But, as Burke said, the practice had been abandoned, and the first resolution, therefore, as Lord North said, involved no practical result.

It is the second resolution that confers a constitutional character and importance on this debate.

And it is not too much to say that no vote of greater value had been come to for many years.

It might have been considered almost as the assertion of a truism included in the power of granting supplies, to declare that the Parliament has the right and authority to examine into and correct abuses in the expenditure, if it had not been denied by more than one speaker on the ministerial side, though not by the Prime-minister himself.

But that denial made the assertion of the right an imperative duty; for certainly the exclusive right of authorizing a levy of money would lose half its value, if unaccompanied by the other right of preventing the waste of the revenue thus raised.
It may likewise be said that another principle of the parliamentary constitution is, by implication, contained in Mr.Dunning's second resolution, and that the words, "it is competent to this House to examine into and to correct abuses in the expenditure," were meant to imply a denial of the competency of the other House to institute, or even to share in, such an examination.