post of duty than this?  Strip it of the poor reward of popularity; suffer even the excesses committed in defence of the popular interest to become a ground for the majority of that House to form a disqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure, attended not only with the loss of the franchise, but with every kind of personal disgrace.—­If this shall happen, the people of this kingdom may be assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man.  It is out of the nature of men and things that they should; and their presumption will be equal to their folly if they expect it.  The power of the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to protect every representative in the animated performance of his duty, or that duty cannot be performed.  The House of Commons can never be a control on other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by their constituents; and unless those constituents possess some right in the choice of that House, which it is not in the power of that House to take away.  If they suffer this power of arbitrary incapacitation to stand, they have utterly perverted every other power of the House of Commons.  The late proceeding I will not say is contrary to law; it must be so; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any possibility, 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 exercise of this claim, but their own discretion.  Not one of their abettors has ever undertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species 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 consequence of which is, that the first franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally depend, is to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence.  This is so anomalous to our whole constitution, that I will venture to say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor can be, forfeited in such a manner.

The whole of their usurpation 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 supreme, what we declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been so before.  Thus the circumstance of having no appeal from their jurisdiction is made to imply that they have no rule in the exercise of it:  the judgment does not derive its validity from its conformity to the law; but preposterously the law is made to attend on the judgment; and the rule of the judgment is no other than the occasional will of the House.  An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows; which is just the very nature and description of a legislative act.