[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 8. Yet neither this declaration nor the
frequent remonstrances of the lawyers could prevent the house from usurping
the office of the judges, or from inflicting illegal punishments. Thus,
for example, on the report of a committee, detailing the discovery of a
conspiracy to extort money by a false charge of delinquency, the house,
without hearing the accused, or sending them before a court of justice,
proceeded to inflict on some the penalties of the pillory, fine, and
imprisonment, and adjudged Mrs. Samford, as the principal, to be whipped
the next day from Newgate to the Old Exchange, and to be kept to hard
labour for three months.--Journals, 1650, Feb. 2, Aug. 13.]

[Footnote 2: Immediately after Pride's purge, Vane, disgusted at the
intolerance of his own party, left London, and retired to Raby Castle; he
was now induced to rejoin them, and resumed his seat on Feb. 26.]

from the abolished House of Lords. But, after all, what right could this
handful of men have to impose a new constitution on the kingdom? Ought they
not, in consistency with their own principles, to have ascertained the
sense of the nation by calling a new parliament? The question was raised,
but the leaders, aware that their power was based on the sword of the
military, shrunk from the experiment; and, to elude the demands of their
opponents, appointed a committee to regulate the succession of parliaments
and the election of members; a committee, which repeatedly met and
deliberated, but never brought the question to any definitive conclusion.
Still, when the new authorities looked around the house, and observed the
empty benches, they were admonished of their own insignificance, and of the
hollowness of their pretensions. They claimed the sovereign authority,
as the representatives of the people; but the majority of those
representatives had been excluded by successive acts of military violence;
and the house had been reduced from more than five hundred members, to