On March 19, 1649, England’s House of Commons passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England.”
This was during Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, after the execution of Charles I. The House of Lords did not again meet until the Convention Parliament of 1660, under the Restoration of the monarchy.
On March 19, 1979, the United States House of Representatives began broadcasting its day-to-day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.
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The House of Lords is in the process of being replaced by a chamber of the same name, but no longer representing a hereditary aristocracy. Remarkably, what began this transformation was the popularity of the prescriptions of a self-educated American economist, Henry George.
George accepted the Ricardian notions that land had distinctive, immutable properties of value, and that pure rent — rewards to these properties — were unearned. George propose to fund government exactly and only by taxing land to capture this rent.
The House of Commons did not propose to limit taxation to a land tax, but spurred by Georgism proposed to tax land. Those in the House of Lords, whose personal wealth tended to be in land, would not agree. The King sided with the House of Commons, and threaten to pack the House of Lords with acquiescent peers unless the then-present lords not only agreed to the land tax, but also accepted a more general primacy of the House of Commons. Thence was set into motion a process under which the House of Commons began reforming to its own pleasure the House of Lords.
George’s views no longer have the traction that once they did, and his remaining acolytes fare badly in debate with economists. Discussion of George is largely reduced to footnotes.