5401. MONEY BILLS, Parliament and.—
By the law and usage of the British parliament,
all those are understood to be money
bills which raise money in any way, or which
dispose of it, and which regulate those circumstances
of matter, method and time,
which attend as of consequence on the right
of giving and disposing. Again, the law and
customs of their Parliament, which include the
usage as to “money bills”, are a part of the
law of their land; our ancestors adopted their
system of law in the general, making from
time to time such alterations as local diversities
required; but that part of their law,
which relates to the matter now in question,
was never altered by our Legislature, in any
period of its history; but on the contrary, the
two Houses of Assembly, both under our regal
and republican governments, have ever
done business on the constant admission that
the law of Parliament was their law.—
Congress Report.
Ford ed., ii, 136.
(1777)
