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defence of the popular interest, to become a ground for the majority of that Houfe to form a difqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure, attended not only with the lofs of the franchise, but with every kind of perfonal difgrace.If this fhall happen, the people of this kingdom may be affured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully ferved by any man. out of the nature of men and things that they fhould; and their prefumption will be equal to their folly, if they expect it. The power of the people, within the laws, muft fhew itfelf fufficient to protect every reprefentative in the animated performance of his duty, or that duty cannot be performed. The Houfe of Commons can never be a controul on other parts of Government unless they are controuled themselves by their conftituents; and unless these conftituents poffefs fome right in the choice of that Houfe, which it is not in the power of that House to take away. If they fuffer this power of arbitrary incapacitation to ftand, they have utterly perverted every other power of the House of Commons. The late proceeding, I will not fay, is contrary to law; it must be fo; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any poffibility, be a legal power in any limited member of Government.

The power which they claim, of declaring. incapacities, would not be above the just claims of a final judicature, if they had not laid it down as a leading principle, that they had no rule in the exercife of this claim, but their own discretion.

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Not one of their abettors has ever undertaken to affign the principle of unfitnefs, the fpecies or degree of delinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the mode of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is established. The direct confequence of which is, that the first franchife of an Englishman, and that on which all the reft vitally depend, is to be forfeited for fome offence which no man knows, and which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence. This is fo anomalous to our whole conftitution, that I will venture to fay, the most trivial right which the fubject claims, never was, nor can be, forfeited in fuch a manner.

The whole of their ufurpation is established upon this method of arguing. We do not make laws. No; we do not contend for this power. We only declare law; and, as we are a tribunal both competent and fupreme, what we declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been fo before. Thus the circumftance of having no appeal from their jurifdiction is made to imply that they have no rule in the exercise of it; the judgement does not derive its validity from its conformity to the law; but prepofterously the law is made to attend on the judgement; and the rule of the judgement is no other than the occafional will of the House. An arbitrary difcre tion leads, legality follows; which is just the very nature and defcription of a legiflative act.

This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into its utmost confequences; and G a dangerous

a dangerous principle has begot a correfpondent practice. A fyftematic fpirit has been fhewn upon both fides. The electors of Middlefex chofe a perfon whom the House of Commons had voted incapable; and the House of Commons has taken in a member whom the electors of Middlesex had not chofen. By a conftruction on that legislative power which had been affumed, they declared that the true legal fense of the county was contained in the minority, on that occafion; and might, on a refiftance to a vote of incapacity, be contained in any minority.

When any conftruction of law goes against the fpirit of the privilege it was meant to fupport, it is a vicious conftruction. It is material to us to be reprefented really and bona fide, and not in forms, in types, and fhadows, and fictions of law. The right of election was not established merely as a matter of form, to fatisfy fome method and rule of technical reafoning; it was not a principle which might substitute a Titius or a Maevius, a John Doe or Richard Roe, in the place of a man specially chofen; not a principle which was just as well fatisfied with one man as with another. It is a right, the effect of which is to give to the people, that man, and that man only, whom by their voices, actually, not conftructively given, they declare that they know, efteem, love, and truft. This right is a matter within their own power of judging and feeling; not an ens rationis and creature of law: nor can thofe devices, by which any thing else is fubftituted in the place of fuch an actual choice,

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I know that the courts of law have made as ftrained conftructions in other cafes. Such is the conftruction in common recoveries. The method of construction which in that cafe gives to the perfons in remainder, for their fecurity and representative, the door-keeper, cryer, or sweeper of the Court, or fome other fhadowy being without substance or effect, is a fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however fuffered by the acquiefcence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of the old ftatute of Weftminster, which authorised perpetuities, had more fense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to turn the right of election into fuch a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evafion is infinitely contemptible.

The people indeed have been told, that this power of difcretionary difqualification is vefted in hands that they may truft, and who will be sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find fomething in this argument differing from that on which every mode of defpotifm has been defended, I fhall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. The people are fatisfied to truft themselves with the exercise of their own privileges, and do not defire this kind intervention of the House of Commons to free them froin the burthen. They are certainly in the right. They ought not to truft the House of Commons with a G 2

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power over their franchises: because the conftitution, which placed two other co-ordinate powers to controul it, repofed no fuch confidence in that body. It were a folly well deferving fervitude for its punishment, to be full of confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to an House of Commons, arrogating to its fole refolution the most harsh and odious part of legislative authority, that degree of fubmiffion which is due only to the Legiflature itself.

When the Houfe of Commons, in an endeavour to obtain new advantages at the expence of the other orders of the State, for the benefit of the Commons at large, have purfued ftrong measures; if it were not juft, it was at least natural, that the constituents fhould connive at all their proceedings; because we were ourselves ultimately to profit. But when this fubmiffion is urged to us, in a contest between the reprefentatives and ourfelves, and where nothing can be put into their fcale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us to be children when they tell us they are our representatives, our own flefh and blood, and that all the ftripes they give us are for our good. The very defire of that body to have fuch a truft contrary to law repofed in them, fhews that they are not worthy of it. They certainly will abuse it; becaufe all men poffeffed of an uncontrouled difcretionary power leading to the aggrandifement and profit of their own body have always abufed it: and I fee no particular fanctity in our times, that is at all likely, by a miraculous

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