person and authority” is one of the leading phrases—­it was received generally as a positive anticipation of the judgment on these questions.  There was yet farther light, however, between March 13 and March 16, when the House, on report from the Committee, settled the qualifications of members and electors.  All Papists and all who had aided or abetted the Irish Rebellion were to be incapable of being members, and also all who, or whose fathers, had advised or voluntarily assisted in any war against the Parliament since Jan. 1, 1641-2, unless there had been subsequent manifestation of their good affections.  This implied the exclusion of all the very conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars and the sons of such; and the present House, as the lineal representative of the Parliamentarians in those wars, could hardly have done less, especially as there was a saving-clause of which moderate Royalists would have the benefit, and as the electors were sure to interpret the saving-clause very liberally.  For there was not even the same guardedness in the qualifications of the electors themselves.  It was proposed, indeed, by the Committee to disfranchise all “that have been actually in arms for the late King or his son against the Parliament or have compounded for his or their delinquency” with an exception only in favour of manifest penitents; but this was negatived by the House by ninety-three votes (Lord Ancram and Mr, Herbert tellers) to fifty-six votes (Scott and Henry Marten tellers).  Thus, active Royalists of the Civil Wars, if they might not be elected, might at least elect; and, as another regulation disqualified from electing or being elected all “that deny Magistracy or Ministry or either of them to be the Ordinances of God “—­viz. all Fifth Monarchy men, extreme Anabaptists, and Quakers—­the balance was still towards the Royalists.  In short, as finally passed, the Bill was one tending to bring in a Parliament the main mass of which should consist of Presbyterians, though there might be a large intermixture of Old Royalists, Cromwellians, and moderate Commonwealth’s men.  To such a Parliament it might be safely left to determine what the future form of Government should be, whether Commonwealth continued, restored Kingship, or a renewal of the Protectorate.  The present House had not itself decided anything.  It had not decided against a continuance of the Commonwealth, should that seem best.  It had only assumed that possibly that might not seem the best, and had therefore removed obstacles to the free deliberation of either of the other schemes.  The revival of the Solemn League and Covenant might seem to imply more; but the phraseology of a document of 1643 might admit of re-interpretation in 1660.—­A special perplexity of the present House was in the matter of the Other House or House of Lords.  They were now sitting themselves as a Single House, notwithstanding that the Long Parliament, of which they professed themselves to be a continuation, consisted of two Houses.