Commons has taken in a member whom the
electors of Middlesex had not chosen. By a construction on that
legislative power which had been assumed, they declared that the true
legal sense of the country was contained in the minority, on that
occasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote of incapacity, be
contained in any minority.

When any construction of law goes against the spirit of the privilege it
was meant to support, it is a vicious construction. It is material to us
to be represented really and bona fide, and not in forms, in types, and
shadows, and fictions of law. The right of election was not established
merely as a _matter of form_, to satisfy some method and rule of
technical reasoning; it was not a principle which might substitute a
_Titius_ or a _Maevius_, a _John Doe_ or _Richard Roe_, in the place of a
man specially chosen; not a principle which was just as well satisfied
with one man as with another. It is a right, the effect of which is to
give to the people that man, and that man only, whom by their voices,
actually, not constructively given, they declare that they know, esteem,
love, and trust. This right is a matter within their own power of
judging and feeling; not an _ens rationis_ and creature of law: nor can
those devices, by which anything else is substituted in the place of such
an actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of representation.

I know that the courts of law have made as strained constructions in
other cases. Such is the construction in common recoveries. The method
of construction which in that case gives to the persons in remainder, for
their security and representative, the door-keeper, crier, or sweeper of
the Court, or some other shadowy being without substance or effect, is a
fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however suffered, by the
acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of the
old Statute of Westminster, which authorised perpetuities, had more sense
and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to turn the
right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine and
recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give it
are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely contemptible.

The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionary
disqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will be
sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I