“If any person, being chosen a member of the house of commons, shall accept of any office from the crown, during such time as he shall continue a member, his election shall be, and is hereby declared to be void; and a new writ shall issue for a new election, as if such person, so accepting, was naturally dead.  Nevertheless such person shall be capable of being again elected, as if his place had not become void as aforesaid.”

How this favours the doctrine of readmission, by a second choice, I am not able to discover.  The statute of the thirtieth of Charles the second had enacted, that “he who should sit in the house of commons, without taking the oaths, and subscribing the test, should be disabled to sit in the house during that parliament, and a writ should issue for the election of a new member, in place of the member so disabled, as if such member had naturally died.”

This last clause is, apparently, copied in the act of Anne, but with the common fate of imitators.  In the act of Charles, the political death continued during the parliament; in that of Anne it was hardly worth the while to kill the man whom the next breath was to revive.  It is, however, apparent, that in the opinion of the parliament, the dead-doing lines would have kept him motionless, if he had not been recovered by a kind exception.  A seat vacated could not be regained, without express permission of the same statute.

The right of being chosen again to a seat thus vacated, is not enjoyed by any general right, but required a special clause and solicitous provision.

But what resemblance can imagination conceive between one man vacating his seat by a mark of favour from the crown, and another driven from it for sedition and obscenity?  The acceptance of a place contaminates no character; the crown that gives it, intends to give with it always dignity, sometimes authority.  The commons, it is well known, think not worse of themselves, or others, for their offices of profit; yet profit implies temptation, and may expose a representative to the suspicion of his constituents; though, if they still think him worthy of their confidence, they may again elect him.

Such is the consequence.  When a man is dismissed by law to his constituents, with new trust and new dignity, they may, if they think him incorruptible, restore him to his seat; what can follow, therefore, but that, when the house drives out a varlet, with publick infamy, he goes away with the like permission to return?

If infatuation be, as the proverb tells us, the forerunner of destruction, how near must be the ruin of a nation that can be incited against its governours by sophistry like this!  I may be excused, if I catch the panick, and join my groans, at this alarming crisis, with the general lamentation of weeping patriots.

Another objection is, that the commons, by pronouncing the sentence of disqualification, make a law, and take upon themselves the power of the whole legislature.  Many quotations are then produced to prove, that the house of commons can make no laws.