direct terms all the other articles." That, on the other hand, other
members of deserved weight and influence, such as Lord Palmerston and
Lord F. Campbell, had disdained the idea of regarding "the article of
the three obscene and impious libels as affording any ground for their
proceeding." So practised a debater as Mr. Grenville had but little
difficulty, therefore, in arguing against the advocates of expulsion,
when they were so divided that one portion of them did, in fact, reply
to the other. But it would be superfluous here to enter into the
arguments employed on either side to justify the expulsion, or to prove
it to be unjustifiable, from a consideration of the character of either
Wilkes or his publication. The strength and importance of Mr.
Grenville's speech lay in the constitutional points which it raised.

Some supporters of the ministers had dwelt upon the former expulsion,
insisting that "a man who had been expelled by a former House of Commons
could not possibly be deemed a proper person to sit in the present
Parliament, unless he had some pardon to plead, or some merit to cancel
his former offences." By a reference to the case of Sir R. Walpole, Mr.
Grenville proved that this had not been the opinion of former
Parliaments; and he contended, with unanswerable logic, that it would be
very mischievous to the nation if such a principle should be now acted
on, and such a precedent established, since, though employed in the
first instance against the odious and the guilty, it might, when once
established, be easily applied to, and made use of against, the
meritorious and the innocent; and so the most eminent and deserving
members of the state, under the color of such an example, by one
arbitrary and discretionary vote of one House of Parliament, the worst
species of ostracism, might be excluded from the public councils, cut
off and proscribed from the rights of every subject of the realm, not
for a term of years alone, but forever. He quoted from "L'Esprit des