llustrious family constantly exercised by
this House, (and which we hold and exercise in trust for the Commons of
Great Britain, and for their benefit,) shall be constructively
surrendered, or even weakened and impaired, under ambiguous phrases and
implications of censure on the late Parliamentary proceedings. If these
claims are not well founded, they ought to be honestly abandoned; if
they are just, they ought to be steadily and resolutely maintained.

Of his Majesty's own gracious disposition towards the true principles of
our free Constitution his faithful Commons never did or could entertain
a doubt; but we humbly beg leave to express to his Majesty our
uneasiness concerning other new and unusual expressions of his
ministers, declaratory of a resolution "to support in their _just
balance_ the rights and privileges of every branch of the legislature."

It were desirable that all hazardous theories concerning a balance of
rights and privileges (a mode of expression wholly foreign to
Parliamentary usage) might have been forborne. His Majesty's faithful
Commons are well instructed in their own rights and privileges, which
they are determined to maintain on the footing upon which they were
handed down from their ancestors; they are not unacquainted with the
rights and privileges of the House of Peers; and they know and respect
the lawful prerogatives of the crown: but they do not think it safe to
admit anything concerning the existence of a balance of those rights,
privileges, and prerogatives; nor are they able to discern to what
objects ministers would apply their fiction of a balance, nor what they
would consider as a just one. These unauthorized doctrines have a
tendency to stir improper discussions, and to lead to mischievous
innovations in the Constitution.[62]

That his faithful Commons most humbly recommend, instead of the
inconsiderate speculations of unexperienced men, that, on all occasions,
resort should be had to the happy practice of Parliament, and to those
solid maxims of government which have prevailed since the accession of
his Majesty's illustrious family, as furnishing the only safe principles
on which the crown and Parliament can proceed.

We think it the more necessary to be cautious on this head, as, in the
last Parliament, the present ministers had thought proper to
countenance, if not to suggest, an attack upon the most clear and
undoubted rights and privileges of this House.[63]

Fearing,