to the law of the land, has spread so universal an alarm, and produced so general a discontent throughout the Kingdom.

2ndly, Because, although we do not deny that the determination on the right to a seat in the House of Commons is competent to the jurisdiction of that House alone, yet, when to this it is added, that whatever they in the exercise of that jurisdiction think fit to declare to be law, is therefore to be considered as law, because there lies no appeal, we conceive ourselves called upon to give that proposition the strongest negative; for if admitted, the law of the land (by which all courts of judicature, without exception, are equally bound to proceed) is at once overturned, and resolved into the will and pleasure of a majority of one House of Parliament; who, in assuming it, assume a power to over-rule at pleasure the fundamental right of election, which the Constitution has placed in other hands, those of their constituents and if ever this pretended power should come to be exercised to the full extent of the principle, that House will be no longer a representative of the people, but a separate body altogether independent of them, self-existing and self-elected.

3rdly, Because we are told that expulsion implies incapacity, and the proof insisted upon is, that the people have acquiesced in the principle by not re-electing persons who have been expelled; we equally deny the position as false, and reject the proof offered as in no way supporting the position to which it is applied. We are sure the doctrine is not to be found in any statute or law-book, nor in the Journals of the House of Commons, neither is it consonant with any just or known analogy of law. And as not re-electing would at most but infer a supposition of the electors' approbation of the grounds of the expulsion, and by no means their acquiescence in the conclusion of an implied incapacity, so were there, not one instance of a re-election after expulsion but Mr. Woolaston's, that alone demonstrates that neither did the constituents admit, nor the House of Commons maintain incapacity to be the consequence of expulsion. Even the case of Mr. Walpole shews, by the first re-election, the sense of the people, that expulsion did not infer incapacity; and that precedent too, which is the only one of a declaration of incapacity, produced as it was, under the influence of party violence, in the latter days of Queen Anne, in so far as it relates to the introduction

of a candidate having a minority of votes, it decides expressly against the proceedings of the House of Commons in the late Middlesex Election.

4thly, Because, as the Constitution hath been once already destroyed by the assumption and exercise of the very power which is now claimed, the day may come again when freedom of speech may be criminal in that House, and every member who shall have virtue enough to withstand the usurpations of the time, and assert the rights of the people, will for that offence be expelled by a factious and corrupt majority; and by that expulsion rendered incapable of serving the public: in which case the electors will find themselves reduced to the miserable alternative of giving up altogether their right of election, or of choosing only such as are enemies of their country, and will be passive at least, if not active, in subverting the Constitution.

5thly, Because, although it has been objected in the debate, that it is unusual and irregular in either House of Parliament to examine into the judicial proceedings of the other, whose decisions, as they cannot be drawn into question by appeal, are, it is said, to be submitted to without examination of the principles of them elsewhere; we conceive the arguments go directly to establish the exploded doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, which, as applied to the acts of any branch of the supreme power, we hold to be equally dangerous; and though it is generally true, that neither House ought lightly and wantonly to interpose even an opinion upon matters which the Constitution hath entrusted to the jurisdiction of the other, we conceive it to be no less true, that where under colour of a judicial proceeding, either House arrogates to itself the power of the whole legislature, and makes the law which it professes to declare; the other not only may but ought to assert its own right and those of the people; that this House has done so in former instances, particularly in the famous case of Ashby and White, in which the first resolution of the Lords declares, that neither House of Parliament hath any power by any vote or declaration to create to themselves any new privilege that is not warranted by the known laws and customs of Parliament.' We ought to interfere at this time, the rather as our silence on so important and alarming an occasion might be interpreted into an approbation of the

measure, and be a means of losing that confidence with the people which is so essential to the public welfare, that this House, the hereditary guardians of their rights, should at all times endeavour to maintain.

6thly, Because, upon the whole, we deem the power, which the House of Commons have assumed to themselves, of creating an incapacity, unknown to the law, and thereby depriving, in effect, all the electors of Great Britain of their invaluable right of free election, confirmed to them by so many solemn statutes, a flagrant usurpation, as highly repugnant to every essential principle of the Constitution, as the claim of ship-money by King Charles I, or that of the suspending and dispensing power by King James II. This being, indeed, in our opinion, a suspending and dispensing power assumed and exercised by the House of Commons, against the ancient and fundamental liberties of the Kingdom.

Richard Grenville, Earl Temple.

Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire.

John Talbot Touchet, Lord Audley (Earl of Castlehaven).
Heneage Finch, Earl of Aylesford.

William Craven, Lord Craven.

William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Earl Fitzwilliam.

Charles Pratt, Lord Camden.

Richard Trevor Hampden, Lord Trevor.

William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, Duke of Portland.

Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham.

Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond.

Frederic Augustus Berkeley, Earl of Berkeley.

William Bouverie, Earl of Radnor.

Francis Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon.

Sackville Tufton, Earl of Thanet.

George Neville, Lord Abergavenny.

George Lyttelton, Lord Lyttelton.

Edmund Boyle, Lord Boyle (Earl of Cork and Orrery).

George William Coventry, Earl of Coventry.

John Hobart, Earl of Buckinghamshire.

George Harry Grey, Earl of Stamford.

Joseph Damer, Lord Milton.

John Ewer, Bishop of Bangor.

Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland.
Frederic Keppel, Bishop of Exeter.
Richard Grosvenor, Lord Grosvenor.
George Byng, Viscount Torrington.
Charles Bennet, Earl of Tankerville.
Thomas Howard, Earl of Effingham.

Andrew Archer, Lord Archer.

Matthew Fortescue, Lord Fortescue.

Harry Paulet, Duke of Bolton.

William Petty, Lord Wycombe (Earl of Shelburne).
Thomas King, Lord King.

George Montagu, Duke of Manchester.

Henry Frederic Howe, Lord Chedworth.

William Ponsonby, Lord Ponsonby (Earl of Bessborough).
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

Thomas Villiers, Lord Hyde.

John Monson, Lord Monson.

George Keppel, Earl of Albemarle.

Richard Lumley, Earl of Scarborough.

CCCL.

FEBRUARY 2, 1770.

Immediately on the motion of Lord Rockingham being disposed of, Lord Marchmont moved, it being past midnight, that any resolution of this House directly or indirectly impeaching a judgment of the House of Commons in a matter where their jurisdiction is competent, legal, and exclusive, would be a violation of the constitutional rights of the Commons, tends to make a breach between the two Houses of Parliament, and leads to general confusion.' He was supported by Lord Mansfield, and opposed by Lord Chatham, who in the course of his speech having lauded the characters of Somers and Chief Justice Holt, turned to Lord Mansfield, and asserted that he believed the noble Lord equalled them both in abilities. Lord Sandwich attacked Camden, who defended himself. After a vain attempt to adjourn the debate, the resolution was carried at halfpast one.

The following protest was inserted.

1st, Because we apprehend that the rights and powers of the Peerage are not given for our own particular advantage, but merely as a constitutional trust, to be held and exercised for the benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their laws and liberties; and we should hold ourselves betrayers of that trust, unworthy of our high rank in the Kingdom, and of our seats in this House, if we considered any one legal right of the subject, much less the first and most important of all their rights, as a matter indifferent and foreign to the Peers of this Kingdom.

2ndly, Because by this resolution it is declared to the world, that if the House of Commons should change the whole law of election, should transfer the rights of the freeholders to copyholders and leaseholders for years, or totally extinguish those rights by an arbitrary declaration; should alter the constitution of cities and

boroughs with regard to their elections; should reverse not only all the franchises of suffrage which the people hold under the common law, but also trample upon the sanctions of so many Acts of Parliament made for declaring and securing the rights of election; that even in such a critical emergency of the constitution, the people are to despair of any relief whatsoever from any mode of direct or indirect interference of this House.

3rdly, Because by this resolution the House not only refuses to stand by the people, in case they should suffer the most grievous injuries from their representatives, but it abdicates its ancient and unquestioned province and duty of the Hereditary Council to the Crown, rendering itself unable to give its advice in a point in which, of all others, the King may stand in the greatest need of the wisdom and authority of the Peers, a point such as the present, in which numbers of the constituents have, in a manner agreeable to law, carried up their complaints to the Throne against their representatives.

4thly, Because by the said resolution we do a most material injury to the House of Commons itself; the resolution, by the studied latitude of the words 'directly or indirectly to impeach,' puts it out of the power of the Lords to offer, either in the present or in any future unfortunate difference between them and their constituents, even in the way of friendly conference, our amicable and healing mediation; the want of which may be a means of letting such difference run to extremities, fatal to the House of Commons itself, to the constitution, and to the nation.

5thly, Because we consider ourselves also, as an House of Parliament, to be most materially interested that the people should be legally and constitutionally represented; for as the House of Commons makes an essential part of Parliament, if that House should come to be chosen in a manner not agreeable to the laws and constitution of the Kingdom, the authority of Parliament itself must suffer extremely, if not totally perish; the Peers can no more in their legislative capacity, do any valid act, without a legal House of Commons, than without a legal Prince upon the Throne.

6thly, Because by this resolution, the constitutional control has been given up, which this House, as appears by ancient and recent precedents have constantly claimed and exercised, and for the purpose of which, the legislature has been divided into separate