Three acts have been cited, disabling members, for different terms, on different occasions; and it is profoundly remarked, that if the commons could, by their own privilege, have made a disqualification, their jealousy of their privileges would never have admitted the concurrent sanction of the other powers.

I must for ever remind these puny controvertists, that those acts are laws of permanent obligation; that two of them are now in force, and that the other expired only when it had fulfilled its end.  Such laws the commons cannot make; they could, perhaps, have determined for themselves, that they would expel all who should not take the test, but they could leave no authority behind them, that should oblige the next parliament to expel them.  They could refuse the South sea directors, but they could not entail the refusal.  They can disqualify by vote, but not by law; they cannot know that the sentence of disqualification pronounced to-day may not become void to-morrow, by the dissolution of their own house.  Yet, while the same parliament sits, the disqualification continues, unless the vote be rescinded; and, while it so continues, makes the votes, which freeholders may give to the interdicted candidate, useless and dead, since there cannot exist, with respect to the same subject, at the same time, an absolute power to choose and an absolute power to reject.

In 1614, the attorney general was voted incapable of a seat in the house of commons; and the nation is triumphantly told, that, though the vote never was revoked, the attorney general is now a member.  He, certainly, may now be a member, without revocation of the vote.  A law is of perpetual obligation; but a vote is nothing, when the voters are gone.  A law is a compact reciprocally made by the legislative powers, and, therefore, not to be abrogated but by all the parties.  A vote is simply a resolution, which binds only him that is willing to be bound.

I have thus punctiliously and minutely pursued this disquisition, because I suspect, that these reasoners, whose business is to deceive others, have sometimes deceived themselves, and I am willing to free them from their embarrassment, though I do not expect much gratitude for my kindness.

Other objections are yet remaining, for of political objections there cannot easily be an end.  It has been observed, that vice is no proper cause of expulsion; for if the worst man in the house were always to be expelled, in time none would be left; but no man is expelled for being worst, he is expelled for being enormously bad; his conduct is compared, not with that of others, but with the rule of action.

The punishment of expulsion, being in its own nature uncertain, may be too great or too little for the fault.

This must be the case of many punishments.  Forfeiture of chattels is nothing to him that has no possessions.  Exile itself may be accidentally a good; and, indeed, any punishment, less than death, is very different to different men.