of the one nor of the other; but upon a fixed rule, of which he
has not the making, but singly and solely the application to the case.

The power assumed by the House neither is, nor can be, judicial power
exercised according to known law. The properties of law are, first, that
it should be known; secondly, that it should be fixed and not occasional.
First, this power cannot be according to the first property of law;
because no man does or can know it, nor do you yourselves know upon what
grounds you will vote the incapacity of any man. No man in Westminster
Hall, or in any court upon earth, will say that is law, upon which, if a
man going to his counsel should say to him, "What is my tenure in law of
this estate?" he would answer, "Truly, sir, I know not; the court has no
rule but its own discretion: they will determine." It is not a, fixed
law, because you profess you vary it according to the occasion, exercise
it according to your discretion; no man can call for it as a right. It
is argued that the incapacity is not originally voted, but a consequence
of a power of expulsion: but if you expel, not upon legal, but upon
arbitrary, that is, upon discretionary grounds, and the incapacity is _ex
vi termini_ and inclusively comprehended in the expulsion, is not the
incapacity voted in the expulsion? Are they not convertible terms? and,
if incapacity is voted to be inherent in expulsion, if expulsion be
arbitrary, incapacity is arbitrary also. I have, therefore, shown that
the power of incapacitation is a legislative power; I have shown that
legislative power does not belong to the House of Commons; and,
therefore, it follows that the House of Commons has not a power of
incapacitation.

I know not the origin of the House of Commons, but am very sure that it
did not create itself; the electors wore prior to the elected; whose
rights originated either from the people at large, or from some other
form of legislature, which never could intend for the chosen a power of
superseding the choosers.

If you have not a power of declaring an incapacity simply by the mere act
of declaring it, it is evident to the most ordinary reason you cannot
have a right of expulsion, inferring, or rather, including, an
incapacity, For as the law, when it gives any direct right, gives also as
necessary incidents all the means of acquiring the possession of that
right, so where it does not give a right directly, it refuses all the
means by whi