unless these 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.

This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into its
utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondent
practice. A systematic spirit has been shown upon both sides. The
electors of Middlesex chose a person whom the House of Commons had voted
incapable; and the House of