accorded by the Toleration Act to most of the dissenting denominations the country was prepared; but neither the occasion nor the idea of the Comprehension Bill--a measure for widening the entrance to the Church of England at the very moment when those who had chosen to remain outside were being encouraged by a relieving Act to remain there--was in itself a happy one. Churchmen were, from their own point of view, entitled to argue that the two measures proceeded upon two opposite and conflicting theories of state policy; that toleration, properly understood and applied, would render comprehension superfluous, and had indeed been accepted by the Church with that very object; and that it was but a poor