the Constitution. That this House should name the representative,
is a saying which, followed by practice, subverts the constitution.
They have the right of electing, you have a right of expelling; they
of choosing, you of judging, and only of judging, of the choice.
What bounds shall be set to the freedom of that choice? Their right
is prior to ours, we all originate there. They are the mortal
enemies of the House of Commons, who would persuade them to think or
to act as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of
the people and unconnected with their opinions and feelings. Under
a pretence of exalting the dignity, they undermine the very
foundations of this House. When the question is asked here, what
disturbs the people, whence all this clamour, we apply to the
treasury-bench, and they tell us it is from the efforts of libellers
and the wickedness of the people, a worn-out ministerial pretence.
If abroad the people are deceived by popular, within we are deluded
by ministerial, cant. The question amounts to this, whether you
mean to be a legal tribunal, or an arbitrary and despotic assembly.
I see and I feel the delicacy and difficulty of the ground upon
which we stand in this question. I could wish, indeed, that they
who advised the Crown had not left Parliament in this very
ungraceful distress, in which they can neither retract with dignity
nor persist with justice. Another parliament might have satisfied
the people without lowering themselves. But our situation is not in
our own choice: our conduct in that situation is all that is in our
own option. The substance of the question is, to put bounds to your
own power by the rules and principles of law. This is, I am
sensible, a difficult thing to the corrupt, grasping, and ambitious
part of human nature. But the very difficulty argues and enforces
the necessity of it. First, because the greater the power, the more
dangerous the abuse. Since the Revolution, at least, the power of
the nation has all flowed with a full tide into the House of
Commons. Secondly, because the House of Commons, as it is the most
powerful, is the most corruptible part of the whole Constitution.
Our public wounds cannot be concealed; to be cured, they must be
laid open. The public does think we are a corrupt body. In our
legislative capacity we are, in most instances, esteemed a very wise
body. In our judicial, we have no credit, no character at, all.
Our judgments stink in the nostrils of the people. They think us to
be not only without virtue, but without shame. Therefore, the
greatness of our power, and the great and just opinion of our
corruptibility and our corruption, render it necessary to fix some
bound, to plant some landmark, which we are never to exceed. That
is what the bill proposes. First, on this head, I lay it down as a
fundamental rule in the law and constitution of this country, that
this House has not by itself alone a legislative authority in any
case whatsoever. I know that the contrary was the doctrine of the
usurping House of Commons which threw down the fences and bulwarks
of law, which annihilated first the lords, then the Crown, then its
constituents. But the first thing that was done on the restoration
of the Constitution was to settle this point. Secondly, I lay it
down as a rule, that the power of occasional incapacitation, on
discretionary grounds, is a legislative power. In order to
establish this principle, if it should not be sufficiently proved by
being stated, tell me what are the criteria, the characteristics, by
which you distinguish between a legislative and a juridical act. It
will be necessary to state, shortly, the difference between a
legislative and a juridical act. A legislative act has no reference
to any rule but these two: original justice, and discretionary
application. Therefore, it can give rights; rights where no rights